US reviews $221m payment to Palestinians

WASHINGTON. - The State Department is reviewing a last-minute decision by former Secretary of State John Kerry to send $221 million dollar-payment to the Palestinians late last week over the objections of congressional Republicans.

The department said on Tuesday it would look at the payment and might make adjustments to ensure it comports with the Trump administration’s priorities.

Kerry formally notified Congress that the State Department would release the money on the morning of January 20, just hours before president Donald Trump took the oath of office.

The funds intended for reconstruction in Gaza and good governance programmes for the Palestinian Authority were being blocked by at least two GOP lawmakers in response to Palestinian attempts to join international organisations before a peace deal with Israel.

Such holds are generally respected but are not legally binding.

Meanwhile, Trump began rolling out executive actions on immigration yesterday, beginning with steps to build his proposed wall along the US-Mexico border, according to two administration officials.

He was also expected to target so-called sanctuary cities and was reviewing proposals that would restrict the flow of refugees to the US

Trump was expected to sign the first actions - including the measure to jumpstart construction of the wall - yesterday during a trip to the Department of Homeland Security. Additional actions would be rolled out over the next few days, according to one official.

Trump is said to still be weighing the details of plans to restrict refugees coming to the US.

Just after Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president, a range of information on the White House website related to climate change was moved to an Obama online archive.

The only references to rising temperatures on the new Trump White House site are a commitment to eliminate “harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan”. This was president Obama’s broad-based strategy to cut carbon emissions.

The brief White House document now contains a further indication of the green priorities of the new administration.

The Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA), should focus on its “essential mission of protecting our air and water”.

While the administration figures out how to achieve that re-focus, staff at the EPA have been told to freeze all grant making, and to be quiet about it.

This means that no external press releases will be issued and no social media posts will be permitted. It is unclear when these restrictions will be lifted.

Reports from news agencies indicate that the roll-back will not stop there, with climate information pages hosted by the EPA expected to be shut down.

“My guess is the web pages will be taken down, but the links and information will be available,” the prominent climate sceptic and adviser to the Trump transition team, Myron Ebell, told Reuters.

“If the website goes dark, years of work we have done on climate change will disappear,” said an anonymous EPA staff member, according to reports.

The Trump team has also taken immediate steps to push forward with two controversial oil pipelines.

So are all these moves evidence of a malevolent mindset, determined to crush all this snowflake climate change chatter?

Definitely, according to Alden Meyer, a veteran climate campaigner with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“President Trump and his team are pursuing what I call a ‘control-alt-delete’ strategy: control the scientists in the federal agencies, alter science-based policies to fit their narrow ideological agenda, and delete scientific information from government websites,” told BBC News.

“This is an across-the-board strategy that we are seeing at multiple federal agencies on a range of issues, though climate denialism is clearly the point of the spear.”

Not according to White House spokesman Sean Spicer.

“I don’t think it’s any surprise that when there’s an administration turnover, that we’re going to review the policy,” he said. - Reuters/ BBC.