American voters have less confidence in President Donald Trump a year after his surprise election victory and think he is doing a “poor job” in delivering on his campaign promises, according to a new poll.

The CNN/SSRS survey released Wednesday shows that 64 percent of American voters are less confident in Trump’s ability to serve as a president, up from 43 percent immediately after his election victory.

Additionally, 55 percent of the voters think he is doing a poor job keeping the important promises he made prior to the 2016 presidential election, compared to 40 percent who believe otherwise.

There was a 9-percent drop in the number of voters who say Trump can bring the kind of change the country needs, with only 40 percent thinking that he can still pull off the job.

The decline in confidence comes mostly among independents and Republicans. Compared to November 2016, confidence in Trump’s ability to bring the needed change was down by 10 points among Republicans and nine points among independents.

However, Republican confidence in Trump’s ability to deliver on his promises has remained unchanged, at 86 percent, since April, according to the poll.

Only 30 percent say Trump is able to unite the country as opposed to 43 percent last November. Among Republicans, the figure stood at 65 percent down from 81 percent a year ago.

Nearly 65 percent say Trump’s statements and actions since taking office have made them less confident in his ability to serve as president, up from 43 percent who said so a year ago.

Trump also scored low on trustworthiness as 34 percent call him honest and trustworthy compared to 64 percent who say he is not.

Another poll revealed earlier this week showed Trump’s overall approval rating stood at 36%, the worst of his presidency. Trump’s approval ratings have been noticeably lower than any of his predecessors.

The businessman-turned-politician has drawn fire at home and abroad for his radical measures, including a ban on Muslim travelers from entering the US, a plan to build a wall along the Mexico border and rolling back on enhanced relations with Cuba.

Source: Presstv

Another winner last night in the US elections was Wilfred Mbah, who won an alderman seat in Somerville, Massachusetts. Originally from Southern Cameroons now known as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, he is the recipient of a visa through the diversity-lottery program that Trump announced he wanted to dismantle in the wake of last week’s attack in New York City.

In an interview about his experience as an immigrant, Mbah said of Somerville, “I feel like the city has helped me a lot. Right from the beginning, I had friends that were helping me with job searches, helping me with my résumé.” But, he added,

We cannot leave it up to the generosity of private citizens to look after people who are struggling. I don’t know how many people are out there struggling to live in this city: artists, immigrants, working class people, middle class people. The city government must take a more active role in looking out for people who care about this city, and want to live and grow here.

Democrats won big last night, but there’s an even more important lesson to learn here: Progressive Democrats won big last night.

Source: The Nation

Moscow has banned dozens of Canadian individuals from entering Russia in retaliation for sanctions recently imposed by Ottawa against 30 Russian officials.

The move was prompted after Canada’s government on Friday banned and froze the assets of 30 Russians over alleged accusations of corruption and human rights violations.

“We have to respond with mirror-image sanctions,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement. “If our Canadian partners like playing sanctions games, we will be forced to respond, although we certainly prefer to develop constructive cooperation on the issues important for the peoples of both countries.”

“The list is long and contains dozens of names — the Russophobic Canadian citizens that have been systematically destroying bilateral relations,” Zakharova said, without offering names.

The Russian Foreign Ministry also warned that Canada must step back from a “destructive course, leading to further aggravation of bilateral relations.”

Meanwhile, the Russian diplomatic mission in Canada censured Ottawa’s measure as “a false pretext of a hypocritical protection of human rights,” which is “absolutely senseless and reprehensible.”

Ottawa “is isolating itself from one of the key global powers” and “pushes Canada’s foreign policy back to the narrow black-and-white world view, incompatible with modern geopolitics,” the mission added.

“At the moment, dozens of Canadians have been banned from entering Russia; this is not our choice, but in case of new sanctions, our response will be unchanged and reciprocal in terms of amount and quality,” it said.

Canada’s sanctions list came after the country earlier this year passed its own version of the United States’ Magnitsky Law, a measure that punishes Russian officials linked to the case of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in prison after exposing an alleged tax fraud scheme in 2009.

The Magnitsky Act in the US has led to sanctions on more than 40 senior Russian officials so far. The list includes names of those whose assets under US jurisdiction are frozen and are barred from doing business with Americans or receiving US visas.

Culled from Presstv

US President Donald Trump will be impeached within a year, says an American professor, who correctly predicted Trump’s election victory, long before most Americans considered it a possibility.

Allan Lichtman, a distinguished professor of history at American University, wrote in an essay for the TIME magazine that Trump is closer to impeachment than ever.

Lichtman argued that the reason for the possible impeachment lies with the indictments recently handed down by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating an alleged collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

“Already, Mueller’s filing in federal court of just partial information from his plea deal with [former campaign staffer George] Papadopoulos, contains stunning new revelations,” Lichtman wrote.

Papadopoulos pleaded guilty on Monday in a federal court to having lied to the FBI about his contacts with Russia while working on Trump’s campaign. He had met with Russian officials in 2016 and was offered damaging information about Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails,” court records revealed.

Lichtman said the most stunning of these revelations is the suggestion that Trump likely knew about Papadopoulos’s attempts to reach out to Russian officials.

Trump’s former presidential campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his lobbying associate Richard Gates were also  indicted late last month, on multiple counts as a part of the FBI’s special inquiry into the allegations.

They are facing charges of conspiracy, failure to register as foreign agents, failing to report foreign bank accounts to the federal government and money laundering.

Lichtman said the president should be concerned, because there are new revelations that suggest Trump likely knew about some of his staffer’s attempts to reach out to Russian officials.

“These revelations may not by themselves establish the case for impeachment, but Mueller’s investigation is still in its early stages,” he wrote.

Trump has repeatedly denied allegations that his campaign colluded with Russians and has condemned the investigations. Russian President Vladimir Putin has also denied the allegations.

American intelligence agencies claim that Russia interfered last year in the US presidential election to try to help Trump, who was then the Republican Party’s presidential candidate, defeat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Source: Presstv