{"id":380951,"date":"2018-10-14T18:20:30","date_gmt":"2018-10-14T17:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trumps-aggressive-plans-to-stifle-democracy\/"},"modified":"2018-10-14T18:20:30","modified_gmt":"2018-10-14T17:20:30","slug":"trumps-aggressive-plans-to-stifle-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trumps-aggressive-plans-to-stifle-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Aggressive Plans to Stifle Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In a Trump administration where policy, on issues from taxes to education to <\/span>the environment<\/a>, is skewed sharply in favor of wealthy special interests and driven by <\/span>officials<\/a> <\/span>who <\/span>previously served<\/a> <\/span>as <\/span>corporate lobbyists<\/a>, and where the president himself mocks victims of sexual assault, makes common cause with racists, and <\/span>seems to believe<\/a> <\/span>the justice system is his to <\/span>manipulate for personal gain<\/a>, it is unsurprising, but still appalling and alarming, that Trump and his underlings are aggressively pushing measures to stifle public protest and citizen participation in our democracy.<\/p>\n

Start with a modest, but meaningful, example. Trump\u2019s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has not only stocked her senior staff roster with former officials of predatory for-profit colleges, but, forced to go through steps called \u201cnegotiated rule-making\u201d before she can gut Obama-era rules aimed at protecting students, she has taken multiple steps to try to rig the process. In earlier meetings, she <\/span>stacked the deck<\/a> <\/span>by filling as many negotiator slots as possible with executives of for-profit schools. Her aides also <\/span>tried to block the public from live streaming<\/a> <\/span>the negotiator meetings on the Internet, until Department of Education lawyers told them that position was untenable. When DeVos issued her proposed rules, which gave the worst predatory schools everything they wanted, she gave the public only 30 days (mostly in August) to <\/span>comment<\/a>, instead of the usual 90 days.<\/p>\n

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Don’t miss a beat<\/strong><\/p>\n

Get the latest news and thought-provoking analysis from Truthout.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

For the latest rule-making round, <\/span>announced Thursday<\/a>, DeVos has eliminated negotiator spots for representatives of consumer organizations and state attorneys general \u2014 after people representing those interests acted as powerful advocates for pro-student, pro-taxpayer positions in the prior rounds, repeatedly demonstrating the bankruptcy of the Devos Department\u2019s arguments. DeVos and her aides didn\u2019t like hearing the truth, so they\u2019ve eliminated…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a Trump administration where policy, on issues from taxes to education to the environment, is skewed sharply in favor of wealthy special interests and driven by officials who previously served as corporate lobbyists, and where the president himself mocks victims of sexual assault, makes common cause with racists, and seems to believe the justice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-380951","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}