How Fox News Pushes Trump to Make Every Bad Decision

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-fox-news-pushes-trump-to-make-every-bad-decision

President Donald Trump’s announcement last Friday that he would end the longest partial government shutdown in U.S. history without securing funding from congressional Democrats for his long-promised border wall came after weeks of brutal headlines and sagging poll numbers.

But when Trump arose the following morning, he did not devote his time to convening his White House advisers to figure out what went wrong or reaching out to Republican congressional leaders to plot their next move.

Instead, he did the same thing he’s done on countless days of his administration: He turned on his television, tuned in to his favorite program, Fox & Friends, and started tweeting about what he saw.

A Utah Orthodox rabbi said his childhood nanny sexually abused him for 10 years. Here's why he decided to tell his story for the first time

deseretnews

From behind the witness stand, Utah Rabbi Avrohom (“Avremi”) Zippel gazes out into the sea of faces and prepares to speak.

It's a dreary Tuesday morning, and normally, public speaking doesn’t intimidate the 27-year-old. Since he was a child — the precocious and prized eldest son of a prominent rabbi — he has revelled in the attention of a crowd.

But today, sitting in a courtroom in downtown Salt Lake City, the confidence that usually comes so easily evades him.

He fidgets nervously, his fingers playing with his long dark beard, adjusting his black suit and yamulkre, the traditional garb of observant Jewish men.

Time seems to slow to a stop, and all he can hear is the sound of his heart pounding in his ears. But then, one message rings clear in his head, as if from on high: you are doing the right thing.

He clears his throat, and in a voice barely above a whisper, begins to share a story that has haunted him for decades.

Speaking up

In a preliminary hearing Tuesday, Rabbi Zippel testified that Alavina Florreich, 69, sexually abused him for roughly 10 years — from age 8 to 18 — while she was employed as his nanny.

Florreich was arrested March 30, 2018, on suspicion of 131 counts of child abuse. She was charged in 3rd District Court in April 2018 with five counts of aggravated sex abuse of a child, a first-degree felony, and two counts of forcible sexual abuse, a second-degree felony, according to charging documents.

Florreich, in interviews taped by police, said she was teaching Rabbi Zippel to be a good husband and that it was "all part of the boy's curiosity” and it was just him "learning," according to a police report.

Florreich did not testify at the hearing Tuesday, and her attorneys did not respond to multiple requests from the Deseret News for comment on the case.

Rabbi Zippel said he was inspired to come forward by the #MeToo movement, in particular by Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman, who testified in court alongside 156 other women who said that former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar had sexually abused them.

But he is also making history: Rabbi Zippel may be the first Orthodox Jewish rabbi to come out during the #MeToo movement as a survivor of sexual abuse — a topic he said is rarely discussed in the observant Jewish community.

Fact-checking Trump's State of the Union address

cnn

Governance

Claim: "This new era of cooperation can start with finally confirming the more than 300 highly qualified nominees who are still stuck in the Senate — in some cases years and years waiting. Not right. The Senate has failed to act on these nominations, which is unfair to the nominees and very unfair to our country. Now is the time for bipartisan action."

This is misleading. While it is true that confirmations for Trump nominees lag behind the rate of confirmation for other American presidents, it is inaccurate to suggest that it is entirely the fault of the Senate, which is controlled by Republicans.

Of the 705 key executive branch positions tracked by the Washington Post and the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, 274 have not been confirmed. While Trump and Senate Republicans sharply criticize Democrats for slowing down the confirmation process, more than half of those — 144 to be exact — are open because the Trump administration has not yet nominated a candidate.

The jobs range from ambassadorships to important undersecretary roles to governorships at the Federal Reserve board.

Overall, the Partnership analysis shows that only 54% of Trump civilian executive branch nominations have been confirmed, much lower than the 77% of Obama nominees confirmed at the same point in his presidency.

-- Alex Rogers

Top US general says Trump didn’t consult him on Syria pullout

https://www.timesofisrael.com/top-us-general-says-trump-didnt-consult-him-on-syria-pullout/

The top general overseeing US military actions in the Middle East said Tuesday that US President Donald Trump did not consult him ahead of the decision to pull American troops from Syria.

Trump last month claimed the Islamic State jihadist group had been defeated in Syria and said all US troops were “coming back now.”

The US president had long questioned America’s multiple and seemingly interminable wars, but his withdrawal order came as a shock to Washington, upending years of doctrine in Syria.

Gedolim in the Trump post--Truth and alternative facts Era

Today it seems as personality is more important than knowledge of Torah/
 a Rabbi who can inspire and gives people what they want is viewed as a Gadol.

Torah laws can be ignored if you have enough money

as HaRav Sternbuch told me "money can purify even the status of mamzer"

Fox Host Tells Trump He's "Beacon for Repression"

9 מוסדות חרדיים נקנסו בגלל התפרצות חצבת

http://www.bhol.co.il/news/972931

9 מוסדות חרדיים במונסי קיבלו קנסות בסך כולל של 70,000 דולר, מכיוון שהם נמנעו להציג מידע בעניין חיסון נגד חצבת.

עקב התפרצות של כ-95 מקרי חצבת ב-12 שבועות האחרונים באזור רוקלנד קאונטי, בה שוכן כפר מונסי, משרד הבריאות האמריקאי דרש מכל מוסדות החינוך להציג רשומות של החיסונים שנערכים אצלם.

שני שליש מהמוסדות נענו לדרישה, אך תשע מוסדות חרדיים לא שיתפו פעולה ולא הציגו את המידע הנדרש.

הקנס על חוסר שיתוף הפעולה הוא 2,000 דולר ליום, וחלק מהמוסדות נקנסו על כך שבמשך שבועיים ימים הם לא העבירו את המידע. קנס של 14,000 דולר.

כעת שמונה מתוך התשע החלו להעביר את המידע הנדרש למשרד הבריאות. בזכות שיתוף הפעולה הם זכו למחילה של 10% מהקנס. לעומתם מוסד אחד, 'עטרת בנות', אינו מסכים להתניות ולא משתף פעולה.

"במהלך משבר בריאות ציבורי, אנו מצפים מכולם לשתף פעולה עם דרישות משרד הבריאות המחוזי", הכריז מנהל המחוז.

Business Secrets from the Bible

Psychiatrist Bandy Lee On What's Wrong With Trump's Mental Health

'Willful Ignorance.' Inside President Trump's Troubled Intelligence Briefings

http://time.com/5518947/donald-trump-intelligence-briefings-national-security/

In the wake of President Donald Trump’s renewed attacks on the U.S. intelligence community this week, senior intelligence briefers are breaking two years of silence to warn that the President is endangering American security with what they say is a stubborn disregard for their assessments.

Citing multiple in-person episodes, these intelligence officials say Trump displays what one called “willful ignorance” when presented with analyses generated by America’s $81 billion-a-year intelligence services. The officials, who include analysts who prepare Trump’s briefs and the briefers themselves, describe futile attempts to keep his attention by using visual aids, confining some briefing points to two or three sentences, and repeating his name and title as frequently as possible.

FACT CHECK Fact-Checking President Trump’s Interview With The New York Times

5 Takeaways From The Times’s Interview With President Trump

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/us/politics/donald-trump-interview-takeaways.html

WASHINGTON — President Trump wanted to talk. He initially invited A. G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, to an off-the-record dinner. Mr. Sulzberger countered with a request for an on-the-record interview that included Times reporters. The White House accepted.

Trump Says He Summoned Intel Chiefs After Hearing They Contradicted Him | The Last Word | MSNBC

Fact-checking Trump's claim on cost of illegal immigration, number of immigrants here illegally

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/jan/28/donald-trump/fact-checking-donald-trumps-claim-cost-illegal-imm/

Our ruling

Trump said, "We are not even into February and the cost of illegal immigration so far this year is $18,959,495,168. Cost Friday was $603,331,392. There are at least 25,772,342 illegal aliens, not the 11,000,000 that have been reported for years, in our Country."

The source of Trump’s claim is unclear. We asked DHS and the White House to back Trump’s statement, but neither provided studies or any other data to support it.

Trump previously falsely claimed that the cost of illegal immigration was $250 billion a year. Even the highest annual estimates we found were significantly lower than that amount ($116 billion, after factoring in tax contributions).

Most estimates say there are around 11 million immigrants in the country illegally. A recent study from Yale University researchers said a mean number was 22.1 million, but several demographers have pointed flaws in the assumptions and findings of that study.

Without evidence from Trump or his administration to back this statement, we rate it False.

Rabbis: New York Reproductive Health Act 'declares war on life'

israelnationalnews

A prominent rabbinic organization has denounced New York State's newly-passed Reproductive Health Act. The law not only declares that abortion is a "fundamental right," but entirely removes illegal abortion, whether by a practitioner or malicious assailant, from the New York Penal Law. The Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), representing over 1000 traditional rabbis in matters of public policy, called the law "indefensible" from a moral and humanitarian perspective.

"According to this law," said Rabbi Avrohom Gordimer, Chairman of the Rabbinic Circle of the CJV, "late-term abortions may be performed literally until right before birth, even by non-doctors, and not only in order to save the mother’s life but also 'to protect a patient’s health' — and even decriminalized illegal abortions. New York State has asserted that a woman’s convenience and whim are more important than the life of another."

Rabbi Gordimer, who has written extensively on this topic, also pointed to numerous cases where women were attacked specifically due to their pregnancy, with intent to harm or kill her fetus. "The same legislators who have defined entirely new 'protected classes' have stripped expectant mothers — and their unborn children — of protection. This is morally indefensible. That they imagine this better for humanity simply boggles the mind."