WASHINGTON (AP) — Over 300 U.S. businesses have signed a statement calling on President-elect Donald Trump to support the Paris Agreement on climate change — including General Mills, eBay, Intel, Unilever, and dozens of other Fortune 500 companies.
Their statement reads “implementing the Paris Agreement will enable and encourage businesses and investors to turn the billions of dollars in existing low-carbon investments into the trillions of dollars the world needs to bring clean energy and prosperity to all.”
The statement is addressed to Trump, President Barack Obama and members of Congress. It calls on elected U.S. officials to maintain the country’s policy and financial commitments to lower carbon emissions.
Lara Birkes, chief sustainability officer of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, says “the Paris Agreement was a vital step forward, but its power is in our collective action.”
Ivana ambassador?
Czech President Milos Zeman has called U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s former wife, Ivana, to thank her for her “courage” and interest to become the new U.S. ambassador to Prague.
In a Wednesday statement, Zeman said he’s pleased with that because “the U.S. cannot send a better ambassador to Prague” than her.
Zeman said he would be delighted to meet her at the Prague Castle, the seat of presidency and is looking forward to introduce her to his wife, also named Ivana.
Ivana, Trump’s first wife and the mother of his three oldest children, is of Czech origin.
Zeman was among several European leaders, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who endorsed Trump during the campaign.
Zeman said he shared Trump’s views of migration and the fight against the Islamic terrorism.
Trump’s presidential transition team provided no readout of the conversation between the Czech leader and his ex-wife.
No media?
The White House Correspondents’ Association says it is “unacceptable” that President-elect Donald Trump is traveling without a regular pool of journalists to inform the public of his whereabouts.
Trump left his residence Tuesday night for a family dinner after his transition team had told journalists he would not be in public the rest of the day. A protective pool of journalists is supposed to join the president or president-elect’s motorcade to record their whereabouts and be on hand in the event of breaking news.
Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks has said the team plans to respect the traditions of press access at the White House. WHCA President Jeff Mason says “the time to act on that promise is now.”
Mason says it is critical that journalists covering the president-elect “be allowed to do their job.”
‘They want jobs’
Ohio congressman Tim Ryan says Democrats should get back to economic basics of manufacturing, not veer to its liberal wing in the wake of Republican Donald Trump’s election victory.
Ryan is considering challenging Rep. Nancy Pelosi as House Democratic leader because he says the party risks sliding back into an ideological past rather than moving forward.
He told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday that Democrats “have to grab that idea of making things in America again.”
“No one wants to hear about job retraining,” he said. “They want jobs.”
Kids’ clearance?
President-elect Donald Trump is denying reports that efforts are underway to get security clearances for his adult children.
In a post on his verified Twitter account realDonaldTrump early Wednesday, the billionaire businessman who’s to be inaugurated as the nation’s 45th president on Jan. 20, said, “I am not trying to get top security clearances for my children.”
Trump, who has been immersed in transition planning at his office skyscraper in New York in recent days, added, “This was a typically false news story.”
There had been rampant speculation in recent days that such an effort was being attempted. Asked about it earlier this week, Kellyanne Conway, who was Trump’s campaign manager, said in a broadcast interview she wasn’t “intimately’ familiar with the issue and indicated she couldn’t confirm it.
