The Trump administration is finally providing guidance on new Russia sanctions passed by Congress in August, issuing long overdue details on which entities tied to the Russian government will be targeted.
The State Department made the move Thursday afternoon, shortly after Foreign Relations committee chair Bob Corker called Foggy Bottom to inquire about the delay. CNN reports:
“This is something that’s been in the works for quite some time,” Nauert said. “So when Capitol Hill said to the State Department, ‘Provide us this information,’ we were given about two months to pull it together, which is a relatively short period of time to be able to work through all of this, work across the interagency, to determine the types of entities, the type of industry that would be affected, and to work out all those details.”
Perhaps two months is a “relatively short period of time,” but one criticism I hear from elsewhere in the administration is the degree to which understaffing at the State Department frustrates processes such as this one.
In a statement provided to the Daily Beast, Corker praised the administration’s guidance as “a good first step in responsibly implementing a very complex piece of legislation.”
“Congress will expect thorough and timely consultation until full implementation is complete,” said Corker, who was among those in the Senate who had expressed concern about the administration missing the October 1 deadline.
President Trump declared America’s opioid crisis a public health emergency Thursday, decrying the “scourge of drug addiction” that kills 175 Americans a day and pledging that “we can be the generation that ends the opioid epidemic.”
“We want the next generation of young Americans to know the blessings of a drug-free life,” Trump said. “Each of us has a responsibility to this effort. We have a total responsibility to ourselves, to our family, to our country, including those who are struggling with this addiction.”
Trump’s emergency declaration will allow the Department of Health and Human Services to immediately divert discretionary funding toward combating the crisis. Planned initiatives include hiring addiction professionals more quickly and expanding citizens access to addiction telemedicine.
Trump also pledged to beef up anti-drug advertising, citing his conversations with his alcoholic older brother as an example of how effective education can immunize a young person against the seductions of drugs.
“I had a brother, Fred,” Trump said. “He had a problem with alcohol, and he would tell me, ‘Don’t drink, don’t drink.’ He was substantially older, and I listened to him. . . . He would say it over and over and over again. And to this day, I’ve never had a drink. I have no longing for it. I have no interest in it. . . . He really helped me. I had somebody that guided me.”
Mark It Down—“We await the final report, which will come in next week.” —President Trump, on his presidential commission on the opioid crisis, October 26, 2017
JFK Watch—After a day-long drama about whether they would come out as planned, the federal government at last released a new tranche of official documents related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In a conference call with reporters Thursday night, the White House explained that a number of agencies, primarily the FBI and CIA, had requested parts of these latest documents be redacted.
“The National Archives and Records Administration will make approximately 2,800 records available in full for public access today,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. “The remaining records will be released with agency-proposed redactions on a rolling basis in the coming weeks. The President has demanded unprecedented transparency from the agencies and directed them to minimize redactions without delay. The National Archives will therefore release more records, with redactions only in the rarest of circumstances, by the deadline of April 26, 2018.”
If you want to confirm your favored assassination theory, you can look at the released records here.
2017 Watch—My colleague David Byler takes a look at the polls for the Virginia governor’s race, which show a much closer contest than expected between the favorite, Democrat Ralph Northam, and Republican Ed Gillespie. The Old Dominion went for Hillary Clinton in 2016, after going for Barack Obama twice, and the commonwealth’s been trending Democratic now for more than a decade. So why does Gillespie seem to have a chance?
Byler’s detailed examination of the polls and Virginia’s recent political history leads him to conclude the race may have “uncoupled itself from national politics.”
Read the whole thing here.
Anti-Israel Bigotry of the Day
Wow. Israeli wins gold in Judo in Abu Dhabi, which refuses to show Israeli flag or play its national anthem. So he sings it quietly himself. pic.twitter.com/EuJbcP4wTu
— (((Yair Rosenberg))) (@Yair_Rosenberg) October 26, 2017
Health Care Watch—From the Wall Street Journal: “CVS Makes Blockbuster Aetna Bid”
Song of the Day—“There Is an End” by the Greenhornes featuring Holly Golightly.
