White House axes online petition tool to build new one
The White House temporarily removed its “We The People” petition tool from its website following an 11-month period in which the administration did not respond to requests. However, a replacement is promised for next month.
The administration of President Donald Trump said on Monday that the petition tool, which requires 100,000 signatures in order to elicit a response from his administration, will be removed from the White House website at midnight Tuesday, and that section of the website will return in the last days of January as a new site.
An unidentified official from the White House told the Associated Press that every pre-existing petition will be restored again next year.
The move by the Trump administration will save US taxpayers $1.3 million annually, the official told AP.
The administration has not yet responded to any of the 17 petitions that have reached the signature threshold since Trump took office on January 20.
Among the petitions already submitted to the White House website for review is one calling on Trump to release his tax returns, which has been signed over 1 million times. Another demands the president to place his assets within a blind trust.
Another petition that has reached the required number of signatures is one that asks the White House to formally recognize the left-leaning activist group, Antifa, as a terrorist organization.
US citizens also asked the administration to “remove regulations on our 2nd amendment rights, increase national economic strength, and provide protection against threats to our national security” by repealing the National Firearms Act of 1934.
Another petition that has now reached over 150,000 signatures, called on the Trump administration to label Hungarian-American billionaire, George Soros, as a terrorist. It also calls on the US government to seize all of Soros' assets, and argues that the billionaire “has willfully and on an ongoing basis attempted to destabilize and otherwise commit acts of sedition” against the US.
READ MORE: Petition to declare ‘Antifa’ group terrorists collects 250k signatures
The petition further states that Soros “has developed unhealthy and undue influence over the entire Democrat Party and a large portion of the US Federal government.”
