Year: 2017

Farmer Chris Peterson pleads with Sen. Chuck Grassley in Iowa on Tuesday. Republican lawmakers returning home this week to host town halls are being greeted by overflow crowds filled with angry voters and protesters demonstrating against President Trump’s polarizing policies.

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Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt’s first speech to employees of the EPA at midday on Tuesday did little to assuage the concerns of environmentalists over his ties to the fossil fuel industry. At the EPA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., Pruitt called for civility and listening in his highly anticipated, tense inaugural address to the staff of an agency that he sued more than a dozen times as Oklahoma attorney general. President Trump’s decision to nominate Pruitt, who has made it clear he has no confidence in mainstream climate science, to lead the EPA immediately incited a backlash from liberals and environmentalists.

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Iraqi forces backed by jets and helicopters battled their way towards southern Mosul on Monday and prepared to take on the Islamic State group’s stronghold in the city’s west bank. The fresh push in the four-month-old operation to retake Mosul has sparked fears for 750,000 trapped civilians who risk being killed if they try to flee and starvation if they stay. Federal police forces reached the Aqrab checkpoint on the highway from Baghdad, a spot that marks the southern entrance to Mosul and from which the city is clearly visible.

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