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Here’s your dose of ‘What the Fuck is Going On’ News (1/24/2017 edition)

• Two more Breitbart staffers have joined the Trump administration, joining Steve Bannon. Julia Hahn specifically covered immigration on the website and is aggressively anti-immigration. Sebastian Gorka was the website’s national security editor and served as a policy consultant on Trump’s campaign. VDare, a white nationalist website who is listed on the SLCP extremist list, has praised Hahn’s anti-immigration work in the past. (source)
• A day after reinstating the global gag rule, which removes all US funding from foreign aid groups if they counsel patients on abortion (source), the House of Representatives passed a funding ban on abortion. The bill will ban anyone in the US from receiving federal financial assistance for abortion. This means programs like Medicaid and those who purchased insurance through the Affordable Care Act, meaning that abortions will be even harder to get for lower income women. (source)
• Badlands National Park’s official Twitter posted a ton of tweets about climate change. This went against the current social media blackout order that the Trump administration has enforced on the EPA, Department of Interior, and the Department of Agriculture meaning no news releases, blog posts, or social media updates allowed. The tweets have “mysteriously” been deleted, no further information known. (source)
• In preparation to “drastically reshape” the Environmental Protection Agency, the Trump administration has put a freeze on all EPA grants to local and state communities. The EPA has received no notice on how long the freeze will last, and this goes beyond the hiring freeze that all federal government (minus new political appointees) is facing. (source)
• Trump signed two executive orders to revive the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline and Keystone Pipeline. Trump also signed an executive order to expedite environmental project reviews, meaning they won’t have to go through the same regulatory process as before. (source)
• Trump announced that his Supreme Court Justice pick will be announced next week, the shortlist includes Neil Gorsuch, Thomas Hardiman, and William Pryor. Gorsuch is against abortion, opposes the ACA’s birth control mandate and calls it “unconstitutional.” Hardiman does not believe citizens should have the right to tape police wrongdoing. And Pryor has called Roe v. Wade the “worst abomination in the history of constitutional law.” Pryor also urged the Supreme Court to uphold laws banning sodomy – linking consensual activity between men to bestiality, incest, and pedophilia. (source)
• Trump’s pick for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, will not have to go through a second hearing. The senate committee will vote on her nomination on January 31st. (source)
• Trump is (again) claiming that millions of people voted illegally, and that he would have also won the popular vote if not for this. This is still a baseless claim, and WH press secretary, Sean Spicer told the press today that Trump believes “people voting illegally during the campaign and continues to maintain that belief based on studies and evidence people have brought to him.” They still have provided no evidence (and refuse to) and so far no evidence coming from elsewhere supporting this exists. (source)