Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg speaks with reporters after meeting with Donald Trump. (Worldwide Trends via YouTube)
After meeting with President-elect Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg says he’s making a “personal commitment” to keep the cost of the next two Air Force One jets below $4 billion.
“We’re going to get it done for less than that, and we’re committed to working together to make sure that happens,” Muilenburg told reporters on Dec. 21.
Trump threatened in a Dec. 6 tweet to have the Air Force One deal canceled because “costs are out of control, more than $4 billion.” But since then, Muilenburg and other executives have smoothed over the dispute. Wednesday’s meeting in Palm Beach appeared to cement the rapprochement with Trump.
Protesters gather at the state Capitol in Olympia to urge Electoral College members across the nation to break ranks. (Wash. Secretary of State Photo)
Only seven members of the Electoral College proved “faithless” to their pledged presidential candidates today, and four of them are in Washington state. The tally in Olympia was eight for Democrat Hillary Clinton, who won the state – plus three for retired Gen. Colin Powell and one for Native American activist Faith Spotted Eagle.
One of the four, Bret Chiafalo, was a leader in the “Hamilton Electors” movement, which sought to derail President-elect Donald Trump’s move to the White House by denying him the 270 electoral votes required for a win.
If the Hamilton Electors had swayed 37 of the electors pledged to the GOP candidate, the presidential election would have been gone to the House, to be decided in an arcane procedure that hasn’t been used since 1824.
In the end, just two Trump electors were swayed. Texas elector Chris Suprun had been saying for weeks that he’d vote for Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich when given the chance. In an op-ed published today by The Hill, Suprun said he was “gravely concerned” about claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin helped Trump win.
Thirty-six of Texas’ electoral votes went to Trump. One vote went to Kasich, and another went to Ron Paul, a libertarian Republican from Texas.
Texas’ vote put Trump over the top in the Electoral College, formalizing his presidential victory with 304 electoral votes.
Later today, an elector who was pledged to Clinton in Hawaii voted instead for independent-minded Democrat Bernie Sanders.
A flashing graphic can cause people with epilepsy to suffer seizures.
Yes, flashing online images can set off an epileptic seizure – and Newsweek senior writer Kurt Eichenwald, a frequent critic of President-elect Donald Trump, says he’s planning legal action after just such an attack.
This isn’t the first time Eichenwald, who has epilepsy, has been hit with a griefing GIF. He reported facing a similar threat back in October when someone tagged him in a tweet showing a flashing online image of Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character that has been appropriated by extremists.
Strobe lights and rapidly flashing graphics can be epileptogenic – that is, capable of inducing seizures or other health effects for those with photosensitive epilepsy. One infamous case involved a Pokémon TV cartoon that sent hundreds of Japanese children to hospitals in 1997. (Mass hysteria may have played a role.)
In 2008, malicious Internet users posted hundreds of epileptogenic graphics to an online message board run by the Epilepsy Foundation, causing some patients to suffer headaches or seizures.
The causes of photosensitive epilepsy are poorly understood, but the phenomenon appears the primary visual cortex. In vulnerable people, the neural networks that handle rapid changes in imagery may be overly excitable, leading to sensory overload.
An F-35 Lightning II fighter jet prepares to land. (U.S. Air Force Photo / Alex R. Lloyd)
Today it was Lockheed Martin’s turn to feel the Twitter burn from President-elect Donald Trump over the cost of the F-35 fighter jet program: Its stock dropped by as much as 5 percent after Trump’s complaint.
Share prices for other aerospace companies such as Boeing and Northrop Grumman went through twists and turns as well.
The plane that Donald Trump used during the campaign, nicknamed Trump Force One, is a Boeing 757-200 jet. (Trump Organization via YouTube)
The Boeing Co. donated its traditional $1 million to support President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration celebration, days before Trump dinged the jetmaker over the projected multibillion-dollar cost of the future Air Force One planes.
“We are pleased to continue our tradition of supporting presidential inaugurations,” Boeing spokesman Gordon Johndroe told GeekWire in an emailed statement.
That traditional level is $1 million, the same amount that Boeing contributed for President Barack Obama’s inaugural ceremonies in 2013.
The Trump inaugural committee sent out its package for underwriting next month’s festivities a little more than a week ago, and Boeing quickly got on board.
The donation was firmed up by Dec. 5 – a day before Trump tweeted his displeasure about the Air Force One cost estimates, complained that Boeing “is doing a little bit of a number,” and called for a cancellation of the order.
Original report from Dec. 8: Former Boeing and Ford executive Alan Mulally was on the schedule to sit down with Donald Trump today, setting off buzz that the president-elect may be considering the management guru as his pick for secretary of state.
Fox News quoted unnamed sources as saying that Trump was expected to discuss the secretary of state scenario with Mulally during a meeting at Trump Tower in New York.
Transition spokesman Jason Miller deflected questions about the issue during a teleconference with reporters, saying only that Trump has been meeting with a wide variety of people to discuss policy as well as potential posts in the incoming administration.
The Air Force One planes are Boeing 747-200s, to be replaced by the Boeing 747-8. (Boeing Photo)
By Todd Bishop and Alan Boyle
President Obama has expressed a deep appreciation for Air Force One, describing the current Boeing 747-200 planes as the best perk of the job. President-elect Donald Trump, who is accustomed to flying in his own Boeing 757, isn’t as enamored with Boeing’s contract to build a new generation of Air Force One planes.
In a tweet today, Trump claimed that costs on the project are “out of control” and called for the cancellation of a deal with the Boeing Co. for two 747-8 aircraft that would serve as Air Force One.
Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!
British physicist Stephen Hawking worries about humanity’s long-term future. (Credit: NASA)
World-famous physicist Stephen Hawking says Britain’s vote to leave the European Union and Donald Trump’s presidential victory serve as wakeup calls amid what he says is “the most dangerous moment in the development of humanity.”
And he says that elite members of society, including himself, have to take those wakeup calls to heart.
In an opinion piece written for The Guardian, Hawking said that the past year’s game-changing outcomes have their roots in the economic consequences of globalization and accelerating technological change. Automation has already cut into manufacturing jobs, and the rise of artificial intelligence could extend the job losses “deep into the middle class,” he said.
In this artist’s conception, two astronauts make their way between their Orion capsule and a piece of an asteroid that’s been captured by a robotic spacecraft. (NASA via YouTube)
House Republicans are voicing renewed doubts about NASA’s plan to have astronauts study a piece of an asteroid – a turn of events that was expected for the transition to the Trump administration.
As currently conceived, the mission calls for a robotic spacecraft to visit a near-Earth asteroid, pull off a piece and bring it back to lunar orbit for study by a crew of astronauts in the mid-2020s.
President Barack Obama casts an early ballot in the 2012 election. (White House File Photo)
A flurry of reports has raised questions over whether electronic voting systems were hacked during this month’s election, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s campaign has raised more than $5 million with the aim of double-checking the vote in three key states.
It all started with a report published by New York magazine on Tuesday. It said that a group of lawyers and computer scientists, including the University of Michigan’s J. Alex Halderman, was calling for a closer look at ballots from Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Those states narrowly went for President-elect Donald Trump over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. The group noted that counties in Wisconsin with electronic-voting systems showed Clinton receiving a lower proportion of votes than she did in counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots.
The implication was that hackers, perhaps based in Russia, may have tampered with the e-voting machines. However, the magazine said the group had no proof of such interference; rather, it was reportedly calling upon the Clinton team to press for a recount or an audit.
