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By Catherine Davis | Date
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Donald J. Trump
Current U.S. president
2017 through 2019

  1. Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court – As messy and unfair as the process was, his confirmation secures another conservative jurist with an originalist constitutional approach and a restrained view of judicial power. The untimely death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016 crystalized for many voters the danger of allowing Hillary Clinton to fill that seat. With Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh in place, Trump has kept his promise to remake the high court with young, conservative thinkers.
  2. Confronting China – Much of the heartland anxiety that vaulted Trump into the Oval Office emanates directly from the abusive economic warfare waged by China for decades against the United States.
  3. Middle-Class Wages Rise – Incomes in general soared in 2018, with average hourly earnings finally eclipsing 3 percent growth for the first time since before the Great Recession. The news is even better for blue-collar workers, who now realize wage growth above that of white-collar workers for the first time in nearly a decade.
  4. ​Middle-Class Wages Rise – Incomes in general soared in 2018, with average hourly earnings finally eclipsing 3 percent growth for the first time since before the Great Recession. The news is even better for blue-collar workers, who now realize wage growth above that of white-collar workers for the first time in nearly a decade.
  5. U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Deal – Trump proved that America welcomes equitable global commerce by cementing a badly needed modernization of NAFTA. The USMCA provides a template for other such trade pacts and effectively isolates China’s increasingly untenable posture.
  6. Ending the Iran Nuclear Deal – Gone are the days of coddling the mullahs who have terrorized America and our allies for decades.
  7. Moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem – Trump proved once again how differently he governs compared to Washington norms. Past presidents promised for decades to make this move and U.S. law has required it since 1995, but only President Trump made good on his pledge, honored our ally, and recognized the obvious reality that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel.
  8. Smashing the ISIS Caliphate and Exiting Syria – Unlike his predecessor, who haughtily dismissed and ignored the ISIS threat as terrorists’ “JV team,” President Trump smartly dispatched limited U.S. troops to help our partners erase the territorial caliphate that had inflicted unspeakable human rights abuses.
  9. Increasing Minority Jobs – If Trump is actually racist, as biased mainstream media 
  10. Holding the Line with Migrant Caravans 
  11. Record American Oil Production – In 2018, the U.S. surpassed Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world’s largest producer of crude oil. 
    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/.../trumps_top_10..
  12. Rebounding economy — By the end of 2017, the economy is soaring with more than 3 percent growth from July through September, the highest quarterly performance in three years, according to Fox News. The 4.1-percent unemployment rate is the lowest in 17 years, the stock market has hit record highs more than 60 times during the year, and Trump has promised continued growth in business and jobs with the passage of the tax bill.
  13. Victory against ISIS — After the terrorist organization took over major parts of Iraq, Trump delivered on his promise to defeat ISIS.
  14. Appointment of conservative judges — Trump set a record for the most confirmed appellate judges in a president’s first year, ABC News reported. By December, Trump had 19 federal judges confirmed, including 12 circuit judges, six district court judges, and Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who replaced the late Antonin Scalia.
  15. Huge tax cuts — Trump called the tax reform package passed by the Senate and House a Christmas gift for middle America as he signed it into law, beating his year-end forecast. The tax bill provides the most sweeping tax changes in three decades, lowering the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent with the aim of stimulating long-term growth and the creation of jobs.
  16. Repeal of Obamacare’s individual mandate — The tax bill also included  a provision repealing a mandate that forced Americans to pay a penalty for not getting health insurance. Many people chose to pay the fine rather than the costs of high premiums and deductibles under the Affordable Care Act. Trump said the move will eventually end Obamacare, which depended on the mandate to keep working.
  17. Slashing federal regulations — Many business leaders complained of strangling Obama-era regulations that slowed the economy. Trump got rid of many burdensome regulations under the Environmental Protection Agency, the Education Department, and Health and Human Services.
  18. The Federal Communications Commission reversed net neutrality, which opened the way for entrepreneurs to compete on the internet with colossal corporations with less government oversight.
  19. Trump also reversed Obama’s blocking of the Keystone Pipeline.
  20. Travel ban — Trump’s controversial ban faced legal challenges by lower courts before receiving approval from the Supreme Court to go ahead with a third version of the plan while the challenges continue...
  21. The New York Times reported. Trump issued the ban for national security reasons and to protect American jobs. The ban restricts travel for people in predominantly Muslim countries — Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Chad, and Somalia — as well as for people in North Korea and Venezuela.
  22. Border control — The strengthening of border patrol policies has put a significant dent in the number of border crossings from Mexico. A Customs and Border Protections report revealed a drop in the arrest of unauthorized people by nearly 20 percent from the year before.
  23. Support for veterans — Backlogs at medical facilities for vets were alleviated through the Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act, notes Thomas Binion in Fortune. Vets will find more efficient service with claims processed quicker. Other legislative actions signed by Trump help veterans with education benefits and improved healthcare.
  24. Recognizing Jerusalem — Trump announced the U.S. would formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which would include eventually moving its embassy to the holy city. After more than 120 countries of the United Nations criticized the move, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley announced massive cuts in contributions to the UN. Trump and Haley had threatened to eliminate funding for any country voting in favor of a resolution for the U.S. to reverse its Jerusalem decision, Newsweek reported.
  25. Exiting the Paris climate agreement — The deal could hurt the American economy and jobs, Trump said after announcing the withdrawal in June. The agreement put restrictions on the U.S. with the goal of lowering global temperatures in a reaction to climate change. Trump later said the U.S. was willing to re-negotiate a more favorable agreement.
  26. Leaving the Trans-Pacific Partnership — The TPP, a trade deal with Asia, was a “potential disaster for our country,” Trump said, harming American workers and manufacturing. President Obama had negotiated the deal, but it was never ratified by Congress, CNN reported. Trump withdrew via an executive order last January.​
  27. ​https://www.houstonpress.com/news/5-objectively-good-things-trump-has-done-11286106 ---->>>>Prison Reform - Among its initiatives are expansion of earned-time credits, more chances for prisoners to slowly transition from prison to society through halfway homes, time off sentences for vocational achievements, and better approaches to mandatory sentencing that retroactively reduce drug sentences of ridiculous length. Let’s also not forget he personally granted clemency to Alice Johnson, a 63-year-old woman who had been serving time for a drug charge since 1996.
  28. Gun Control - After the NRA spent years saying Barack Obama’s gun confiscation was right around the corner (and thereby increasing gun sales to an all-time high), it’s somewhat ironic that Trump has embraced gun control in small ways. His administration used powers already granted to the justice department to ban bump stocks, the accessories that allow semi-automatic rifles to mimic automatic ones. The shooter in the 2017 Las Vegas massacre, which remains the deadliest mass shooting in United States history so far, used one in his attack. He’s unfortunately vowed to veto an expansion of background checks passed by the House this year, but there’s no getting around that he did eliminate one of the tools of mayhem with a single pen stroke.
  29. Salary Donation - For a president who seems to literally be unable to stop lying, Trump actually has a good record keeping campaign promises. According to Politifact, who kept a similar record for Obama, Trump has kept in some form or is working on more than half of the promises made on the campaign trail. One of those promises was that he would donate his presidential salary rather than keep it, and every year he has done exactly that. He has gifted his entire paycheck to various places since assuming office, including the National Park Service, the U.S. Education Department, the Transportation Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. My personal favorite was him sending $100,000 to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, which he did in memory of his older brother, Fred’s, fatal struggles with booze. If Trump continues the practice, his donation amount will actually surpass Obama donating his Nobel Prize money by 2021.
  30. Union Representation. Every time the words “Trump” and “treaty” are in the news it’s safe to assume that something horrible is going to happen, but there is one instance in which an incredible benefit was the result. The trade deal his administration made with Mexico and Canada came with the caveat that Mexico would overhaul its labor laws. They did so, and part of the new set of laws that just passed gave workers the right to collective bargaining. Previously NAFTA helped keep unionization out of Mexico as U.S. companies sought cheap labor there. The new deal, USMCA, seeks to de-incentivize moving jobs beyond the southern border by improving the lot of Mexican workers. This is a huge move to combat bad practices by corporations eager to save money at labor’s expense outside of the United States.






​

Barack Obama
Former U.S. president
2008 through 2016 (Two Terms of Office)

  1. When Obama took office the real estate and banking industry was in free fall. Here's some of Obama's accomplishments.
  2. Rescued the country from the Great Recession, cutting the unemployment rate from 10% to 4.7% over six years, saving the banking and real estate industries.
  3. Signed the Affordable Care Act which provided health insurance to over 20 million uninsured Americans
  4. Ended the war in Iraq
  5. Ordered for the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden
  6. Passed the $787 billion America Recovery and Reinvestment Act to spur economic growth during the Great Recession
  7. Supported the LGBT community’s fight for marriage equality
  8. Commuted the sentences of nearly 1200 drug offenders to reverse “unjust and outdated prison sentences”
  9. Saved the U.S. auto industry
  10. Helped put the U.S. on track for energy independence by 2020
  11. Began the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan
  12. Signed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals allowing as many as 5 million people living in the U.S. illegally to avoid deportation and receive work permits
  13. Signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to re-regulate the financial sector
  14. Dropped the veteran homeless rate by 50 percent
  15. Reversed Bush-era torture policies
  16. Began the process of normalizing relations with Cuba
  17. Increased Department of Veteran Affairs funding
  18. Signed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act
  19. Boosted fuel efficiency standards for cars
  20. Improved school nutrition with the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act
  21. Repealed the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy
  22. Signed the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, making it a federal crime to assault anyone based on sexual or gender identification
  23. Helped negotiate the landmark Iran Nuclear Deal
  24. He signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to combat pay discrimination against women
  25. Nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, making her the first Hispanic ever to serve as a justice
  26. Supported veterans through a $78 billion tuition assistance GI bill
  27. Won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”
  28. Increase Commutations -The Brennan Center’s first recommendation for the president was to commute the sentences of individuals still locked up under overly-harsh drug penalties, particularly those sentenced under outdated crack guidelines. We called for a mass commutation that would retroactively apply the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, recalibrating thousands of unjust sentences. A week after the release of the report, Obama announced his Clemency Initiative, a Justice Department priority to focus on reviewing and granting commutations (the presidential power to reduce prison sentences) for nonviolent prisoners sentenced under outdated drug penalties. Although Obama’s actions did not grant relief to all prisoners sentenced under the unfair crack guidelines (as the Brennan Center recommended) it is significant nonetheless. To date, the president has issued commutations to 306 individuals, more than the previous six presidents combined. Create a Presidential Commission - The report also ecommended the creation of a presidential commission to study mass incarceration and suggest high-impact reforms. In late 2014, following the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., Obama signed an executive order establishing the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. It included a diverse group of stakeholders, chaired by former Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and former Assistant Attorney General Laurie Robinson, to identify best practices in law enforcement and suggest possible reforms police departments could make to avoid future tragedies. Its final report was released in May 2015, and urged increased collaboration with community members, training, and implementation of a community policing model. Activists and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have lauded the report’s recommendations. While the commission did not conduct in-depth analysis of the entire system, it both emphasized the need for improving law enforcement-community relations and decreasing the number of people coming in contact with the system in the first place.
  29. End Federal Financial Subsidization of Mass Incarceration. Currently, the federal government sends $3.8 billion in federal grants to states and cities for criminal justice purposes. Unfortunately, these grants largely go out on autopilot, pressuring states to increase the number of arrests, prosecutions, and imprisonment without requiring a public safety reason. In its report, the Brennan Center called on the president to revamp federal grants so that they only go to states that reduce both incarceration and crime. Much can be done through the president’s executive authority to redirect these grants. In February 2015, then-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder marked the anniversary of the Justice Department’s Smart on Crime Initiative — an effort by the Justice Department to reduce unnecessary incarceration and violent crime — with a speech touting the success of the program. The measures he cited — an increased focus on violent and serious crime, decreased prosecutions for low-level, non-violent offenses, and a 20 percent drop in the number of people being charged under drug-related mandatory minimums — directly aligned with several Brennan Center recommendations regarding Success-Oriented Funding.
  30. “Banning the Box” for Federal Employment - In April, the federal government proposed a rule to ban “the box” — the question that asks applicants to disclose whether they’ve been convicted of a crime — on applications for federal employment. The rule will be finalized after a 60-day comment period.  Earlier this month, the Brennan Center joined 134 allied organizations on a letter to President Barack Obama, asking him to “ban the box” on job applications for federal contracting positions. These moves parallel the final recommendation in the Brennan Center report calling for such action.Such a decision would bring 40 million jobs within reach of people with criminal convictions. In today’s tough job market, a checked box on an employment application often offers employers a simple method to narrow down saturated applicant pools. Unfortunately, this creates significant barriers to former prisoners getting jobs, no matter their qualifications. One study found that employers were 50 percent less likely to offer interviews to white applicants with criminal records than those without them. The effect was even more significant for African Americans, who were 64 percent less likely to be interviewed if they had a criminal  record. Defining applicants by their past mistakes, without considering their qualifications and potential, is unjust and unnecessary. Having served their prescribed sentences, former prisoners have repaid their debt to society. Yet the stigma of their criminal conviction continues to punish them and, in many ways, permanently relegate them to a second-class status. ------>>>>>The Obama administration has taken many steps in the right direction on criminal justice reform, from ban-the-box to the clemency initiative to creating a task force examining ways to improve the system. The United States remains the largest incarcerator in the world, with thousands more people entering the system every day. As the Obama Administration comes to a close, the president can go further, taking stronger action to help reform our justice system. More must be done - especially to end the incredibly harmful streams of federal dollars that incentivize mass incarceration. 
  31. The National HIV/AIDS Strategy: Updated to 2020. Today, President Obama signed an Executive Order releasing the National HIV/AIDS Strategy: Updated to 2020, detailing principles and priorities to guide our collective national work to address HIV in the United States over the next five years. In 2010, the President launched the nation’s first comprehensive National HIV/AIDS Strategy. The Strategy has changed the way the American people talk about HIV, prioritize and organize HIV prevention and care services locally, and deliver clinical and other related services that support people living with HIV and encourage their engagement in treatment and care.This updated Strategy reflects the accomplishments and the lessons learned since the original Strategy was released in 2010. Looking ahead to 2020, this Update retains the Strategy’s original vision and four main goals: Goal 1: Reducing New HIV Infections -Goal 2: Increasing Access to Care and Improving Health Outcomes for People Living with HIV. Goal 3: Reducing HIV-related Disparities and Health. Inequities. Goal 4: Achieving a More Coordinated National Response.The Update calls for particular focus on the following priority activities through 2020: Widespread HIV testing and linkage to care, enabling people living with HIV to access treatment early. Broad support for people living with HIV to remain engaged in comprehensive care, including support for treatment adherence. Universal viral suppression among people living with HIV, since it benefits their health and reduces transmission of the virus to others. Full access to comprehensive pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) services for those whom it is appropriate and desired, with support for medication adherence for those using PrEP.  As one of the tools in the HIV prevention toolkit, PrEP is a way for people who don’t have HIV to prevent HIV infection by taking a pill every day. Continuing on the path set by the 2010 Strategy, the Update also recognizes that—for a variety of reasons—HIV does not impact all Americans equally. The HIV epidemic in the United States is concentrated in key populations and geographic areas and the Update guides our response to prioritize the following groups: *Gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men of all races and ethnicities, noting the particularly high burden of HIV among Black gay and bisexual men *Black women and men *Latinos and Latinas *People who inject drugs *Youth aged 13 to 24 years, noting the particularly high burden of HIV among young Black gay and bisexual men *People in the Southern United States *Transgender women, noting the particularly high burden of HIV among Black transgender women
 Sources:   Yahoo, Obama's 50 Accomplishments


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