EXCLUSIVE: The leader of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) sent a memo to all House Republicans Saturday with an "urgent call to arms" that Democrats are trying to "steal" Tuesday's special election for California's 25th Congressional District Seat, Fox News has learned.

Saturday Night Live season finales tend to be elaborate, star-studded affairs. And they managed to make that the case even this year with all of the cast members still broadcasting from their respective homes, along with guests stars like Kristen Wiig, Martin Short and more.

Two weeks after Brad Pitt debuted his effortlessly charming Dr. Anthony Fauci impression, the final—with any luck—episode of SNL at Home opened with a Zoom graduation featuring a commencement address from Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump, who somehow got ahold of a “Make America Great Again” hat at his Hamptons house.

“I’m so honored to be your vale-dictator,” he told the students. “But today’s not about me. It’s about you. Although I should spend a little time on me first, because I’ve been treated very poorly, even worse than they treated Lincoln.” 

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Today, a federal appeals court judge in California rebuked the Trump administration for its zealous deportation policy and for "ripping apart a family." Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that he had no power to stop the removal of Andres Magana Ortiz, but nevertheless took the time to write a short opinion blasting his deportation as "inhumane."

"We are unable to prevent Magana Ortiz's removal, yet it is contrary to the values of this nation and its legal system," Reinhardt wrote in a six-page concurring opinion. "Indeed, the government's decision to remove Magana Ortiz diminishes not only our country but our courts, which are supposedly dedicated to the pursuit of justice…I concur as a judge, but as a citizen I do not."

As Reinhardt detailed in his opinion, Magana Ortiz came to the United States from Mexico 28 years ago, built a family and a career, and paid his taxes. His wife and three children are American citizens. His only legal transgressions were two DUIs, the last one 14 years ago. "[E]ven the government conceded during the immigration proceedings that there was no question as to Magana Ortiz's good moral character," Reinhardt noted. Nonetheless, in March the government decided to deny Magana Ortiz's application for a stay of removal while he applied for legal residency status, a process that is still underway, and moved to deport him to Mexico.

Reinhardt took particular aim at the fact, demonstrated repeatedly in the first months of Donald Trump's presidency, that the administration's immigration crackdown is not only targeting violent criminals. "President Trump has claimed that his immigration policies would target the 'bad hombres,'" he wrote. "The government's decision to remove Magana Ortiz shows that even the 'good hombres' are not safe. Magana Ortiz is by all accounts a pillar of his community and a devoted father and husband. It is difficult to see how the government's decision to expel him is consistent with the President's promise of an immigration system with 'a lot of heart.' I find no such compassion in the government's choice to deport Magana Ortiz."

Read the full opinion below.

On May 17, while delivering a graduation speech to cadets at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, a scandal-plagued President Donald Trump took the opportunity to complain, yet again, about the news media. No leader in history, he said, has been treated as unfairly as he has been. Shortly thereafter, when the graduates presented Trump with a ceremonial sword, a live mic picked up Homeland Security chief John F. Kelly telling the president, "Use that on the press, sir!"

Kelly was presumably joking, but the press isn't laughing. Presidents have complained bitterly about reporters since George Washington ("infamous scribblers"), but Trump has gone after the media with a venom unmatched by any modern president—including Richard Nixon. At campaign rallies, Trump herded reporters into pens, where they served as rhetorical cannon fodder, and things only got worse after the election. Prior to November 8, the media were "scum" and "disgusting." Afterward, they became the "enemy of the American people." (Even Nixon never went that far, noted reporter Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame. Nixon did refer to the press as "the enemy," but only in private and without "the American people" part—an important distinction for students of authoritarianism.) 

On April 29, the same day as this year's White House Correspondents' Dinner (which Trump boycotted), the president held a rally in Pennsylvania to commemorate his first 100 days. He spent his first 10 minutes or so attacking the media: CNN and MSNBC were "fake news." The "totally failing New York Times" was getting "smaller and smaller," now operating out of "a very ugly office building in a very crummy location." Trump went on: "If the media's job is to be honest and tell the truth, then I think we would all agree the media deserves a very, very big, fat failing grade. [Cheers.] Very dishonest people!"

Trump's animosity toward the press isn't limited to rhetoric. His administration has excluded from press briefings reporters who wrote critical stories, and it famously barred American media from his Oval Office meeting with Russia's foreign minister and ambassador to the United States while inviting in Russia's state-controlled news service.

Before firing FBI Director James Comey, Trump reportedly urged Comey to jail journalists who published classified information. As a litigious businessman, the president has expressed his desire to "open up" libel laws. In April, White House chief of staff Reince Preibus acknowledged that the administration had indeed examined its options on that front.

This behavior seems to be having a ripple effect: On May 9, a journalist was arrested in West Virginia for repeatedly asking a question that Tom Price, Trump's health secretary, refused to answer. Nine days later, a veteran reporter was manhandled and roughly escorted out of a federal building after he tried (politely) to question an FCC commissioner. Montana Republican Greg Gianforte won a seat in the House of Representatives last week, one day after he was charged with assaulting a reporter who had pressed Gianforte for his take on the House health care bill. And over the long weekend, although it could be a coincidence, someone fired a gun of some sort at the offices of the Lexington Herald-Leader, a paper singled out days earlier by Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, who likened journalists to "cicadas" who "don't actually seem to care about Kentucky."

Where is all of this headed? It's hard to know for sure, but as a lawyer (and former newspaper reporter) who has spent years defending press freedoms in America, I can say with some confidence that the First Amendment will soon be tested in ways we haven't seen before. Let's look at three key areas that First Amendment watchdogs are monitoring with trepidation.

Abusive Subpoenas

The First Amendment offers limited protections when a prosecutor or a civil litigant subpoenas a journalist in the hope of obtaining confidential notes and sources. In the 1972 case of Branzburg v. Hayes, a deeply divided Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution does not shield reporters from the obligation of complying with a grand jury subpoena. But the decision left room for the protection of journalists who refuse to burn a source in other contexts—in civil cases, for instance, or in criminal cases that don't involve a grand jury. Some lower courts have ruled that the First Amendment indeed provides such protections.

The Constitution, of course, is merely a baseline for civil liberties. Recognizing the gap left by the Branzburg ruling, a majority of the states have enacted shield laws that give journalists protections that Branzburg held were not granted by the Constitution. Yet Congress, despite repeated efforts, has refused to pass such a law. This gives litigants in federal court, including prosecutors, significant leverage to force journalists into compliance. (In 2005, Judith Miller, then of the New York Times, spent 85 days in jail for refusing to reveal her secret source to a federal grand jury investigating the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. The source, Miller eventually admitted, was Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.)

Trump will almost certainly take advantage of his leverage. He and his innermost circle have already demonstrated that they either fail to understand or fail to respect (or both) America's long-standing tradition of restraint when it comes to a free press. During the campaign, Trump tweeted that Americans who burn the flag—a free-speech act explicitly protected by the Supreme Court—should be locked up or stripped of citizenship "perhaps." In December, after the New York Times published a portion of Trump's tax returns, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski declared that executive editor Dean Baquet "should be in jail."

Trump took over the reins from an executive branch that was arguably harder on the press than any administration in recent history. President Barack Obama oversaw more prosecutions of leakers under the vaguely worded Espionage Act of 1917 than all other presidents combined, and he was more aggressive than most in wrenching confidential information from journalists.

Over the course of two months in 2012, Obama's Justice Department secretly subpoenaed and seized phone records from more than 100 Associated Press reporters, potentially in violation of the department's own policies. Thanks to the rampant overclassification of government documents, Obama's pursuit of whistleblowers meant that even relatively mundane disclosures could have serious, even criminal, consequences for the leaker. Under Obama, McClatchy noted in 2013, "leaks to media are equated with espionage."

One can only assume Trump will up the ante. His administration's calls to find and prosecute leakers grow more strident by the day. He and his surrogates in Congress have repeatedly tried to divert public discussion away from White House-Russia connections and in the direction of the leaks that brought those connections to light. It stands to reason that Trump's Justice Department will try to obtain the sources, notes, and communication records of journalists on the receiving end of the leaks.

This could already be happening without our knowledge, and that would be a dangerous thing. Under current guidelines, the Justice Department is generally barred from deploying secret subpoenas for journalists' records—subpoenas whose existence is not revealed to those whose records are sought. But there are exceptions: The attorney general or another "senior official" may approve no-notice subpoenas when alerting the subject would "pose a clear and substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation." 

The guidelines are not legally binding, in any case, so there may be little to prevent Jeff Sessions' Justice Department from ignoring them or scrapping them entirely. Team Trump has already jettisoned the policies of its predecessors in other departments, and it's pretty clear how Trump feels about the press. 

The use of secret subpoenas against journalists is deeply problematic in a democracy. Their targets lack the knowledge to consult with a lawyer or to contest the subpoena in court. The public, also in the dark, is unable to pressure government officials to prevent them from subjecting reporters to what could be abusive fishing expeditions.

As president, Trump sets the tone for executives, lawmakers, and prosecutors at all levels. We have already seen a "Trump effect" in the abusive treatment of a reporter in the halls of the Federal Communications Commission, the arrest of the reporter in West Virginia, and the attack by Congressman-elect Gianforte.

We are also seeing the Trump effect in state legislatures, where the president's rants may have contributed to a spate of legislative proposals deeply hostile to free speech, including bills that would essentially authorize police brutality or "unintentional" civilian violence against protesters and make some forms of lawful protest a felony. A leader who normalizes the use of overly broad or abusive subpoenas against journalists could cause damage all across the land.
 

Espionage Laws

A second area of concern is the Espionage Act of 1917, a law that has been used for nearly a century to prosecute leakers of classified information—from Daniel Ellsburg and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. The government hasn't ever tried to use it to prosecute the journalists or media organizations that publish the offending leaks—possibly because it was seen as a bad move in a nation that enshrines press protections in its founding document. But free-speech advocates have long been wary of the possibility.

The successful prosecution of a journalist under the Espionage Act seems unlikely—a long string of Supreme Court decisions supports the notion that reporters and news outlets are immune from civil or criminal liability when they publish information of legitimate public interest that was obtained unlawfully by an outside source. "A stranger's illegal conduct," the court's majority opined in the 2001 Bartnicki v. Vopper case, "does not suffice to remove the First Amendment shield about a matter of public concern." But like any appellate decision, the Bartnicki ruling is based on a specific set of facts. So there are no guarantees here.
 

Litigious Billionaires

Very, very rich people with grievances against the press are as old as the press itself. But the number of megawealthy Americans has exploded in recent years, as has the number of small, nonprofit, or independent media outlets—many of which lack ready access to legal counsel. In short, billionaires who wish to exact vengeance for unflattering coverage enjoy a target-rich environment.

Trump did not create this environment. But from his presidential bully pulpit, he has pushed a narrative that can only fuel the fire. The Trumpian worldview holds that the media deserves to be put in its place; the press is venal, dishonest, and "fake" most of the time. It should be more subject to legal liability so that, in his words, "we can sue them and win lots of money."

Win or lose, a billionaire with an ax to grind and a fleet of expensive lawyers can cause enormous damage to a media outlet, particularly one with limited means (which, these days, is most media outlets). Some lawsuits by deep-pocketed plaintiffs, like the one filed against Mother Jones by Idaho billionaire Frank VanderSloot (a case I helped defend), are ultimately dismissed by the courts. Others, such as Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker Media—funded by Silicon Valley billionaire and Trump adviser Peter Thiel—succeed and put the media outlet out of business. Another recent suit, filed by Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson against a Wall Street Journal reporter, ultimately settled.

Regardless of the outcome of such cases, the message to the media is clear: Don't offend people who have vast resources. Even a frivolous lawsuit can stifle free speech by hitting publishers where it hurts (the wallet) and subjecting them to legal harassment. This is especially so in the 22 states that lack anti-SLAPP statutes—laws that facilitate the rapid dismissal of libel claims without merit.

The VanderSloot lawsuit is instructive. Although a court in Idaho ultimately threw out all the billionaire's claims against Mother Jones, the process took almost two years. During that time, VanderSloot and Mother Jones engaged in a grueling regimen of coast-to-coast depositions and extensive and costly discovery and legal motions. Along the way, VanderSloot sued a former small-town newspaper reporter and subjected him to 10 hours of depositions, which resulted in the reporter breaking down in tears while VanderSloot, who had flown to Portland for the occasion, looked on. VanderSloot also deposed the journalist's ex-boyfriend and threatened to sue him until he agreed to recant statements he had made online.

Victory did not come cheap for Mother Jones: The final tab was about $2.5 million, only part of which was covered by insurance. And because Idaho lacks an anti-SLAPP statute, none of the magazine's legal costs could be recovered from VanderSloot.

Despite his threats, Trump has not brought any libel lawsuits as president—but his wife has. First lady Melania Trump sued the Daily Mail in February over a story she said portrayed her falsely "as a prostitute." The Daily Mail retracted the offending article with a statement explaining (a) that the paper did not "intend to state or suggest that Mrs. Trump ever worked as an 'escort' or in the sex business," (b) that the article "stated that there was no support for the allegations," and (c) that "the point of the article was that these allegations could impact the U.S. presidential election even if they are untrue."

So which billionaire will be next to sue, and who will the target be? The question looms over America's media organizations like a dark cloud. That is an unacceptable situation in a nation whose Constitution guarantees "robust, uninhibited and wide-open" discussion of public issues, as Supreme Court Justice William Brennan wrote in the landmark First Amendment case New York Times v. Sullivan.

Trump has yet to act on his most outrageous rhetorical attacks on the media and free speech, but it's likely only a matter of time. When he does act, it will be important to remember that constitutional protections are quite broad, and that there's only so much any White House can do to the press without the backing of Congress or the courts. Such cooperation is hardly out of the question, though. Stranger things have already happened in this strangest of political times.

The author's views do not necessarily reflect those of the First Amendment Coalition's board of directors.

Donald McGahn, like all White House counsels who have served before him, has a broad portfolio but one fundamental charge: to keep his boss, the president of the United States, out of trouble. To say McGahn hasn't fared well in this department is an understatement. President Donald Trump and his administration have been besieged by scandal from the outset. And lawyers who worked in past administrations, Democratic and Republican, have questioned whether McGahn has the judgment or the clout with his client to do the job.

Four months in, despite having yet to confront a crisis not of its own making, the Trump administration faces a growing list of controversies, legal and otherwise. The FBI is reportedly investigating retired Lt. General Michael Flynn, who for 22 days served as Trump's national security adviser, for his lobbying on behalf of Turkish interests and for his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States before Trump took office. There are two congressional probes examining Flynn's actions and two more looking at whether anyone connected with the Trump campaign interacted with Vladimir Putin's regime when it was interfering with the 2016 presidential race. And the Justice Department recently appointed a special counsel to oversee the FBI's probe into Moscow's meddling and the Trump-Russia connections. Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and a close adviser; former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort; and Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, face FBI or congressional scrutiny.

All presidents, Democratic and Republican, experience their share of scandals. But the pace and magnitude of the controversies engulfing the Trump White House are on a different level and pace. (Recall that Richard Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre—when he fired the special prosecutor investigating Watergate—didn't happen until nearly five years into his presidency.) And each leak and drip of new information raises more questions about McGahn, the man whose job is to steer Trump clear of potential land mines before they explode into breaking-news bombshells.

An election lawyer who served five contentious years on the Federal Election Commission, McGahn first met Trump in late 2014 and was one of the mogul's first hires when he launched his presidential run. He endeared himself to Trump by fending off an effort to remove Trump from the New Hampshire primary ballot and coordinated the campaign's well-timed release of a list of potential Supreme Court nominees, a move that helped to attract ambivalent evangelical and conservative voters.

Shortly after winning the presidency, Trump rewarded McGahn's loyalty by picking him to be White House counsel.

About six weeks later, on January 4, according to the New York Times, McGahn spoke with Michael Flynn, the retired general whom Trump had selected as his national security adviser a week before he hired McGahn, about a sensitive matter. In August 2016, Flynn's consulting firm, Flynn Intel Group, had signed a $600,000 contract to lobby on behalf of Turkish interests; Flynn's client was a Dutch company run by a Turkish businessman who is an ally of Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. At the time, however, Flynn did not register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires lobbyists and advocates working for foreign governments to disclose their work.

Now, with Trump's inauguration almost two weeks away, Flynn reportedly told McGahn that he was under federal investigation for failing to disclose his lobbying on behalf of foreign interests.

What McGahn did with this information is unclear—but it's nonetheless revealing to former White House lawyers that Flynn went on to receive a top White House post, arguably the most sensitive job in the White House. (McGahn, through a White House spokesperson, declined to comment for this story.) Alums of the counsel's office in previous White Houses say it was unimaginable to hire a national security adviser who faced legal questions regarding foreign lobbying, let alone one who was under federal investigation. "In the White House counsel's office I was working in, the idea that somebody was under investigation was a big red flag and it would be doubtful that we would go forward with that person," says Bill Marshall, a former deputy counsel in the Clinton White House. "That's not even saying it strong enough."

Flynn remained on the job and, during the transition, reportedly told the outgoing Obama administration that it should delay a joint American-Kurdish military strike on an ISIS facility in the Syrian city of Raqqa—a move that conformed with the desires of the Turkish government.

In a short ceremony at the White House on January 22, Flynn was sworn in as national security adviser and McGahn as chief counsel. Four days later, Sally Yates, the acting US attorney general, and a senior official in the Justice Department's national-security division met with McGahn at the White House. Yates informed McGahn of a troubling development: the US had credible information to suggest that Flynn had not told the truth when he denied that he had discussed sanctions during conversations with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States. Yates added that Flynn had been interviewed by the FBI.

Flynn had lied. What's more, his mention of sanctions was potentially illegal under an obscure law known as the Logan Act. (Since the law's creation in 1799, not one person has been convicted under the Logan Act.) Yates warned McGahn that the discrepancy between Flynn's public statements and what he said to the Russian ambassador left him vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians.

"If Sally Yates had come to me with that information, I would've run down the hall like my hair was on fire," Rob Weiner, another former counsel in the Clinton White House, told me. Because the messenger in this case was a holdover from the Obama administration, Weiner added, the Trump White House "might not have had a lot of trust in Yates at that point. Even so, that should've been something to cause alarm bells to go off." Jack Goldsmith, a former senior Justice Department lawyer during the George W. Bush administration, echoed Weiner's observation. Writing at the website Lawfare, Goldsmith weighed in: "Especially coming against the background of knowing (and apparently doing nothing) about Flynn's failure to report his foreign agent work, the information Yates conveyed should have set off loud alarm bells."

Flynn, with two federal investigations hanging over his head, remained on the job for another 18 days. He joined Trump in the Oval Office for calls with foreign dignitaries, including the leaders of Australia and Russia. He presumably sat in on daily intelligence briefings and had unfettered access to classified information. It was only after the Washington Post on February 13 reported on Yates' warning to McGahn about Flynn's susceptibility to blackmail that Trump fired Flynn.

The question looming over the entire debacle was this: How had Flynn been allowed to stay on the job? At the media briefing on the day after Flynn's dismissal, Sean Spicer, the press secretary, addressed McGahn's role in the Flynn controversy. McGahn had conducted his own review after meeting with Yates, Spicer explained, and "determined that there is not a legal issue, but rather a trust issue."

It was a mystifying answer, especially given the facts that later emerged: Flynn was allegedly the target of active investigations. "It is very hard to understand how McGahn could have reached these conclusions," wrote Goldsmith, the former Bush administration lawyer. McGahn, Goldsmith noted, could not know all the details of the investigations targeting Flynn. (Indeed, Yates later testified that McGahn appeared to have not known that the FBI had interviewed Flynn about his calls with the Russian ambassador.) "Just as important, the final word on the legality of Flynn's actions was not McGahn's to make," Goldsmith went on. "That call in the first instance lies with the FBI and especially the attorney general."

The steady stream of revelations about the Trump White House and its various legal dramas has only cast a harsher light on McGahn and the counsel's office. After the Post reported that White House officials had pressured the director of national intelligence and the National Security Agency chief to downplay the FBI's Russia investigation, Goldsmith tweeted, "Asking again: Is WH Counsel 1) incompetent or 2) ineffective because client's crazy and he lacks access/influence?"

Lawyers who have represented Democrats and Republicans agree that Trump is about as difficult a client as they can imagine. "One gets the sense that Mr. Trump has people talking to him, but he doesn't either take their advice, ask for their advice, or follow their advice," says Karen Hult, a Virginia Tech political-science professor who has studied the White House counsel's office. C. Boyden Gray, the White House counsel for President George H.W. Bush, said few, if any, presidents have had more financial and ethical entanglements than Trump. "I didn't have anywhere near the complexities that Don McGahn had," he told me earlier this year. Bob Bauer, a former counsel in the Obama White House, recently questioned whether any lawyer could rein in Trump: "Is the White House counsel up to the job of representing this president? We may find out nobody is." There is some indication that Trump does trust McGahn. When Trump wanted to release statements of support for Flynn and Kushner after the naming of a special counsel to oversee the Trump-Russia investigation, it was reportedly McGahn who convinced Trump not to do so.

But part of the job, former lawyers in the counsel's office say, is giving the president unwelcome advice and insisting that advice be followed. "It's always very hard to say no to the president and not do what the president of the United States wants," says Bill Marshall, the former Clinton White House lawyer. "But the long-term interests of the president of the United States can often be not doing something he might want to do, and if you do, it can come back and hit you from a direction that you never anticipated."

The Trump administration is considering a broad exemption to Obamacare's mandate on contraceptive coverage, according to a leaked draft of the proposed rule published by Vox on Wednesday.

Since 2011, the Obamacare provision has required that most employers provide insurance that covers birth control, without any cost to the patient. The rule has been the target of a number of lawsuits by religious employers who felt that the requirement violated their religious beliefs. Showing sensitivity to such concerns, in 2014 the Supreme Court ruled in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby that some religious employers could opt out of the coverage. But the court required them to file paperwork indicating their objection, in turn triggering separate contraceptive coverage for employees provided directly by the insurance company. That ruling, though, didn't settle the issue for religious groups. In a follow-up 2016 Supreme Court case, Zubik v. Burwell, a number of religious organizations said that even this accommodation required them to violate their beliefs, as the paperwork made them complicit in providing birth control coverage. The Supreme Court sent the case down to the lower courts, where it has still not been resolved.

Now, the Trump administration seems ready to extend the birth control exemption beyond just religious employers. According to the leaked draft, dated May 23, the new rule would allow virtually any organization to opt out of the mandate if they feel contraception coverage violates "their religious beliefs and moral convictions."

"This rule would mean women across the country could be denied insurance coverage for birth control on a whim from their employer or university," said Dana Singiser, vice president for public policy and government relations of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in a statement. "It would expand the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby ruling to allow any employer—including huge, publicly traded companies—to deny birth control coverage to their employees. Think about it: Under this rule, bosses will be able to impose their personal beliefs on their female employees' private medical decisions."

What's more, this draft doesn't require employers opting out of the mandate to notify the government they are doing so; they're only required to notify employees of a change in their insurance plans. Insurance companies could also themselves refuse to cover contraception if it violates their religious or moral beliefs.

This appears to provide an even broader exemption than what team Trump has previously signaled it would enact. Throughout the campaign, Trump assured religious leaders their organizations would not have to comply with the contraception mandate: "I will make absolutely certain religious orders like the Little Sisters of the Poor are not bullied by the federal government because of their religious beliefs," he wrote in a letter to Catholic leaders last year, referring to the order of nuns that were party to the Zubik Supreme Court case. And on May 4, Trump, flanked by the Little Sisters of the Poor, signed an executive order about religious liberty, which encourages several agencies to address religious employers' objections to Obamacare's preventive care requirements, including contraception.

It is unclear what changes may have been made to this draft since May 23, but what is clear is that the rule is in an advanced stage of the process; the Office of Management and Budget announced that it is currently reviewing it, the penultimate step before the rule is enacted via posting in the Federal Register.

You can read the full draft, obtained by Vox, below:

It seems clear now why the Trump administration fought so hard to avoid making public the details of the waivers it granted to White House staffers who might otherwise have been in violation of the president's self-imposed ethics rules. They show that President Donald Trump, who made "drain the swamp" a campaign battle cry, has enlisted numerous swamp-dwellers—former lobbyists, consultants, corporate executives—to staff key positions in his White House and has granted them broad exemptions to work on issues directly related to their former jobs and clients.

After repeatedly slamming DC lobbyists during the campaign, Trump used one of his first executive orders to lay out ethics rules for his new administration. The January 28 order barred Trump officials from working on issues related to their former employers for at least two years, and these rules applied not only to lobbyists, but to anyone who worked for a business or organization potentially affected by federal policy decisions. The prohibitions were not absolute: Waivers would be available in certain cases.

The Trump administration initially balked when the Office of Government Ethics demanded the White House hand over the waivers it had granted. But after a standoff the administration relented late Wednesday and released about 14 waivers covering White House staffers. They make clear that Trump's ethics rules are remarkably flexible and that his top staffers don't need to worry too much about staying on the right side of them. On paper, Trump's rules are similar to those imposed by President Barack Obama, but it appears that Trump is far more willing to hand out exemptions. At this point in the Obama administration, just three White House staffers had been granted ethics waivers. So far, Trump has granted 14, including several that apply to multiple people.

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus and adviser Kellyanne Conway were both granted waivers to deal with issues involving their previous employers. In the case of Priebus, this narrowly applies to the Republican National Committee. But Conway is now free to work on issues involving her ex-clients from her previous life as an operative and pollster—clients that included political campaigns, nonprofit activist groups, and corporations.

Conway's relationships with these clients were murky to begin with; she was never required to disclose who she worked for. We do know that she repped virulently anti-immigration and anti-Muslim groups. The names of some of her corporate clients also have trickled out, including Major League Baseball, Hasbro, American Express, and Boeing. The waiver may have been granted to help smooth the way for Conway after evidence emerged that she continued to operate own her polling and consulting company even after she'd gone to work in the White House—a possible violation of conflict-of-interest laws that drew the attention of congressional Democrats who have begun probing her relationship with the company.

Conway's waiver was not retroactive, but there is another that specifically allows White House employees to communicate freely with former employers and coworkers at media organizations—and applies back to January 20. Trump's executive order didn't simply prohibit any of his hires from working on matters relating to a former employer—it specifically covered "any meeting or communication relating to the performance of one's official duties." This means at least two of Trump's top aides, former Breitbart News chairman Steve Bannon and his assistant Julia Hahn, would be prohibited from chatting with their former colleagues at Breitbart about anything work-related—a rule that Bannon appears not to have followed. While not named, it seems likely that protecting the Breitbart alums from ethics complaints was the aim.

Another takeaway from Trump's waivers is that they appear to be far less restrictive than Obama administration waivers. Many Obama waivers (there were only 10 total granted to White House employees during his administration) were very narrowly tailored. For example, James Jones, Obama's national security adviser, was granted a waiver to allow him to introduce Bill Clinton at an event for the Atlantic Council, even though Jones had previously worked for the group. John Brennan, at the time one of Obama's deputy national security advisers, had previously worked for The Analysis Company, and he was granted a waiver to use the company's data while investigating the so-called "Underwear Bomber" incident. Brennan was not cleared to talk to any of the company's employees, however.

Trump's waivers, on the other hand, are broad.

For instance, Trump granted a waiver to Michael Catanzaro, who is the president's most senior energy policy aide, allowing him to work freely on "broad policy matters and particular matters of general applicability relating to the Clean Power Plan, the WOTUS [Waters of the United States] rule, and methane regulations." Catanzaro worked as a registered lobbyist for several oil and gas companies as recently as January, which made the waiver necessary. On his most recent lobbying disclosure form—filed on behalf of one of his clients, natural gas company Noble Energy—Catanzaro wrote that he was working on "EPA and BLM's proposed and final regulations covering methane emissions from new and existing oil and gas facilities." Nearly identical language appears in his most recent lobbying disclosure on behalf of another natural gas company, Encana. In other words, Catanzaro is now making policy on the very issues he was paid by corporations to lobby on. There are no restrictions in Catanzaro's waiver relating to his previous clients.

Another lobbyist turned Trump aide is Shahira Knight, who was previously employed as vice president of public policy for mutual fund giant Fidelity and now serves as Trump's special assistant for tax and retirement policy. Her waiver grants her permission to work on "matters of general applicability relating to tax, retirement and financial services issues." Fidelity's most recent lobbying report—filed while Knight ran its lobbying shop—lists the main issue areas targeted by the company's lobbyists: finance, retirement, banking, and taxes.

While the Obama administration reluctantly granted waivers for narrow sets of circumstances, the Trump waivers appear to be written to carefully exempt the previous lobbying work done by White House aides.

And this is just the beginning. The administration released only the waivers granted to White House employees—the release does not include waivers granted to administration officials who work for federal agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency or the Treasury Department. The White House will turn those waivers over to the Office of Government Ethics on Thursday, but it's not clear when they will be made public.

The Trump administration's argument for letting lots of employers opt out of covering birth control is…not exactly bulletproof.

Yesterday, Vox reported that the Trump administration is considering a broad exemption to Obamacare's mandate on contraceptive coverage, according to a leaked draft of the proposed rule. If passed, the rule would allow virtually any employer, not just a religious one, to remove birth control coverage from its insurance plan if contraception violates the organization's religious beliefs or "moral convictions"—a broad and murky standard.

But, in a curious twist, part of the Trump administration's justification for the move hinges on the existence of hundreds of Planned Parenthood clinics, many of which the White House is actively trying to close by "defunding" Planned Parenthood.

As the draft text explains, the administration believes the past rationale for Obamacare's contraception mandate is insufficient. The document lists several reasons why this is the case. Here's one of them:

"There are multiple Federal, state, and local programs that provide free or subsidized contraceptives for low-income women, including Medicaid (with a 90% Federal match for family planning services), Title X, health center grants, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. According to the Guttmacher Institute, government-subsidized family planning services are provided at 8,409 health centers overall. Various state programs supplement Federal programs, and 28 states have their own mandates of contraceptive coverage as a matter of state law. For example, the Title X program, administered by the HHS Office of Population Affairs (OPA), provides voluntary family planning information and services for clients based on their ability to pay.

...

"The availability of such programs to serve the most at-risk women identified by IOM [Institute of Medicine, now known as the National Academy of Medicine] diminishes the Government's interest in applying the Mandate to objecting employers."

The implication here is that since there are already programs like Medicaid and Title X to help low-income women afford contraception, the requirement that most employers provide no-cost birth control is less pressing.

But there are a couple of glaring contradictions here: First of all, of the 8,409 health centers that provide Medicaid and Title X family planning services, as cited in the rule, 817 of them are run by Planned Parenthood—the very group that Congress and the administration are trying to exclude from using Title X and Medicaid funds to provide health care.

Trump has already signed a bill into law allowing states to exclude Planned Parenthood and other providers who offer abortions from receiving Title X family planning funding—never mind that Title X funding is used exclusively for nonabortion services. Beyond that, there are several more proposals moving through government—including in the House's American Health Care Act and in the Trump budget proposal—to withhold Medicaid and other federal dollars, including Title X, specifically from Planned Parenthood.

The problem with the White House's logic boils down to this: As the nation's largest provider of federal Title X-funded care, in 2015 Planned Parenthood centers served more than 40 percent of women nationwide using Title X-funded family planning care—a whopping 1.58 million patients. But if Planned Parenthood can no longer receive a single federal dollar to provide contraception and other family planning care—an oft-repeated goal of the Trump administration—then these nearly 1.6 million low-income patients will suddenly lose their family planning care. And now their employers may not cover that care either.

Just hours after President Donald Trump announced that he intends to withdraw the United States from Paris Climate Agreement, three state governors announced the formation of the United States Climate Alliance, a union that will work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, even as national leadership on climate change falters.

For now, the alliance includes California, New York and Washington State. The governors of those states, Jerry Brown, Andrew Cuomo, and Jay Inslee, respectively, released a statement on Thursday describing how the new alliance will build state-level partnerships to continue aggressive American action on climate change and uphold the goals and standards of the Paris Agreement.

"The president has already said climate change is a hoax, which is the exact opposite of virtually all scientific and worldwide opinion," said Governor Brown in the statement. "I don't believe fighting reality is a good strategy—not for America, not for anybody. If the president is going to be AWOL in this profoundly important human endeavor, then California and other states will step up."

Governor Cuomo echoed that sentiment. Trump's "reckless decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement has devastating repercussions not only for the United States, but for our planet," he said. "This administration is abdicating its leadership and taking a backseat to other countries in the global fight against climate change."

California, New York, and Washington combined are home nearly 70 million people, about 20 percent of the US population. And their governments have already begun to take action. For example, the California State Senate passed legislation on Wednesday that mandates California to develop 100 percent of its electricity from renewable resources by 2045.

So far, no other states have signed on to the alliance, though 61 American mayors also pledged on Thursday that their cities will uphold the tenets of the Paris Climate Agreement.

The concept is straight from the Soviet playbook: Plant false information and use it to influence the attitudes of another country’s people and government. This “active measures” technique from the Cold War era appears to have been resurrected with alarming success by the Kremlin in its attack on the 2016 presidential election—and has been echoed in tactics used by President Donald Trump and his associates, according to Clint Watts, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

“Part of the reason active measures have worked in this US election is because the commander in chief has used Russian active measures at times against his opponents,” Watts, a former FBI agent, recently testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Key to this equation have been RT and Sputnik international, two Russian state-sponsored news outlets. Both reach only relatively small audiences in the US (RT is estimated to reach about 8 million people via cable television), but their impact has been magnified greatly online, with their stories reposted on what Watts calls “gray” conspiracy sites like Breitbart News and InfoWars. Twitter bots and other social media accounts further amplify the stories. And in several cases, Trump or his associates have directly cited phony Russian propaganda in a speech or interview. Here are some examples:

A false report of a terrorist attack at a NATO base in Turkey: Last July, RT and Sputnik each reported on a fire at the Incirlik base, framing it as potential sabotage. Pro-Russian and pro-Trump Twitter accounts spread and magnified the false reports, but mainstream news organizations didn’t pick up the report because it wasn’t true, as Watts explained in a piece for the Daily Beast. Yet, in mid August, Paul Manafort—Trump’s campaign chairman at the time—escalated the story to a terrorist attack, complaining on CNN that US media outlets were not adequately covering it. Politifact debunked Manafort’s claims, noting that Turkish authorities had reported small, peaceful demonstrations outside the base, but no actual assault on the base.

The case of the phony Benghazi email: On October 10, Wikileaks released a batch of emails hacked from campaign chairman John Podesta’s email account. About 5 pm ET that day, Sputnik News published a story about leaked Clinton campaign emails with the headline “Hillary confidante: Benghazi was ‘preventable’; State Department negligent.” Roughly an hour later, Trump told supporters at a rally in Pennsylvania that Clinton ally Sidney Blumenthal had called the Benghazi attack “almost certainly preventable.” “This just came out a little while ago,” Trump said. Those words weren’t actually Blumenthal’s and Sputnik later deleted the story – but by then the headline had spread far and wide.

False claims of pervasive voter fraud: RT has been attempting to delegitimize the American electoral process since 2012 by calling the U.S. voting system fraudulent, according to the declassified version of the report the Director of National Intelligence released this past January. In his Senate testimony, Watts called this the “number one theme" pushed by Russian outlets. In October 2016, a Kremlin-controlled think tank circulated a strategy document that said Russia should end its pro-Trump propaganda “and instead intensify its messaging about voter fraud to undermine the U.S. electoral system’s legitimacy and damage Clinton’s reputation in an effort to undermine her presidency,” according to a Reuters investigation. 

That same month, Trump pushed hard on the theme that the election was rigged; on Oct. 17 Trump tweeted “Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day.” The sources his campaign pointed to were all debunked by Politifact, which noted that Trump had also tweeted in 2012 about dead voters delivering Obama’s win.

The Swedish attack that wasn’t: Trump’s strategy of running with false information didn’t stop when he won the election – and hasn’t been limited to Russian-owned media properties: He’s also used Fox News reports in a similar way. In February, Trump appeared to imply at a Florida rally that a terrorist attack had occurred the previous night in Sweden. Sweden itself had no idea what he meant and the Swedish Embassy reached out to ask for clarification. Twitter users, including many Swedes, ridiculed Trump’s statement, with references ranging from IKEA to the Swedish Chef character from the “Muppets.” Trump later said that he was referring to a Fox News story on violence allegedly perpetrated by refugees. That report, which aired the night before Trump’s rally, did not mention a specific terror-related attack; it focused on reports that rape and gun violence had increased since Sweden began taking in a record number of refugees in 2015.

Wiretapping claims pushed by a Fox News personality: In March, even though Trump's claim about Obama wiretapping Trump Tower had been directly debunked by top US intelligence officials, the president seized on a baseless claim by Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano that British spies had wiretapped Trump at former President Obama’s request. Fox News later disavowed Napolitano’s statement. Trump continued to repeat his conviction that he’d been wiretapped, even though American and British intelligence officials insist there is no basis for the claims.

The murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich: Trump allies recently pushed another story that started as a conspiracy theory online and was fueled by Russian news outlets. Fox’s Sean Hannity aired several segments focusing on the unsubstantiated claim that Rich was behind the Clinton campaign email leaks and then murdered for his actions, even though police have said he was likely killed in a robbery attempt. When the claims were thoroughly debunked, Fox retracted the story from its website – but not before it had been spread by Trump ally and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Even after Fox pulled the story, Gingrich told the Washington Post, “I think it is worth looking at.”

In his Senate testimony, Watts noted that Trump is vulnerable to further manipulation by the Russians: He warned that Russian-linked Twitter accounts are actively trying to engage the president by sending him conspiracy theories. “Until we get a firm basis on fact and fiction in our own country, get some agreement about the facts,” Watts said, “we’re going to have a big problem.”

President Donald Trump began the week with a barrage of early-morning tweets blasting the courts for blocking his travel ban executive order. But in doing so, he may have just made it more likely that the courts will keep blocking the ban.

People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017

The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017

The Justice Dept. should ask for an expedited hearing of the watered down Travel Ban before the Supreme Court - & seek much tougher version!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017

In any event we are EXTREME VETTING people coming into the U.S. in order to help keep our country safe. The courts are slow and political!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017

These tweets followed upon several from over the weekend about the ban and the terrorist attack in London, including this one from Saturday evening:

We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 3, 2017

In January, Trump signed an executive order banning nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for 90 days, as well as halting the refugee resettlement program for 120 days (and indefinitely for Syrian refugees). When the courts blocked it, rather than appeal to the Supreme Court, Trump signed a modified version of the order. The new ban repealed the old one, reduced the number of banned countries from seven to six, and added exceptions and waivers. Still, federal courts in Maryland and Hawaii blocked it, and now the Justice Department has appealed to the Supreme Court to have this second version of the ban reinstated.

The biggest question in the litigation over the ban is whether the courts should focus solely on the text of the order or also consider Trump's comments from the campaign trail, and even during his presidency, to determine whether the order uses national security as a pretext for banning Muslims from the country. The president's lawyers argue that the courts should focus on the text of the order and defer to the president's authority over national security. Trump's tweets Monday morning and over the weekend make it harder for the courts to justify doing that.

The travel ban is supposed to be a temporary remedy until the government can review its vetting procedures. But Trump's tweets make it appear that the ban itself is his goal. Trump repeatedly and defiantly uses the word "ban" when his administration has instead sought to call it a pause. 

The tweets "undermine the government's best argument—that courts ought not look beyond the four corners of the Executive Order itself," Stephen Vladeck, an expert on national security and constitutional law at the University of Texas School of Law, says via email. "Whether or not then-Candidate Trump's statements should matter (a point on which reasonable folks will likely continue to disagree), the more President Trump says while the litigation is ongoing tending to suggest that the Order is pretextual, the harder it is to convince even sympathetic judges and justices that only the text of the Order matters." And once the courts start looking at the president's statements, it's not hard to find ones that raise questions about anti-Muslim motivations.

Even the president's allies acknowledge his tweets are a problem. George Conway, the husband of top Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, responded to Trump on Twitter by pointing out that the work of the Office of the Solicitor General—which is defending the travel ban in court—just got harder.

These tweets may make some ppl feel better, but they certainly won't help OSG get 5 votes in SCOTUS, which is what actually matters. Sad. https://t.co/zVhcyfm8Hr

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) June 5, 2017

Conway, who recently withdrew his name from consideration for a post at the Justice Department, then followed up to clarify his position.

2) ... and of course, my wonderful wife. Which is why I said what I said this morning. Every sensible lawyer in WHCO and every political ...

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) June 5, 2017

3) ... appointee at DOJ wd agree with me (as some have already told me). The pt cannot be stressed enough that tweets on legal matters ...

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) June 5, 2017

4) ... seriously undermine Admin agenda and POTUS--and those who support him, as I do, need to reinforce that pt and not be shy about it.

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) June 5, 2017

Trump may soon see his tweets used against him in court. Omar Jadwat, the ACLU attorney who argued the case before the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, told the Washington Post this morning that the ACLU's legal team is considering adding Trump's tweets to its arguments before the Supreme Court. "The tweets really undermine the factual narrative that the president's lawyers have been trying to put forth, which is that regardless of what the president has actually said in the past, the second ban is kosher if you look at it entirely on its own terms," Jadwat told the Post.

Former President Barack Obama described President Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic as "chaotic" in a conference call with former members of his administration, a source said on Saturday.

President Donald Trump on Saturday said the United States will next week begin purchasing $3 billion worth of dairy, meat and produce from farmers as unemployment soars and people are forced to food lines.

A newly released memo shows that Robert Mueller was given wide latitude to investigate Michael Flynn, whose prosecution the Justice Department is attempting to drop.

Former President Barack Obama described President Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic as "chaotic" in a conference call with former members of his administration, a source said on Saturday.

Actors, writers, musicians and even former president Barack Obama will be taking part in virtual graduation ceremonies as the Class of 2020 is still under stay-at-home orders due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and on “Saturday Night Live’s” “At Home” finale, the NBC late-night sketch series got in on the ceremonial event as well. Alec Baldwin […]

Former President Barack Obama slammed the Trump administration's coronavirus response as an "an absolute chaotic disaster."

Mr. Obama's comments came Friday night while privately talking to ex-members of his administration. A tape of the conversation was leaked to Yahoo News, which first reported the former president's comments Saturday morning.

He ...

UFC 249 served as the first major sporting event to take place since the global pandemic shut down much of the country nearly eight weeks ago. It was originally scheduled for 18 April in New York, but was postponed in hopes of helping slow the spread of COVID-19.

Arsenal reportedly must decide on Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang's future by next month amid Real Madrid links.

London, May 10: Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is out of contract in June 2021 and the Gabon international is no closer to signing a new Arsenal deal. The former Borussia Dortmund star is not short of suitors amid uncertainty over his future

The Department of Homeland Security has issued new regulations, set to take effect Monday, that will limit visas for Chinese reporters to 90 days.

More than 77,000 people with COVID-19 have died in the United States and more than 1.27 million people have tested positive.

Former US president Barack Obama has criticised Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, calling it an "absolute chaotic disaster".

Former President Barack Obama harshly criticized President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as an “absolute chaotic disaster” during a conversation with ex-members of his administration, according to a recording obtained by Yahoo News. Obama also reacted to the Justice Department dropping its criminal case against Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, saying he worried that the “basic understanding of rule of law is at risk.” Obama’s comments came during a Friday call with 3,000 members of the Obama Alumni Association, people who served in his administration.

Both China and South Korea reported new spikes in coronavirus cases on Sunday, setting off fresh concerns in countries where local outbreaks had been in dramatic decline. Former President Barack Obama, meanwhile, harshly criticized President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as an “absolute chaotic disaster,” while U.S. states began gradually reopening, even as health officials are anxiously watching for a second wave of infections. China reported 14 new cases on Sunday, its first double-digit rise in 10 days.

It's the first time Baldwin has impersonated the president in an episode of 'SNL at Home'

The comments came during a conference call.

HHS will ship 14,400 vials of the drug to state health departments, putting the onus on them to decide which hospitals get some of the country's limited supply.

Trying to revive a devastated U.S. economy, Trump is expanding his wartime metaphors to draw in just about everyone across the nation.

Former US President Barack Obama harshly criticised President Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic as an "absolute chaotic disaster" during a conversation with ex-members of his administration, according to a recording...

Former President Barack Obama has sharply criticized President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, describing the administration’s response as “an absolute chaotic disaster” during a call with fellow Democrats, according to a recording obtained by Yahoo News. The blistering comments came during a Friday call with the Obama Alumni Association, which is made up […]

President Trump has consistently defended and boasted of his response to the virus.

The Premier League is finally working towards a restart of its competition as Liverpool wait to be crowned champions.

US President Trump has congratulated UFC for restarting the sports world on Saturday night after a nearly two-month hiatus.

President Donald Trump is fired up about UFC 249 -- making a special video to praise Dana White for finding a way to throw the event despite the COVID-19 pandemic. "I want to congratulate Dana White and the UFC," Trump said while standing outside…

A weight-lifting guru, author and podcaster calls the U.S. response to the pandemic an “exercise in hysteria" that might do more harm than good

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Act now for the best deal on SAS Global Forum 2016 registration. You already know that SAS Global Forum will pay for itself in learning opportunities.

You have just a few more days to submit your paper proposal for the 2017 SAS® Global Forum in Orlando on April 2–5. The call for papers ends and registration begins October 3.

Amid the evasions and distortions lies evidence that Ralph Reed knows, really, that religion and politics can mix to noble ends – just not under this president

Ralph Reed, an evangelical leader and conservative political activist, first met Donald Trump in 2011, after being “coincidentally” seated next to Ivanka Trump at a meeting. The following year, he writes now, at his own Faith & Freedom conference, Trump “bounded on stage to the thumping strains of ‘Money, money, money’ from For the Love of Money, a song by the 70s soul group the O’Jays”.

Related: Who is Kayleigh McEnany – and why is she saying nice things about Donald Trump?

No other advanced nation denies healthcare and work protections, or loosens lockdown while fatalities mount

No other nation has endured as much death from Covid-19 nor nearly as a high a death rate as has the United States.

Related: Donald Trump's four-step plan to reopen the US economy – and why it will be lethal | Robert Reich

Around the world, governments are providing generous income support. Not in the US

American workers are far less unionized than workers in other advanced economies

Related: Mothers will be hardest hit if the economy reopens too fast | Jessica Zucker

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a columnist for Guardian US

The White House press secretary has made a confident start in a notoriously difficult role. Those who know her say the media and opponents underestimate her at their peril

It was a mic drop designed to thrill conservatives and infuriate liberals and the media.

Related: 'You can't ask the virus for a truce': reopening America is Trump's biggest gamble

More than 78,400 people with COVID-19 have died in the United States and more than 1.3 million people have tested positive, according to the latest estimates from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University

Government, business, trade and civil society representatives came together at this panel session to discuss the first year of implementation following the 2011 Update of the Guidelines.

Participants in this multi-stakeholder meeting launched the Gold Implementation programme and advanced implementation of due diligence in the 3Ts supply chain to ensure that companies avoid contributing to conflict through their mineral or metal purchasing decisions and practices.

Participants in this multi-stakeholder meeting reviewed and discussed the implementation of the OECD Due Diligence Guidance and in the 3Ts supply chain to ensure that companies avoid contributing to conflict through their mineral or metal purchasing decisions and practices.