Category: US News

The red steel and glass wedge sticking out of the Washington, D.C. landscape is the home to some of the best-kept secrets in the world. The new International Spy Museum has just opened its doors to reveal the hidden stories behind global espionage.  At a cost of some $162 million, Washington’s newest museum is a 140,000 square-foot showcase for secrets – and it’s near twice the size of the old museum. Much of the work involved carting every artifact, including a 1964 Aston Martin, from the James Bond film “Goldfinger,” into storage and across town. Now, 007’s car is playing a small part in a massive house of secrets.  Chris Costa is the executive director of the International Spy Museum.  “I’ve never done anything operational in a tuxedo,” he told CBN News.  He’s no James Bond, but Costa spent 34 years as an intelligence officer before taking the helm of the museum.  “Real espionage, of course, there’s a lot of work, painstaking work – not a lot of action all the time and when you do have action it’s sheer terror for a few minutes or an uncomfortable feeling in your gut,” he explained.

Costa’s service in Afghanistan and Iraq involved recruiting human sources. He said “a typical day… in a combat zone,” involved “a couple of minutes of adrenaline and then a whole lot of tea drinking with villagers.”  The museum takes visitors from tea time to the story of the son of a Hamas leader, Mosab Hassan Yousef, and his Israeli handler Gonen ben Yizhak.  “I need to give him the feeling that I’m his best friend when maybe, I’m his biggest enemy,” said Gonen in an exhibit examining human intelligence gathering.  The museum exhibits highlight the ubiquity and importance of data collecting and surveillance in today’s covert operations.  “There’s no replacing human sources,” said H. Keith Melton. Melton is a historian, donor, and board member of the museum.  “This museum will for the first time show people that truth is far stranger than fiction,” Melton said.  Melton has collected some 10,000 clandestine artifacts, and hundreds of them are on display in the new building. From the bloodstained ice ax that killed Marxist dissident Leon Trotsky to the tiny sub called “Sleeping Beauty” that became a prototype for U.S. Navy SEALs, and the first Enigma machine used to encrypt messages during World War II.  Tracking secret artifacts down can be a cloak and dagger operation in itself.  “I met someone out in a remote parking low at 2:00 in the morning,” Melton added, telling how he acquired the Enigma machine.  “It had been just smuggled across the border from East Germany into West Germany,” he said.  From the story of the Trojan Horse to the black op that killed Osama bin Laden, it’s all here — the secret history of history. There’s a fee to get in, but it’s all for a good cause. The museum is a non-profit dedicated to educating the public about this covert tradecraft. “We’re like no other museum on the planet,” said Costa.

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Males identifying as females and using women’s locker rooms. Faith-based adoption and foster agencies required to place children with same-sex couples. Florists and bakers forced to fill orders for same-sex weddings. Critics say these are just a few of the potential results if The Equality Act becomes law.  “Every American should be treated with dignity and respect, but our laws need to protect the Constitutionally guaranteed rights that we have,” says Greg Baylor from Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian organization which advocates for religious freedom.  ADF is currently handling cases in numerous states where laws like The Equality Act already exist.  If The Equality Act passes, Baylor says, “we will see a proliferation of instances where Christians and others are being coerced to violate their beliefs in order to comply with such a law.”  While introducing the bill, Democrat lawmakers talked about making the protection of same-sex individuals a priority over other Constitutional freedoms. “We cannot allow claims of religious freedom to be used to discriminate against an LGBT individual,” said Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI).  Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) added, “It makes a difference when any level of government or any corporation says that this discriminatory behavior and action is wrong. It makes a difference and it provides those of us in our community – the LGBT community – with the tools that we need to fight back.”  In requiring things like faith-based adoption agencies to place children with same-sex couples, opponents fear religious liberty cases will pop up all over the country.  “Some of the things in The Equality Act are very disturbing and alarming as far as what they could do to Christian values in this country, so we’re certainly keeping a pulse on it,” said Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA).  Meanwhile, a senior White House official says the president would oppose the Equality Act, telling the Washington Blade, “The Trump administration absolutely opposes discrimination of any kind and supports the equal treatment of all; however, this bill in its current form is filled with poison pills that threaten to undermine parental and conscience rights.”

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“We are restoring NASA to greatness and we are going back to the Moon, then Mars,” Trump tweeted on Monday afternoon, adding that the additional funding will enable the US to “return to Space in a BIG WAY!”

Under my Administration, we are restoring @NASA to greatness and we are going back to the Moon, then Mars. I am updating my budget to include an additional $1.6 billion so that we can return to Space in a BIG WAY!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)

The US currently has no vessels capable of taking astronauts into orbit, let alone the moon or another planet. The Space Shuttle program was canceled in 2011, and NASA has relied on Russia for trips to the International Space Station ever since.

Plans for manned launches using SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule have hit a bump after the vessel exploded during a test on April 20. Details about the incident remain unknown, as NASA and SpaceX have reportedly worked hard to suppress any information from leaking to the general public.

The Trump administration’s space ambitions have been in the works for a while, with Vice President Mike Pence recently announcing plans to build a station in lunar orbit and put US astronauts on the Moon by 2024.

Last week, Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos pitched cooperation with his space company Blue Origin as a way for NASA to meet that deadline. Meanwhile, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has spoken with enthusiasm about the prospect of setting up a base on the Moon and colonizing Mars – using his rockets, of course.

Trump’s interest in space has not been purely civilian, either. After months of hyping the idea of a ‘Space Force’ to defend US national interests in orbit and beyond, the president signed a decree in February it as a subsidiary of the US Air Force, rather than a separate branch of the military in its own right. International treaties dating back to the 1960s prohibit weaponization of space, but the Trump administration has scrapped numerous treaties over the past two years.

A new poll from CNN is bad news for Obama and the Democratic Party. With the Mueller report complete and the Russian collusion narrative collapsed, Americans seem ready to move on.

“The American public increasingly feels that Democrats in Congress are going too far in investigating the President,” CNN reports. “44% say Democrats are doing too much on that score, up from 38% saying so in March. That shift stems largely from independents, 46% of whom now say congressional Democrats are going too far.” And that was before Democrats wasted a whole day moaning and groaning about Attorney General William Barr’s memo about the Mueller report, which Robert Mueller told Barr was accurate.

But the most interesting part of the is that “69% think Congress ought to investigate the origins of the Justice Department’s inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election, including 76% of Democrats, 69% of independents and 62% of Republicans.” In other words, an overwhelming majority of Americans believe that the Obama Justice Department’s actions in 2016 should be investigated.  The American people want answers about the Steele dossier, the FISA court approval of the wiretap, everything. What did Obama know, and when did he know it? Why did the Obama administration not do more to prevent or stop Russian cyber attacks?

As John Nolte at Breitbart explains, this was a poll of random adults and such polls tend to skew left, but they are “useful in looking at trends, and this poll shows that the trends are almost all moving in Trump’s direction.” He continues:

 

We saw how Bill Clinton’s impeachment actually improved his poll numbers, so it is easy to infer from the polling trends we’re seeing now that even if Democrats don’t pursue impeachment, endless investigations are likely to work in President’s Trump favor. If Senate Republicans do their jobs and thoroughly investigate Obama-era abuses of power that led to the illegal spying on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, we could see the tide turn even more in Trump’s favor in 2020.

Matt Margolis is the author of The Scandalous Presidency of Barack Obama and the bestselling The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. His new book, Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama’s Legacy, will be published in July 2019. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis

Bryan Carmody, a freelance reporter in San Francisco, awoke Friday to the sounds of someone trying to break into his house.  About 10 officers from the San Francisco Police Department were bashing the front gate of his home in the Outer Richmond neighborhood with a sledgehammer, he said. It was just after 8 o’clock in the morning.  Carmody called out and said he would let them into the house. The officers showed him a search warrant and proceeded to go through his home — from “top to bottom” he says — with their guns drawn.  “They treated me like I was some kind of drug dealer,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post.  Carmody was being raided in connection with a criminal investigation.  Two weeks before, police investigators showed up at his home to ask him, politely he says, to identify the source who provided him with a confidential police report about the February death of the city’s public defender, Jeff Adachi. Carmody, who said he worked with three local television news stations on the story, declined.  He wasn’t about to give up his source on Friday either, despite the escalation — not to the police or two FBI agents in suits who questioned him about the case, he said.  “I’m smart enough not to talk to federal agents, ever,” Carmody said. “I just kept saying ‘lawyer, lawyer, lawyer.’ ”

So he stayed handcuffed for the next six hours, he says — a certificate of release from the police department that he distributed says he was in custody from 8:22 a.m. until 1:55 p.m. — as investigators searched his home, then his office, where they found the report in a safe. A search warrant filed in the case notes that it was issued as police investigated “stolen or embezzled property.”  “There’s only two people on this planet who know who leaked this report — me and the guy who leaked it,” Carmody said.  The raid on Carmody’s home and office drew wide First Amendment-related attention in the Bay Area over the weekend. And it added a new twist to the intrigue that surrounded the death of Adachi, who had built up a high profile as a public defender in the 16 years he had held the office.  The only elected public defender in California, Adachi was known as an watchdog on police misconduct. His death, on Feb. 22, at the age of 59, was attributed in early reports to a heart attack.

On Feb. 24, ABC 7 published a story after it said it obtained a police report and photos about Adachi’s death, which included unflattering details about the public defender’s last hours. The story reported that he had been with a woman named Caterina — not his wife — and that he was found unresponsive in an apartment with “an unmade bed, empty bottles of alcohol, cannabis gummies, and two syringes that may have been left by paramedics.”  The publication of those details, which did little to illuminate the nature of Adachi’s death and more to call into question his character, prompted some to wonder if the police department was retaliating against Adachi, even after his death.  “It’s curious that we’re reading leaked details about another ‘woman,’ the renting of an apartment, and entirely unnecessary mentions of alcohol, cannabis, and syringes,” SFist noted at the time. “Certainly the incident ought to be investigated, as any death should, but the information coming out makes it seem like Adachi’s decades-old battles with law enforcement — on behalf of defendants and otherwise — may continue even after his passing.”

Tim Redmond, editor of the San Francisco news site 48 Hills, called the local coverage “repugnant,” noting how disliked Adachi was by many police officers in the city in a post he wrote at the time.  “Where do you supposed those came from? Why do you suppose they wound up with the sensation-driven TV stations?” he wrote of the provenance of the police report. “The photos have been widely publicized with no context at all. There are photos of ‘an unmade bed’ — a salacious innuendo with no relevance.”  Carmody declined to give specifics about the three outlets he had worked with on the story.  A “stringer” in the parlance of TV news, Carmody occupies the small niche in the world of broadcast journalism that was satirized in the Hollywood film “Nightcrawler.”  He works every night from about 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., when he chases news, such as car crashes, crime scenes, disasters, weather stories, the release of a new video game — “anything that happens overnight,” he says — then sells his services and materials he gathers to local stations for their morning broadcasts. His name is rarely included on the report or corresponding material, he said.  His company, North Bay Television, which is run out of an office stocked with police scanners, computers, and a coffee machine downtown, employs three or four other people, down from a one time peak of 10.  “Like all media, we are shrinking,” he said.  He said he has never paid any of his sources of information or material.

Asked about tensions between the police department and Adachi, Carmody declined to comment on the politics of the case.  “I had no beef with him, I had no beef with anyone, I’m just a journalist in the middle of this,” he said.  He said he believed he was being targeted because he was a freelancer, noting that details in the police report had appeared in other publications, such as the San Francisco Chronicle.  “I don’t think there was a police raid at the Chronicle with a sledgehammer yesterday,” he said.  A medical examiner’s report, which was released to the media in March, filled in more details about Adachi’s death. The office ruled his death an accident due to the effects of cocaine and alcohol combined with a preexisting heart condition it said Adachi had.  The San Francisco Police Department defended the investigation Saturday in a statement sent to local reporters.  “The citizens and leaders of the City of San Francisco have demanded a complete and thorough investigation into this leak, and this action represents a step in the process of investigating a potential case of obstruction of justice along with the illegal distribution of confidential police material,” it said.

An FBI spokeswoman said that the bureau’s agents did not participate in the execution of the search warrant but confirmed that they were present to interview Carmody.  A law enforcement source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Carmody was handcuffed for procedural issues related to “multiple weapons” in the house. Carmody said that he is the lawful owner of an unspecified number of guns.  Carmody says his ability to work is now crippled by the seizure of his electronics. A search warrant and affidavit he distributed noted that police took at least at least four tablets, seven computers, 10 hard drives, a dozen phones, two cameras, reporters’ notebooks and a thumb drive from his home. He has started a GoFundMe page to raise money to buy more equipment.  Thomas R. Burke, a First Amendment lawyer in the Bay Area who represents Carmody, said that he believes the police overreached significantly.  “The appropriate thing was to issue a subpoena, not a search warrant,” he said, noting the breadth of Carmody’s material they had control over in all of this devices and notebooks. He said he wants to know whether the judges who signed the warrants were aware that they were for a reporter’s home and office.  Carmody said he had never been pressured by law enforcement to give up a source before in 29 years of reporting — mentioning as an example the leaked photographs from San Francisco’s public transportation agency he recently acquired that exposed a safety issue with some trains.

“I am shocked at how far this has gone already,” he said. “It’s already gotten way out of hand.”  Source

 

State governments are on a course to virtually eliminate abortion access in large chunks of the Deep South and Midwest

f a new Mississippi law survives a court challenge, it will be nearly impossible for most pregnant women to get an abortion there.

Or, potentially, in neighboring Louisiana. Or Alabama. Or Georgia.

The Louisiana legislature is halfway toward passing a law — like the ones enacted in Mississippi and Georgia — that will ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, about six weeks into a pregnancy and before many women know they’re pregnant. Alabama is on the cusp of approving an even more restrictive bill.

State governments are on a course to virtually eliminate abortion access in large chunks of the Deep South and Midwest. Ohio and Kentucky also have passed heartbeat laws; Missouri’s Republican-controlled legislature is considering one.

Their hope is that a more conservative U.S. Supreme Court will approve, spelling the end of the constitutional right to abortion.

“For pro-life folks, these are huge victories,” said Sue Liebel, state director for the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion advocacy group. “And I think they’re indicative of the momentum and excitement and the hope that’s happening with changes in the Supreme Court and having such a pro-life president.”

For abortion rights supporters, meanwhile, the trend is ominous. Said Diane Derzis, owner of Mississippi’s sole abortion clinic, the Jackson Women’s Health Organization: “I think it’s certainly more dire than it ever has been. They smell blood and that’s why they’re doing this.”

Already, Mississippi mandates a 24-hour wait between an in-person consultation. That means women must make at least two trips to her clinic, often traveling long distances.

Other states have passed similar, incremental laws restricting abortion in recent years, and aside from Mississippi, five states have just one clinic — Kentucky, Missouri, North and South Dakota, and West Virginia. But the latest efforts to bar the procedure represent the largest assault on abortion rights in decades.

Lawmakers sponsoring the bans have made it clear their goal is to spark court challenges in hopes of ultimately overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

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Vice President Mike Pence told the graduating class of Liberty University this weekend that they need to be ready for attacks on their Christian faith as they move into the world.  “Throughout most of American history, it’s been pretty easy to call yourself Christian,” he said. “It didn’t occur to people you might be shunned or ridiculed for defending the teachings of the Bible. But things are different now.”  Pence himself has come under attack for some of his Christian beliefs, including his biblical views on traditional marriage.  “Some of the loudest voices for tolerance today have little tolerance for traditional Christian beliefs,” Pence continued. “So as you go about your daily life, just be ready. Because you’re going to be asked not just to tolerate things that violate your faith, you’re going to be asked to endorse them. You’re going to be asked to bow down to the idols of popular culture.”

“So you need to prepare your minds for action, men and women,” the vice president warned.  “You need to show that we can love God and our neighbor at the same time through words and deeds.”  “Men and women of Liberty University Class of 2019, as you strive for greatness, know that you will face challenges. You’ll face opposition,” Pence noted. “But just know this. If like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, you end up in the fire, there’ll be another in the fire.  Delivering the keynote address at Liberty University’s 46th Commencement ceremony Saturday, Vice President Pence also told graduates they graduated at the right time due to President Donald Trump’s growing economy.

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All the Democrats’ threats subpoenas and votes for contempt are just payback for losing the election.

Lara Trump, senior advisor to the 2020 Trump campaign and wife of President Donald Trump’s son Eric, said on Fox News Thursday night that demanding Donald Trump Jr. testify before congress or face jail “is not going to make Hillary Clinton the president of the United States.”

Lara Trump told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on his nightly program, “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” that the special counsel investigation into whether the 2016 Trump campaign colluded with Russia “is over,” and that Trump Jr. testified previously.

In September 2017, Trump Jr. testified before members of the Senate Judiciary Committee behind closed doors — for hours. He was asked repeatedly about the infamous Trump Tower meeting where he, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort met with alleged Russians (who actually had ties to Democrat opposition research firm Fusion GPS) to get “dirt” on Clinton. In the end, no “dirt” was provided, and the meeting — which now looks more like entrapment — resulted in nothing.

Now, nearly two years later, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) has sent a subpoena to Trump Jr., causing a rift in the Republican party. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said Trump Jr. “ought to be put in jail” if he doesn’t comply with the subpoena.

Lara Trump scoffed at the notion.

“We know [collusion] did not happen,” she told Carlson. “Whatever they think they’re going to do is not going to change that. It’s not going to make Hillary Clinton the president of the United States like I know they all wanted so badly for so long.”

Lara Trump added that she was “shocked and appalled” that Burr, a senator from her home state of North Carolina, would do such a thing.

“This is harassment of our family, harassment of the president,” she said.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller finished his investigation in March, finding no evidence of collusion and not enough evidence to recommend a charge of obstruction. Attorney General William Barr opted not to charge for obstruction, since the decision then fell to him.

Since then (and really, even before), Democrats have demanded to see the evidence for themselves, no doubt so that they can use it against President Trump and justify their continued discussions of impeachment. Democrats currently have around 22 investigations opened into Trump, his business, his finances, his campaign, and his family — all fishing expeditions to get back at him for winning the presidency over Clinton (and maybe even as revenge for leaving their party and becoming a Republican).

Trump won the election; Hillary Clinton did not. Trump’s presidency has been succeeding even with the Russian investigation looming over his head. Now he’s been cleared, and Democrats aren’t happy. Neither, it would appear, are some Republicans.

President Donald Trump boosted tariffs Friday on $200 billion in goods from China and was preparing more in his most dramatic steps yet to extract trade concessions, further roiling financial markets and casting a shadow over the global economy.

China immediately said in a statement it is forced to retaliate, though hadn’t specified how as of 3:55 p.m. in Beijing. The move came after discussions between President Xi Jinping’s top trade envoy and his U.S. counterparts in Washington made little progress on Thursday, with the mood around them downbeat, according to people familiar with the talks. The negotiations were due to resume on Friday morning Washington time.

Asian stocks whipsawed in heavy trading. Chinese state-backed funds were reported jumping into the local market after shares slumped, and the Shanghai Composite closed up 3.1%. S&P 500 futures were down in London trading, putting U.S. stocks –- a key metric of performance in Trump’s own analysis — on course for the worst week since December.

The fresh wave of tariffs marked a sharp reversal from just last week, when U.S. officials expressed optimism that a pact was within reach.

Ahead of the talks on Thursday, Trump also said the U.S. would go ahead with preparations to impose 25% tariffs on a further $325 billion in goods from China, raising the prospect of all of China’s goods exports to the U.S. — which were worth about $540 billion last year — being subject to new import duties.

Such a move would take weeks to deploy. But it would have significant repercussions for the U.S., Chinese and global economies. Economists at Moody’s Analytics said in a report this week that an all-out trade conflagration between the world’s two-largest economies risked tipping the U.S. economy into recession by the end of 2020 just as voters go to the polls in the U.S.

The world’s two largest economies will both get pinched. Bloomberg Economics calculates the new increase will raise the drag on Chinese growth to 0.9 percentage point from 0.5 percentage point. The International Monetary Fund estimates the pullback on the U.S. expansion at about 0.2 point, and potentially more if there’s a blow to markets and confidence.

The new tariffs that took effect at 12:01 a.m. Washington time Friday raise from 10% to 25% the duties on more than 5,700 different product categories from China — ranging from cooked vegetables to Christmas lights and highchairs for babies.

U.S. officials have said the new duties — introduced on just five days’ notice — will not apply to goods already on boats headed for American shores. A 25% tariff is already in place on a further $50 billion in imports from China.

Some American industries were quick to decry Trump’s decision, which will hurt some of his key political constituencies, including farmers and manufacturers.

The tariffs will “suppress job gains for the industry by as much as 400,000 over 10 years. It will also invite China to hit back at American businesses, farmers, communities, and families,” said Kip Eideberg, vice president of government affairs for the Association of Equipment Manufacturers.

Meanwhile, talks were expected to continue. Chinese Vice Premier Liu He huddled with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in Washington on Thursday for about 90 minutes of talks before breaking and reconvening later for a working dinner that broke up around 8:40 p.m. Washington time.

Though talks are set to resume Friday, some close observers said they were not hopeful for any meaningful breakthroughs. One person familiar with the discussions said that U.S. officials were unsure whether Liu had the authority to make any meaningful commitments. It was also unclear whether China had resolved the internal debates that had led to last week’s rescinding of prior commitments to enshrine reforms agreed in Chinese law.

Ahead of the latest round of meetings, Liu told Chinese state media he was coming to Washington under pressure but “with sincerity” and warned that a move to raise tariffs by the U.S. starting Friday was not a solution.

Earlier on Thursday, Trump sought to calm U.S. financial markets after he insisted it was still possible to reach a deal this week, even as he reiterated plans to raise tariffs on Chinese goods. Trump, speaking at an event in Washington, also said he may hold a phone call with his Chinese counterpart, Xi. No call between the two leaders had taken place by late Thursday nor had one been scheduled, according to a senior Trump administration official.

“He just wrote me a beautiful letter, I just received it, and I’ll probably speak to him by phone, but look, we have two great alternatives, our country is doing fantastically well,” Trump said. “Our alternative is an excellent one, it’s an alternative I’ve spoken about for years. We’ve taken well over $100 billion from China in a year.”

What Bloomberg’s Economists Say

“The trade truce, one of the pillars on which optimism about global growth is based, appears to be crumbling. We’ll see how talks in D.C. go on Friday. Assuming there’s no speedy resolution and higher tariffs remain in place, forecasts for global growth will be shaded down, with the main blow landing on China and its Asian neighbors.” — Tom Orlik, chief economist at Bloomberg Economics

China has disputed the U.S. characterization that the country reneged on prior commitments. But it has also sent its own signals that a deal could take time.

“There’s definitely disappointment and frustration” in China, said Zhu Ning, deputy director of the National Institute of Financial Research at Tsinghua University in Beijing. “We thought we were on a good path of making progress and having a deal.”

Trade data released Thursday showed the U.S. trade deficit with China decreased to the narrowest in almost three years as imports slowed and exports advanced. Strong gross domestic product and jobs numbers in recent weeks have also emboldened Trump.

“When people looked at the economic numbers, they were shocked. When they look at the import-export numbers they were shocked,” Trump said Thursday. “Try looking at all of the tariffs that China’s been paying us for the last eight months. Billions and billions of dollars.”

While Trump insists that the tariffs are paid for by China, most economists say the evidence shows that their cost is being absorbed by American companies and consumers.

By Shawn Donnan, Jennifer Jacobs and Kevin Hamlin

After almost eliminating press conferences, the Trump administration’s campaign against journalists covering the White House has reached a new peak. On Wednesday, the administration today revoked the hard passes of almost the entire White House press corps, the Washington Post reports.

After telling all six Post reporters that their hard passes were revoked, the administration then said they’d take requests for “exceptions,” veteran White House journalist Dana Milbank writes. The exceptions were granted for all of the other Post journalists besides Milbank.

From the Post:

The White House press office granted exceptions to the other six, but not to me. I strongly suspect it’s because I’m a Trump critic. The move is perfectly in line with Trump’s banning of certain news organizations, including The Post, from his campaign events and his threats to revoke White House credentials of journalists he doesn’t like.

White House officials provided me no comment for the record.

Milbank points out that due to this change, nearly the entire press corps will be allowed to cover the White House only under these “exceptions,” which could be revoked at any time.

After the White House revoked journalist Jim Acosta’s press pass last year, a Trump-appointed judge ordered that it be restored. The judge described the decision to revoke Acosta’s pass as “shrouded in mystery.”

Now, the White House seems to have created a new standard that supposedly clears things up.

In response, it seems, the White House established a clear — if nearly impossible — standard: no credentials to any journalist who is not in the building on at least 90 out of the previous 180 days — in other words, seven of every 10 workdays. The White House wouldn’t provide numbers, but it appears most of the White House press corps didn’t qualify for credentials under the new standard, including regulars for The Post and the Associated Press.

As Milbank points out, the president is barely in the White House himself, and new White House policies around journalists have prevented many from attending events in recent months. That’s one reason many do not meet the high quota of days.

Milbank also points out that this policy change could mean that some of these journalists will lose their income source.

Though the culling properly eliminated some (including at The Post) who no longer needed credentials, the victims hurt most were freelance camera operators and technicians who now could lose their livelihood.

Milbank and others who were not granted exceptions will now be given something called a six-month pass, which he says doesn’t offer the same access as a hard pass.

Just another day in our increasingly authoritarian America!