Democracy Wire

In a tale of two meetings, President Trump met recently with Vladimir Putin for two hours with no one but a translator and still has provided no read-out of the meeting to his top national security advisors. By contrast he met with those top advisors today for thirty minutes about protecting our elections from Russian interference. Whose side is he on?

The Atlantic noted it immediately, the rest of the media world is catching up after Rachel Maddow raised concerns last night that one week later the White House has not corrected the official transcript of the Putin-Trump news conference in Helsinki to include Jeff Mason's full question.

On January 21, 2017, Donald John Trump raised his right hand and, with just the hint of a smile of self-vindication, took an oath “to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.” “We the People,” the Constitution begins, and its foundation stone is the right of the People to elect our leaders through the free exercise of elections without the interference of any foreign power.

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Inspectors General are the people's watchdogs within government agencies and often the reason we know about government waste, fraud, and abuse. It's a concern then that 13 agencies lack IGs right now. A new report from the Bipartisan Policy Center makes recommendations for governmental oversight and the offices of IGs.

The embattled Environmental Protection Agency Administrator is the subject of at least 10 ethics investigations by an assortment of federal agencies.