With Jeff Sessions now removed, the question becomes who will be the next person selected by President Trump to lead the institutionally corrupt U.S. Department of Justice.

With the loss of the House of Representatives to the arch-enemies of the President; and with the predictable likelihood of resistance investigations starting almost immediately in January; the next AG nominee is perhaps the most important cabinet choice in the second half of President Trump’s first term in office.

The upcoming 2019 siege of the White House will be record-breaking in anger, incivility, rage, activist-driven political violence, Machiavellian schemes, death threats against cabinet officials, increased Antifa activity, and media assaults.  The next AG faces the full weaponized deployment of well-planned DC swamp attacks.

That said, the series of names currently being promoted includes:

♦Former NJ Governor Chris Christie
♦Former NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani
♦Former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker
♦Former Kansas SoS Kris Kobach
♦Congressman John Ratcliffe [(R-TX) possible frontrunner]
♦Florida AG Pam Bondi
♦Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-SC)
♦Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar
♦Former U.S. Attorney SDNY Andrew McCarthy

According to multiple media reports, citing close White House officials, the key advisor to President Trump, on this important decision, is Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

[Anyone else picturing a possible set-up here?]

Here’s my review of the current names and situation therein.

♦Trump cannot pick Christie or Giuliani because  the Mueller investigation is, by design, not over – and there’s no end in sight.  Christie and Giuliani would face the identical recusal issues as Jeff Sessions for exactly the same reason.  Both are shrewd enough to withstand the firestorm; but both were also on the 2016 election campaign – just like the elf on the shelf.  However, likely for this very reason, they are the two being pushed by the media and democrats.

♦Given the history of Scott Walker and his relationship to big GOPe he would be a Never Trump pick.  Predictably, in his off hours, Walker would fly down to the border wall with his staff and personally use pick-axes to tear it down.  Walker, might not be Brutus, but he would polish the spear, drive Brutus to the White House and keep watch while the deed is done.  His ability to look in both directions simultaneously does have benefits.

♦In a similar vein, Trey Gowdy would be even worse than Walker.  Dear God, can you even imagine the chaos?…  Democrats wouldn’t need a Trojan Horse, roosterhead would hold the door open while singing Muellers praises and personally ordering every member of the Trump family, and administration, to be on 24/7 mattress tag surveillance.  Purple-tied Gowdy would likely hire Peter Strzok as his deputy. Um… no!

♦Next up, Pam Bondi – the BFF of Benjamin Crump and most ineffective politically correct AG in the history of Florida.  If you want to know if me-me-me Bondi would bow-down under pressure; you need to look no further than her decision-making in the Zimmerman case.  How’s that Broward County election accountability working out?  Nuf said.

♦HHS Secretary Alex Azar doesn’t want the job.  Thankfully, Mr. Bean takes a pass.

♦If the AG job required writing 3,000 word daily essays to defend the administration from the legions knocking down the gates; and then standing atop a gilded podium talking to them with the intention of boring them into submission with articulate prose… Andrew McCarthy would be ideal.  Otherwise, well, not-so-much.

♦That leaves John Ratcliffe and Kris Kobach.  Ratcliffe is generally unflappable and knows the likely force of the alliance against him. Actually, Kobach and Ratcliffe both know what’s coming.  Could Kris Kobach pass confirmation? Likely yes; however, he would be fuel for the resistance horde.  That’s probably why John Ratcliffe is the frontrunner.

The success or failure of this person, whoever President Trump picks, will strongly influence: (A) his decision on running for re-election in 2020; and (B) the likelihood of success in the 2020 election.

Given the DOJ history and ‘in-your-face‘ evidence over the past two years, if the next AG can’t or won’t deal with the institutional corruption that has fully metastasized within the Department of Justice, President Trump’s support could erode quickly.

The words from Peter Navarro will come as no surprise to any CTH reader who is fully engaged and reviewing the multi-trillion stakes, within the Globalist (Wall St.) -vs- Nationalist (Main Street) confrontation.

For several decades Wall Street, through lobbying arms such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (Tom Donohue), has structurally opposed Main Street economic policy in order to inflate profits and hold power – “The Big Club”. This manipulative intent is really the epicenter of the corruption within the DC swamp.

U.S. National Trade Council Director Peter Navarro discusses how Wall Street bankers and hedge-fund managers are attempting to influence U.S.-China trade talks. He speaks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

https://videopress.com/embed/0kCDXSwK?hd=0&autoPlay=0&permalink=0&loop=0Originally outlined a year ago. At the heart of the professional/political opposition the issue is money; there are trillions at stake.

President Trump’s MAGAnomic trade and foreign policy agenda is jaw-dropping in scale, scope and consequence. There are multiple simultaneous aspects to each policy objective; however, many have been visible for a long time – some even before the election victory in November ’16.

If we get too far in the weeds the larger picture is lost. CTH objective is to continue pointing focus toward the larger horizon, and then at specific inflection points to dive into the topic and explain how each moment is connected to the larger strategy.

If you understand the basic elements behind the new dimension in American economics, you already understand how three decades of DC legislative and regulatory policy was structured to benefit Wall Street and not Main Street. The intentional shift in fiscal policy is what created the distance between two entirely divergent economic engines.

REMEMBER […] there had to be a point where the value of the second economy (Wall Street) surpassed the value of the first economy (Main Street).

Investments, and the bets therein, needed to expand outside of the USA. hence, globalist investing.

However, a second more consequential aspect happened simultaneously. The politicians became more valuable to the Wall Street team than the Main Street team; and Wall Street had deeper pockets because their economy was now larger.

As a consequence Wall Street started funding political candidates and asking for legislation that benefited their interests.

When Main Street was purchasing the legislative influence the outcomes were -generally speaking- beneficial to Main Street, and by direct attachment those outcomes also benefited the average American inside the real economy.

When Wall Street began purchasing the legislative influence, the outcomes therein became beneficial to Wall Street. Those benefits are detached from improving the livelihoods of main street Americans because the benefits are “global”. Global financial interests, multinational investment interests -and corporations therein- became the primary filter through which the DC legislative outcomes were considered.

There is a natural disconnect. (more)

As an outcome of national financial policy blending commercial banking with institutional investment banking something happened on Wall Street that few understand. If we take the time to understand what happened we can understand why the Stock Market grew and what risks exist today as the monetary policy is reversed to benefit Main Street.

President Trump and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin have already begun assembling and delivering a new banking system.

Instead of attempting to put Glass-Stegal regulations back into massive banking systems, the Trump administration is creating a parallel financial system of less-regulated small commercial banks, credit unions and traditional lenders who can operate to the benefit of Main Street without the burdensome regulation of the mega-banks and multinationals. This really is one of the more brilliant solutions to work around a uniquely American economic problem.

♦ When U.S. banks were allowed to merge their investment divisions with their commercial banking operations (the removal of Glass Stegal) something changed on Wall Street.

Companies who are evaluated based on their financial results, profits and losses, remained in their traditional role as traded stocks on the U.S. Stock Market and were evaluated accordingly. However, over time investment instruments -which are secondary to actual company results- created a sub-set within Wall Street that detached from actual bottom line company results.

The resulting secondary financial market system was essentially ‘investment markets’. Both ordinary company stocks and the investment market stocks operate on the same stock exchanges. But the underlying valuation is tied to entirely different metrics.

Financial products were developed (as investment instruments) that are essentially wagers or bets on the outcomes of actual companies traded on Wall Street. Those bets/wagers form the hedge markets and are [essentially] people trading on expectations of performance. The “derivatives market” is the ‘betting system’.

♦Ford Motor Company (only chosen as a commonly known entity) has a stock valuation based on their actual company performance in the market of manufacturing and consumer purchasing of their product. However, there can be thousands of financial instruments wagering on the actual outcome of their performance.

There are two initial bets on these outcomes that form the basis for Hedge-fund activity. Bet ‘A’ that Ford hits a profit number, or bet ‘B’ that they don’t. There are financial instruments created to place each wager. [The wagers form the derivatives] But it doesn’t stop there.

Additionally, more financial products are created that bet on the outcomes of the A/B bets. A secondary financial product might find two sides betting on both A outcome and B outcome.

Party C bets the “A” bet is accurate, and party D bets against the A bet. Party E bets the “B” bet is accurate, and party F bets against the B. If it stopped there we would only have six total participants. But it doesn’t stop there, it goes on and on and on…

The outcome of the bets forms the basis for the tenuous investment markets. The important part to understand is that the investment funds are not necessarily attached to the original company stock, they are now attached to the outcome of bet(s). Hence an inherent disconnect is created.

Subsequently, if the actual stock doesn’t meet it’s expected P-n-L outcome (if the company actually doesn’t do well), and if the financial investment was betting against the outcome, the value of the investment actually goes up. The company performance and the investment bets on the outcome of that performance are two entirely different aspects of the stock market. [Hence two metrics.]

♦Understanding the disconnect between an actual company on the stock market, and the bets for and against that company stock, helps to understand what can happen when fiscal policy is geared toward the underlying company (Main Street MAGAnomics), and not toward the bets therein (Investment Class).

The U.S. stock markets’ overall value can increase with Main Street policy, and yet the investment class can simultaneously decrease in value even though the company(ies) in the stock market is/are doing better. This detachment is critical to understand because the ‘real economy’ is based on the company, the ‘paper economy’ is based on the financial investment instruments betting on the company.

Trillions can be lost in investment instruments, and yet the overall stock market -as valued by company operations/profits- can increase.

Conversely, there are now classes of companies on the U.S. stock exchange that never make a dime in profit, yet the value of the company increases. This dynamic is possible because the financial investment bets are not connected to the bottom line profit. (Examples include Tesla Motors, Amazon and a host of internet stocks like Facebook and Twitter.) It is this investment group of companies that stands to lose the most if/when the underlying system of betting on them stops or slows.

Specifically due to most recent U.S. fiscal policy, modern multinational banks, including all of the investment products therein, are more closely attached to this investment system on Wall Street. It stands to reason they are at greater risk of financial losses overall with a shift in fiscal policy.

That financial and economic risk is the basic reason behind Trump and Mnuchin putting a protective, secondary and parallel, banking system in place for Main Street.

Big multinational banks can suffer big losses from their investments, and yet the Main Street economy can continue growing, and have access to capital, uninterrupted.

Bottom Line: U.S. companies who have actual connection to a growing U.S. economy can succeed; based on the advantages of the new economic environment and MAGA policy, specifically in the areas of manufacturing, trade and the ancillary benefactors.

Meanwhile U.S. investment assets (multinational investment portfolios) that are disconnected from the actual results of those benefiting U.S. companies, and as a consequence also disconnected from the U.S. economic expansion, can simultaneously drop in value even though the U.S. economy is thriving.

Rick Scott’s margin over Bill Nelson in the unofficial U.S. Senate race result is 12,562 votes. Ron Desantis is holding a 33,684-vote lead over Andrew Gillum in the governor race; and in the Florida agriculture commissioner race Democrat Nikki Fried has a 5,326-vote lead over Republican Matt Caldwell.

By order of the Florida Secretary of State, Ken Detzner, a mandatory recount will now take place.

Per state law, any Florida election result with an outcome below half a percentage point triggers an automatic recount. The machine recount result is due next Thursday.  However, if the final difference in votes is found to be less than .25 points, a hand recount will begin.

President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron deliver remarks to the media prior to a bilateral meeting.

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[Transcript] Élysée Palace – Paris, France 11:05 A.M. CEST

PRESIDENT MACRON: I wanted to welcome my good friend, President Trump, and wanted to thank you for this visit after a very important time in your domestic policy.

I do appreciate the fact that you came here, Donald, after your visit for Bastille Day in 2017, and now our state visit in Washington beginning of this year. I think it’s very important to celebrate our soldiers and the great solidarity between our two nations. And we are the best (inaudible) allies, and this is what I told our people.

Obviously, we will discuss about a lot of topics: Iran, Syria, Yemen, Africa, trade, climate, and a lot of common global issues. And, obviously, we will discuss about our defense cooperation, which is very important. And I do share President Trump’s views that we need a much better burden sharing within NATO, and that’s why I do believe that my proposals for European defense are totally consistent with that, because it means more Europe within NATO, more capacity, in order to take our part of the burden. And I think it’s very fair and it’s very important.

So thanks very much, Donald, for being here. This is our pleasure. And our people are very proud to have you here, and I want to thank you here today for your solidarity 100 years ago, and your constant solidarity for precisely our people.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you very much, Emmanuel. Thank you very much.

PRESIDENT MACRON: Thank you very much.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I very much appreciate that, Mr. President. And we have become very good friends over the last couple of years. We have much in common in many ways — perhaps more ways than people would understand. But we are — we’re very much similar in our views.

And I appreciate what you’re saying about burden sharing. You know what my attitude has been, and we want a strong Europe. It’s very important to us to have a strong Europe. And whichever way we can do it the best and most efficient would be something that we both want.

I just want to thank you very much for the graciousness that was so beautifully received. We were so beautifully received last night. We look forward to spending the next day and a half with you.

And today and tomorrow are going to be very important. And we’ll be discussing many things, not only military and aid, and NATO, and others, but we’ll also be discussing trade. And we’ve been discussing that for a little while. I think we’ve made a lot of progress. We’ll see if we can get it over the line, as they say. We’ll see what happens. But trade is very important.

And we’re also very much focused — the President and I — on terrorism. Terrorism is a very big subject for both of us. And we see what’s going on in the world, and it’s not a good picture. But we’ve made a lot of progress. We’ve done things together that were quite bold, recently, six months ago. Very bold. And terrorism will be a big factor and a big part of our discussion today.

So I want to thank everybody for being here. And, Mr. President, thank you very much.

Q Mr. Trump, you said you felt insulted by what Mr. Macron say about Europe making its own defense. Could you explain?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: We’re getting along from the standpoint of fairness, and I want it to be fair. We want to help Europe but it has to be fair. Right now, the burden sharing has been largely on the United States, as the President will say, and he understands that. And he understands that the United States can only do so much, in fairness to the United States.

So we’ve — we’re rebuilding our military. We just had approved $716 billion. The year before that, we had $700 billion. So we’re almost completely rebuilding our military with the latest and the greatest.

And we want — we just want — we want to absolutely be there. We want to help. We want to be a part of it. But different countries have to also help. That’s only fair. And I think the President — we’ve already discussed this — and the President and I very much agree on that.

PRESIDENT MACRON: I do agree. I think we worked very closely together in Syria. President Trump reminded you what happened on the 13th of April this year. We worked very closely together to make a super operation against chemical weapons. And we work very closely together in the Middle East, in Africa, and some.

But it’s unfair to have the European security today being assured just by the United States, and we need a much better burden sharing. That’s why I do believe that we need more European capacities, more European defense, in order to take this part of the burden. When President Trump has to protect or to defend one of the states of the United States, he doesn’t ask France or Germany, or another government of Europe to finance it.

That’s why I do believe that we need more investment. It’s exactly what we do in France. It’s the first increase in terms of budget for defense, for the coming years. We will reach 2 percent. But that’s why I do believe that we need more European defense. Thank you.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you. Thank you.

END

Let me start by saying I mean no disrespect to those individuals who enjoy the riddles posted by an unknown entity who writes under the nom de plume “Q”.  However, the time has come where aspects within the well promoted “Q narrative” are now a risk and must be addressed.  Please bear with me….

The baseline – In the aggregate the “Q narrative” has been: there’s a coordinated effort by President Trump and officials to expose, and confront, corrupt entities within the “deep state.”  The essential element within the narrative, as pushed by the “Q” entity, is that President Trump is aware of, and coordinating, some larger plan.

Hopefully that brief baseline summary is not controversial, and most would agree that’s been the structural and purposeful intent of the overall message.

Structurally, and factually, this claim is false.  However, that’s not the problem. Within this theory, that seems to have garnered a considerable following, there is now a danger to the office of the president; and however well-intentioned the theory initially might have been, it urgently needs to stop being spread.

As you have seen recently, yesterday, President Trump is forcefully repeating that he has not had any contact with current Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker.  Part of the reason President Trump has to do this is because this false narrative, the “Q Theory”, has been drum-beaten by well-intentioned supporters.  Many of those supporters, genuinely good people, have believed this coordinated theory.  However, it is false.

Conversely, all of President Trump’s opposition is trying to attach President Trump to the actions and intents of his new Acting Attorney General. The false “Q” narrative helps them.

Currently the Trump opposition, writ large, would love nothing more than to frame the President over taking executive action that puts the Mueller investigation at risk; and thereby attaches him to some form of obstruction.  If people keep pushing the “Q theory” of President Trump orchestrating moves; that narrative is adverse to his actual interests.

That false narrative actually impedes Whitaker from diminishing Mueller as a sword of Damocles over the office of the president.

The opposition to the office of the president desire to have the office of Attorney General in a position of compromise, and subsequent recusal.  This was the reason why there was such a push by that same opposition to force the recusal of AG Jeff Sessions; whereby the DOJ is then hamstrung in the ability of the AG to defend the executive.

So long as opposition can rely on, and manipulate, embed (and likely corrupt) DOJ and FBI officials toward their goals, things are in their favor.  If the opposition can no longer work around the AG, their efforts at removing President Trump are more difficult.

If the AAG is both: (A) independent from the White House; and (B) simultaneously looking out for the genuine interests of the executive [note: not mutually exclusive] and confronting historic corrupt behavior, those within the entrenched DC system have a much harder time trying to frame the President out of office.

President Trump’s political and administrative opposition didn’t care about the “Q narrative” (which is false), because it was of no consequence for a bunch of people to mistakenly think that President Trump and Jeff Sessions were coordinating (they weren’t) an effort against the deep state (never happening) while they had the AG recused.  However, with a fully empowered AG that same message (which is false) will be leveraged to oppose any adverse action by Matthew Whitaker; and demand his recusal.

Can you see how the dynamic shifts?

Does that make sense?

This is how the “Q Narrative” now becomes a liability.

I’ve not been confrontational to the game of the “Q riddles” until recently.  To each his own; and most of the stuff is harmless and the community seems to have fun with it. However, once I saw what was predictably going to happen; and strongly sensing Sessions was about to get dispatched; and against a mountain of research, and suspicions, I have gone through about a genuine network of information; I saw the warning signs and began trying to stop the spread of the “Q” virus – at least on this website.

So my message to those loosely connected/tenuously labeled, “former intelligence officials”, ie. those behind the Q message board, is to please stop with the “trust the plan” stuff.

If you need to modify the messaging because you are financially dependent on keeping the game alive, then so be it…. Same request applies to the downstream benefactors… But please modify the narrative to a more factual and substantive one.

[If it helps, soon there will be a reality-based origin for you to modify the riddles]

The key point here is for all of you to please stop pushing a narrative that President Trump is somehow coordinating or influencing an investigative or confrontational outcome.  He isn’t; he never has been; and he will not be in the future.  However, that narrative, false though it always has been, is now a genuine problem.   I am making this request politely and hopefully you can digest the problem as the landscape has changed.

President Trump is spending an inordinate amount of time reaffirming the reality that he has no connection to anything AG Matthew Whitaker has done in the past; or might do in the future.

If “Q riddle originators” and “Q riddle followers” keep pushing this “trust the plan” narrative, in any form – but specifically as it relates to the involvement of the President (which is false), you will actually be hurting the administration; and the larger goal of those who are factually trying to work internally within the corrupt systems to bring the needed change within the institutions.

President Trump will need to confirm a new U.S. Attorney General (Sessions replacement) and likely a new DAG (Rosenstein replacement), as well as a new FBI Director and Deputy in the near future (Wray and Bowditch).  All of them have been Mueller enablers [see here] And, with the FL and AZ senate race results tenuous, there may be a diminishing margin for controversy (aggressive, actual swamp draining candidates) in the nomination process.

Please, and thank you.

There are no coincidences; and I need to request help.  It is critical that everyone assist in pushing into the general psyche these two tweets from President Trump released a few minutes ago:  (LINK) [Pacific Time Zone in Tweet]  11:04pm Eastern.

Against the backdrop of an exhaustive earlier conversation the most important part of these tweets is the date and time.  Please, retweet them, and make a record (via screen grabs etc.) with specific note of the date and time.  Just trust me, and bear with me, it will be important later on.  This is proactive.

Additionally, get completely familiar withe the specific wording of the comments made by President Trump, surrounding AAG Matthew Whitaker, as he departed the White House earlier today, November 9th, 2018.   Bookmark the transcript [see here].

[Transcript] THE PRESIDENT: I didn’t speak to Matt Whitaker about it. I don’t know Matt Whitaker. Matt Whitaker has a great reputation, and that’s what I wanted. I also wanted to do something which, frankly, I could have brought somebody very easily from the outside. I didn’t want to do that. When Sessions left, what I did, very simply, is take a man who worked for Sessions. Again, he worked for Jeff Sessions. He’s a highly respected man, especially by law enforcement. And I think he’s going to do a great job. He’s there in an acting position. He’s a — probably, from what I hear — a very strong person, a very strong personality. And I think that’s what they need.

… Now, in all fairness to Matt Whitaker, who, again, I didn’t know — okay? — other than through reputation. His reputation is excellent.  (transcript link)

At a later date this will all become clear why it is so important.  At a future date the media, and all of President Trump’s political opposition, will attempt to frame a narrative around Matthew Whitaker and President Trump.  You need to help counter that predictable future narrative by making these remarks, and when they were made, set-in-stone now.

With the possibility of losing the FL and AZ senate races this is more important for future confirmation issues (DOJ and FBI) within the Senate.

I will be updating this.  I need to carefully think about how to word it; it is not my intention to post in riddles; but I need to be cautious and I need to seek counsel.  Check back for an update that will follow; hopefully soon/overnight.

Departing the White House for a trip to France, President Donald Trump pauses to talk to the media about important ongoing events.

Topics include: the ongoing efforts to prepare from the Central American migration; the interim AAG Matthew Whitaker; the crisis with the Florida election usurpation; and Jim Acosta.

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The left-wing media, and their political allies, are desperate to get Matthew Whitaker recused because the incoming House majority plans to use the Russia Probe (Robert Mueller) as the cornerstone of their efforts to impeach the presidency. The House is relying on using their embed allies inside the DOJ and FBI, Whitaker would be an impediment therein.

Senior White House Adviser Kellyanne Conway holds an impromptu media availability to discuss current events and the White House preparations for the two-year political siege.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker issued a new asylum rule today as officials at the U.S. southern border and U.S. military prepare to confront an approaching horde of approximately 20,000 Central American migrant/invaders.

[U.S. Department of Justice] Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen today announced an Interim Final Rule declaring that those aliens who contravene a presidential suspension or limitation on entry into the United States through the southern border with Mexico issued under section 212(f) or 215(a)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) will be rendered ineligible for asylum.

The Acting Attorney General and the Secretary issued the following joint statement:

“Consistent with our immigration laws, the President has the broad authority to suspend or restrict the entry of aliens into the United States if he determines it to be in the national interest to do so. Today’s rule applies this important principle to aliens who violate such a suspension or restriction regarding the southern border imposed by the President by invoking an express authority provided by Congress to restrict eligibility for asylum.  Our asylum system is overwhelmed with too many meritless asylum claims from aliens who place a tremendous burden on our resources, preventing us from being able to expeditiously grant asylum to those who truly deserve it.  Today, we are using the authority granted to us by Congress to bar aliens who violate a Presidential suspension of entry or other restriction from asylum eligibility.”

Section 212(f) of the Immigration and INA states that “[w]henever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”

Further, Section 215(a) of the INA states that it is “unlawful…for any alien to depart from or enter or attempt to depart from or enter the United States except under such reasonable rules, regulations, and orders, and subject to such limitations and exceptions as the President may prescribe.”

In Section 208(d)(5)(B) of the INA, Congress specified that the Attorney General “may provide by regulation for any other conditions or limitations on the consideration of an application for asylum.”

Today’s new rule applies to prospective presidential proclamations, and is not retroactive.

Asylum is a discretionary form of relief granted by the Executive Branch on a discretionary basis to those fleeing persecution on the basis of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.  The rule does not render such aliens ineligible for withholding of removal under the INA or protection from removal under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

The Interim Final Rule can be found here.

https://videopress.com/embed/6YhXWT44?hd=0&autoPlay=0&permalink=0&loop=0