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Wednesday, February 28, 2018

UN Body Says US Detention of Pakistani at Guantanamo Has No Legal Basis

A Pakistani man held at the U.S.-run Guantanamo Bay detention facility since 2006 should be released immediately and given a right to compensation, the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said on Wednesday.

The detention of Ammar al-Baluchi is arbitrary, breaches international human rights law and has no legal basis, according to a written opinion by the group of five independent experts, who report to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The United States has said al-Baluchi’s detention is lawful. Al-Baluchi, a Kuwait-born citizen of Pakistan also known as Abdul Aziz Ali, is the nephew and an alleged co-conspirator of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“Mr. al Baluchi has been subject to prolonged detention on discriminatory grounds and has not been afforded equality of arms in terms of having adequate facilities for the preparation of his defense under the same conditions as the prosecution,” the experts said.

The U.S. judicial system normally affords detainees the guarantees of due process and a fair trial, but he had been denied those rights, an act of discrimination based on his status as a foreign national and his religion, they said.

His detention contravened at least 13 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the group added.

The five members of the group are Jose Antonio Guevara Bermudez from Mexico, Elina Steinerte from Latvia, Leigh Toomey from Australia, Seong-Phil Hong from South Korea and Setondji Roland Adjovi from Benin.

U.S. military spokeswoman Navy Commander Sarah Higgins reaffirmed the U.S. view that it has the right to detain him, but declined for now to offer a broader rebuttal.

“The U.S. government has the legal authority to detain al Baluchi. Until we have time to analyze the basis of their claim, we will delay further comment,” Higgins told Reuters.

In December, another expert mandated by the U.N. Human Rights Council, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer, said he had information that al-Baluchi was still being tortured, years after Washington banned “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

The Pentagon said at the time that the allegation was not true, and such claims had been investigated on several occasions, and no credible evidence had been found.

The prison, which was opened at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo, Cuba by President George W. Bush to hold terrorism suspects captured overseas after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, came to symbolize harsh detention practices that opened the United States to international accusations of torture.

His successor Barack Obama reduced the inmate population at Guantanamo Bay to 41 from 242, but fell short of fulfilling his promise to close the jail.

President Donald Trump asked Congress last year for funds to upgrade the detention center, having said during his electoral campaign that he wanted to “load it up with some bad dudes.”

The Working Group, which has previously expressed concerns about Guantanamo Bay to the U.S. government, said its closure must remain a priority, adding that systematic imprisonment in violation of the rules of international law may constitute crimes against humanity.

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Trump to Senators: 'You're Afraid of the NRA'

U.S. President Donald Trump held a roundtable discussion on gun control Wednesday with a group of senators, during which he accused them of being "afraid" of the National Rifle Association, the powerful gun lobby.

At the bipartisan meeting, Trump said he would give "very serious thought" to a proposal to raise to 21 from 18 the age at which rifles such as the AR-15 — the gun used in the Parkland, Florida, school shooting — can be legally purchased.

WATCH: Trump Says He, NRA Don't Have to Agree All the Time

"I can say that the NRA is opposed to it, and I'm a fan of the NRA. There's no bigger fan," Trump said. But, he added, he and the NRA don't have to agree on "everything."

The provision is included in a bill that would mandate background checks to include online sales and gun shows. Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, one of the bill's authors, told Trump that legislators didn't address the age question in recent discussions in the Senate.

Trump replied, "You know why? Because you're afraid of the NRA."

WATCH:Trump: 'We Have to Confront Mental Health'

The bill, named for Toomey and Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, failed to get the 60-vote minimum in the Senate in 2013 and again in 2015.

On Sunday, Toomey told NBC News that he was "skeptical" about the proposed change in the age limit "because the vast majority of 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds are law-abiding citizens who aren't a threat to anyone."

In 2013, the NRA said the Toomey-Manchin bill would "not prevent the next shooting" and would not "solve violent crime."

During Wednesday's meeting, Trump called for "one great piece of legislation" to address the gun problem and asked whether various suggestions from senators could be added to the basic background check bill.

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White House Communications Director Hope Hicks Resigns

White House Communications Director Hope Hicks, one of President Donald Trump's most loyal aides, is resigning.

In a statement, the president praises Hicks for her work over the last three years. He says he “will miss having her by my side.”

The news comes a day after Hicks was interviewed for nine hours by the panel investigating Russia interference in the 2016 election and contact between Trump's campaign and Russia.

She acknowledged to a House intelligence panel that she has occasionally told “white lies” for Trump. But she said she had not lied about anything relevant to the Russia investigation.

Hicks served as Trump's one-woman communications shop during his winning campaign. She says in a statement, “There are no words to adequately express my gratitude to President Trump.”

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Californians Bash Trump for Bid to End Climate Change Plan

Record Number of Native American Women to Run in 2018 Midterm Polls

Trump Attacks Attorney General Sessions as 'Disgraceful'

Manafort Pleads Not Guilty to New Charges

Trump Praises Border Wall Ruling by Judge He Ridiculed

Students Wary, Hopeful, Proud as Florida School Reopens

US Criticizes Beijing's Term Limit Decision, but Carefully

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The United States says China's proposal to abolish presidential term limits — a move that could make Xi Jinping president for life — is an internal matter for Beijing. VOA's Bill Gallo reports from Washington. Read More US Criticizes Beijing's Term Limit Decision, but Carefully : http://ift.tt/2CuCZku

U.S. Attorney General Announces New Task Force to Combat Opioid Epidemic

Joined by several state attorneys general and the acting DEA administrator, U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions announced a new task force to crack down on opioid manufacturers and distributors. He also announced the hiring of a federal prosecutor to lead anti-opioid efforts at the Department of Justice. From Washington, VOA's Jill Craig has more.

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Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Plan to Privatize US Air Traffic Control Lacks Support, Lawmaker Says

The chairman of the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said Tuesday that there was not enough support in Congress to move forward with a plan backed by President Donald Trump to privatize the air traffic control system.

Republican Representative Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania said in a statement that the "air traffic control reform provisions did not reach the obvious level of support needed to pass Congress."

But Shuster vowed to work with the Senate to move forward with legislation to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration, which expires at the end of March. Without authorization, the FAA would not be able to collect aviation taxes, and many of its employees would have to be laid off.

In June, Trump unveiled a plan to privatize air traffic control, saying it would modernize the system and lower flying costs.

Democrats contended it would hand control of a key asset to special interests and big airlines, and some Republicans opposed it.

On Tuesday, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, nearly 250 general aviation organizations, state and local aviation officials, labor unions, consumer groups and airports said they had sent a letter to congressional leaders vowing to oppose any effort to privatize air traffic control.

United Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, American Airlines and Southwest Airlines, all represented by the Airlines for America lobbying group, backed the plan.

Under the proposal, air traffic control would be spun off from the FAA and put under the oversight of a nonprofit corporation.

The FAA spends nearly $10 billion a year on air traffic control funded largely through passenger user fees, and has spent more than $7.5 billion on next-generation air traffic control reforms in recent years.

Trump has said current air traffic reform efforts have failed and were a "total waste of money."

Opponents said the U.S. system is so large that privatization would not save money, would drive up ticket costs and could create a national security risk. Opponents also said technology upgrades would be sidetracked while the private entity was set up, potentially adding years to awarding contracts.

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US Task Force Will Target Opioid Crisis 'at Its Root'

House Resolution Allows Congress to Use Taxpayer Funds for Bulletproof Vests

Judge Ridiculed by Trump Rules in Favor of Border Wall

The same federal judge who President Donald Trump derided during the presidential campaign because of his Mexican heritage ruled in favor of Trump's desire for a wall along the Mexican border.

Judge Gonzalo Curiel on Tuesday dismissed legal challenges to the wall by the state of California and a number of environmental groups.

The judge wrote that the plaintiffs failed to prove the administration overstepped its legal authority by ordering the wall.

They had argued the project violates environmental rules and the rights of states to decide whether it wants the wall on their side of the border.

Curiel said his decision was not based on whether building the wall was "politically wise or prudent."

Curiel oversaw lawsuits of alleged fraud by Trump University during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump, then a Republican candidate, ridiculed the U.S.-born judge over his Mexican heritage and accused him of bias.

Trump paid a multimillion-dollar settlement in the university fraud case without admitting guilt.

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Sessions: Justice Dept. Can Ban Bump Stocks With Regulation

NSA Director: Trump Has Given No Specific Order to Combat Russian Meddling in 2018 Election

Sources: Trump Son-in-law Kushner Loses Access to Coveted Intelligence Briefing

U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has lost access to the most valued U.S. intelligence report, the President's Daily Brief, as the White House moves to impose greater discipline on access to secrets, two U.S. officials familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

Kushner, a close Trump adviser who has been operating under an interim security clearance for about a year, had his access to the highly classified briefing cut off in the past few weeks, said the sources.

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Florida School Massacre Scene to Reopen as Lawmakers Debate Guns

White House Aide Hope Hicks Faces Lawmakers' Questions

White House communications director Hope Hicks, one of President Donald Trump's longest-running aides, is set to appear Tuesday before a congressional panel probing his campaign's links to Russia, but it is not clear how many questions she might be willing to answer.

The House Intelligence Committee is meeting behind closed doors with Hicks, who first worked for the Trump family as a public relations spokeswoman for Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump, to promote her clothing business before later joining Trump's campaign on his successful 2016 run for the White House.

The congressional panel has sparred in recent weeks with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon over the scope of questions he would answer about the weeks after Trump won the election before taking office and then events that occurred after Trump assumed power 13 months ago.

The White House did not invoke executive privilege against his testimony, but worked to limit the scope of questions he would answer to a prepared list of queries.

It has not been disclosed what line of questions the 29-year-old Hicks will face. Her earlier appearance in January before the same committee was scuttled in a dispute over what questions she would answer.

One point of Tuesday's inquiry is likely to focus on her role in helping draft a misleading statement on Air Force One last year about a June 2016 meeting that Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort held with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower in the midst of the campaign. The younger Trump set up the meeting believing he would get incriminating information about Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump's opponent, but the mid-2017 statement about the gathering said it was about Americans' adoptions of Russian children.

Congressman Michael Conaway, a Texas Republican who is running the panel’s Russia investigation, said Monday that he “would not be surprised” if Hicks refuses to answer certain questions on grounds that Trump may eventually want to invoke executive privilege to keep secret conversations he had with her.

Trump almost daily attacks the investigations into Russia's meddling in the election that was aimed at helping him defeat Clinton, a former U.S. secretary of state.

On Tuesday, hours before Hicks was set for questioning, Trump said on Twitter, "WITCH HUNT," in all capital letters.


He quoted several analysts who say they see no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia or that he obstructed justice in trying to curb the FBI's Russia investigation by firing former FBI director James Comey, who at the time was leading the agency's Russia probe.

Trump's ouster of Comey last May led to the appointment of another former FBI director, Robert Mueller, as the special counsel to continue the Russia investigation.

Mueller has secured guilty pleas from Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and former foreign affairs adviser George Papadopoulos for lying to investigators about their Russia contacts. One-time Trump campaign aide Rick Gates pleaded guilty last week to financial fraud and lying to investigators in connection with his lobbying efforts on behalf of a Moscow-backed government in Ukraine that predated his role in the U.S. political race.

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Trump Names Campaign Manager for Re-Election Bid

President Donald Trump has named former digital advisor Brad Parscale to be the campaign manager of his 2020 re-election bid.

An official statement referred to Parscale as an "amazing talent, selected based on record of success."

The news was first reported by the conservative Drudge Report website.

Trump has already indicated he plans to run for a second term in office.

"Of course, he's running for re-election," White House press secretary Sarah Sanders

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US Top Court to Mull Rules on What Voters Can Wear to Polls

Sources: Trump to Consider Biofuels Policy Tweaks at Tuesday Meeting

U.S. President Donald Trump will meet with senators and Cabinet officials on Tuesday to discuss ways to lower the cost of the nation’s biofuels policy to oil refiners, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The meeting reflects rising concern in the White House over the current state of the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard, a law requiring refiners to mix biofuels such as corn-based ethanol into their fuel, after a Pennsylvania refiner blamed the regulation for its recent bankruptcy.

The meeting will include Republican Senators Ted Cruz of Texas, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst of corn state Iowa, along with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, according to the sources.

The meeting will also include White House legislative director Marc Short, who will seek to ensure any agreement can be achieved through executive orders and regulatory actions defensible in court, the sources said.

Representatives for those officials, and the White House, declined to comment.

U.S. farm groups urged Trump in a letter on Monday not to weaken the RFS, calling it a critical engine of rural jobs. "Any action that seeks to weaken the RFS for the benefit of a handful of refiners will, by extension, be borne on the backs of our farmers," according to the letter.

Under the RFS, refiners must earn or purchase biofuel blending credits called RINs to prove to the federal government that enough biofuels are being blended into their gasoline and diesel to comply with the policy.

As biofuels volumes quotas have increased over the years, however, so have prices for the credits – meaning refiners that buy them instead of acquire them by blending fuels themselves are facing rising costs.

Oil refiner Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES), which employs more than 1,000 people in a key electoral state, declared bankruptcy last month and blamed the regulation for its demise. Reuters reported other factors may also have played a role in the company's bankruptcy, including the withdrawal of more than $590 million in dividend-style payments from the company by its investor owners.

Two of the sources familiar with the agenda of the Tuesday meeting said at least four options aimed at reducing the cost of RINs to refiners like PES will be considered — though they noted the effort would be constrained by political and legal realities that have derailed previous reform efforts.

Prices of RINs tumbled by nearly 20 percent in the past week on expectations of a regulatory tweak.

One idea would be to count U.S. ethanol exports toward annual biofuels volumes mandates that are currently focused purely on domestic usage, an idea the sources said had been studied by Agriculture Secretary Perdue who now favors it.

Another idea would be to place a cap on the price of a RIN.

Senator Cruz late last year suggested capping RIN prices at 10 cents each, far below the current value of over 60 cents, in a move that was roundly rejected by biofuels advocates.

The meeting will also consider measures to remove speculation from the RIN market, potentially by limiting RIN transactions to those directly involved in generating and consuming them: blenders and refiners, the sources said.

Any plan would also likely include a concession to the ethanol industry, they said, such as a waiver to allow gasoline containing 15 percent ethanol to be sold year round. Sales of high-ethanol blends are currently restricted in the summer due to concerns over smog.

The meeting could also look at solutions focused more directly on refiner PES — like waiving its current RIN obligation valued at about $350 million, the sources said. But any such move would likely draw a backlash from other refiners who have no hope of receiving such a waiver.

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Monday, February 26, 2018

Americans Say Congress Listening to All the Wrong People

Looking for common ground with your neighbor these days? Try switching subjects from the weather to Congress. Chances are, you both agree it's terrible.

In red, blue or purple states, in middle America or on the coasts, most Americans loathe the nation's legislature. One big reason: Most think lawmakers are listening to all the wrong people, suggests a new study by researchers at Stanford University and the University of California-Santa Barbara with the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

"We have the best Congress you can buy and pay for," said Chester Trahan, 78, of Palm Coast, Florida. "Congress, they're subject to the special interest groups and that's really who's running the show."

Hating Congress has become a lasting feature of American politics, regardless of which party is in power or whether the 435 House members and 100 senators pass lots of legislation — or don't do much of anything at all.

A new poll from the AP-NORC Center found that 85 percent of Americans, including 89 percent of Democrats and 82 percent of Republicans, disapprove of the job Congress is doing. That might matter in this midterm election year, as Republicans defend their majorities in the House and Senate.

In the study by Stanford, UC-Santa Barbara and the AP-NORC Center, which was conducted in 2015 and again in 2017, only about 2 in 10 said they think Congress pays much attention to their own constituents or Americans as a whole, or even give much consideration to the best interests of those people.

Instead, most said Congress does listen to lobbyists, donors and the wealthy.

That's exactly the opposite of the way people think Congress should function, the study found. The highest levels of disapproval came from Americans who felt the largest sense of disconnect between whom they think Congress should listen to and whom they believe Congress actually listens to.

That disconnect played out in the public square last week as the nation reeled from yet another mass shooting — this time, the Valentine's Day killing of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Many raged over what they see as the National Rifle Association's power to stifle efforts to tighten gun laws, including a ban on assault rifles.

"Can you tell me right now that you will not accept a single donation from the NRA?" student Cameron Kasky demanded of Sen. Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican who appeared on CNN's "Stand Up" town hall.

Rubio, one of the gun rights groups' top beneficiaries over his political career, would not make that pledge. Nor have other congressional Republicans, who are overwhelmingly favored by gun rights supporters when it comes to campaign contributions.

The disillusionment is not just about guns, and it's not new. Democrats and Republicans alike see members of Congress as mostly listening to elites and donors rather than the ordinary people they represent.

Congress has rarely been especially popular in polls conducted over the past several decades, but approval of the House and Senate's performance has been particularly low over the past several years. In polling by Gallup, Congress' approval rating has been below 20 percent for eight straight years.

Americans are more likely to approve of their own member of Congress than of Congress generally, but even that rating is less than stellar. In the latest AP-NORC poll, 44 percent of Americans — 41 percent of Democrats and 50 percent of Republicans — approve of the person representing their district.

American apathy toward their lawmakers has become an area of scholarly study, with some researchers contending that when Congress doesn't act, it's often representing a divided electorate that can't resolve disagreements, either.

That certainly describes the United States now, which is deeply divided over such uncomfortable matters as immigration, gun control and President Donald Trump. Even with Republicans in control of the presidency and the House and Senate, Congress passed just one significant piece of legislation during Trump's first year in office — a $1.5 trillion overhaul of U.S. tax laws that Republicans hope will begin to boost American paychecks this year.

"It is not crumbs,'' Trump said earlier this month in a brushback to Democratic efforts to campaign against the tax cuts.

In November, voters cast ballots for every House seat and 34 in the Senate. And it's fair to say plenty of members of Congress have had enough of Congress, too — including more than 50 House members who have opted to leave rather than seek re-election.

Among the other reasons for all the Congress hate, fewer than 2 in 10 Americans in the new study said they think Congress passes mostly good laws. The remainder considers congressional output to be at best neutral, with over a third seeing it as mostly bad. At the same time, Americans who felt Congress should be passing either more laws or fewer of them were far more likely to disapprove of Congress than those who felt the number of laws passed by Congress is about right.

"Most of them have got it wrong," said David Peterson, 67, a Republican-leaning Vietnam veteran from Torrance, California. "The fact that Congress can't seem to come to grips with health care, can't seem to come to grips with immigration, can't seem to come to grips with legislating firearms. It makes me less optimistic."

The study was conducted in 2015 and 2017 using samples drawn from NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. Funding was provided by the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University and by NORC.

The most recent AP-NORC poll of 1,337 adults was conducted Feb. 15-19 using a sample drawn from NORC's AmeriSpeak Panel, and has a margin of sampling error for all respondents of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

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Trump Org. Donates Foreign Profits, But Won't Say How Much

The Trump Organization said Monday it has made good on the president's promise to donate profits from foreign government spending at its hotels to the U.S. Treasury, but neither the company nor the government disclosed the amount or how it was calculated.

Watchdog groups seized on the lack of detail as another example of the secrecy surrounding President Donald Trump's pledges to separate his administration from his business empire.

"There is no independent oversight or accountability. We're being asked to take their word for it," said Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "Most importantly, even if they had given every dime they made from foreign governments to the Treasury, the taking of those payments would still be a problem under the Constitution."

Trump Organization Executive Vice President and Chief Compliance Counsel George Sorial said in a statement to The Associated Press that the donation was made on Feb. 22 and includes profits from Jan. 20 through Dec. 31, 2017. The company declined to provide a sum or breakdown of the amounts by country.

Sorial said the profits were calculated using "our policy and the Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry" but did not elaborate. The U.S. Treasury did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Watchdog group Public Citizen questioned the spirit of the pledge in a letter to the Trump Organization earlier this month since the methodology used for donations would seemingly not require any donation from unprofitable properties receiving foreign government revenue.

Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, said that the lack of disclosure was unsurprising given that the Trump's family businesses have "a penchant for secrecy and a readiness to violate their promises."

"Did they pay with Monopoly money? If the Trump Organization won't say how much they paid, let alone how they calculated it at each property, why in the world should we believe they actually have delivered on their promise?" Weissman said.

Ethics experts had already found problems with the pledge Trump made at a news conference held days before his inauguration because it didn't include all his properties, such as his resorts, and left it up to Trump to define "profit." The pledge was supposedly made to ameliorate the worry that Trump was violating the Constitution's emoluments clause, which bans the president's acceptance of foreign gifts and money without Congress' permission.

Several lawsuits have challenged Trump's ties to his business ventures and his refusal to divest from them. The suits allege that foreign governments' use of Trump's hotels and other properties violates the emoluments clause.

Trump's attorneys have challenged the premise that a hotel room is an "emolument" but announced the pledge to "do more than what the Constitution requires" by donating foreign profits at the news conference. Later, questions emerged about exactly what this would entail.

An eight-page pamphlet provided by the Trump Organization to the House Oversight Committee in May said that the company planned to send the Treasury only profits obviously tied to foreign governments, and not ask guests questions about the source of their money because that would "impede upon personal privacy and diminish the guest experience of our brand."

"It's bad that Trump won't divest himself and establish a truly blind trust, and it's worse that he won't be transparent," said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, ranking member on the House Oversight Committee. He called the Republicans refusal to do oversight, such as subpoena documents, that would shed light on Trump's conflicts of interest "unconscionable."

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US on China's Proposal to Scrap Term Limits: 'That's a Decision for China'

US Lawmakers Renew Calls to Protect Young Undocumented Immigrants

Trump Says Wants to Revive Steel Jobs Even if it Takes Import Tariffs

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said he wants to bring the steel industry back to America even if it means applying tariffs to imports from other countries.

"I want to bring the steel industry back into our country.

If that takes tariffs, let it take tariffs, OK? Maybe it will cost a little bit more, but we'll have jobs," Trump told a meeting at the White House with state governors.

The U.S. Commerce Department has recommended Trump impose curbs on steel and aluminum imports from China and other countries. On Friday, the White House had said Trump has not yet made a final decision on the matter.

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US Supreme Court Rejects Trump 0ver 'Dreamers' Immigrants

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday dealt a setback to President Donald Trump, requiring his administration to maintain protections he has sought to end for hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought illegally into the United States as children.

The justices refused to hear the administration's appeal of a federal judge's Jan. 9 injunction that halted Trump's move to rescind a program that benefits immigrants known as "Dreamers" implemented in 2012 by his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama.

Under Trump's action, the protections were due to start phasing out beginning in March.

In a brief order, the justices did not explain their reasoning, but said the appeal was "denied without prejudice," indicating they will maintain an open mind on the underlying legal issue still being considered by a lower court. The high court also said it expects that appeals court to "proceed expeditiously to decide this case."

Under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, roughly 700,000 young adult, mostly Hispanics, are granted protect from deportation and given work permits for two-year periods, after which they must re-apply. A total of about 1.8 million people are eligible for the program, a sizable fraction of the more than 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally.

Trump's administration had appealed a Jan. 9 nationwide injunction by San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who ruled that the DACA program must remain in place while the litigation is resolved.

The administration had challenged a nationwide injunction by San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who ruled that DACA must remain in place while the litigation is resolved. In an unusual move, the administration appealed directly to the Supreme Court instead of going first to a federal appeals court.

Alsup ruled that the challengers, including the states of California, Maine, Maryland and Minnesota and Obama's former homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano, were likely to succeed in arguing that the administration's decision to end DACA was arbitrary.

Justice Department spokesman Devin O'Malley said in a statement that the administration will continue to defend the Department of Homeland Security's "lawful authority to wind down DACA in an orderly manner."

O'Malley said that "while we were hopeful for a different outcome," the high court rarely agrees to take up cases before a lower court has ruled, "though in our view it was warranted for the extraordinary injunction requiring the Department of Homeland Security to maintain DACA."

The DACA dispute is the second major case the Supreme Court will hear in the coming months arising from Trump's immigration policies. The justices are due to hear arguments in April on the legality of his latest travel ban order barring entry to people from several Muslim-majority nations.

Congress so far has failed to pass legislation to address the fate of the "Dreamers," including a potential path to citizenship.

Trump's move to rescind DACA prompted legal challenges by Democratic state attorneys general and various organizations and individuals in multiple federal courts. His administration argued that Obama exceeded his powers under the Constitution when he bypassed Congress and created DACA.

On Feb. 13, a second U.S. judge issued a similar injunction ordering the Trump administration to keep DACA in place. U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis in Brooklyn acted in a lawsuit brought by plaintiffs including a group of states led by New York.

Alsup and Garaufis did not say that the administration could not at some point end the program, only that there was evidence it did not follow the correct procedures in doing so.

The rulings allow those who had previously applied for protections and whose two-year status was soon to expire to apply beyond the deadline set by the administration in September.

The original plan put on hold by the court rulings said that only those who re-applied by October and whose status was due to expire by March 5 could re-apply.

The administration is not processing new applications.

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Sunday, February 25, 2018

US Lawmakers Face Pressure to Stem Gun Violence

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U.S. lawmakers return to Washington this week facing heightened pressure to address gun violence in America after yet another mass shooting that claimed 17 lives at a Florida high school. VOA's Michael Bowman has this report Read More US Lawmakers Face Pressure to Stem Gun Violence : http://ift.tt/2CJtZU6

Trump to Discuss Florida School Shooting With Governors

President Donald Trump says he'll be discussing the Florida school shooting with the nation's governors.

Trump says the "horrible event" that killed 17 high school students and teachers will be the top agenda item when the governors come to the White House on Monday for meetings.

Socializing was on the agenda Sunday night when the governors and their spouses arrived at the White House night for their annual ball.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott is among those attending. Trump thanked Scott, a close ally, and told the governor he's "doing a great job."

Trump says he's very proud of all the governors. He says they are "very, very special people" who do an "incredible" job.

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Trump Spars with Key Democrat over Surveillance Memos

Crackdown Sparks Fear in Immigrant Communities

Stricter enforcement of U.S. immigration law has created uncertainty for migrants who have been living in the United States for many years, despite having entered the country illegally. Mike O’Sullivan reports from Los Angeles that a widespread crackdown and recent workplace raids have prompted some to seek legal advice.

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Saturday, February 24, 2018

Interior Secretary Alters His Overhaul Plans After Governors Push Back

U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke revamped a plan for a sweeping overhaul of his department Friday with a new organizational map that more closely follows state lines instead of the natural boundaries he initially proposed.

The changes follow complaints from a bipartisan group of Western state governors that Zinke did not consult them before unveiling his original plan last month. The agency oversees vast public lands, primarily in the U.S. West, ranging from protected national parks and wildlife refuges to areas where coal mining and energy exploration dominate the landscape.

Zinke said in an interview with The Associated Press that his goal remains unchanged: decentralizing the Interior Department’s bureaucracy and creating 13 regional headquarters.

Regional map redrawn

The redrawn map, obtained by AP, shows that states such as Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming would fall within a single region instead of being split among multiple regions. Other states remain divided, including California, Nevada, Montana and Oregon.

Aspects of the original map remain, with some regions labeled according to river systems, such as the Upper Colorado Basin and the Missouri Basin. But the new lines tend to cut across geographic features and follow state lines, not boundaries of rivers and ecosystems.

The new proposal resulted from discussions with governors, members of Congress and senior leaders at the agency, Interior officials said.

Many department changes

Zinke, a former Republican congressman from Montana, has imposed major changes at the 70,000-employee Interior Department. He has rolled back regulations considered burdensome to the oil and gas industry and reassigned dozens of senior officials who were holdovers from President Barack Obama’s administration.

The vision of retooling the department’s bureaucracy plays into longstanding calls from politicians in the American West to shift more decisions about nearly 700,000 square miles (more than 1.8 million square kilometers) of public lands under Interior oversight to officials in the region.

Some Democrats have speculated that Zinke’s true motivation for the overhaul is to gut the department, noting that more than 90 percent of its employees work outside Washington, D.C.

Zinke contends that he’s trying to streamline Interior’s management of public lands by requiring all of the agencies within the department to use common regional boundaries, including the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service.

Congress has the final word on the proposal.

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US Governors, VIPs Meet to Discuss Trade, Innovation, Key Issues

U.S. governors kicked off their winter meeting Saturday in Washington, an agenda focusing on trade and innovation. International cooperation was highlighted, with Australia’s prime minister delivering opening remarks and Ghana’s president scheduled to give the keynote address Sunday. From Washington, VOA’s Jill Craig has more.

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Trump Tells Defense Department to Plan Military Parade for Veterans Day

Governors Welcome New Gun Debate, Skeptical Congress Will Act

Testy Exchange With Trump Leads Mexico President to Cancel Visit to White House

After a testy exchange this past week over a proposed U.S. border wall, Mexico President Enrique Pena Nieto canceled plans to visit the White House, according to a report Saturday by The Washington Post.

Pena Nieto and Trump spoke Tuesday, spending a considerable amount of their nearly hourlong call on discussions of the border wall, according to sources who spoke with the Post.

During his run for president, Trump made it a campaign promise that he would have a wall built along the U.S.-Mexico border to help reduce illegal immigration. He told his enthusiastic crowds that Mexico would pay for it.

In the phone call Tuesday, however, the two men argued over that issue. Pena Nieto wanted the U.S. leader to say publicly that Mexico would not pay for the building of the wall, but Trump refused.

One Mexican official said Trump “lost his temper” during the phone call, but U.S. officials countered that he was instead “frustrated and exasperated,” the newspaper reported.

There had been plans for the Mexican leader to make an official visit to the White House in the coming weeks. A planned visit in 2017 was scrapped after the two men disagreed over the proposed wall and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

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US House Intel Committee Democratic Memo Defends Russia Probes

Democrats on the U.S. House Intelligence Committee defended official investigations into claims of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election in a party memo released on Saturday.

The 10-page, partly redacted document, which was posted to the panel's website, sharply criticized a previously released Republican memo as a "transparent effort to undermine" investigations by the FBI, Justice Department and special counsel Robert Mueller.

The memo defends the FBI's obtaining of warrants to conduct
temporary surveillance of Carter Page, an associate of President
Donald Trump's election campaign, whom the Democrats say "the FBI assessed to be an agent of the Russian government."

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More US Companies End Marketing Programs With National Rifle Association

Friday, February 23, 2018

Federal Judges to Hear Pennsylvania District Map Challenge

A request by eight Republican congressmen in Pennsylvania to halt the use of a new congressional district map in this year's elections was placed in the hands of three Republican-appointed federal judges Friday.

The panel, named pursuant to a federal law governing constitutional challenges to congressional reapportionment, consists of Judge Christopher Conner, a Pennsylvania-based district judge; Judge Jerome Simandle, a senior district judge from New Jersey; and Judge Kent Jordan, a circuit judge who was formerly a district judge in Delaware.

Conner and Jordan were chosen for the federal bench by President George W. Bush, while Simandle was nominated by President George H.W. Bush.

The lawsuit filed Thursday in Harrisburg against state elections officials seeks an injunction against the map produced Monday by the Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court.

A lawyer who works for Democratic Governor Tom Wolf on Friday wrote to Conner on behalf of the elections officials, noting that the two senior Republican leaders in the Legislature have a request for a stay of the new map pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Deputy General Counsel Thomas Howell asked Conner to defer action on the congressmen's lawsuit until that request has been resolved.

Howell contended that the lawsuit against Wolf's acting secretary of state and the head of the Bureau of Commissions, Elections and Legislation had "significant hurdles'' and was "rife with legal and factual errors.''

Republican-drafted 2011 map

The congressmen, joined by two Republican state senators, have asked the federal court to require the use of a 2011 congressional district map, drafted by Republicans, for this year's primary and general elections. They argue the map the state justices announced Monday is biased in favor of Democrats, and they did not give lawmakers sufficient time to produce their own replacement map.

In the parallel case, House Speaker Mike Turzai and Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to put the new map on hold, arguing state justices overstepped their authority. On Thursday, the leaders went back to the state Supreme Court to ask it to delay the map.

Wolf and other parties have been given until noon Monday to weigh in.

The 2011 map is widely considered among the nation's most gerrymandered, and has helped Republicans maintain a 13-5 edge in the congressional delegation for three elections.

A majority on the state Supreme Court ruled in January that the 2011 map violated the state constitution's guarantee of free and equal elections.

Democrats have about 800,000 more registered voters in Pennsylvania, but Republican President Donald Trump narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton in the state during the 2016 election.

Democrats are hopeful that new Pennsylvania congressional districts will help them flip enough Republican seats to retake majority control of the U.S. House this year. Six Pennsylvania congressmen elected in 2016 are not running again, an unusually large number.

Pennsylvania congressional candidates can begin collecting signatures to get on the May 15 primary ballot starting Tuesday. Wolf's office has said he is working to implement the court-drawn map for this year's elections.

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Trump: White House Chief of Staff to Decide Fate of Kushner Security Clearance

Trump Recites Inflammatory, Anti-immigrant ‘Snake’ Song

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday recited the lyrics of a song seen as anti-immigration called “The Snake” to drive home his point about restricting immigration — an inflammatory move that harkened back to his days on the campaign trail.

In a speech to conservatives at a convention outside Washington, he also bashed opposition Democrats for failing to back his proposal for putting 1.8 million so-called Dreamer immigrants on a pathway to citizenship in exchange for tightening border security and severely restricting legal immigration.

During his hourlong address, Trump pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and read “The Snake,” a ballad by Al Wilson about a reptile who repays a “tender woman” that nurses it back to health with a deadly bite.

During his campaign, as well as in a speech early in his presidency, Trump used the song, based on one of Aesop's fables, as a less-than-subtle allegory about immigrants entering the United States.

Some Republicans recoil

On Friday, he made no secret about the comparison he was making.

“Think of it in terms of immigration,” he urged attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) as he launched into the song.

“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in,” he said, reading the final line of the song, before returning to his speech.

“And that’s what we’re doing with our country, folks — we’re letting people in, and it’s going to be a lot of people. It’s only going to be worse.”

Some mainstream Republicans have recoiled at Trump's continued recitation of the lyrics.

“Trump's snake story is vicious, disgraceful, utterly racist and profoundly un-American,” tweeted Steve Schmidt, a former campaign aide for president George W Bush.

Democrats ‘totally unresponsive’

In his wide-ranging speech, Trump warned that efforts to reach a deal on the status of undocumented migrants brought to the US illegally as children could fail — and blamed his opponents.

“The Democrats are being totally unresponsive. They don’t want to do anything about DACA, I’m telling you,” he said, referring to negotiations on Capitol Hill on replacing an expiring program that defers deportation for some undocumented migrants.

“It’s very possible that DACA won’t happen.”

Former president Barack Obama launched the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, whose recipients were given legal permission to work, live and go to school in the United States.

DACA-related bills

Last September, Trump announced he was rescinding DACA and called on Congress to craft a solution before March 5, setting off months of bipartisan negotiations.

The Senate held votes on several DACA-related bills last week, but none of them advanced.

Many conservatives in Congress including Senator Ted Cruz have been outspoken in their opposition to any legislation that provides “amnesty” to people who are in the United States illegally.

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US Defense Secretary Mattis Sends Transgender Guidance to Trump

US to Move Embassy to Jerusalem in May

Reports: Former Trump Campaign Associate to Plead Guilty in Russia Probe

Trump Announces 'Heaviest Ever' Sanctions on North Korea

Trump Set to Announce New Sanctions Against North Korea

Ivanka Trump Brings Star Power to Olympics

Trump Outlines Plan to Arm School Teachers

President Donald Trump says he wants to arm U.S. teachers as part of a plan to "harden" schools against attackers, following last week's deadly school shooting in Florida. As VOA's Bill Gallo reports, the proposal comes as students protest across the country to call for more gun control measures.

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Thursday, February 22, 2018

Widow Disgusted by Indiana Immigration Ad Featuring Husband

Trump: Give Guns to Teachers Who 'Want Them'

Russian Indicted by US Seen as Doing Favors for Putin

US Official Focused on Election Security Being Removed From Job

New Charges Brought Against Ex-Trump Campaign Associates

Special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutors filed additional charges Thursday against President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and a business associate.

The charges are contained in a new indictment brought by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia.

The new indictment, which had been expected, adds allegations of tax evasion and increases the amount of money Manafort is accused of laundering through offshore accounts to $30 million. The additional charges involve much of the same conduct Manafort and his longtime associate, Rick Gates, were charged with last year in an indictment in Washington.

The new indictment comes a week after Mueller filed charges against 13 Russians, accusing them of a vast conspiracy to undermine the U.S. presidential election.

The charges against Manafort and Gates don't relate to any allegations of misconduct related to Trump's campaign. They are accused of directing a covert Washington lobbying campaign on behalf of pro-Russian Ukrainian interests.

Manafort and Gates pleaded not guilty after they were initially charged last October.

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Trump Seeks to Clarify Call for Arming Teachers to Deter School Shootings

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Florida Shooting Unleashes Youth Crusade for Stricter Gun Laws

US SEC Calls for 'Clearer' Cyber Risk Disclosure From Companies

Defense Secretary Has Yet to Send Transgender Guidance to Trump

Trump Demands Probe of Obama Response to Russia Election Meddling

Florida School Shooting Survivors Are Not 'Crisis Actors'

Two students who survived the Florida school shooting and spoke publicly about it are not “crisis actors,” despite the claims of several conspiracy-oriented sites and an aide to a Florida lawmaker.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students, David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez, are among those targeted by conspiracy theories about the Feb. 14 shooting that killed 17 people.

Similar hoaxes were spread online following other mass shootings, including the 2012 assault on Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

In Florida, an aide to a state representative on Tuesday emailed a Tampa Bay Times reporter a screenshot of them being interviewed on CNN and said, “Both kids in the picture are not students here but actors that travel to various crisis when they happen.”

Broward County Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie told the Times that the legislative aide’s comments were “outrageous and disrespectful.”

“These are absolutely students at Stoneman Douglas. They’ve been there. I can verify that,” Runcie told the newspaper.

The aide, Benjamin Kelly, sent a second email to Times reporter Alex Leary with a link to a conspiracy video saying, “There is a clip on you tube that shows Mr. Hogg out in California. (I guess he transferred?)” In the clip, a news reporter interviewed Hogg while on vacation in 2017 in Redondo Beach as a witness to a friend’s confrontation with a lifeguard. On Wednesday, YouTube had replaced one link to a video about Hogg as an actor with a notice saying it violated the site’s policy on harassment and bullying, but other videos remained.

Kelly tweeted later Tuesday that his comments were a mistake. The speaker of the Florida House, who oversees all House employees, subsequently fired him.

Runcie called such attacks “part of what’s wrong with the narrative in this country. If someone just has a different type of opinion, it seems that we want to somehow demonize them or color them as being somehow illegitimate instead of listening. . We’ll never get beyond that if, as soon as you show up, you’re demonized.”

Hogg also responded to the erroneous claims, telling CNN, “I am not a crisis actor. I’m somebody that had to witness this and live through this and I continue to have to do that.”

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Trump Pushes for Ban on Bump Stock Devices

U.S. President Donald Trump says he has directed the Justice Department to propose regulations to curb the use of rapid-fire devices that allow semi-automatic rifles to mimic the firing speed of fully automatic firearms. Trump made the announcement Tuesday, six days after a gunman opened fire in a Florida high school, killing 17 people. Students across America are protesting mass shootings at schools and demand action from political leaders to stop the trend. VOA's Zlatica Hoke has more.

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WH: New Security Clearance Policy Will Not Affect Kushner's Work

The White House says new restrictions on top security clearances set to go into effect Friday will not affect the work of senior White House adviser Jared Kushner.

President Donald Trump's son-in-law has been operating for more than a year with an interim clearance, and his position has given him access to some of the most sensitive information, including the president's daily security briefing.

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly announced last week the new policy that would strip interim clearances from those who currently have access at the top levels of the security classification system.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Tuesday the change will not impact Kushner's work.

"Nothing that has taken place will affect the valuable work that Jared is doing. He continues, and will continue, to be a valued member of the team," Sanders said.

Kushner's duties have been wide-ranging, from the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to making the federal government run more efficiently, as well as work on the North American Free Trade Agreement.

"As I told Jared days ago, I have full confidence in his ability to continue performing his duties in his foreign policy portfolio including overseeing our Israeli-Palestinian peace effort and serving as an integral part of our relationship with Mexico," Kelly said in a statement.

U.S. government employees must submit a form extensively detailing background information such as prior jobs and addresses, relatives, foreign contacts, foreign business activities and criminal record. The information is the basis for investigators to determine whether the person should be trusted to receive any relevant security clearances.

Kushner has amended his submission multiple times, delaying his clearance process.

When asked if Trump would use his executive authority to grant Kushner a clearance, Sanders said Tuesday she had not spoken with the president "about whether or not that would be necessary."

The new White House policy is set to affect several dozen employees, according to administration officials, though most do not need the top level clearances to do their jobs.

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Trump Proposes Banning Devices that Make Some Guns More Lethal

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Clooney, Winfrey, Spielberg, Katzenberg Offer $500K Each for Gun Control March

George Clooney, Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg said Tuesday that they would each donate $500,000 to the "March for Our Lives" rally in Washington in support of gun control following last week's shooting at a Florida high school that left 17 dead.

Clooney and his wife, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, were the first to make the financial pledge and also said they would march alongside the students behind the rally on March 24.

Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, where a 19-year-old former student is accused of going on a rampage with a semiautomatic AR-15-style assault rifle on February 14, are assisting in planning the march.

"Our family will be there on March 24 to stand side by side with this incredible generation of young people from all over the country, and in the name of our children Ella and Alexander, we're donating $500,000 to help pay for this groundbreaking event. Our children's lives depend on it," Clooney said in a statement.

Later on Tuesday, Spielberg, with wife Kate Capshaw, and Winfrey each said that they would match the Clooneys' donation.

"George and Amal, I couldn't agree with you more. I am joining forces with you and will match your $500,000 donation to 'March for Our Lives.' These inspiring young people remind me of the Freedom Riders of the '60s who also said we've had ENOUGH and our voices will be heard," Winfrey tweeted.

Spielberg and Capshaw, in an emailed statement, said, "The young students in Florida and now across the country are already demonstrating their leadership with a confidence and maturity that belies their ages."

It was not immediately clear whether they and Winfrey would attend the march. But Katzenberg, a film producer, and his wife, Marilyn, also said they would match the $500,000 donation and march in Washington.

The March for Our Lives event is one of several rallies being organized by students across the country in support of stronger gun laws, challenging politicians who they say have failed to protect them. Busloads of Florida students headed to the state capital, Tallahassee, on Tuesday to call for a ban on assault rifles.

Other celebrities have voiced their support for the students' efforts on social media, including Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and Cher.

Gun ownership is protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and remains one of the nation's more divisive issues.

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US: North Korea Canceled Planned Meeting With VP Pence

Vice President Mike Pence was all set to hold a history-making meeting with North Korean officials during the Winter Olympics in South Korea, but Kim Jong Un's government canceled at the last minute, the Trump administration said Tuesday.

Pence led the U.S. delegation to the opening ceremonies in Pyeongchang, South Korea, amid dramatic speculation that the United States and North Korea might finally sit down to talk. North Korea had sent athletes to compete at the games along with a delegation including its nominal head of state and Kim's sister, Kim Yo Jong. But while U.S. officials had left open the possibility that Pence could potentially meet with the North Koreans during the visit, they had emphasized that no such meeting was expected.

On Tuesday, the vice president's office said that North Korea had "dangled a meeting" with Pence in hopes that doing so would entice Pence to ease up on the North. Pence's office suggested that North Korea later bailed on the meeting because it became clear that Pence would hold firm on the U.S. stance if a meeting did occur. And the State Department said that while Pence was willing to meet, he would have used the opportunity to "drive home the necessity of North Korea abandoning its illicit ballistic missile and nuclear programs."

"We regret their failure to seize this opportunity," said State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert.

Pence's chief of staff, Nick Ayers, said that the planned meeting — first reported by The Washington Post — would have included an "uncompromising message" delivered by Pence about the "maximum pressure campaign" the Trump administration is waging to try to deter North Korea from proceeding with its nuclear program.

"Perhaps that's why they walked away from a meeting, or perhaps they were never sincere about sitting down," Ayers said.

North Korea had no immediate response to the news out of Washington. But North Korean officials had said previously that they had no interest or intention of meeting with Pence in Pyeongchang during the games.

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Florida Students Push to Control Assault Rifle Sales

Trump Denounces Women Who Accused Him of Sex Abuse

U.S. President Donald Trump Tuesday denounced Rachel Crooks, one of 19 women who have accused Trump of sexual assault, and the Washington Post, for publishing an article about her allegations.

The Post story offers her detailed account of how Trump allegedly forcibly kissed the then 22-year-old on January 11, 2006 while the two were waiting for an elevator in Trump Tower in New York. The article also describes how nothing has come of the allegations from her and the other women, despite repeating her story, which she first described to The New York Times several months prior to the 2016 presidential election.

Like other allegations, Trump has denied them — as he did Tuesday on Twitter.

"A woman I don’t know and, to the best of my knowledge, never met, is on the FRONT PAGE of the Fake News Washington Post saying I kissed her (for two minutes yet) in the lobby of Trump Tower 12 years ago. Never happened! Who would do this in a public space with live security......

...cameras running. Another False Accusation. Why doesn’t @washingtonpost report the story of the women taking money to make up stories about me? One had her home mortgage paid off. Only @FoxNews so reported ...doesn’t fit the Mainstream Media narrative."

In response to the Republican president's tweets, Crooks, who is running as a Democrat for a seat in the Ohio State House of Representatives, challenged Trump to release video of their alleged encounter.

"Please, by all means, share the footage from the hallway outside the 24th floor residential elevator bank on the morning of January 11, 2006. Let’s clear this up for everyone. It’s liars like you in politics that have prompted me to run for office myself."

Most of the sex abuse accusations from the other women were made after Trump began campaigning for president in 2015, describing experiences spanning five decades.

Trump has consistently denied the allegations, calling them "total fabrications" and tweeting once that "Nobody has more respect for women than me."

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Trump Orders Justice Department to Ban Bump Stocks

President Donald Trump has ordered the Justice Department to draw up regulations on banning bump stocks — the accessory that allowed the Las Vegas gunman to massacre more than 50 people in October.

Trump said during a White House event Tuesday he wants the attorney general to "ban all devices to turn legal weapons into machine guns."

These are the first signs coming from the White House on regulating weapons since 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz allegedly killed 17 people last week at a Parkland, Florida high school.

Until Tuesday, all previous comments from the president centered on combating mental illness and increasing school security.

The Las Vegas shooter used bump stocks — a device attached to a semi-automatic rifle so it can fire more bullets in a shorter time.

Moments before Trump announced his bump stocks memorandum, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said "we haven't closed the door on any front." She was responding to reporters who want to know what the president planned to do about gun violence.

Along with being "very focused" on mental illness, Sanders said Trump is also considering age limits on sales of the type of weapon the teenage gunman used in the high school attack.

Sanders says the president is hosting parents, teachers, and students Wednesday for what she called a "listening session" on school safety. Survivors from the Parkland, Sandy Hook, and Columbine school massacres have been invited.

Sanders also tried to smooth over the fallout from Trump's controversial tweet about the FBI in which he said agents missed signs about Parkland shooter because it was busy trying to look for election interference collusion between his campaign and Russia.

Sanders said a "deranged individual" was the cause of the killings.

The FBI admitted it did not act on a tip on January 5 about Cruz when someone with a close relationship to him called with information about his "gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting."

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Trump Urges Republicans to Fight Pennsylvania's Congressional Map

President Donald Trump on Tuesday encouraged Republicans to fight Pennsylvania's new court-imposed map of congressional districts, issued a day earlier in a move expected to improve Democrats' chances at chipping away at the GOP's U.S. House majority.

“Trump tweeted that Republicans should challenge the new map of Pennsylvania's 18 congressional districts all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary.

“Your Original was correct! Don't let the Dems take elections away from you so that they can raise taxes & waste money!” Trump tweeted.

Republicans have already vowed to challenge it in federal court, as early as Tuesday.

The Democratic-majority state Supreme Court met its own deadline Monday to issue the new boundaries after it threw out a 6-year-old GOP-drawn map as unconstitutionally gerrymandered. The Republican-controlled Legislature and Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf did not produce a consensus replacement map in the three weeks allotted by the court.

The new map is to be in effect for the May 15 primary and substantially overhauls a Republican-drawn congressional map widely viewed as among the nation's most gerrymandered.

New boundaries will likely usher in changes to Pennsylvania's predominantly Republican delegation, which has provided a crucial pillar of support for GOP control of the U.S. House.

Most significantly, the new map gives Democrats a better shot at winning a couple more seats, particularly in Philadelphia's heavily populated and moderate suburbs. There, Republicans have held seats in bizarrely contorted districts, including one described as “Goofy Kicking Donald Duck.”

Republican Rep. Ryan Costello, whose suburban Philadelphia district was narrowly won by Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, is in even more dire straits now that his district adds the heavily Democratic city of Reading.

The state's delegation is already facing big changes in a year with six open seats, the most in decades. Meanwhile, candidates finding themselves in a new political landscape are rethinking campaigns a week before they can start circulating petitions to run.

The map removes the heart of one district from Philadelphia, where a crowd of candidates had assembled to replace the retiring Democratic Rep. Bob Brady, and moves it to suburban Montgomery County.

The new map does not apply to the March 13 special congressional election in southwestern Pennsylvania's 18th District to fill the remaining 10 months in the term of former Republican Rep. Tim Murphy, who resigned amid a scandal. But it renders the special election virtually meaningless: the court's map puts each candidate's homes in a district with a Pittsburgh-area incumbent.

The court ruled last month that Republicans who redrew district boundaries in 2011 unconstitutionally put partisan interests above neutral line-drawing criteria. It was the first time any state court threw out congressional boundaries in a partisan gerrymandering case, this one brought by registered Democratic voters and the League of Women Voters last June.

The new map repackages districts that had been stretched nearly halfway across Pennsylvania and reunifies Democratic-heavy cities that had been split by Republican map drawers six years ago.

Democrats cheered the new map, while Republicans blasted it.

Independent analysts said the map should improve Democratic prospects while still favoring Republicans as a whole. An analysis conducted through PlanScore.org concluded the court's redrawn map eliminates “much of the partisan skew” favoring Republicans on the old Republican-drawn map, although not all of it.

University of Florida political science doctoral student Brian Amos said Clinton beat Republican Donald Trump in eight of 18 districts in the 2016 presidential election on the court's map. That compared with six of 18 districts Clinton won in 2016 under the invalidated map.

Republicans who controlled the Legislature and the governor's office after the 2010 census crafted the now-invalidated map to elect Republicans and succeeded in that aim: Republicans won 13 of 18 seats in three straight elections even though Pennsylvania's registered Democratic voters outnumber Republicans.

Republicans will argue in federal court that legislatures and governors, not courts, have the constitutional responsibility to draw congressional maps. But they appear to face an uphill battle since federal courts are normally reluctant to undo a state court decision, said Michael Morley, a constitutional law professor at Barry University in Florida. “I think it will be a major obstacle and a major challenge to get around it” Morley said.

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Mueller Charges Lawyer With Lying in Ukraine-related Case

The Special Counsel probing Russian interference in the U.S. election has unveiled charges against a lawyer for making false statements.

The office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller has accused attorney Alex Van Der Zwann of "knowingly making materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statements" to investigators about a Ukraine-related case.

Details are still coming in.

Last week, Mueller indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities with conducting an illegal "information warfare" campaign to disrupt the 2016 election to help President Donald Trump win.

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Students Hold 'Lie-In' Protest to Urge White House Action on Guns

The White House is signaling it is open to expanded background checks on potential gun buyers. The statement comes as pressure builds for Washington to address gun violence following last week's shooting at a Florida high school, where 17 people were killed. VOA's Bill Gallo reports

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Monday, February 19, 2018

Trump Endorses Romney in Run for US Senate Seat in Utah

President Donald Trump on Monday endorsed former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's run for a U.S. Senate seat in Utah, despite Romney often being critical of Trump.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Romney excoriated Trump as a "fraud" who was "playing the American public for suckers." Trump responded that Romney had "choked like a dog" in his 2012 campaign against President Barack Obama.

Trump said on Twitter that Romney "will make a great Senator and worthy successor to @OrrinHatch, and has my full support and endorsement!" Romney announced Friday he would run to replace retiring Senator Orrin Hatch.

Romney thanked Trump for the endorsement in a Tweet posted soon after the president's statement.

"I hope that over the course of the campaign I also earn the support and endorsement of the people of Utah," Romney said.

Despite Romney's prior criticism, after Trump won the presidency in November 2016, he briefly considered picking Romney as secretary of state.

Republicans hold 51 of the Senate's 100 seats but many legislative issues require getting the support of 60 senators.

Trump has repeatedly said that he needs more Republicans elected during the 2018 congressional elections to win approval of more of his agenda.

Romney said last week he generally approved of Trump's agenda, but would not hesitate to call out the president if needed.

"I'm with the president's domestic policy agenda of low taxes, low regulation, smaller government, pushing back against the bureaucrats," Romney said. "I'm not always with the president on what he might say or do, and if that happens I'll call'em like I see'em, the way I have in the past."

Trump had lobbied Hatch to run for re-election in 2018, in what was viewed as an effort to prevent Romney from getting into the Senate. Trump and Romney spoke in January after Hatch announced his retirement, a White House official said.

Romney, the son of former Michigan Governor George Romney, helped found the buyout firm Bain Capital and gained prominence after stepping in to lead the organizing committee for the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics after a bribery scandal. He served as governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007.

Romney first sought the presidency in 2008 but lost the Republican nomination to Arizona Senator John McCain. Four years later, Romney won the party's nomination but was defeated by incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama.

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How US Coal Deal Warms Ukraine’s Ties With Trump

For the first time in Ukraine's history, U.S. anthracite is helping to keep the lights on and the heating going this winter following a deal that has also helped to warm Kyiv’s relations with President Donald Trump.

The Ukrainian state-owned company that imported the coal told Reuters that the deal made commercial sense. But it was also politically expedient, according to a person involved in the talks on the agreement and power industry insiders.

On Trump’s side it provided much-needed orders for a coal-producing region of the United States which was a vital constituency in his 2016 presidential election victory.

On the Ukrainian side the deal helped to win favor with the White House, whose support Kyiv needs in its conflict with Russia, as well as opening up a new source of coal at a time when its traditional supplies are disrupted.

Trump’s campaign call to improve relations with the Kremlin alarmed the pro-Western leadership in Ukraine, which lost Crimea to Russia in 2014 and is still fighting pro-Moscow separatists.

However, things looked up when President Petro Poroshenko visited the White House on June 20 last year.

“The meeting with Trump was a key point, a milestone,” a Ukrainian government source told Reuters, requesting anonymity.

The Americans had set particular store by supplying coal to Ukraine.

“I felt that for them it is important,” said the source, who was present at the talks that also included a session with Vice President Mike Pence.

Despite Trump’s incentives, U.S. utilities are shutting coal-fired plants and shifting to gas, wind and solar power.

Ailing U.S. mining companies are therefore boosting exports to Asia and seeking new buyers among eastern European countries trying to diversify from Russian supplies.

Trump, who championed U.S. coal producers on the campaign trail, pressed the message after meeting Poroshenko.

“Ukraine already tells us they need millions and millions of metric tons right now,” he said in a speech nine days later. “We want to sell it to them, and to everyone else all over the globe who need it.”

The deal with Kyiv was sealed the following month, after which U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said: “As promised during the campaign, President Trump is unshackling American energy with each day on the job.”

The deal helped to “bolster a key strategic partner against regional pressures that seek to undermine U.S. interests,” Ross added, referring to past Russian attempts to restrict natural gas flows to its western neighbors.

A matter of necessity

Ukraine was once a major producer of anthracite, a coal used in power generation, but it has faced a shortage in recent winters as it lost control of almost all its mines in eastern areas to the separatists.

Along with South Africa, Ukrainian-owned mines in Russia have been the main source of anthracite imports but this is fraught with uncertainty. In the past Moscow has cut off gas supplies to the country over disputes with Kyiv, while the Ukrainian government considered forbidding anthracite imports from Russia in 2017 although no ban has yet been imposed.

Overall anthracite imports shot up to 3.05 million tons in the first 11 months of 2017 from just 0.05 million in all of 2013 — the year before the rebellion erupted.

Neighboring Poland, which Trump visited in July, is also turning increasingly to U.S. coal. Its imports from the United States jumped five-fold last year to 839,000 tons, data from the state-run ARP agency showed.

In July Ukrainian state-owned energy company Centrenergo announced the deal with U.S. company Xcoal for the supply of up to 700,000 tons of anthracite.

Centrenergo initially said it would pay $113 per ton for the first shipment, a price industry experts and traders told Reuters was expensive compared with alternatives.

However, chief executive Oleg Kozemko said the cost varied according to the quality of the coal delivered, so Centrenergo had paid around $100 per ton on average for the 410,000 tons supplied by the end of 2017.

Kozemko said in an interview that the U.S. deal was Centrenergo’s only viable option after three tenders it launched earlier last year had failed.

“The idea to sign a contract with Xcoal was a matter of necessity,” he said. “We had agreements but they didn’t work out, because the pricing that they discussed with us and that we signed an agreement on didn’t work out.”

Data on the state tenders registry and documents seen by Reuters show that two of the tenders failed due to a lack of bids, while the results of the third were cancelled.

If that contract had worked out, Centrenergo would have paid around $96 per ton, according to Reuters calculations based on the exchange rate at the time of the tender in April.

Energy expert Andriy Gerus told Reuters the Xcoal deal “probably helps Ukraine to build some good political connections with the USA and that is quite important right now.”

Mutual desire

The anthracite for Centrenergo is mined in Pennsylvania, which backed Trump in 2016. This marked the first time a Republican presidential candidate had won the state since 1988, and followed Trump’s pledge to reverse the coal industry’s history of plant closures and lay-offs in recent years.

Centrenergo says it and Xcoal agreed the contract independently of their governments and without any political pressure. However, Kozemko said: “If talks between the heads of our countries helped in this, then we can only say thank you... It was a mutual desire.”

For the Ukrainian authorities, the diplomatic benefit is clear. When the first shipment of U.S. anthracite arrived in September, Poroshenko tweeted a photo of himself shaking hands with Trump in Washington.

“As agreed with @realDonaldTrump, first American coal has reached Ukraine,” he wrote.

Poroshenko’s press service said the deal “is an exact example of when the friendly and warm atmosphere of one conversation helps strengthen the foundations of a strategic partnership in the interests of both sides for the future.”

The Washington meeting also discussed U.S.-Ukrainian military and technical cooperation. Soon after, the Trump administration said it was considering supplying defensive weapons to Ukraine to counter the Russian-backed separatists.

In late December the U.S. State Department announced that the provision of “enhanced defensive capabilities” had been approved.

Kozemko said the Xcoal deal was likely to be only the beginning of Centrenergo’s trade relations with the United States as it is currently holding talks on supplies of bituminous coal, a poorer quality variety.

“It’s good that we studied the U.S. market because we had never looked at it before. We see big prospects for bituminous coal,” he said, adding that other Ukrainian firms were thinking similarly. “We showed how to bring coal from America and they are following our lead.”

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Trump Revives Push for Limits on Immigrants Bringing Family

When the U.S. government approved Ricardo Magpantay, his wife and young children to immigrate to America from the Philippines, it was 1991. By the time a visa was available, it was 2005, and his children couldn't come with him because they were now adults.

More than a decade later, his children are still waiting.

Magpantay gets worried when he hears the White House is aiming to limit the relatives that immigrants-turned-citizens can sponsor, a profound change to a fundamental piece of the American immigration system.

"It is really frustrating and it is very dreadful for me, because after a long wait, if this will be passed, what will happen for them?" said Magpantay, a 68-year-old mechanical engineer in the Southern California city of Murrieta. "I won't be able to bring them forever."

For the past 50-plus years, family reunification has been central to U.S. immigration law. Those who become naturalized citizens can bring spouses and minor children and petition for parents, adult children and siblings to get their own green cards and become Americans in their own right, with their own ability to sponsor.

Many on opposing sides of the immigration debate have long felt the family reunification system needs reform. Immigration advocates want a reassessment of the quotas on how many people can come from a given country in a given year, which has created decadeslong backlogs for citizens of some countries.

Self-described "restrictionists," including President Donald Trump, want a narrower, nuclear definition of family, making spouses and minor children the only relatives a citizen could sponsor. That's a central plank of the sweeping immigration overhaul Trump has proposed, a move that activists say could cut legal immigration in the U.S. by half.

Congress rejected competing bills last week meant to resolve the status of hundreds of thousands of young people brought to the U.S. illegally, including one plan that mirrored Trump's overall immigration proposal. The lack of resolution on an issue that was pivotal to Trump's election leaves it as potential tinderbox for the midterm congressional elections this fall.

In his State of the Union speech last month, Trump referenced an attempted bombing by a Bangladeshi immigrant in New York in December as proof of the need to curtail what he and others term "chain migration" in favor of a more skills-based system.

"This vital reform is necessary not just for our economy, but for our security and for the future of America," he said.

Trump is giving a spotlight to an idea that "was clearly out in the wilderness" in a policy sense, and something only its advocates were really talking about, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which has long pushed for limits on family sponsorships.

"He has forced issues to the forefront that need to be debated," Krikorian said.

Advocates of family reunification call the rhetoric around merit and skills a smoke screen.

"They're being disingenuous - their goal is to reduce immigration overall," said Anu Joshi, director of immigration policy at the New York Immigration Coalition. "This is just about cutting family, it's a family ban."

Prior to 1965, U.S. immigration was tightly controlled, with parts of the world all but ineligible and caps that ended up favoring immigrants from northern Europe.

Families of Italians and other Europeans pushed to change the law, resulting in a system that opened visas to all countries equally, with preferences for family reunification and, to a lesser extent, those with advanced skills or education.

At the time, politicians didn't think the changes would make a great deal of difference and that European immigrants would be the main beneficiaries. Instead, Asians and Latin Americans started coming and then were able to bring their parents and siblings.

Dividing the available visas equally among countries also had an unanticipated impact. In countries where the demand was higher, like China, India and the Philippines, the line has grown so long that it can take years for someone to get a green card.

That's a reality immigrants and their advocates wish more Americans knew, in the face of Trump's State of the Union assertion that "a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives."

Jeff DeGuia, 28, recalled that it took his mother more than a decade to bring two sisters from the Philippines.

"There's definitely this idea you are not really complete without your huge family," said DeGuia, whose grandfather came to the United States for an engineering job in the 1970s. His family settled in Chicago, though he and his brother now live in Southern California.

"Your cousins are like your brothers and sisters, and your uncles and aunts are like second dads and second moms," he said.

Proposals to scale back the number of immigrants allowed into the country will end up dividing families and drive more people to enter the country illegally, making them vulnerable to exploitation, said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles.

Family immigration is also important, advocates said, because it signals immigrants' commitment to make America their home, not just take a job that lands them here. For years, relatives have helped newcomers integrate into society.

Royce Murray, policy director for the American Immigration Council in Washington, said immigrants bringing family to join them once they settle in the United States is the foundation of the country.

"The idea someone came before us and wanted to work hard and bring their family is actually a very unifying value, a very bipartisan value," she said. "Wanting to reunify families should be common ground, and we're struggling against this hostile branding to make it something that it's not."

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Doctors Blast Trump's Mental Illness Focus to Fight Violence

Frustration is mounting in the medical community as the Trump administration again points to mental illness in response to yet another mass shooting.

"The concept that mental illness is a precursor to violent behavior is nonsense," said Dr. Louis Kraus, forensic psychiatry chief at Chicago's Rush University Medical College. "The vast majority of gun violence is not attributable to mental illness."

Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old charged with killing 17 people on Valentine's Day at his former high school in Parkland, Florida has been described by students as a loner with troubling behavior who had been kicked out of school. His mother recently died and Cruz had been staying with family friends.

Since the shooting, his mental health has been the focus of President Donald Trump's comments. And on a Thursday call with reporters, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the administration is committed to addressing serious mental illness and that his agency "will be laser-focused on this issue in the days, weeks, and months to come."

Mental health professionals welcome more resources and attention, but they say the administration is ignoring the real problem - easy access to guns, particularly the kind of high-powered highly lethal assault weapons used in many of the most recent mass shootings.

"Even for those who manage to survive gun violence involving these weapons, the severity and lasting impact of their wounds, disabilities and treatment leads to devastating consequences," American Medical Association President David Barbe wrote in an online column after the shooting.

"We are not talking about Second Amendment rights or restricting your ability to own a firearm. We are talking about a public health crisis that our Congress has failed to address. This must end," Barbe wrote.

Better access to mental health care, including for those who might be prone to violence, is important, but "to blame this all just on mental illness is not sufficient," he said in an interview Friday.

The AMA has supported efforts to boost gun violence research, ban assault weapons and to restrict access to automatic weapons. Barbe wrote in his column that federally funded research is crucial to address an "urgent health crisis."

Under gun industry pressure, U.S. government research on firearm violence has been limited for decades.

The American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and four other medical associations issued a joint statement Friday urging comprehensive action by Trump and Congress, including labeling gun violence a national public health epidemic.

The groups' recommendations include limits on high-powered, rapid-fire weapons designed to kill and funding gun violence research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to the CDC, there were about 38,000 U.S. gun deaths in 2016, slightly more than the number of people who died in car crashes.

"The families of the victims in Parkland and all those whose lives have been impacted by daily acts of gun violence deserve more than our thoughts and prayers. They need action from the highest levels of our government to stop this epidemic of gun violence now," the groups said in a statement.

The American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Physicians, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Osteopathic Association contributed to the statement.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement Sunday that Trump is working with senators on a bill designed to improve criminal background checks. "While discussions are ongoing and revisions are being considered, the President is supportive of efforts to improve the Federal background check system," she said.

Florida's Republican governor, Rick Scott, a Trump ally, said he had discussed with Trump and GOP leaders how to restrict gun access to the mentally ill.

Federal and state laws already attempt to do this, in many cases with a ban on gun ownership for people who have been treated in mental institutions.

Kraus noted that a year ago Trump rolled back an Obama-era law that aimed to prevent certain mentally ill people from buying guns. But he suggested that is beside the point.

"There's a great naivete to what the president and the governor are proposing," Kraus said. A history of violent behavior, alcohol and substance use, and previous criminal behavior are all more pertinent factors to consider.

Dr. Garen Wintemute, director of a violence prevention research program at the University of California, Davis, said gun violence restraining order laws in California and Washington are ``a much more focused approach.'' The laws allow courts to keep guns out of the hands of people who pose threats to themselves or others.

"Florida has no such mechanism. Could have prevented this one; there was plenty of advance notice," Wintemute said.

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