3 Stories You Should Read 1/31/2019: Trump, Betsy DeVos, KellyAnne Conway

January 31, 2019 Confluence

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Confluence Daily is your daily news source for women in the know.

In the category of: This isn’t going to end well.

The chances of Donald Trump declaring a national emergency at the border just went way up

Three very important things happened on Thursday in Washington.

First, President Donald Trump tweeted this at 7:16 a.m.: “Lets just call them WALLS from now on and stop playing political games! A WALL is a WALL!”

Second, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this of the congressional committee working to craft a compromise bill too keep the government open: “There’s not going to be any wall money in the legislation.”

Third, Trump responded with this: “If there’s no wall it doesn’t work. She’s just playing games. If there’s no wall it doesn’t work.”

Which, well, seems like a dead end.

Continue

In the category of: Immediate feedback to bad policy.

Betsy DeVos’s new sexual harassment rules might already be hurting students

One school just got rid of its Title IX coordinator. The debate could be a sign of things to come.

DeVos has long expressed skepticism of the Obama-era guidelines, and in November, the Education Department released new regulations that differed in several key ways. They allow schools to use a higher standard of evidence for adjudicating claims of harassment and assault, meaning it will be harder to find an accused person responsible. They also introduce a stricter definition of sexual harassment, defining it as “unwelcome conduct on the basis of sex that is so severe, pervasive and objectively offensive that it denies a person access to the school’s education program or activity.

Continue

In the category of: A zebra won’t every loose it’s stripes.

“SHE WAS A CARTOON VILLAIN BROUGHT TO LIFE”: A FORMER TRUMP AIDE RECALLS CONWAY’S LEAKING TACTICS IN THE WEST WING VIPER’S NEST

In this exclusive excerpt from Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House, a former Trump aide recalls the leaking, the gossiping, and the infighting that made Kellyanne Conway such a formidable player in the White House.

“The inner circle of Trumpworld was not always a pretty picture. Too often, it was a portrait of venality, stubbornness, and selfishness. We leaked. We schemed. We backstabbed. Some of us told ourselves it was all done in the service of a higher calling—to protect the president, to deliver for the people. But usually it was for ourselves. Most of us came to Washington convinced of the justice of our cause and the righteousness of our principles, certain that our moral compasses were true. But proximity to power changes that. Donald Trump changes that. The once-clear lines—between right and wrong, good and evil, light and darkness—were eroded, until only a faint wrinkle remained.

A particular case in point involves Kellyanne Conway, who had the title of Trump’s 2016 campaign manager.”

Continue

Confluence Daily is the one place where everything comes together. The one-stop for daily news for women.