Households in 86 percent of entire counties across the US that voted for President Donald Trump last year earn less income annually than the combined worth of 27 staffers that work for the Trump administration, a report has revealed. Financial reports released by the Trump administration indicate that 27 staffers who currently work for the US president are worth a combined $2.3 billion in properties, investments and huge salaries, The Washington Post reported Saturday.

How much is $2.3 billion, the report explains: “Here’s one way to look at it. Consider the amount of money earned in any county in the country in a year — the number of households in each county times the average household income in the county. In 80 percent of the counties in America, every household combined earns less than $2.3 billion per year.”

In counties that voted for Trump, however, that figure is even higher, the report adds, explaining that “in 86 percent of Trump counties, the total amount of income earned in a year is less than $2.3 billion.” The report further notes that based on 2011 to 2015 five-year estimates from the US Census Bureau, the average annual income in the aforementioned counties stood at $2.1 billion.

Only 8 percent of Trump-voting counties have a cumulative annual income greater than the $3.9 billion Trump himself in worth, as estimated by the financial Forbes magazine, and only two percent earn more annually than the $10 billion Trump claims to be worth. Most counties have small populations — which further explain why, cumulatively, they do not earn as much in income annually. The counties that tend to beat the $2.3 billion in annual income, tend to be the ones that include large cities.

Consequently, a map of where incomes beat the Trump staff’s net worth looks like an electoral map: “Swaths of counties that earn less each year than those 27 people are worth and a few pockets, mostly on the coasts, that are exceptions,” according to the report. It adds that the data – in a broader sense – “reinforces the disconnect between the Trump team and the voters Trump likes to highlight.” A lot of very wealthy people work in the White House. A lot of other houses scattered across the US are relying on those millionaires to boost their own incomes.

Meanwhile, financial disclosures from dozens of top White House officials released Friday night also reveal an administration stacked with millionaires, who’s combined net worth exceeds $12 billion. The filings shed new light on the business webs and conflicts held by a number of Trump’s top aides and advisers when they entered government.

Among the wealthiest members of Trump’s White House are his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, the heir to a vast real estate business, and his top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, the former president of Goldman Sachs. The filings detail the investments, salaries and assets of Trump’s senior staff, opening the personal finances of as many as 180 administration officials to public scrutiny. Trump himself, whose personal wealth is believed to be in the billions, is not included in the releases.

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Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair wanted by the anti-war movement for war crimes committed in Iraq paid a short visit yesterday Wednesday in Lomé and was received by President Faure Gnassingbé. The Communication Directorate of the Togolese presidency revealed that Tony Blair was accompanied by a high level delegation.

Last February, Togo received a Commonwealth delegation and the country is diversifying its partnerships and considering becoming part of the Commonwealth. It is expected that the presence of a former British Prime Minister in Togo will help to advance the process.

The Commonwealth is an intergovernmental organization created in 1949 and is composed of states traditionally made up of former territories under British rule. The Commonwealth has evolved into countries with a sense of peace, freedom and commitment to the values of democracy, human rights, good governance and respect for the principle of non-interference.

Togo’s desire to join the Commonwealth is not new, as the country had submitted its application in 2014. The accession process is continuing and accelerating. The influence of English in the world, especially in the business, is one of the strategic arguments that has pushed the German and French colony to seek membership into the Commonwealth.

By Chi Prudence Asong

US President Donald Trump’s funding request for building a wall on the Mexican border as well as military activities has to wait by later this year, Senate Republican leaders say. Missouri Republican Senator Roy Blunt argued Tuesday that the new president’s supplemental funding request would complicate the spending bill lawmakers already have to deal with.

The US government could face a shutdown as its funding is due to expire on April 28. “We have the FY17 defense bill,” said Blunt, a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, at a leadership press conference.

Democrats have vowed to bar any legislation, involving a funding for the construction of the wall, which the Republican president used to promote on the campaign trail.

“All of the committees, the leaderships of the House and Senate, are working together to try to finalize the rest of the FY17 bill,” Blunt said. “My guess is that comes together better without the supplemental.”

The statement ran against Trump’s request for a supplemental spending bill. According to South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, “The border wall is probably not a smart investment.” While campaigning for the 2016 presidential election, the then-GOP candidate vowed to make Mexico to pay for the wall rather than American taxpayers

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Former US Vice President Joe Biden is remorseful about his decision not to run in last year’s presidential election, claiming that he could have easily defeated Donald Trump. During a speech at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, Biden said he only needed to secure the Democratic Party’s nomination in order to win.

“I had planned on running for president and although it would have been a very difficult primary, I think I could have won,” he said. “I don’t know, maybe not. But I thought I could have won.” “I had a lot of data and I was fairly confident that if I were the Democratic Party’s nominee, I had a better than even chance of being president,” Biden continued.

“But do I regret not being president? Yes,” he said. “I was the best qualified.” Biden, a favorite for the 2016 Democratic nomination, announced his decision to not run for the White House in October 2015, cementing former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s standing as the front-runner.

The popular vice president, who lost his son Beau to cancer in May 2015, said back then that he was not emotionally prepared to take on the battle and that it was too late for him to enter the race. Trump proceeded to pull off a historic victory against Clinton last November. Biden has famously criticized Trump for posing a “threat to our democratic process.”

He once said that the billionaire Republican “was born with a silver spoon in his mouth that he’s now choking on because his foot’s in his mouth along with the spoon.” Biden made the headlines again last October, when he invited Trump to a high school-style fight. “The press always asks me don’t I wish I were debating him,” Biden said of Trump back then. “No, I wish we were in high school—I could take him behind the gym. That’s what I wish.”

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel is to travel to the United States to meet with President Donald Trump and discuss with him issues of mutual concern. The meeting, due to take place at the White House on Tuesday, would be Merkel’s first face-to-face with Trump since he took office on January 20 this year. Merkel has been Germany’s chancellor since 2005.

The leader of Europe’s most powerful economy has emphasized that she would be representing the European Union (EU) in her meeting with the US president. “I will of course point out that for us, our country and our membership in the European Union are two sides of the same coin,” Merkel said at the EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, ahead of the visit.

Trump and his officials have previously questioned the institutional foundation of the EU. A spokeswoman for Merkel has said the two leaders would discuss “bilateral and international topics, and transatlantic ties.” US sources have said the two would discuss issues related to NATO, refugees, the EU, and Russia.

On almost all of those topics, Trump has adopted stances diverging — sometimes radically — from those of European leaders. One such area would be Russia. Trump has said he favors better, possibly even strategic cooperation with Russia. European leaders, on the other hand, have had serious reservations about ties with Moscow, particularly over the Ukrainian conflict.

Trump is “very interested in hearing her (Merkel’s) insights on what it’s like to deal with the Russians,” a US official said anonymously. Transatlantic trade is another area of concern for Berlin. Trump has said he plans to renegotiate the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

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China has strongly rejected US criticism of its human rights record, accusing American politicians of corruption and hypocrisy. China’s State Council Information Office, in a report entitled “The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2016” and released on Thursday, scoffed at Washington’s repeated pose as “the judge of human rights.”

The report stated that the United States continues to wield “the baton of human rights” and criticize many countries for the human rights situation while it takes no heed of its own “terrible human rights problems.” It added that “the self-proclaimed human rights advocate has exposed its human rights myth” with “the gunshots lingering in people’s ears behind the Statue of Liberty, worsening racial discrimination and the election farce dominated by money politics and power-for-money deals.”

“Waves of boycotts and protests fully exposed the hypocritical nature of US democracy,” the report pointed out. The United States had the second highest prisoner rate last year, with 693 prisoners per 100,000 of the national population. Gun-related crimes also reached a high level, according to the report. There were a total of 58,125 gun violence incidents, including 385 mass shootings, in the United States in 2016, leaving 15,039 killed and 30,589 injured, the report cited figures from a report by the Gun Violence Archive.

Moreover, US social polarization worsened in 2016 and the proportion of adults who had full-time jobs hit a new low since 1983, income gaps continued to grow, the size of middle class began to shrink, and living conditions of the lower class deteriorated, the report added.

The percentage of Americans who said they were in the middle or upper-middle class dropped by 10 percentage points, from an average of 61 percent between 2000 and 2008 to 51 percent in 2016. That descent meant 25 million people in the United States fared much worse in economic terms, the report highlighted.

It added that race relations continued to deteriorate in the US last year, and the wage gap between blacks and whites was the worst in nearly four decades. The report came in response to “The Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2016” issued by the US State Department on March 3. Washington’s report accused China of “repression and coercion” of civil society groups, and claimed that Beijing is impinging on people’s liberties in Hong Kong and Macau.

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US Democratic lawmakers have denounced as “ridiculous” President Donald Trump’s claims that his predecessor, Barack Obama, wiretapped his telephones during the 2016 presidential campaign. On Monday, senators of the Democratic Party vehemently criticized the new president over the baseless claims he had made two days earlier, describing Trump’s accusations as an attempt to distract officials and the public from renewed scrutiny of his senior aides and allies’ alleged ties to Russia and the interference of Moscow in the last year election.

Senator Bernie Sanders slammed Trump’s claims in a tweet, saying, “President Trump cannot continue to lie, lie, lie,” adding that, “It diminishes the office of the president and our standing in the world.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said that the president was trying to create a distraction and referred to Trump as a “deflector-in-chief.” “That’s just ridiculous for President Trump to say that President Obama would ever order any wiretap of an American citizen, any president,” Pelosi said. “It’s the tool of an authoritarian to have them always be talking about what you want to be talking about.”

In an interview with NBC News, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer said Obama had “flatly denied that he has done this,” adding that the claims by Trump showed that “the president’s in trouble.” “It’s beneath the dignity of the presidency. It is something that really hurts people’s view of government,” Schumer noted. “If he falsely spread this kind of misinformation, that is so wrong.”

Chris Coons, the Democratic Senator from Delaware, called the allegations made by Trump “remarkable,” saying that, “I think another attempt by President Trump to change the subject.” Coons (pictured below) noted that he does not think any president should ever “directly order an intercept or wiretap of an American citizen.”

The Democratic Senator raised the possibilities that either Trump “inappropriately released classified information and was himself the subject of a court-ordered wiretap” or there was “inappropriate actions by the previous administration.” “It ought to be worked out in a full, fair, prompt and thorough investigation, whether by the Senate Intelligence Committee, if they can get to the bottom of this, or by a special prosecutor,” Coons noted.

The comments are made as Obama’s intelligence chief, James Clapper, has rejected the claims and a spokesman for Obama dismissed the accusation as “simply false.” FBI Director James Comey has reportedly asked the Justice Department to publicly reject Trump’s claim because it falsely insinuates that the agency broke the law.

According to officials, the move has potential risks for the president, particularly if the House and Senate intelligence committees unearth damaging information about Trump, his aides or his associates.

The new unsubstantiated claims by Trump and the continued political wrangling over ties with Russia will likely heighten the seemingly-unending tensions and controversies that have thrown the new administration into disarray and chaos.

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US President Donald Trump has offered a more moderate tone on immigration policy, telling lawmakers in Congress that he was open to immigration reform. Addressing the country during his first speech to Congress on Tuesday, Trump shifted from the harsh rhetoric that he had expressed over illegal immigration during his election campaign and first month in the White House.

The president’s wide-ranging speech was long on promises but short on specifics on how to achieve the pledges he made in his election campaign. Trump was seeking to regain the confidence of Americans that are rattled by his leadership thus far.

On immigration, the new president took a more measured tone, appealing to Republicans and Democrats to work together on immigration reform. Trump also said immigration to the US should be based on a merit system, rather than relying on lower-skilled immigrants.

“I believe that real and positive immigration reform is possible, as long as we focus on the following goals: to improve jobs and wages for Americans, to strengthen our nation’s security, and to restore respect for our laws”, Trump said in a conciliatory tone.

However, the US president reiterated his pledge to build a wall along the border with Mexico. “We want all Americans to succeed — but that can’t happen in an environment of lawless chaos. We must restore integrity and the rule of law to our borders. For that reason, we will soon begin the construction of a great wall along our southern border,” he said.

Trump built a base of support behind his presidential campaign by vowing to fight illegal immigration. Building a wall on the US-Mexico border to stop the influx of refugees and undocumented migrants coming from Central and Latin America was a hallmark of Trump’s presidential campaign. During his campaign, Trump also characterized Mexican migrants living in the US as murderers and rapists and pledged to build a wall that he said Mexico would pay for.

Since his inauguration, Trump has faced nearly non-stop protests and rallies condemning his divisive rhetoric and controversial immigration policy. Trump’s first month in office was dominated by a battle over his temporary travel ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries and harsh personal criticism of federal judges who blocked his immigration order.

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US President Donald Trump’s approval rating has dropped to a new low at 38 percent, a new poll shows. According to the Quinnipiac University survey released on Wednesday, only 38 percent of Americans approve of the New York billionaire, while 55 percent disapprove of him. The poll also indicated a strong partisan divide, with 83 percent of Republicans backing him and 91 percent of Democrats opposing him.

A previous version of the poll showed a 41 percent support for the Republican president and a 51 percent disapproval rating. The 17-point difference in the latest survey means the new president’s “popularity is sinking like a rock,” according to Tim Malloy, the assistant director of the poll.

“He gets slammed on honesty, empathy, level headedness and the ability to unite. And two of his strong points, leadership and intelligence, are sinking to new lows. This is a terrible survey one month in,” Malloy added.

According to a RealClearPolitics average of recent polls, the real estate tycoon enjoys a 44.5 percent support for his job performance, while he is disapproved by 50.5 percent others. The most conservative poll considered in the average is conducted by Rasmussen Reports, which shows a 51 percent approval and a 49 percent disapproval rating for the commander-in-chief.

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