President Trump announces he is like to impose global tariffs on imported steel and aluminum – in a broad effort to ensure U.S. national security and manufacturing capacity within a very important industrial sector.

Earlier today President Trump appeared to be accepting Commerce Secretary Ross proposals for 25 percent tariffs on imported steel and 10 percent for aluminum.  It is likely the tariffs will apply globally to all imports because targeted national tariffs have not worked.  China ships their manufactured steel to another nation first in order to avoid the tariff.  As Secretary Ross has previously stated we end up with a whack-a-mole policy.   So likely the tariff will apply globally regardless of the nation shipping the product.

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The usual, the corporate GOPe and Chamber of Commerce politicians will go bananas.

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Following up on this earlier scare. Today federal authorities arrested a Massachusetts man for mailing a threatening letter to Donald and Vanessa Trump containing powder.

(New York Post) The feds on Thursday busted a 24-year-old man from suburban Boston for sending a letter that contained a white powder that turned out to be cornstarch to Donald Trump Jr. last month, authorities said.

The letter was postmarked from Boston on Feb. 7, and the first son’s frightened wife Vanessa was briefly hospitalized when she opened it on Feb. 12 at her mother’s Upper East Side home.
Daniel Frisiello of Beverly was arrested on federal charges of mailing threats to injure and providing false information and hoaxes, The Boston Globe reported.

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In an effort to keep the Daily Open Thread a little more open topic we are going to start a new daily thread for “Presidential Politics”. Please use this thread to post anything relating to the Donald Trump Administration and Presidency.

This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.

President Trump Twitter @POTUS / Vice President Pence Twitter @VP

Sarah H Sanders Twitter @SHSanders45

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.

For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †

UPDATE: 5:00pm 3/1/18:  See NYT tweet

A day after Mayor Bill de Blasio named Alberto Carvalho as the next New York City schools chancellor, Carvalho rejected the offer https://t.co/AAsEbZHXJv

— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 1, 2018

According to the New York Daily News, New York Mayor Bill De Blasio has hired Miami Dade’s former school head Alberto Carvalho to be the New York School Chancellor. This will NOT end well.  New York parents likely have no idea who their mayor just hired.

In 2013 an investigation into the Miami-Dade School Police Department (M-DSPD) uncovered several police officers, and School Resource Officers, admitting to breaking the law because they were instructed to do so by M-DSPD Police Chief Charles Hurley.  During the investigation, Chief Hurley admitted to giving the police officers instructions to hide criminal conduct by students, because of specific demands by School Superintendent Alberto Carvalho.

Alberto Carvalho is a very well connected political figure among Democrats.  [Carvalho also has a zipper problem] It was Carvalho’s program to use the police to inflate statistical improvements in schools that eventually led to neighboring Broward County doing the same thing in 2013.  Those policies directly led to the recent school shooting in Parkland.

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Earlier today President Trump held a meeting with Republican and Democrat representatives who are reviewing a myriad of legislative proposals on school safety improvements.

Using an increasingly familiar and rather Trumpian approach, the President instructs the media to remain in the room for well over an hour as the various positions and politicians debate and outline their proposals.

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Remember the ‘alarms‘ over the previously similar DACA meeting?

Wolfmoon Reminder: “Well, I don’t really have to do any holding together, now that I figured out what Trump is up to. He is shaking things out, but counting on Trump gravity to pull things back together as he moves along.

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The New York Times is reporting Ms. Hope Hicks is resigning from her role as White House Communications Director to seek opportunities in the private sector.

This doesn’t come as a surprise considering 29-year-old Ms. Hicks was/is romantically involved with Rob Porter, the embattled White House Staff Secretary who was swamped in a controversy of accusations of abuse against him by former spouses earlier this month.

Hope Hicks was initially candidate Donald Trump’s personal aide, and one of a very small group organized within the initial presidential campaign headed by Cory Lewandowski.

Together with Lewandowski, Hope Hicks, Dan Scavino Jr., Michael Cohen, Michael Glassner, Brad Parscale and Jared Kushner were the team who powered through the political machine to win the GOP nomination and later the presidency.

According to the Times: “Ms. Hicks had been considering leaving for several months. She told colleagues that she had accomplished what she felt she could with a job that made her one of the most powerful people in Washington, and that there would never be a perfect moment to leave, according to White House aides.”  Her exact departure date is unknown.

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Boy howdy, it only takes a tweet from POTUS to get everyone fired up on the AG Sessions battle-front; including AG Sessions himself.  It seems, generally speaking, responses to the tweet vary in direct relationship to the disposition of the reviewer:

My personal view is somewhat different than most.  President Trump is highlighting a genuine frustration, not necessarily with Jeff Sessions per se’, but rather within the institution Jeff Sessions dutifully represents.  This is, after all, what happens when citizen government runs into the bureaucracy of the institutions.

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Reverend Bill Graham is honored today during a ceremony at the Capitol Hill Rotunda:

[Transcript] U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C. – 11:21 A.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Speaker Ryan and Leader McConnell. And, most importantly, thank you to the entire Graham family for honoring us with your presence here today. Thank you.

In the spring of 1934, Billy Graham’s father allowed a group of Charlotte businessmen to use a portion of the family’s dairy farm to gather for a day of prayer.

On that day, the men prayed for the city. They prayed that, “Out of Charlotte, the Lord would raise up someone to preach the Gospel to the ends of the Earth.”

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In an effort to keep the Daily Open Thread a little more open topic we are going to start a new daily thread for “Presidential Politics”. Please use this thread to post anything relating to the Donald Trump Administration and Presidency.

This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.

President Trump Twitter @POTUS / Vice President Pence Twitter @VP

Sarah H Sanders Twitter @SHSanders45