The U.S. Supreme Court stepped into Texas' congressional redistricting debate this week, temporarily halting an order to correct two districts that lower courts found disenfranchised minority voting rights. The court's stay is the latest in the years-long battle over racially motivated redistricting in Texas that could have a significant impact on Republican Party control of Congress. VOA congressional reporter Katherine Gypson traveled to one of the districts at the heart of the debate.
Dinosaurs roamed Washington this week as young Americans protested possible budget cuts for the Peace Corps and other national service programs funded by the federal government.
About 100 young people wearing Tyrannosaurus rex costumes stalked the National Mall and other parts of the nation’s capital to dramatize their slogan, “Expansion, not extinction.” They said they want more funding, not less, for programs such as the Peace Corps, whose volunteers serve in more than 60 countries around the world, and domestic public-service organizations such as Teach for America, YouthBuild and City Year.
The group sponsoring the protests, LetUsServe.org, said hundreds of thousands of people are involved in national service each year, working to help ease poverty, control the epidemic of opioid drug use in the U.S., improve education and pitch in on disaster-relief crews. They are known as volunteers, but generally receive a small stipend. Young people who take part, proponents say, learn useful skills and gain job experience.
President Donald Trump’s proposed federal budget for fiscal 2018, which begins Oct. 1, would eliminate the Corporation for National and Community Service, along with the groups it supervises, many of which were established in the early 1960s by President John F. Kennedy. Among them are AmeriCorps, and VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America). Senior Corps, also begun by JFK, recruits older Americans to serve as mentors, coaches and volunteer helpers in many fields.
Trump called for a 15 percent cut in funds for the Peace Corps, and he would eliminate a program that forgives student loans for college graduates who choose public-service jobs.
White House officials contend that national service and other volunteer programs should be funded by the private sector and nonprofit groups, not U.S. taxpayers.
“Together, we can tell Congress: Stop National Service Extinction,” protest organizers said in an online statement. “Let’s expand national service instead.”
Crowds of young protesters wearing their plastic dinosaur costumes attracted lots of attention and social media posts from tourists, Washington workers and reporters.
The “expansion not extinction” campaign said there were protests in other U.S. cities, too.
Congress will have the final say on the president’s spending requests for 2018, and groups such as LetUsServe say they are counting on the lawmakers to jettison Trump’s proposals. Early indications are that some if not all of the budget-cut proposals for public-service groups will be reversed.
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Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is raising speculation that Harriet Tubman's future on the $20 bill could be in jeopardy.
In a CNBC interview, Mnuchin on Thursday avoided a direct answer when asked whether he supported the decision made by the Obama administration to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with Tubman, the 19th century African-American abolitionist who was a leader in the Underground Railroad.
"People have been on the bills for a long period of time,'' he said. "This is something we'll consider. Right now, we have a lot more important issues to focus on.''
During last year's campaign, Donald Trump praised Jackson, the nation's seventh president, for his "history of tremendous success'' and said the decision to replace him with Tubman was "pure political correctness.''
Trump suggested during the campaign that one possibility would be to put Tubman on another bill and leave Jackson on the $20. He and Ben Carson, currently secretary of housing and urban development, had both suggested during the GOP primaries that Tubman might go on the $2 bill instead.
Then-Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced last year that he had decided to place Tubman on the $20 bill as part of a make-over of the nation's currency to improve security features on the bills. The new currency bearing Tubman's portrait was scheduled to be unveiled in 2020, the 100th anniversary of passage of the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote.
Lew arrived at the decision to displace Jackson on the $20 bill after generating a loud outcry with an initial proposal to put a woman on the $10 bill replacing Alexander Hamilton.
In the CNBC interview, Mnuchin said, "The number one issue why we change the currency is to stop counterfeiting. So the issues of why we change it will be primarily related to what we need to do for security purposes.''
At the White House, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters, "I'm not aware of any policy change. I'd certainly have to check into that.''
In a wide-ranging interview, Mnuchin also:
— Said the original goal of getting Congress to pass comprehensive tax reform by August "got delayed a bit,'' but he stressed that the administration was still on track to have a measure signed into law by the end of this year.
Mnuchin's comments on taxes came one day after Trump launched the administration's fall push to overhaul the nation's tax system with a speech in Springfield, Missouri. There he said the plan, details of which have yet to be revealed, would unlock strong economic growth, reduce the tax burden of the middle-class and encourage corporations to keep jobs in America.
Mnuchin rejected the idea that the administration has yet to settle on the details of the tax plan.
"We are on track to get this done by the end of the year,'' he said. "So you're going to see the detail come out [in September.] It's going to go through a committee process. We expect the House and Senate will get this to the president to sign this year and we couldn't be more excited about the progress we've made.''
Mnuchin would not say whether Trump's goal of reducing the top corporate tax rate to 15 percent from the current 35 percent would remain in the finished administration proposal, or whether it might be changed to a less ambitious cut to 20 or 25 percent.
"We'll go through with the [congressional] committees and see where we end up,'' Mnuchin said.
— Expressed confidence that Congress will pass legislation needed to raise the government's borrowing limit this fall and avoid a catastrophic default on the nation's debt. Mnuchin has authority to use a range of bookkeeping maneuvers to avoid breaching the limit through Sept. 29, although private analysts believe the actual deadline for Congress increasing the current $19 trillion limit will be in mid-October.
— Stated that the administration has a good working relationship with Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen. He refused to say how many candidates, other than Yellen, President Donald Trump is considering for the Fed job when Yellen's current term expires in February. Trump said in an interview last month that Yellen, Gary Cohn, head of Trump's National Economic Council, and "two or three'' other contenders were in the mix.
Yellen used a high-profile speech last Friday at a central bank conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to defend the Dodd-Frank bank regulatory overhaul passed in 2010. She described it as a successful effort to make the financial system stronger following the 2008 financial crisis. Trump has called the measure a "disaster'' and he and GOP lawmakers would like to rewrite it extensively to reduce regulatory burden on banks.
Asked if this was an area of conflict between Yellen and the administration, Mnuchin said, "I had breakfast with Fed Chair Yellen this morning. ... we have a very constructive dialogue on a lot of issues including regulation.''
Mnuchin said "ultimately the president will make a decision later in the year'' on who he will nominate for a new term as Fed chair.
Read More Treasury Secretary Vague on Support for Tubman on US $20 Bill : http://ift.tt/2wmN5zx
Foreigners who were barred from entering the U.S. during President Donald Trump's first attempt to ban travel from seven Muslim-majority nations will get government help reapplying for visas under a lawsuit settlement reached Thursday.
Civil rights lawyers and the Trump administration announced the deal in during a conference call in federal court in Brooklyn, one scene of the legal battle over the treatment of hundreds of travelers who were detained at U.S. airports over a chaotic weekend last January.
Under the terms of the settlement, the government agreed to notify anyone overseas who was banned that they can reapply for visas with the help of a Department of Justice liaison for a three-month period. In return, the plaintiffs said they would drop all their claims.
"We are pleased with the settlement and that this chapter in the fight is done,'' said American Civil Liberties Union Attorney Lee Gerlent.
Gerlent said it's unclear how many people will benefit from the settlement because the government has refused to disclose the total.
There was no immediate comment from Justice Department officials.
The ACLU, along with the National Immigration Law Center and the International Refugee Assistance Project, sued after the Trump administration implemented a policy Jan. 27 that barred entry of visa-holders from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Among them was Hameed Khalid Darweesh, a translator who has done work for the U.S. military, who was detained at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
A federal judge blocked the ban eight days later in a ruling upheld by a circuit court. Rather than pursue an appeal, the administration said it would revise the policy.
In June, the Supreme Court found that a narrower order that excluded Iraq from the list can be enforced if those visitors lack a "credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.''
Read More Lawsuit Over Trump's 1st Attempt to Ban Travel is Settled : http://ift.tt/2wmx3pg
U.S. Customs and Border Protection selected four construction companies Thursday to erect prototypes of the Mexican border wall that President Donald Trump has said he intends to build to deter illegal immigration and smuggling.
The four firms, from four different U.S. states, are to build solid-concrete prototypes of the border wall within 30 days, once they are given a notice to proceed. Those four sample walls will then be tested for strength and "permeability," according to the agency's acting deputy commissioner, Ronald Vitiello.
The border protection agency is separately screening applicants for other contracts to build prototype walls made from alternate materials.
Trump has said he thinks the 10-meter-tall wall should have windows, or even be fully transparent, so Border Patrol officers in the United States can observe suspicious activities on the other side of the barrier.
"We're going to use all the things that we think will work the best," Vitiello said.
Thursday's announcement was the latest step forward in a bureaucratic process that has been delayed multiple times. The administration once said construction of the full border wall would begin in June, but it was not until mid-March that the first requests for proposals went out to contractors, seeking conceptual designs for the border barrier, which has been shrouded in political controversy.
Congress has appropriated $20 million to CBP for use in preparing the prototypes, both of concrete and other materials. No funds have yet been budgeted for the full border wall, likely a multibillion-dollar undertaking that would be one of the largest public works projects in U.S. history.
The four companies selected Thursday to build concrete prototypes were Caddell Construction of Montgomery, Alabama; Fisher Industries of Tempe, Arizona; Texas Sterling Construction of Houston; and W.G. Yates & Sons of Philadelphia.
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A freak accident almost led to disaster on Tuesday when a brake malfunction caused a woman's car to nearly collide with President Donald Trump's motorcade on a highway in southern Missouri, police say.
Trump was returning from a speech on tax reform in Springfield when a white sedan emerged from a wooded area, plowed down an embankment, and headed directly for the presidential limousine.
The car stopped about 10 meters (30 feet) from Trump's limousine, which sped by unharmed with the rest of the motorcade. Video posted on social media showed a woman emerge from the car, seemingly distressed at her accident.
Police quickly determined there was no intent to harm the president.
"It was a horribly timed mistake," said Lisa Cox, with the Springfield Police Department. "It's like the opposite of winning the lottery."
Local police and Secret Service officers questioned the woman and a passenger, before releasing them both unharmed, Cox said.
In a statement, the Secret Service said an investigation revealed the vehicle "experienced a total failure of its braking system."
"The vehicle did not make contact with any motorcade vehicles, and there was no alteration of the motorcade route. A security sweep of the vehicle was carried out with negative results," the statement said.
Still, the incident had many onlookers wondering if they had just witnessed an assassination attempt.
"It came right out of the woods, out of the tall grass," said Kirk Stanton, who works across the street at a used car lot. "I didn't know what the deal was. You know, it's Kearney Street — anything can happen here."
Dan Emmett, a former Secret Service officer who teaches at Auburn University, said while the incident posed no threat, it is still concerning that a car was able to approach the president without being stopped.
"Had the driver been on a suicide mission, for example, she could have easily intercepted the [president's] limo and detonated," Emmett said.
'The Beast'
Presidential limousines are incredibly secure. Nicknamed "The Beast," the fleet of presidential limos are reported to feature 20-centimeter-thick armor plating and multilayered protective windows, and are built on the frame of a truck, not a car.
It's not unusual for minor traffic incidents to occur during presidential motorcades.
Perhaps the most famous incident was in 1975, when a driver in Hartford, Connecticut, plowed through an unprotected intersection, slamming into the limousine carrying then-President Gerald Ford. Ford was unhurt.
The incident prompted a police investigation into possible security lapses, and Emmett suspects the latest one with Trump will, too.
"This is an anomaly, although corrective action will be forthcoming, I am certain," he said.
Read More Car Without Brakes Nearly Slams into Trump Motorcade : http://ift.tt/2emE9R5
U.S. news reports say President Donald Trump could decide as early as Friday whether to end the Obama administration policy that protects children of undocumented immigrants who entered the United States illegally.
On Thursday, White House spokeswoman Sara Huckabee Sanders told reporters the Trump administration is still reviewing the program known as DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Sanders added that "a decision hasn't been made ... there are a lot of conversations about the timeline." She said nothing has been finalized.
Trump had pledged on the campaign trail to scrap the program, calling it "amnesty." Since taking office, he has said the issue is one of the most difficult he has dealt with as president.
His administration faces a September 5 deadline for a decision, set by a group of state attorneys grappling with the issue in their states. But it is possible the administration could negotiate an extension, based on the fact that the Department of Homeland Security — the agency responsible for implementing the change — currently is occupied with the substantial aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Louisiana.
DACA has given nearly 800,000 people a reprieve from deportation by providing two-year, renewable work permits for eligible applicants.
Read More Decision on US DACA Program Expected as Soon as Friday : http://ift.tt/2wVM9Ua
U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis says he has signed orders to deploy additional American troops to Afghanistan beyond the 11,000 currently serving in the war-torn country.
Speaking to reporters Thursday at the Pentagon, Mattis said the additional troops would mostly advise and "enable the Afghan forces to fight more effectively" against the Taliban and more than a dozen terror groups in Afghanistan.
The secretary said he would provide the public with more information once he had completed the orders and notified Congress next week of the military's next steps.
"I've signed orders, but it's not complete. In other words, I've signed some of the troops that will go and we're identifying the specific ones," Mattis said.
News of the new deployment orders comes a day after the Pentagon announced that approximately 11,000 U.S. troops are currently serving in Afghanistan, not 8,400 troops, as the Defense Department had previously reported.
The higher number emerged following Mattis's call for a more accurate troop-strength estimate, as the Trump administration worked on a new U.S. policy in Afghanistan.
The chief spokesperson at the Pentagon, Dana White, told reporters Wednesday the estimate of 11,000 troops is based on a simplified accounting method that provides greater "transparency" while "increasing commanders' ability to adapt to battlefield conditions."
The lower number of troops cited previously excluded service members on assignment in Afghanistan for less than 120 days — short-term duty that could include temporary combat support or materiel recovery missions.
Lieutenant General Kenneth "Frank" McKenzie Jr., staff director on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the new method of counting troops in the field uses approximations rather than exact numbers of troops. This, he said, allows commanders "more flexibility" when it comes to battlefield deployments.
"We all recognize that whole units are inherently more prepared and more ready than units that are fragmented in order to meet an arbitrary force management level," McKenzie said.
White and McKenzie said the changes made in calculating troop strength in Afghanistan eventually will be applied to American troops fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.
Officials have suggested that Secretary Mattis is looking to deploy about 4,000 additional troops to Afghanistan to fulfill the commander's needs on the ground.
Read More Mattis Signs Orders for More US Troops in Afghanistan : http://ift.tt/2xALW5X
A grand jury used by Special Counsel Robert Mueller has heard secret testimony from a Russian-American lobbyist who attended a June 2016 meeting with President Donald Trump's eldest son, The Associated Press has learned.
A person familiar with the matter confirmed to the AP that Rinat Akhmetshin had appeared before Mueller's grand jury in recent weeks. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the secret proceedings.
The revelation is the clearest indication yet that Mueller and his team of investigators view the meeting, which came weeks after Trump had secured the Republican presidential nomination, as a relevant inquiry point in their broader probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The meeting included Donald Trump Jr.; the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner; and his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. Emails released by Trump Jr. show he took the meeting expecting that he would be receiving damaging information about Hillary Clinton as part of what was described to him as a Russian government effort to aid the Trump campaign.
The Financial Times first reported Akhmetshin's grand jury appearance. Reached by the AP, Akhmetshin declined comment. Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, also declined comment Wednesday night.
The confirmation of Akhmetshin's grand jury testimony comes after he spoke at length about his involvement in the Trump Tower meeting in an interview with the AP last month.
Akhmetshin, a former Soviet military officer who served in a counterintelligence unit, is also a well-known Washington lobbyist. He has been representing Russian interests trying to undermine the story of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Russian prison and is the namesake of a U.S. sanctions law.
Akhmetshin has been reported to have ties to Russian intelligence but he has denied that, calling the allegations a "smear campaign."
Mueller and his team first signaled their interest in the Trump Tower gathering last month by contacting an attorney for at least some of the Russians who attended.
The meeting at issue was disclosed earlier this year to Congress and first revealed by The New York Times.
Trump Jr. has offered evolving explanations for the circumstances of the meeting, initially saying that the purpose was to discuss adoption and later acknowledging that he anticipated receiving information that he thought could be damaging to Clinton.
In addition to Akhmetshin, other attendees at the meeting included Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, music publicist Rob Goldstone — who helped arrange the gathering — and a translator. Ike Kaveladze, who also goes by the name Irakly Kaveladze, also attended the meeting. Kaveladze works for a Russian developer who partnered with Trump on the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.
An email exchange posted to Twitter by Trump Jr. showed him conversing with Goldstone, who wanted him to meet with someone he described as a "Russian government attorney," who supposedly had dirt on Clinton as "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump."
"If it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer," Trump Jr. wrote in one email response.
Another contact between Trump associates and Russia was revealed this week when Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, acknowledged that the Trump Organization was pursuing a Trump Tower real estate complex in Moscow in 2015. Cohen said he had reached out to a press secretary for Russian President Vladimir Putin about approvals.
In a letter this month to the House intelligence committee, Stephen Ryan, a lawyer for Cohen, dismissed as "false" and "wholly unsubstantiated" claims about Cohen included in a dossier of salacious allegations about the president's connections with Russia.
Associated Press writer Desmond Butler contributed to this report.
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Daryl Davis, a black musician who has made a practice of befriending members of the Ku Klux Klan, says he knows exactly what racists hear in the slogan "Make America Great Again."
Donald Trump "won the election on one word, one word only. And that word was 'again,' " Davis says.
"When was 'again?' " Davis asked during an interview at his home in May, discussing race relations in the age of President Trump. "Was it back when I was drinking from a separate water fountain? Was it when I couldn't eat in that restaurant over there? ... Make America Great Again -- before I had equality?"
Trump told The Washington Post he thought of the slogan in 2012 and trademarked it immediately, although similar words have been used by politicians as far back as President Ronald Reagan.
President Bill Clinton is on record as having used it during his presidential campaign in 1991, although not as an official slogan. Yet, in 2008, while campaigning for his wife, he noted: "If you're a white Southerner, you know exactly what it means, don't you?"
Is it possible that Trump was elected to the presidency with a racially charged slogan? Or are supporters and critics just hearing what they want to hear?
Christian Picciolini, a former neo-Nazi who now works to help other white supremacists leave the movement, says the slogan fits into the alt-right's efforts to make its message more attractive by toning down the rhetoric.
"That was a concerted effort," Picciolini says in an informational video for Vox news. "We knew we were turning more people away that we could eventually have on our side if we just softened the message. These days with our political climate we see a lot of coded language, or dog whistles." (Picciolini's use of "dog whistle" refers to a subtle message meant to be understood only by a particular group of people, like a whistle pitched high enough that a dog might hear it, but a human would not.)
"Make America Great Again?" Picciolini asks rhetorically. "Well, to them, that means make America white again."
In June 2016, a Tennessee politician even put that on a billboard. Rick Tyler, running for a congressional seat in mostly white Polk County, Tennessee, explained that his "Make America White Again" billboard was meant to evoke the mood of 1950s America, when television shows idealized the image of the happy white family.
In a Facebook post, Tyler said, "It was an America where doors were left unlocked, violent crime was a mere fraction of today's rate of occurrence, there were no car jackings, home invasions, Islamic Mosques or radical Jihadist sleeper cells."
Tyler's billboard quickly drew negative national attention and was taken down within a few days.
Better economic times
President Trump says he merely meant the slogan to refer to better economic times.
"I felt that jobs were hurting," Trump told the Post in January. "I looked at the many types of illness our country had, and whether it's at the border, whether it's security, whether it's law and order or lack of law and order."
Trump said the slogan "inspired me, because to me, it meant jobs. It meant industry. And it meant military strength. It meant taking care of our veterans. It meant so much."
David Axelrod, chief political strategist for former president Barack Obama, credits Trump with understanding his audience and crafting a message whose flexibility was part of its appeal.
Trump, Axelrod told the Post, "understood the market that he was trying to reach. You can't deny him that." He added, "In terms of galvanizing the market that he was talking to, he did it single-mindedly and ingeniously."
So who is Trump's market? According to surveys, at its core are white men in the blue-collar sector -- the demographic with the most to lose when women and minorities started gaining more rights and earning power over the past few decades. But people who find promise in "Make America Great Again" come from more than just that narrow category.
Jason Rankin, a real estate agent in Knoxville, Tennessee, described his thoughts about the slogan this way: "Making America Great Again to me means at least the following things: less national debt, more secure borders, more freedom of speech, more gun rights, more job opportunities across the country (but especially in rural areas), higher GDP, stronger national security & a stronger military, more money in every American's bank account."
Tony Goicochea, an audio engineer in Washington, D.C., said Make America Great Again "has a vision to it," as well as a reference that, to him, speaks of greater economic prosperity in the past, and financial lives unburdened by crippling debt.
Growing up in the 1980s, Goicochea said, "I saw people go to college, they graduated, and they got a job. That was it. They were able to move out on their own and start a life for themselves. So I think about our economics, how much better our economics were."
Now, Goicochea noted, American families are experiencing a boomerang syndrome -- recent graduates who have moved back in with their parents because they cannot make enough money to support themselves and pay off college debt.
Shannon Crannick, a retail consultant in Festus, Missouri, says she believes making America great again means "putting an end to all the hate that has come around in the last few years. Making it safe to walk down the street again. Less debt, secure borders, more support for the military, freedom of speech coming back, better help for the poor and people loving each other again."
Better for whom?
In a Washington Post/ABC News poll taken in September 2016, three-quarters of self-identified Trump supporters said America's greatest days are in the past.
When the same question was asked of other demographic groups, however, five out of six African-Americans disagreed.
The polltakers concluded that one's estimation of the country's greatness depends on factors such as gender, race and education level -- the kinds of factors that have a direct impact on income and political representation.
Hence, "Make America Great Again," doesn't just appeal to people who hear it as racist coded language, but also those who have felt a loss of status as other groups have become more empowered.
Marketing consultant Eva Van Brunt, a critic of the president, says the malleability of the words "great" and "again" are a common marketing trick: using words that sound positive, but lack specific meaning.
"By leaving a definitional vacuum around the word 'great,' it became very easy for groups to co-opt it, ascribing to it the meaning they wanted it to have," Van Brunt says. "The same way a mother rests easy because her baby's food has 'all-natural' written on the jar, Nazis, the KKK, and other white supremacists were able to feel good about Trump because 'great' became interchangeable with white, heterosexual, male, hate, oppress, deport.
As for the word "again," VanBrunt notes that it limits the audience to those who think America was once great and no longer is.
"That excludes those who never thought America was great for them and those who think America is great for them now," she says. "Looked at from that vantage point, it's hard to imagine that the co-opting by certain groups was accidental."
Different interpretations
For better or worse, the phrase is a loaded one, with potential to cause trouble between people who do not share the same interpretation.
On August 19 at Howard University in Washington, D.C., two white teenage girls on a summer enrichment trip entered a campus cafeteria while wearing "Make America Great Again" trucker hats that they had recently bought at a suburban mall.
The girls, part of a group of students from Union City High School in Pennsylvania, say they were unaware Howard was an historically black university.
"I don't even think our advisers really knew," 16-year-old Allie Vandee, one of the hat-wearers, told Buzzfeed. "We just thought of Howard University, we know it's historic, so we kinda went," she said.
Howard University students who witnessed the event say students chastised the teenage visitors for wearing the slogan. One walked up and snatched at their hats. Another one cursed at them. The teenage girls left the cafeteria and shared their experience on Twitter. They say they were unfairly harassed.
The incident prompted discussions online and on campus at Howard. It has resulted in no major protests, turf wars or Twitter feuds. But it was an indicator of deeply different interpretations of that particular four-word phrase.
Student Merdie Nzanga, a junior at Howard, was in the cafeteria when the teenagers walked in. She said several of her friends confronted the teenagers for being insensitive.
"I didn't say anything," she told Buzzfeed. But, "to myself, I thought, 'This is going to be trouble.'"
Read More Is 'Make America Great Again' Racist? : http://ift.tt/2vIzgsz
A federal judge late Wednesday temporarily blocked most of Texas’ tough new “sanctuary cities” law that would have allowed police to inquire about people’s immigration status during routine interactions, such as traffic stops.
The law, SB 4, had been cheered by President Donald Trump’s administration but decried by immigrants’ rights groups who say it could force anyone who looks like they might be in the country illegally to “show papers.”
The measure sailed through the Republican-controlled Legislature despite months of protests and opposition from business groups who worried that it could cause a labor-force shortage in industries such as construction. Opponents sued, arguing it violated the U.S. Constitution, and U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia’s ruling in San Antonio keeps it from taking effect as planned Friday — allowing the case time to proceed.
Judge’s 94-page ruling
In a 94-page ruling, Garcia wrote that there “is overwhelming evidence by local officials, including local law enforcement, that SB 4 will erode public trust and make many communities and neighborhoods less safe” and that “localities will suffer adverse economic consequences which, in turn, will harm the state of Texas.”
“The Court cannot and does not second-guess the Legislature,” he continued. “However, the state may not exercise its authority in a manner that violates the United States Constitution.”
Garcia’s order suspends the law’s most contentious language while suggesting that even parts of the law that can go forward won’t withstand further legal challenges.
What the law says
The law had sought to fine law enforcement authorities who fail to honor federal requests to hold people jailed on offenses that aren’t immigration related for possible deportation. It also would have ensured that police chiefs, sheriffs and constables could face removal from office and even criminal charges for failing to comply with such federal “detainer” requests.
The four largest cities in Texas — San Antonio, Austin, Houston and Dallas — have joined the lawsuit, saying the law is vague and would have a chilling effect on immigrant communities. Their attorneys told Garcia that his ruling could determine if other states pursue copycat measures. Lawyers for the Texas attorney general’s office responded that the new law has fewer teeth than Arizona’s 2010 “Show Me Your Papers” measure that was partially struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Top conservatives say an immigration crackdown is necessary to enforce the rule of law. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has maintained that only lawbreakers have anything to worry about.
Lawmaker tensions
On the final day of the legislative session in May, tensions boiled over when Republican state Rep. Matt Rinaldi told Democrats that he had called federal immigration agents to report protesters in the Capitol who held signs saying they were illegally in the country. One Democratic legislator admitted pushing Rinaldi, who responded by telling one Democrat that he would “shoot him in self-defense.”
The Trump administration has made “sanctuary cities” a target. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has threatened to pull federal money from jurisdictions that hinder communication between local police and immigration authorities and has praised Texas’ law.
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Officials who run a popular language and cultural immersion program in the north woods of Minnesota are warning that potential changes in visa rules could make it hard for them to hire enough instructors.
The Minnesota program's alert is part of a larger push by cultural exchange programs nationwide to draw attention to the possible impact of President Donald Trump's "Buy American, Hire American'' executive order.
Christine Schulze, executive director of Concordia Language Villages, wrote a letter this week urging alumni and other supporters around the country to contact their congressional representatives and ask them to ensure that international exchange programs are excluded from Trump's order.
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the Trump administration is considering major reductions in J-1 visas for cultural exchange programs as it implements the executive order.
Technology jobs targeted
Trump signed the order in April on a trip to Kenosha, Wisconsin. It's aimed mainly at ensuring that highly skilled technology jobs go to Americans rather than foreigners with H1-B visas who will work for less, and strengthening "buy American'' requirements for government purchases. But it may ultimately affect other categories of workers, too, such as foreign college students who take summer jobs in the U.S.
Concordia Language Villages, a program of Concordia College in Moorhead, gathers more than 10,000 people a year from all 50 states and more than 40 countries to camps near Bemidji and other sites in northern Minnesota as either staff or students. That includes nearly 200 people on J-1 visas.
Students, known as "villagers," include young people and adults. Besides seasonal programs at various locations, the program also offers seven year-round, architecturally authentic "villages'' near Bemidji that represent cultures speaking Finnish, French, German, Russian, Norwegian, Spanish and Swedish.
"These staff offer language and cultural skills that ensure top-quality instruction'' in an immersion setting, Schultze said in her letter. "The international staff are vital members of the Concordia Language Villages community and help us provide an incomparable educational opportunity for thousands of young people in the state of Minnesota and across the country on an annual basis.''
Broader initiative
Concordia Language Villages is making its appeal as part of a broader initiative by the Alliance for International Exchange, a national umbrella group for cultural exchange programs. Schulze said she had met in recent days with alliance staff and member organizations in Washington about their next steps.
The alliance said a number of cultural exchange programs are at risk if the Trump administration curtails privately funded J-1 visa programs, including categories for camp counselors, summer work travel, au pairs and others.
"We believe this is a grave mistake — elimination of these programs would have a negative impact on local communities, employers and families nationwide, while dramatically weakening our public diplomacy efforts,'' said Ilir Zherka, executive director of the alliance, in an action alert to its member groups and supporters.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday from The Associated Press. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told The Wall Street Journal she had "nothing to announce at this time.''
Read More Cultural Exchange Programs Fear Visa Cuts From Trump Order : http://ift.tt/2gqKxLb
Krassi Nikov evacuated his Houston home with more than 2 feet (61 cm) of water inside it Tuesday after Tropical Storm Harvey devastated Texas’ Gulf Coast. He now plans to collect on his flood insurance for the second time this year and rebuild.
But the future of the federal-government-run flood insurance program on which Nikov, 63, and other property owners in vulnerable areas depend rests with the U.S. Congress.
National Flood Insurance Program renewal
Congress will soon be asked to renew the National Flood Insurance Program, which expires at the end of September. While a simple extension of the program has wide bipartisan support, some lawmakers are calling for broad reform.
The program had received 35,000 claims from Texas by midday Wednesday, according to Roy Wright, its administrator, who described it as a very fast pace.
Wright said he was confident Congress would reauthorize the program, but he added that the program would only be prevented from selling new policies or renewing existing ones if it were to lapse.
“It does not affect ability to accept claims,” Wright said.
Difficult battle for GOP changes
Republicans advocating changes to the program want private companies to write the policies, which they say would result in premium prices that more accurately reflect risks. Additionally, they want the U.S. government to stop charging the program interest, with the savings to be used for flood mitigation.
That could set up a difficult battle. Conservatives have voiced concerns that the insurance program has about $25 billion of debt, while Democrats say the Republicans’ plan to allow private-market plans would be more expensive for homeowners.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers from coastal states including Senators Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, have been pushing for changes to the program.
The NFIP has been reauthorized 17 times since it was created in 1968, with the last time occurring in 2012. It has been allowed to lapse four times.
Busy legislative schedule
Many lobbyists believe Congress is unlikely to attempt a sweeping reform of the program before the end of September, given a busy legislative schedule that includes approving funding to avoid a government shutdown and raising the debt ceiling.
Congress also faces pressure to pass an aid package to help the devastated Gulf Coast. Goldman Sachs said in a research note Tuesday that early estimates suggested Harvey would cost “in the range of $30 billion.”
Instead, most observers expect Congress to pass a short-term extension of the program, ranging from three months to a year.
Leaders in Congress are weighing whether to attach it to another piece of legislation, such as a continuing resolution to fund the government, according to several lobbyists following the issue.
House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan’s office said it was confident the program would be reauthorized.
Hensarling's reforms
U.S. Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Republican who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, said in a Bloomberg television interview Monday that he hoped his package of reforms could gain full approval before the end of next month.
Hensarling wants to renew the program for five years if private insurers are allowed to write the flood policies.
But a business lobbyist who consults for many large American companies and follows the issue closely said Hensarling lacked the support to get his package passed by the House when Congress left for its August recess.
“I don’t think they’re at the point now where they have the votes,” the lobbyist said. He added that trying to overhaul the program would be a distraction for federal emergency officials and the flood insurance program.
“Even if there was a package of reforms ready to go, (the agencies) are not going to have the bandwidth to deal with some kind of reform package,” he said.
In a letter to Ryan and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sent Monday, 100 House Democrats expressed concerns about the Hensarling package, saying they would not vote for the full package despite believing flood insurance reauthorization was crucial.
“Most of these bills do not meet the goals of affordability, availability, increased mitigation efforts or improved mapping,” the letter said.
‘Incredibly detrimental’
Jerry Howard, head of the National Home Builders Association, said the group had endorsed Hensarling’s package and was hopeful the bills would pass quickly.
Emily Naden of the Building Owners and Managers Association, which in Houston alone represents owners and managers of 312 million square feet of office space and accounts for 43,000 jobs, said the organization had been pushing for reforms but must prioritize avoiding a lapse in coverage.
“For us, we absolutely need the program to be re-upped without a lapse — a lapse is incredibly detrimental to all of our policy members,” she said.
President Donald Trump is promising billions to help Texas rebuild from Harvey-caused epic flooding, but his Republican allies in the House are looking at cutting almost $1 billion from disaster accounts to help finance the president's border wall.
The pending reduction to the Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster relief account is part of a massive spending bill that the House is scheduled to consider next week when lawmakers return from their August recess. The $876 million cut, which is included in the 1,305-page measure's homeland security section, pays for roughly half the cost of Trump's down payment on the U.S.-Mexico border wall that the president repeatedly promised Mexico would finance.
It seems sure that GOP leaders will move to reverse the disaster aid cut next week as floodwaters cover Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city, and tens of thousands of Texans have sought refuge in shelters. There's only $2.3 billion remaining in federal disaster coffer.
The disaster relief cut to finance the wall was proposed well before Harvey and the politically bad optics are sure to lead lawmakers to do an about face, though that would create a money crunch in homeland security accounts.
Harvey aid is a fresh addition to an agenda already packed with must-do tasks and multiple legislative deadlines: Passing a stopgap spending bill to avert a government shutdown; increasing the government's borrowing authority to prevent a market-quaking default on U.S. obligations; and paving the way for a GOP rewrite of the U.S. tax code.
Trump is slated to meet with congressional leaders next Wednesday. The meeting follows a recess that has seen Trump lambast several top Republicans, especially Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., after the collapse of the GOP health care bill in his chamber. That has wounded the president's relationship with his own party, and the coming weeks should offer a test of how much clout he has with fellow Republicans.
McConnell is scheduled to attend next Wednesday morning's White House meeting, according to congressional aides. Also going are House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the aides said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a meeting that hadn't yet been announced.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the chamber's No. 2 Republican, is pressing for an emergency infusion of disaster aid pending estimates of longer-term rebuilding costs.
Despite Trump's promise at a rally in Phoenix last week to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border even “if we have to close down our government,” congressional Republicans are optimistic of averting a politically damaging shutdown after the fiscal year ends September 30.
For one thing, most Republicans, including Trump, want to move on to a sweeping revamp of the tax code, and a shutdown debacle would only make tax legislation more difficult. A tax overhaul, cutting rates for individuals and businesses while erasing numerous tax breaks and loopholes, is difficult enough as it stands.
Like the failed push to repeal former president Barack Obama's health care law, the tax effort is likely to encounter strong Democratic opposition and divisions among Republicans, leaving its fate uncertain.
The massive, ongoing flooding caused by Harvey means that officials still don't know how much aid the metropolis will need to recover, but it's expected to be many billions of dollars. A possible outcome is one or even two infusions of immediate aid next month, with a longer-term recovery package coming by year's end.
Read More US House Republicans Eyeing $1B Disaster Funds Cut to Finance Wall : http://ift.tt/2vtSPZz
Two weeks before Harvey's floodwaters engulfed much of Houston, President Donald Trump quietly rolled back an order by his predecessor that would have made it easier for storm-ravaged communities to use federal emergency aid to rebuild bridges, roads and other structures so they can better withstand future disasters.
Now, with much of the nation's fourth-largest city under water, Trump's move has new resonance. Critics note the president's order could force Houston and other cities to rebuild hospitals and highways in the same way and in the same flood-prone areas.
"Rebuilding while ignoring future flood events is like treating someone for lung cancer and then giving him a carton of cigarettes on the way out the door," said Michael Gerrard, a professor of environmental and climate change law at Columbia University. "If you're going to rebuild after a bad event, you don't want to expose yourself to the same thing all over again."
Trump's action is one of several ways the president, who has called climate change a hoax, has tried to wipe away former President Barack Obama's efforts to make the United States more resilient to threats posed by the changing climate.
Consideration of climate predictions
The order Trump revoked would have permitted the rebuilding to take into account climate scientists' predictions of stronger storms and more frequent flooding.
Bridges and highways, for example, could be rebuilt higher, or with better drainage. The foundation of a new fire station or hospital might be elevated an extra 3 feet (1 meter).
While scientists caution against blaming specific weather events like Harvey on climate change, warmer air and warmer water linked to global warming have long been projected to make such storms wetter and more intense. Houston, for example, has experienced three floods in three years that statistically were once considered 1-in-500-year events.
The government was still in the process of implementing Obama's 2015 order when it was rescinded. That means the old standard — rebuilding storm-ravaged facilities in the same way they had been built before — is still in place.
Trump revoked Obama's order as part of an executive order of his own that he touted at an August 15 news conference at Trump Tower. That news conference was supposed to focus on infrastructure, but it was dominated by Trump's comments on the previous weekend's violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Trump didn't specifically mention the revocation, but he said he was making the federal permitting process for the construction of transportation and other infrastructure projects faster and more cost-efficient without harming the environment.
"It's going to be quick, it's going to be a very streamlined process," Trump said.
Asked about the revocation, the White House said in a statement that Obama's order didn't consider potential impacts on the economy and was "applied broadly to the whole country, leaving little room or flexibility for designers to exercise professional judgment or incorporate the particular context" of a project's location.
Construction curbs
Obama's now-defunct order also revamped Federal Flood Risk Management Standards, calling for tighter restrictions on new construction in flood-prone areas. Republicans, including Senator John Cornyn of Texas, opposed the measure, saying it would impede land development and economic growth.
Revoking that order was only the latest step by Trump to undo Obama's actions on climate change.
In March, Trump rescinded a 2013 order that directed federal agencies to encourage states and local communities to build new infrastructure and facilities "smarter and stronger" in anticipation of more frequent extreme weather.
Trump revoked a 2015 Obama memo directing agencies developing national security policies to consider the potential impact of climate change.
The president also disbanded two advisory groups created by Obama: the interagency Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience and the State, Local and Tribal Leaders Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience.
Obama's 2015 order was prompted in part by concerns raised by Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper after severe flooding in his state two years earlier. Hickenlooper was dismayed to learn that federal disaster aid rules were preventing state officials from rebuilding "better and smarter than what we had built before."
The "requirements essentially said you had to build it back exactly the way it was, that you couldn't take into consideration improvements in resiliency," Hickenlooper, a Democrat, said Tuesday. "We want to be more prepared for the next event, not less prepared."
Bud Wright, the Federal Highway Administration's executive director during George W. Bush's administration, said this has long been a concern of federal officials.
He recalled a South Dakota road that was "almost perpetually flooded" but was repeatedly rebuilt to the same standard using federal aid because the state didn't have the extra money to pay for enhancements.
"It seemed a little ridiculous that we kept doing that," said Wright, now the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials' executive director.
Big federal 'checkbook'
But Kirk Steudle, director of Michigan's Department of Transportation, said states can build more resilient infrastructure than what they had before a disaster by using state or nonemergency federal funds to make up the cost difference.
"That makes sense, otherwise FEMA would be the big checkbook," he said, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "Everybody would be hoping for some disaster so FEMA could come in and build them a brand-new road to the 2020 standard instead of the 1970 standard."
Even though Obama's order has been revoked, federal officials have some wiggle room that might allow them to rebuild to higher standards, said Jessica Grannis, who manages the adaptation program at the Georgetown Climate Center.
If local building codes in place before the storm call for new construction to be more resilient to flooding, then federal money can still be used to pay the additional costs.
For example, in Houston regulations require structures to be rebuilt 1 foot (30 centimeters) above the level designated for a 1-in-100-year storm. And in the wake of prior disasters, FEMA has moved to remap floodplains, setting the line for the 1-in-100-year flood higher than it was before.
Read More Change in US Policy Makes It Harder to Rebuild for Future Floods : http://ift.tt/2vGBjgA
Moscow and Washington should re-establish direct contacts between their military and foreign policy chiefs, Russia's new ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, said Wednesday.
"The time has come to resume joint meetings of Russia's and the United States' foreign and defense ministers in a 'two plus two' format," Antonov said in an interview published on the Kommersant business daily's website.
Military contacts between Moscow and Washington were frozen in 2014 due to the Ukraine crisis.
Antonov also called for meetings between the heads of Russia's Federal Security Service and Foreign Intelligence Service and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency.
A "working cooperation" between Russia's Security Council and the U.S. National Security Council could also help fight terrorism and cyberthreats and help strategic stability, he said.
Antonov, a former deputy foreign minister, is subject to European sanctions over his role in the conflict in Ukraine.
Read More New Russian Ambassador to US Calls for Resumed Military Contacts : http://ift.tt/2wpBuhP
Seven months into his tenure, the broad outlines of President Donald Trump's foreign policy are coming into focus. As a candidate, Trump suggested there would be stark foreign policy changes in his administration. But many experts say that on key issues, such as Afghanistan, Syria and North Korea, Trump is continuing along a traditional U.S. foreign policy path similar to his predecessor, former President Barack Obama.
Last week, Trump said he changed his mind about pulling troops out of Afghanistan, pledging to boost U.S. forces to help the Afghan government. But he insists his plan is different from previous ones in the 16-year-long war.
“We are a partner and a friend, but we will not dictate to the Afghan people how to live, or how to govern their own complex society," he said. "We are not nation-building again. We are killing terrorists.”
Trump campaigned with the slogan “America First”, but some experts stress this does not mean America is retreating from the world stage under his leadership.
James Carafano of the Heritage Foundation said he would call Trump’s strategy one of “forward presence.”
“There are kind of three critical parts of the world that the United States really needs to be stable right? Europe, the Middle East and Asia. So you’ve seen a heavy focus on all three of those. And it's not about the withdrawal or retreat of American power. It's actually about putting American power out there and not just military power, but also economic and diplomatic power.”
'America First' as Foreign Strategy
Previous U.S. presidents also embraced using different levers of power, but experts say Trump has broken with precedent by putting less focus on trade, alliances and institutions.
Longtime U.S. diplomat Aaron David Miller who is now at the Wilson Center told VOA Trump is traditional in some ways, but calls him a “disrupter” on climate change, building a wall with Mexico and on international trade.
“I think if I had to characterize it, it would be a muscular, but highly risk averse, nationalistic ‘America First’ strategy, where in essence the notion of the United States leading in an effort to create a globalist, liberal international environment, where international institutions and all nations connected to one another would thrive – that has been in some respects abandoned, in favor of a much narrower, U.S-focused strategy.”
Trump has not only advocated a narrower foreign policy, he has embraced a more ambiguous one. His tweets are closely followed as indications of U.S. policy, but experts say they sometimes lead to confusion. Many look to others in Trump's cabinet for reassurance about U.S. strategy.
Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress pointed to the former generals who appear to have gained more influence with the president.
“It seems to me that he is just unpredictable and U.S. foreign policy is in uncharted territory. But his team around him, the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, the national security advisor, I think they are trying to keep policy within some sort of more conventional boundaries.”
Katulis told VOA he is concerned though because he thinks there has been a trend for the last 15 years of a militarization of U.S. foreign policy, a huge increase in the budget to the Defense Department, and a heavy reliance under Presidents Bush, and then Obama, on special forces and drones. That trend appears to be continuing under Trump.
Melvin Goodman, who is with Center for International Policy and a former senior CIA analyst, said the U.S. for decades has been leaning more heavily on the military as a foreign policy tool.
“The militarization of U.S. foreign policy worsened during the administration of President Clinton who unwisely supported the expansion of NATO and accepted the Pentagon's opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban and the ban on land mines," he said. "President George W. Bush expanded the influence of the Pentagon with the unwise decision to invade Iraq in 2003. President Obama also deferred to the military in surging US forces in Afghanistan in 2009-2010.”
Goodman added: “But Trump's appointment of Generals Kelly, Mattis and McMaster to key policy positions is the most dangerous step toward militarization in U.S. history.”
The United States is the single biggest military spender in the world, with an estimated military budget greater than the next seven countries combined. At $618.8 billion in 2016, military spending accounted for more than 53 percent of the U.S. federal discretionary budget.
The National Priorities Project puts spending on international affairs, which would include the State Department’s budget at $42.8 billion, or 4 percent of the U.S. federal discretionary budget in 2016. The Trump administration has proposed slashing State's budget by almost a third, while boosting defense spending by 10 percent.
A Beleaguered Top Diplomat?
Some experts pointed to Trump’s foreign policy structure and his relationship with the chief U.S. diplomat, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, as another departure from previous presidents.
Aaron David Miller served as a top adviser to a number of Republican and Democratic Secretaries of State. He told VOA Tillerson’s situation is unprecedented.
“This is not a political statement at all. I have just never seen a situation in which the president does not empower the secretary of state to be the key agent or deliverer of the president’s foreign policy," he said. "That is not what is happening here.”
The news website Axios reported that tensions over policy differences between Trump and Tillerson have been building, and the two sides are now blaming the other for the lack of senior political appointments at the State Department.
Tillerson's spokesman, R.C. Hammond, blamed a "busted" system, according to the Axios report. The website quoted Hammond saying, "The secretary sends over recommendations and they sit on the dock." Trump officials suggested the fault was Tillerson's for moving too slowly, not the White House's.
Analyst Aaron David Miller said: “And no matter how many meetings Tillerson has with the president, it doesn’t obviate or mitigate the fact that he is faced with an environment in which he doesn’t really own a foreign policy issue of real consequence.”
Miller said the most glaring example of this is that the president has given the high-profile Arab-Israeli issue, not to Tillerson, but to his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who traveled to the region last week. He said every other secretary of state has been the one in charge of the thorny Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Trump and Tillerson have also publicly expressed contradictory views on resolving the Qatar crisis and sanctions on Venezuela.
James Carafano disagrees with those who say Tillerson is not empowered.
“Tillerson is, I think, very forceful. Many of the decisions that are made at the top — national security and foreign policy decisions are never the secretary of state’s alone.”
Tillerson raised some eyebrows on Sunday when he was asked by Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace if the president represented American values in his response to the racist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Tillerson replied: the president "speaks for himself."
Some observers have speculated that Tillerson’s days at the State Department may be numbered, a rumor he himself has repeatedly rejected.
Melvin Goodman told VOA he would not be surprised if Tillerson is out by the end of the year.
“Tillerson is the steward of a department that has suffered one indignity too many, and maybe the secretary himself believes it is time to go. The fact that only two of the top 24 positions in the department have been filled also speaks to the irrelevance of the Department of State in day-to-day decision-making.”
Read More Trump's Foreign Policy Outlines Come into Focus : http://ift.tt/2x7cHBe
Most of the United States' special envoys will be abolished and their responsibilities reassigned as part of the State Department overhaul, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Congress on Monday, including envoys for climate change and the Iran deal.
Special envoys for Afghanistan-Pakistan, disability rights and closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center will be eliminated under the plan. But President Donald Trump's administration plans to keep envoys for religious freedom, fighting anti-Semitism and LGBT rights, despite speculation from critics that it would seek to downgrade those priorities.
Lawmakers of both parties, think tanks and even the diplomats' association have long called for absorbing some of the countless U.S. envoys and special representatives into related offices, to help reduce redundancies across the State Department's notoriously unwieldy bureaucracy. But the idea has attracted new scrutiny amid the Trump administration's plans to drastically cut the State Department's budget and concerns that Trump was eschewing the promotion of American values overseas.
While State Department officials stressed that changes to the flow chart don't necessarily signal a change in priorities, in some cases the policy implications are clear. Elimination of the Guantanamo closure envoy dovetails with Trump's plans to keep the prison open. The president has pulled the U.S. out of the Paris global climate deal and threatened to do the same with the Iran nuclear deal.
Of 66 current envoys or representatives, 30 will remain, a cut of 55 percent. Nine positions will be abolished outright. Twenty-one will be “integrated” into other offices, five merged with other positions, and one transferred to the U.S. Agency for International Development, the government's foreign aid arm.
In each case, the envoys' staff and their budgets will be absorbed by the office taking over their functions. That shift will free up significant funds that Tillerson can draw upon as he restructures other parts of the agency, said a State Department official, who wasn't authorized to comment by name and requested anonymity. For example, merging the cyber envoy into the broader Economic and Business Affairs bureau will boost the latter's budget by $5.5 million.
Tillerson, in a letter to Congress, said he believed the State Department could “better execute its mission” by integrating some positions, pointing out concerns that the current system diluting the government's effectiveness by creating multiple power centers dealing with the same issue. The number of special envoys has grown over the years.
“Today, nearly 70 such positions exist within the State Department, even after many of the underlying policy challenges these positions were created to address have been resolved,” Tillerson wrote.
The pruning offers the first concrete information about how Tillerson's sweeping overhaul will affect the State Department and its approximately 75,000 employees. Since taking office in February, Tillerson has been scouring the agency and soliciting input from diplomats about how to trim the agency down. A roughly one-third budget cut and elimination of thousands of jobs are expected.
Those anticipated cuts have driven down morale among diplomats, as Tillerson has acknowledged, playing into concerns that Trump's “America First” approach means the U.S. will stop promoting human rights or helping the most vulnerable global populations.
The Trump administration will keep envoys or at-large ambassadors for women's issues, hostages, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, human trafficking, HIV/AIDS and Holocaust issues. There will no longer be special envoys for the Arctic, Syria, Myanmar, Libya, Haiti, Sudan and South Sudan, though regional offices will assume those portfolios. The envoy for six-party talks in North Korea, currently vacant, won't be filled.
In a 2014 report, the American Foreign Service Association, which represents career diplomats, recommended retaining only a handful of envoys while eliminating or merging the rest.
Tillerson's letter responded to legislation passed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July that took aim at the proliferation of special envoys by forcing Tillerson to tell Congress which positions he wanted to keep, and to secure Senate confirmation for all envoys in the future. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the committee's chairman, praised Tillerson for working to “to responsibly review the organizational structure of special envoys.”
Some special envoys are mandated by Congress. The Trump administration will ask lawmakers to repeal those mandates.
Read More Tillerson to Abolish Most Special Envoys, Including Climate : http://ift.tt/2wJaJaJ
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, warns freedom of the press in the United States is under attack from President Donald Trump, with potential national and global consequences.
Zeid says words have consequences, actions have consequences and both must be chosen wisely. He says President Trump’s characterization of respected newspapers and media outlet as liars and crooks is damaging.
He says the reference to journalists as dishonest and bad people and purveyors of fake news is potentially dangerous.
“Is this not an incitement for others to attack journalists? And, let us assume that a journalist is harmed from one of these organizations, does the president then not bear responsibility for this, for having fanned this?” he asked.
Cornerstone of democracy
Zeid says the demonization of the press is poisonous because it has consequences elsewhere. He says the words of the U.S. president reverberate around the world.
“We see now in Cambodia for example, the licenses of media, radio programs are being lifted off the air. And, the president of the United States — his remarks are being cited," he said. "Is this going to expand in this way?”
Zeid notes freedom of the press is a cornerstone of the U.S. Constitution, adding he is amazed that instead of defending this right, press freedom is now under attack from the president of the United States.
He calls this a stunning turnaround and ultimately a dangerous one, leading to incitement and fear, self-censorship and banning and then violence.
Trump has regularly criticized major news media outlets like CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Earlier in August, he took aim at news organizations for their coverage of a violent rally organized by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia. He called the journalists "truly dishonest people." Trump has lashed out at the media in speeches and on Twitter.
Read More UN Rights Chief: Trump Undermining Freedom of the Press : http://ift.tt/2wS3vl0
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has emphasized the U.S. is “never out of diplomatic solutions” when it comes to the North Korean crisis, after President Donald Trump said that "talking is not the answer."
Mattis was responding to a question about Trump’s tweet Wednesday morning about dealing with the threat of North Korea following the country's most recent ballistic missile test over Japan.
"The U.S. has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money, for 25 years. Talking is not the answer!" Trump tweeted, a day after he said "All options are on the table" for dealing with Pyongyang.
Defense Secretary Mattis welcomed his South Korean counterpart to the Pentagon on Wednesday, as the two countries try to figure out how to handle recent North Korean provocations.
“We continue to work together, and the Minister and I share a responsibility to provide for the protection of our nations, our populations, and our interests…and look for all the areas that we can collaborate,” Mattis said.
North Korea has acknowledged firing a ballistic missile Tuesday over Japan, saying it was to counter current joint exercises by South Korea and the United States.
In Geneva, U.S. Disarmament Ambassador Robert Wood called for “concerted action” in response to the “increasing threat” caused by North Korea’s missile program, calling it the greatest current “challenge to the global security environment.”
“We must respond to the serious threats it makes to the United States and to our allies,” he said. “We want to be clear to North Korea that the United States has the unquestionable ability and unbending will to defend itself and its allies.”
On Wednesday the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) quoted leader Kim Jong Un as saying the drill for the launch of the Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile was “like a real war” and the first step by North Korea's military for operations in the Pacific and “a meaningful prelude to containing Guam."
The U.S. and South Korea have been conducting war games in recent days, as rhetoric between North Korea and the United States has heated up.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy announced its sailors had successfully shot down a medium-range ballistic missile off the coast of Hawaii Wednesday in a test of its defense systems.
“We will continue developing ballistic missile defense technologies to stay ahead of the threat as it evolves,” said Lieutenant General Sam Greaves, the director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.
Read More Mattis: US ‘Never Out of Diplomatic Solutions’ Concerning N. Korea : http://ift.tt/2x5gb7o
The Kremlin on Wednesday confirmed that President Donald Trump's personal lawyer reached out to them during the 2016 presidential campaign, seeking help for a business project in Russia.
In a statement to the House Intelligence Committee investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen said Monday the president's company pursued a project in Moscow during the Republican primary. He said the plan was abandoned for various reasons.
President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters in Moscow on Wednesday that they received Cohen's email, which was sent to the press office's general email address. Peskov said it was one of many emails the Kremlin press office gets - since its email address is available online - and that the Kremlin did not reply to it.
Cohen said he worked on the real estate proposal with Felix Sater, a Russia-born associate who he said claimed to have deep connections in Moscow.
The discussions about a real estate deal in Moscow occurred in the fall of 2015, months after Trump had declared his presidential bid. They ended early in 2016 when Cohen determined that the project was not feasible, according to Cohen's statement.
Cohen also disclosed that Trump was personally aware of the deal, signing a letter of intent and discussing it with Cohen on two other occasions.
Asked whether Putin had seen the email, Peskov said Wednesday that he "cannot discuss with President Putin the hundreds and thousands of various requests coming from different countries" that end up in that Kremlin mailbox.
Peskov said the press office did not reply to Cohen's email because it "does not react to such business requests. It is not our job."
Read More Kremlin Confirms Trump's Lawyer Reached out About Deal : http://ift.tt/2iKcCOC
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Tuesday current policy regarding transgender personnel serving in the military would remain in place until he advises President Donald Trump on how to implement his directive on a transgender ban.
Mattis said in a statement he would set up a panel of experts serving in the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to provide recommendations on implementing the ban.
He said he would advise the president after the panel reports it recommendations, and "in the interim, current policy with respect to currently serving members will remain in place."
Trump signed a memorandum on Friday directing the U.S. military not to accept transgender men and women as recruits and halting the use of government funds for sex-reassignment surgeries for active personnel unless the process is already under way.
A White House official who briefed reporters about the memo on Friday declined to specify whether transgender men and women who are currently active in the military could continue to serve based on such criteria.
The memo called on Mattis to submit a plan to Trump by Feb. 21, on how to implement the changes.
Mattis said he expects to issue other guidance "including any necessary interim adjustments to procedures, to ensure the continued combat readiness of the force until our final policy on this subject is issued."
Trump's directive created uncertainty for thousands of transgender service members, many of whom came out after the Pentagon said in 2016 it would allow transgender people to serve openly.
The decision appealed to some in Trump's conservative political base while drawing criticism from advocates of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights.
Civil rights groups filed two new lawsuits on Monday challenging Trump's ban.
Read More Mattis: Transgender Members in US Military May Serve Until Study Completed : http://ift.tt/2wgI9fz
President Donald Trump on Tuesday inspected the huge cleanup and rescue work in southeastern Texas from Hurricane Harvey and said the storm recovery would probably be one of the most expensive efforts the U.S. has ever undertaken.
The storm is already a record-breaking disaster. More than 49 inches (124 centimeters) of rain have poured down on Houston since Friday night — the most rain ever to fall in the continental U.S. in such a short period.
Visiting an emergency operations center in the Texas capital of Austin late Tuesday, Trump said his administration and Congress would come up with the "right solution" to help storm victims.
WATCH: Texans Talk about Evacuations, Snakes and 'Too Much Water'
The president and first lady Melania Trump spent the day in Texas to get a firsthand look at the indescribable damage caused by Harvey. No longer a major hurricane, the tropical storm was still dumping heavy rain on southeastern Texas and western Louisiana.
Cabinet chiefs
Several Cabinet members accompanied Trump, including Health and Human Services chief Tom Price, who said his department was trying to make sure storm victims get the medical care they need, especially those with chronic diseases who may be unable to reach their regular physicians.
Housing Secretary Ben Carson said his department was reallocating assets from routine spending to disaster relief.
In Corpus Christi, where the hurricane hit the Texas Gulf Coast, Trump said he wanted his administration's storm recovery effort to be "better than ever before."
In an ironic convergence of hurricane history, Tuesday was the 12th anniversary of the day Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana and caused catastrophic damage in New Orleans.
Trump said Harvey was a "historic ... epic" storm. Waving a Texas state flag as he spoke to cheering supporters in Corpus Christi, he added: "But it happened in Texas, and Texas can handle anything."
Total damage estimates from Harvey have ranged between $30 billion and $100 billion. But the immediate job for emergency workers, including firefighters, doctors and the Texas National Guard, is rescuing thousands of people still trapped by floods inside or on top of their homes.
Around-the-clock rescues
More than 3,500 people in the Houston area already have been rescued in around-the-clock efforts by emergency personnel and volunteers pushing boats, rafts, inflatable dinghies and even floating plastic furniture through streets and highways that now resemble brown, debris-filled rivers.
As many as nine storm-related deaths have been reported. They included Houston police Sergeant Steve Perez, who drowned in a highway underpass Saturday when his car was overwhelmed by floodwaters as he tried to get to his post.
Police Chief Art Acevedo could barely hold back his tears when he talked about Perez, saying the 59-year-old veteran officer would get a proper tribute from the city as soon as possible.
More rain fell in Houston Tuesday as the storm, which has moved back out over the Gulf of Mexico, remained near the Texas coastline, sucking up moisture from the warm Gulf waters, normally above 85 degrees Fahrenheit (above 30 degrees Celsius) at this time of year.
Forecasters said Harvey would move back inland, passing north and east of Houston Wednesday. Once it moves away from the Gulf, the tropical storm is expected to weaken further as it heads toward the U.S. East Coast by the end of this week.
Rough days ahead
But the worst may not be over for storm survivors. Brock Long, chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said difficult times lie ahead, even after the rain stops.
"This recovery is going to be frustrating," Long said in a message of assurance to Texas residents, adding, "We're going to be here with you."
Trump did not visit Houston, where flood recovery and relocation efforts were concentrated, in order to avoid disrupting rescue efforts. But White House officials said the president planned to return to Texas as soon as Saturday to see how the recovery effort is going. He also plans to stop in Louisiana, east of Texas, which also has received a heavy share of Harvey's rains.
VOA's Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report.
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Mexico sees a serious risk the United States will withdraw from NAFTA and is preparing a plan for that eventuality, Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said Tuesday, calling talks to renegotiate the deal a "roller coaster."
U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened three times in the past week to abandon the North American Free Trade Agreement, revisiting his view that the United States would probably have to start the process of exiting the accord to reach a fair deal for his country.
Trump has vowed to get a better deal for American workers, and the lively rhetoric on both sides precedes a second round of talks starting on Friday in Mexico City to renegotiate the 1994 accord binding the United States, Mexico and Canada.
"This is not going to be easy," Guajardo said at a meeting with senators in Mexico City. "The start of the talks is like a roller coaster."
The need for a backup plan in case Trump shreds the deal underpinning a trillion dollars in annual trade in North America has been a long-standing position of Guajardo, who travels to Washington on Tuesday with foreign minister Luis Videgaray to meet senior White House and trade officials.
"We are also analyzing a scenario with no NAFTA," Guajardo said.
In an interview published earlier on Tuesday in Mexican business daily El Economista, Guajardo said "there is a risk, and it's high" that the Trump administration abandons NAFTA.
Responding to Guajardo's comments, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government would continue to work "seriously" to improve NAFTA.
What is 'Plan B'?
Earlier this month, Guajardo told Reuters a "Plan B" meant being prepared to replace items such as the billions of dollars in grain Mexico imports from the United States annually.
To that end, and to seek openings in more markets, Mexico is hosting trade talks with Brazil this week. Trade officials are also discussing a possible replacement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact that Trump ditched after taking office.
Overlapping with the NAFTA talks, Mexico will participate in separate trade meetings with Australia and New Zealand in Peru, and President Enrique Pena Nieto travels to China this weekend.
Still, attempts to diversify trade will not be easy. Some 80 percent of all Mexican exports go to the United States, and economies such as Brazil and China often compete with Mexico.
Guajardo also suggested World Trade Organization tariffs that would kick in if NAFTA crumbled would be more favorable for Mexico, a view held by many Mexican experts who think trade with the United States would survive the demise of the 1994 deal.
"I don't think it's going to make that much of a difference in terms of the trading relationship," said Andres Rozental, a former Mexican deputy foreign minister. "If we have to go to WTO tariffs, for us it's fairly straightforward."
Guajardo's and Videgaray's trip to Washington was announced after Trump not only threatened to pull out of the trade deal, but again said that Mexico would end up paying for the wall he wants to build between the two countries.
Mexico has refused point blank to pay for a wall. In January, after similar comments led Mexico to scrap a summit with Trump, the two sides agreed not to talk in public about it.
Read More Mexico Dusts Off 'Plan B' as Trump Revs Up Threats to Kill NAFTA : http://ift.tt/2vCe0EV
President Sauli Niinisto on Tuesday denied that Finland was buying new fighter jets from American planemaker Boeing, following remarks by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Finland is looking to replace its aging fleet of 62 F/A-18 Hornet jets with multirole fighter aircraft in a procurement estimated at 7-10 billion euros by 2025.
"One of the things that is happening is you're purchasing large amounts of our great F-18 aircraft from Boeing and it's one of the great planes, the great fighter jets," Trump said on Monday at a news conference with his Finnish counterpart in the White House.
Niinisto, who was standing next to Trump, looked surprised but did not follow up on the comment. He later denied the deal with Boeing on his Twitter account and on Tuesday in Washington.
"It seems that on the sale side, past decisions and hopes about future decisions have mixed. ... The purchase is just starting, and that is very clear here," Niinisto told Finnish reporters.
Helsinki is expected to request that European and U.S. planemakers provide quotations for new jets in 2018, with a final decision made in the early 2020s.
A government working group has listed possible candidates as Saab's Jas Gripen, Dassault Aviation's Rafale, Boeing's Super Hornet, Lockheed Martin's F-35 and the Eurofighter, made by Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain.
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President Donald Trump is unlikely to win congressional support for funds he wants for a proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall before an Oct. 1 deadline, meaning he may have to choose between backing down on a key campaign promise or shutting down the government.
The second option was a politically dangerous one before Hurricane Harvey tore through southern Texas over the weekend and it now looks even riskier.
At a campaign-style rally in Phoenix last week, Trump doubled down on his earlier demands that Congress fund a Mexican border wall in government spending legislation, adding a clear threat. "If we have to close down our government, we're building that wall," he told supporters.
Since then, lawmakers who were already struggling to hammer out a stop-gap federal spending bill before Oct. 1 to avoid a shutdown have had to factor in Trump's threat as well.
During his election campaign, Trump insisted Mexico would pay for the construction of the wall, which experts said could cost about $22 billion and take more than three years to complete.
With Mexico refusing to pay, Trump has said since taking office in January that the wall will initially need U.S. funding but that he will find a way to make Mexico ultimately pay for it.
A government shutdown would result if Congress is unable to agree on a spending deal or if Trump does not like the package and vetoes it. A veto would put Trump in a dangerous position of rejecting a bill approved by his own party.
"Shutting down the government would be a self-destructive act, not to mention an act of political malpractice," Republican Representative Charlie Dent said in an interview.
Republicans firmly control the House of Representatives, but have only a narrow majority in the Senate, where at least eight Democratic votes will be needed to pass a spending bill.
Democratic leaders firmly oppose the border wall and appear to be in no mood to do Trump a favor by including funding now.
"Democrats aren't feeling the heat over this," Democratic strategist Jim Manley said, adding that "no Democrat is going to be cowed"by Trump's threat to shut down the government.
Without Democratic support, current and former congressional aides from both parties said they expected Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who has been sharply criticized by Trump in recent weeks, to opt for a spending bill without wall funding to get legislation to the president's desk.
Dent said he expected the Senate would "strip out" $1.6 billion that had been set aside to start building the wall in a spending measure already passed by the House, and send it back to that chamber for another vote.
Dent voted for the wall funding the first time but said he would approve the spending measure without the wall money if that is what it takes to keep the government open.
Asked what Congress would do if Trump vetoes a spending bill, Dent said: "We'll have to determine what our next steps will be, but I'm hopeful he'll sign the bill."
Short-term Fix
A stop-gap spending bill would keep the government open for several months with no major changes to spending programs while lawmakers work out a longer-term deal. The U.S. Congress has relied heavily on those short-term fixes - known as continuing resolutions - for many years.
Federal assistance for those affected by devastating floods triggered by Harvey could be attached to a new continuing resolution.
But Trump said on Monday the hurricane recovery effort had not caused him to reconsider the option of a government shutdown.
"I think it has nothing to do with it, really. I think this is separate," he said at a news conference.
He said he hoped a government shutdown would not be needed but declined to rule it out. "If it's necessary, we'll have to see."
If Trump signs a short-term extension without wall funding, it could delay the battle until December, when that legislation would likely expire.
Trump also said on Monday that the border wall was "imperative" in order to tackle drug trafficking and crime as well as illegal immigration.
The budget debate is also complicated by the need to finance support for victims of Harvey, the worst storm to hit Texas in more than 50 years, and find a deal on increasing the federal debt ceiling, which limits how much money the U.S. government can borrow.
One possible escape route for Trump could be separate legislation for funding the wall. John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, has introduced legislation that would authorize $15 billion over four years for border security. That would still need the support of at least eight Senate Democrats.
Read More Tough Choice for Trump if Congress Refuses Border Wall Financing : http://ift.tt/2xsKF0Nunitedstatepolitics.blogspot.com Adblock test (Why?) "politic" - Google News February 01, 2024 at 03:47AM https://ift.tt...
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