Later this week, the U.S. Senate is expected to mount an effort to block an $8 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as many American lawmakers continue to seethe over Riyadh’s human rights record, the war in Yemen and last year’s murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The Trump administration sought to bypass congressional review of the weapons sale by tying it to a national emergency declaration to counter threats from Iran.
Passions over Saudi Arabia run high in the U.S. Senate.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican, says relations with the kingdom have deteriorated.
“The current relationship with Saudi Arabia is not working for America … I am never going to let this go until things change in Saudi Arabia.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, Democrat, says the kidnapping and murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi last October in Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, by Saudi special agents was a breaking point.
“What kind of ally kidnaps a resident of your country [Khashoggi] who was seeking our protection, brings him into a consulate, chops him up and makes him disappear? The nature of this alliance [with Saudi Arabia] has been exposed.”
US Senate Scrutinizes Saudi, UAE Arms Sales video player.
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Months after the Senate narrowly approved a resolution to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led air campaign in Yemen’s bloody civil war, the chamber could vote against pending sales of U.S. bombs, guided munitions and military support to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The Trump administration’s attempt to fast-track the arms deal under an emergency declaration irks lawmakers of both parties.
“I am glad to know I am not the only one in this body disturbed by the president’s willingness to bypass Congress and sell this weaponry without any consideration of the recent events that have strained our relationship with Saudi Arabia,” said Sen. Robert Menendez, a Democrat.
While simple majorities are believed to exist to pass resolutions of disapproval, it is doubtful that two-thirds super-majorities could be mustered to override likely presidential vetoes of the resolutions.
Last week, the Senate declined to consider an effort to block arms sales to Bahrain and Qatar. Floor debate demonstrated that arms sales to the Middle East remain popular among significant numbers of Republicans, especially given a spate of troubling incidents in the Persian Gulf region.
“As Iran’s economy staggers under the weight of new American sanctions, the ayatollahs are lashing out and raging against the world. It is essential we support our Gulf partners during this dangerous time so they can defend themselves from Iranian aggression,” said Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican.
Other Republicans argued that withholding arms sales will only serve to compel longstanding allies to purchase weaponry from America’s adversaries.
U.S. President Donald Trump contended Sunday two of the country’s top newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post, would go out of business when he leaves office.
Trump attacked both newspapers, both of which often publish articles that he labels as “fake news” — stories about his chaotic White House and administration policies that he does not like.
“A poll should be done on which is the more dishonest and deceitful newspaper, the Failing New York Times or the Amazon (lobbyist) Washington Post!” Trump said on Twitter, referring to the Post’s ownership by Jeff Bezos, the founder of the giant online retailer Amazon.
“The good news is that at the end of 6 years, after America has been made GREAT again and I leave the beautiful White House (do you think the people would demand that I stay longer? KEEP AMERICA GREAT), both of these horrible papers will quickly go out of business & be forever gone!” Trump said. He was making an assumption that he is re-elected in 2020 and his White House tenure extends through 2024.
…..news is that at the end of 6 years, after America has been made GREAT again and I leave the beautiful White House (do you think the people would demand that I stay longer? KEEP AMERICA GREAT), both of these horrible papers will quickly go out of business & be forever gone!
Trump rarely misses an opportunity to attack the U.S. mainstream news media and its coverage of him, but it was not immediately clear what prompted his joint attack on the Times and Post, both of which were founded in the 19th century, and over the years have won dozens of Pulitzer Prizes, journalism’s top award for excellence.
Late Saturday, however, he unleashed a broadside on the Times for its story disclosing that the U.S. had secretly stepped up its online attacks on Russia’s power grid.
“This is a virtual act of Treason by a once great paper so desperate for a story, any story, even if bad for our Country,” he tweeted.
…..ALSO, NOT TRUE! Anything goes with our Corrupt News Media today. They will do, or say, whatever it takes, with not even the slightest thought of consequence! These are true cowards and without doubt, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!
In President Donald Trump’s reckoning, an Iran tamed by him no longer cries “death to America,” the border wall with Mexico is proceeding apace, the estate tax has been lifted off the backs of farmers, the remains of U.S. soldiers from North Korea are coming home and China is opening its wallet to the U.S. treasury for the first time in history.
These statements range from flatly false to mostly so.
Here’s a week of political rhetoric in review:
IRAN:
TRUMP, speaking about Iranians “screaming ‘death to America’” when Barack Obama was in the White House: “They haven’t screamed ‘death to America’ lately.” — Fox News interview Friday.
THE FACTS: Yes they have. The death-to-America chant is heard routinely.
The chant, “marg bar Amreeka” in Farsi, dates back even before Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Once used by communists, it was popularized by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the revolution’s figurehead and Iran’s first supreme leader after the U.S. Embassy takeover by militants.
It remains a staple of hard-line demonstrations, meetings with current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, official ceremonies, parliamentary sessions and main Friday prayer services in Tehran and across the country. Some masters of ceremonies ask audiences to tone it down. But it was heard, for example, from the crowd this month when Khamenei exhorted thousands to stand up against U.S. “bullying.”
In one variation, a demonstrator at Tehran’s Quds rally last month held a sign with three versions of the slogan: “Death to America” in Farsi, “Death to America” in Arabic,” ″Down with U.S.A.” in English.
WAGES and TAXES
TRUMP: “Wages are growing, and they are growing at the fastest rate for — this is something so wonderful — for blue-collar workers. The biggest percentage increase — blue-collar workers.” — remarks Tuesday in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
THE FACTS: He’s claiming credit for a trend of rising wages for lower-income blue-collar workers that predates his presidency.
Some of the gains also reflect higher minimum wages passed at the state and local level; the Trump administration opposes an increase to the federal minimum wage.
With the unemployment rate at 3.6%, the lowest since December 1969, employers are struggling to fill jobs. Despite all the talk of robots and automation, thousands of restaurants, warehouses, and retail stores still need workers.
They are offering higher wages and have pushed up pay for the lowest-paid one-quarter of workers more quickly than for everyone else since 2015. In April, the poorest 25% saw their paychecks increase 4.4% from a year earlier, compared with 3.1% for the richest one-quarter.
Those gains are not necessarily flowing to the “blue collar” workers Trump cited. Instead, when measured by industry, wages are rising more quickly for lower-paid service workers. Hourly pay for retail workers has risen 4.1% in the past year and 3.8% for hotel and restaurant employees. Manufacturing workers — the blue collars — have seen pay rise just 2.2% and construction workers, 3.2%.
TRUMP: “And to keep your family farms and ranches in the family, we eliminated the estate tax, also known as the ‘death tax,’ on the small farms and ranches and other businesses. That was a big one. … People were having a farm, they loved their children, and they want to leave it to their children. … And the estate tax was so much, the children would have to go out and borrow a lot of money from unfriendly bankers, in many cases. And they’d end up losing the farm, and it was a horrible situation.” — remarks in Council Bluffs.
THE FACTS: There still is an estate tax. More small farms may be off the hook for it as a result of changes by the Republican-controlled Congress in 2017 but very few farms or small businesses were subject to the tax even before that happened.
Congress increased the tax exemption — temporarily — so fewer people will be subject to those taxes.
Previously, any assets from estates valued at more than $5.49 million, or nearly $11 million for couples, were subject to the estate tax in 2017. The new law doubled that minimum for 2018 to $11.2 million, or $22.4 million for couples. For 2019, the minimums rose to $11.4 million, or $22.8 million for couples. Those increased minimums will expire at the end of 2025.
According to an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, only about 80 small farms and closely held businesses were subject to the estate tax in 2017. Those estates represent about 1 percent of all taxable estate tax returns.
NORTH KOREA
TRUMP: “I think we’re going to do very well with North Korea over a period of time. I’m in no rush. … Our remains are coming back; you saw the beautiful ceremony in Hawaii with Mike Pence. We’re getting the remains back.” — joint news conference Wednesday with Poland’s president.
THE FACTS: The U.S. is not currently getting additional remains of American service members killed during the Korean War.
With U.S.-North Korea relations souring, the Pentagon said last month it had suspended its efforts to arrange negotiations this year on recovering additional remains of American service members. The Pentagon said it hoped to reach agreement for recovery operations in 2020.
The Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency said it has had no communication with North Korean authorities since the Vietnam summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in February. That meeting focused on the North’s nuclear weapons and followed a June 2018 summit where Kim committed to permitting a resumption of U.S. remains recovery; that effort had been suspended by the U.S. in 2005.
The agency said it had “reached the point where we can no longer effectively plan, coordinate, and conduct field operations” with the North during this budget year, which ends Sept. 30.
Wilfredo Mendoza of Boston, left, and Christina Vi
Protesters display placards during a rally called “We Will Persist” in Boston, Feb.
Last summer, in line with the first Trump-Kim summit in June, the North turned over 55 boxes of what it said were the remains of an undetermined number of U.S service members killed in the North during the 1950-53 war. So far, six Americans have been identified from the 55 boxes.
U.S. officials have said the North has suggested in recent years that it holds perhaps 200 sets of American war remains. Thousands more are unrecovered from battlefields and former POW camps.
The Pentagon estimates that about 5,300 Americans were lost in North Korea.
BORDER WALL
TRUMP: “We’re building a wall … And by next year, at the end of the year, we’re going to have close to 500 miles of wall.” — remarks Tuesday at the Republican Party of Iowa annual dinner.
TRUMP: “We’re going to have close to 500 miles of wall built by the end of next year. That’s a lot. And we’re moving along very rapidly. We won the big court case, as you know, the other day. And that was a big victory for us.” — remarks Monday with Indianapolis 500 champions.
THE FACTS: He’s being overly optimistic. It’s unclear how Trump arrives at 500 miles (800 km), but he would have to prevail in legal challenges to his declaration of a national emergency or get Congress to cough up more money to get anywhere close. Those are big assumptions. And by far the majority of the wall he’s talking about is replacement barrier, not new miles of construction.
So far, the administration has awarded contracts for 247 miles (395 km) of wall construction, but more than half comes from Defense Department money available under Trump’s Feb. 15 emergency declaration. On May 24, a federal judge in California who was appointed by Obama blocked Trump from building key sections of the wall with that money. In a separate case, a federal judge in the nation’s capital who was appointed by Trump sided with the administration, but that ruling has no effect while the California injunction is in place.
Even if Trump prevails in court, all but 17 miles (27 km) of his awarded contracts replace existing barriers.
The White House says it has identified up to $8.1 billion in potential money under the national emergency, mostly from the Defense Department.
Customs and Border Protection officials say the administration wants Congress to finance 206 miles (330 km) next year. The chances of the Democratic-controlled House backing that are between slim and none.
TRADE
TRUMP: “Right now, we’re getting 25% on $250 billion worth of goods. That’s a lot of money that’s pouring into our treasury. We’ve never gotten 10 cents from China. Now we’re getting a lot of money from China.” — remarks Monday.
TRUMP: “We’re taking in, right now, billions and billions of dollars in tariffs, and they’re subsidizing product.” — remarks Tuesday in Council Bluffs.
THE FACTS: He’s incorrect. The tariffs he’s raised on imports from China are primarily if not entirely a tax on U.S. consumers and businesses, not a source of significant revenue coming into the country.
A study in March by economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Columbia University and Princeton University, before the latest escalation, found that the public and U.S. companies were paying $3 billion a month in higher taxes from the trade dispute with China, suffering $1.4 billion a month in lost efficiency and absorbing the entire impact.
It’s also false that the U.S. never collected a dime in tariffs before he took action. Tariffs on goods from China are not remotely new. They are simply higher in some cases than they were before. Tariffs go back to the beginning of the U.S. and were once a leading source of revenue for the government. Not in modern times. They equate to less than 1% of federal spending.
TRUMP: “Look, without tariffs, we would be captive to every country, and we have been for many years. That’s why we have an $800 billion trading deficit for years. We lose a fortune with virtually every country. They take advantage of us in every way possible.” — CNBC interview Monday.
THE FACTS: Trump isn’t telling the whole story about trade deficits.
When he refers to $800 billion trade gaps, he’s only talking about the deficit in goods such as cars and aircraft. He leaves out services — such as banking, tourism and education — in which the U.S. runs substantial trade surpluses that partially offset persistent deficits in goods. The goods and services deficit peaked at $762 billion in 2006. Last year, the United States ran a record $887 billion deficit in goods and a $260 billion surplus in services, which added up to an overall deficit of more than $627 billion.
The U.S. does tend to run trade deficits with most other major economies. But there are exceptions, such as Canada (a nearly $4 billion surplus last year), Singapore ($18 billion) and Britain ($19 billion).
Mainstream economists reject Trump’s argument that the deficits arise from other countries taking advantage of the United States. They see the trade gaps as the result of an economic reality that probably won’t bend to tariffs and other changes in trade policy: Americans buy more than they produce, and imports fill the gap.
U.S. exports are also hurt by the American dollar’s status as the world’s currency. The dollar is usually in high demand because it is used in so many global transactions. That means the dollar is persistently strong, raising prices of U.S. products and putting American companies at a disadvantage in foreign markets.
TRUMP: “You know, France charges us a lot for the wine and yet we charge them little for French wine. So the wineries come to me and they say — the California guys, they come to me: ‘Sir, we are paying a lot of money to put our products into France and you’re letting – meaning, this country is allowing this French wine which is great, we have great wine, too, allowing it to come in for nothing. It is not fair.’” — interview Monday with CNBC.
THE FACTS: Trump, who’s been in the wine business, is technically wrong about France applying tariffs. The European Union does.
He’s right about a disparity in wine duties.
Tariffs vary by alcohol content and other factors. A bottle of white American wine with 13 percent alcohol content imported into the EU carries a customs duty of 10 euro cents (just over 11 U.S. cents). A bottle of white wine from the EU exported to the United States has a customs duty of 5 U.S. cents.
The gap in duties is narrower for red wine with an alcohol content of 14.5 percent.
Bulk wines are another story. The U.S. tariff is double the EU one, a break for American producers because bulk wine represents 25% of the volume of U.S. wine coming into the EU, according to the French wine exporter federation.
The value of wine imported by France has jumped 200% over a decade. Americans are the top consumers of French wine exports.
RUSSIA INVESTIGATION
TRUMP, on special counsel Robert Mueller’s report: “The Mueller report spoke. … It said, ‘No collusion and no obstruction and no nothing.’ And, in fact, it said we actually rebuffed your friends from Russia; that we actually pushed them back — we rebuffed them.” — remarks Wednesday in Oval Office.
THE FACTS: He’s wrong to repeat the claim that the Mueller report found no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign; it’s also false that his campaign in 2016 denied all access to Russians. Nor did the special counsel’s report exonerate Trump on the question of whether he obstructed justice.
Mueller’s two-year investigation and other scrutiny revealed a multitude of meetings with Russians. Among them: Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer who had promised dirt on Clinton.
On collusion, Mueller said he did not assess whether that occurred because it is not a legal term.
He looked into a potential criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign and said the investigation did not collect sufficient evidence to establish criminal charges on that front.
Mueller noted some Trump campaign officials had declined to testify under the Fifth Amendment or had provided false or incomplete testimony, making it difficult to get a complete picture of what happened during the 2016 campaign. The special counsel wrote that he “cannot rule out the possibility” that unavailable information could have cast a different light on the investigation’s findings.
In an interview broadcast Wednesday with ABC News, Trump said if a foreign power offered dirt on his 2020 opponent, he’d be open to accepting it and that he’d have no obligation to call in the FBI. “I think I’d want to hear it,” Trump said. “There’s nothing wrong with listening.”
REPUBLICAN SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM, Judiciary Committee chairman, in response to Trump’s comments that he’d be open to accepting political dirt from foreign adversaries like Russia: “The outrage some of my Democratic colleagues are raising about President Trump’s comments will hopefully be met with equal outrage that their own party hired a foreign national to do opposition research on President Trump’s campaign.” — tweet Thursday.
THE FACTS: Graham is making an unequal comparison.
He seeks to turn the tables on Democrats by pointing to their use of a dossier of anti-Trump research produced by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, that was financed by the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Graham also insists on “equal outrage” over Democrats using that information from a former intelligence officer of Britain, an ally with a history of shared intelligence with the U.S. That’s a different story from a foreign adversary such as Russia, which the Mueller report concluded had engaged in “sweeping and systematic” interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Moreover, Steele was hired as a private citizen, though one with intelligence contacts.
The Mueller report found multiple contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia, and the report said it established that “the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”
Trump and his GOP allies typically point to the Steele dossier as the basis for the Russia probe. But the FBI’s investigation began months before it received the dossier.
TRUMP: “The Democrats were very unhappy with the Mueller report. So now they’re trying to do a do-over or a redo. And we’re not doing that. We gave them everything. We were the most transparent presidency in history.” — Oval Office remarks Wednesday.
THE FACTS: It’s highly dubious to say Trump was fully cooperative in the Russia investigation.
Trump declined to sit for an interview with Mueller’s team, gave written answers that investigators described as “inadequate” and “incomplete,” said more than 30 times that he could not remember something he was asked about in writing, and — according to the report — tried to get aides to fire Mueller or otherwise shut or limit the inquiry.
In the end, the Mueller report found no criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia but left open the question of whether Trump obstructed justice.
According to the report, Mueller’s team declined to make a prosecutorial judgment on whether to charge partly because of a Justice Department legal opinion that said sitting presidents shouldn’t be indicted. The report instead factually laid out instances in which Trump might have obstructed justice, specifically leaving it open for Congress to take up the matter.
FEDERAL RESERVE
TRUMP: “We have people on the Fed that really weren’t, you know, they’re not my people, but they certainly didn’t listen to me because they made a big mistake.” — CNBC interview.
THE FACTS: Actually, most of the members on the Fed’s Board of Governors owe their jobs to Trump.
In addition to choosing Jerome Powell, a Republican whom Obama had named to the Fed board, to be chairman, Trump has filled three other vacancies on the board in his first two years in office. Lael Brainard is the only Democrat on the board.
There are still two vacancies on the seven-member board. Trump had earlier intended to nominate two political allies — Herman Cain and Stephen Moore — but both later withdrew in the face of sharp opposition from critics.
AUTOMAKERS
TRUMP: “Tariffs are a great negotiating tool, a great revenue producer and, most importantly, a powerful way to get … companies to come to the U.S.A., and to get companies that have left us for other lands to come back home. We stupidly lost 30% of our auto business to Mexico.” — tweets Tuesday.
TRUMP: “They took 30% of our automobile companies. They moved into Mexico. All of the people got fired.” — interview Monday with CNBC.
THE FACTS: He’s incorrect that Mexico took 30% of the U.S. automobile business in the years since the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect in 1994.
In 2017, 14% of the vehicles sold in the U.S. were imported from Mexico, according to the Center for Automotive Research, a think tank in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Parts imported from Mexico exceed 30%.
TRUMP: “If the Tariffs went on at the higher level, they would all come back.” — tweet Tuesday.
TRUMP: “What will happen is the companies will move into the United States, back where they came from. … They would all move back if they had to pay a 25% tax or tariff.” — interview Monday with CNBC.
THE FACTS: He’s wrong to assume that auto companies in Mexico would immediately move back to the U.S. if there were a 25% tariff on Mexican-made vehicles and parts.
It takes three years or four years minimum to plan, equip and build an auto assembly plant, so there would be little immediate impact on production or jobs. Auto and parts makers are global companies, and they would also look to countries without tariffs as a place to move their factories. The companies could also just wait until after the 2020 election, hoping that if Trump is defeated, the next president would get rid of the tariffs.
“They’re not going to invest in duplicative capacity in response to short-term policy incentives,” said Kristen Dziczek, a vice president at the Center for Automotive Research.
It is possible that some production could be shifted back to the United States. General Motors, for instance, makes about 39% of its full-size pickup trucks at a factory in Silao, Mexico, mainly light-duty versions, according to analysts at Morningstar. If the U.S. imposed a 25% tariff on assembled automobiles, GM could shift some production to a factory in Fort Wayne, Indiana, that also makes light-duty pickups. But there are limits. That plant already is running on three shifts and is almost near its maximum capacity.
Tariffs on Mexico probably would cost auto jobs in the U.S., too, because Mexico would almost certainly retaliate with tariffs of its own. Tariffs on both sides would raise prices of vehicles, because automakers probably would pass the charges onto their customers.
Industry experts say higher prices would cause more buyers to shift into the used-vehicle market, cutting into new-vehicle sales. Tariffs could be higher than 25% because parts go back and forth across the border multiple times in a highly integrated supply chain.
Vehicles built in Mexico get 20% to 30% of their parts from the U.S., so the tariffs would drive up prices there. That would hit lower-income people hard because automakers produce many lower-priced new vehicles in Mexico to take advantage of cheaper labor. About 62% of U.S. vehicle and parts exports go to Canada and Mexico, according to the Center for Automotive Research.
Tariffs would add $1,300 to $4,500 to the price of vehicles based just on the cost of parts, the center estimated.
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner took in as much as $135 million in revenue during their second year as aides to President Donald Trump, generated from their vast real estate holdings, stocks and bonds and even a book deal, according to their financial disclosures released Friday.
Ivanka Trump’s stake in her family’s Washington hotel down the street from the Oval Office generated $3.95 million in revenue in 2018, barely changed from a year earlier. The hotel, a favorite gathering spot for foreign diplomats and lobbyists, is at the center of two federal lawsuits claiming Donald Trump is violating the Constitution’s ban on foreign government payments to the president.
Another big Ivanka Trump holding, a trust that includes her personal business selling handbags, shoes and accessories, generated at least $1 million in revenue in 2018, down from at least $5 million the year before. Ivanka Trump announced in July of last year that she planned to close her fashion company to focus on her work as a White House adviser for her father.
The disclosure for her husband, Jared Kushner, shows that he took in hundreds of thousands of dollars from his holdings of New York City apartments and that he owns a stake in the real estate investment firm Cadre worth at least $25 million.
Disclosure forms vague
The disclosures released by the White House and filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics shows minimum revenue for the couple of $28 million last year generated from assets valued at more than $180 million. The disclosures filed by federal government officials each year show revenue, assets and debts in broad ranges between low and high estimates, making it difficult to precisely chart the rise and fall of business and financial holdings.
Among the dozens of sources of income for Ivanka Trump was a $263,500 book advance for “Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success,” published in 2017. Trump has pledged to donate royalties to her charitable fund.
Kushner’s holdings of apartment buildings through his family real estate firm, Kushner Cos., were the source of much of his income. Westminster Management, the family business overseeing its rental buildings, generated $1.5 million. Separately, one of the family’s marquee holdings, the iconic Puck Building in the Soho section of Manhattan, generated as much as $6 million in rent.
Among other properties cited in the disclosure was a former warehouse-turned-luxury-condominium in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn that brought in more than $350,000 in sale proceeds and rent.
Legal, conflict of interest questions
Former and current tenants in the building have filed a suit against the Kushner Cos. alleging it used noisy, dusty construction to make living conditions unbearable in an effort to push them out so their apartments could be sold. The Kushner Cos. has said the suit is without merit.
Cadre has also drawn conflict-of-interest questions. It launched a fund to take advantage of massive tax breaks by investing in downtrodden areas designated “Opportunity Zones,” a Trump administration program pushed by both Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.
Also, this month the Guardian newspaper reported that Cadre received $90 million in foreign funding from an opaque offshore vehicle since Kushner entered the White House.
Kushner lawyer Abbe Lowell did not immediately respond to an email and phone message seeking comment.
Less debt
Kushner appears to have cut his debt. He had loans and lines of credit worth at least $27 million at the end of last year, down from a minimum value of $40 million the previous year. His lenders include Bank of America, Citi Group and Deutsche Bank. Deutsche Bank is also a major lender to President Trump’s company and has been subpoenaed by congressional investigators looking into his finances.
Both Kushner and his wife took steps to distance themselves from their businesses before taking on their roles as unpaid White House advisers. Kushner stepped down as CEO of Kushner Cos. and sold stakes in many holdings, while Ivanka Trump similarly stepped away from executive roles at her companies.
The brouhaha over U.S. President Donald Trump’s “oppo research” comments — that he’d be willing to accept outside foreign government political assistance — comes down to this question:
Is opposition research a “thing of value” that foreign nationals are prohibited from offering to American political campaigns?
In an interview with ABC News on Wednesday, Trump said he’d consider any foreign-sourced information that would help his 2020 re-election bid.
“There is nothing wrong with listening,” Trump said. “If somebody called from a country — Norway — ‘We have information on your opponent.’ Oh. I think I’d want to hear it.”
U.S. Federal Election Commission Commissioner Ellen Weintraub testifies in Washington, May 22, 2019, on “Securing U.S. Election Infrastructure and Protecting Political Discourse.”
FED comments; Trump backpedals
Trump later backpedaled, but the uproar caused by his comments was enough to prompt Ellen Weintraub, the chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission, to release a statement reiterating a long-standing U.S. prohibition on foreign assistance in U.S. elections.
“Let me make something 100% clear to the American public and anyone running for public office: It is illegal for any person to solicit, accept or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election,” Weintraub, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, wrote.
U.S. election law prohibits foreign nationals from making — and U.S. campaigns from soliciting and receiving — “a contribution or a donation of money or other thing of value.”
The law doesn’t say what constitutes a “thing of value.” However, FEC regulations consider all “in-kind contributions” such as office space, equipment and advertising services “things of value.”
Is it a thing of value?
Although the FEC hasn’t ruled on whether opposition research constitutes a thing of value, a spokesman noted that the commission has advised that candidates report “research/research services” as campaign expenditures. In recent years, a number of political campaigns have reported expenses related specifically to opposition research.
U.S. political campaigns spend tens of millions of dollars on opposition or “oppo research” — damaging information gathered for political advantage. In the 2016 election cycle, campaigns and political action committees spent nearly $71 million on “research,” according to Campaign Legal Center.
“Opposition research is something people ordinarily pay for, so in that sense it looks like it could be considered a thing of value and fall within the prescription of the law,” said James Gardner, an election law expert and professor at State University of New York at Buffalo.
But simply “listening” to information derived from foreign sources may rise to the level of a campaign finance violation.
“There are probably First Amendment considerations at work in terms of communication about a political subject,” Gardner said. “I don’t think the federal law was designed to prevent exchange of information.”
Foreigners can’t be paid
U.S. law allows foreign nationals to provide personal services to political campaigns as long as they’re not paid, according to the Campaign Legal Center.
Jennifer Daskal, a professor at American University Washington College of Law, said opposition research can be viewed as a “thing of value” because it costs money to produce it.
“Certainly, opposition research is valuable and it should be understood in my view as a thing of value,” Daskal said.
But determining the cost of the research is tricky and important in terms of its legal consequences. While campaign finance violations involving $2,000 to $25,000 during a calendar year carry a maximum penalty of one year in prison, a smaller violation may result in a simple fine.
Congressional action needed
To shield U.S. elections from foreign interference, Daskal said, Congress must pass legislation requiring political candidates to report any offer of assistance from foreign governments to the FBI.
“It’s important that … the Department of Justice and the intel community have information that they need to follow up and help protect against undue influence,” she said.
President Donald Trump said Friday that “of course” he would go to the FBI or the attorney general if a foreign power offered him dirt about an opponent. It was an apparent walkback from his earlier comments that he might not contact law enforcement in such a situation.
Trump, in an interview Friday with “Fox & Friends,” said he would look at the information in order to determine whether or not it was “incorrect.” But he added that, “of course you give it to the FBI or report it to the attorney general or somebody like that.”
Earlier in the week, Trump had told ABC that he would consider accepting information from an outside nation and might not contact law enforcement.
His assertion that he would be open to accepting a foreign power’s help in his 2020 campaign had ricocheted through Washington, with Democrats condemning it as a call for further election interference and Republicans struggling to defend his comments.
Asked by ABC News what he would do if Russia or another country offered him dirt on his election opponent, Trump said: “I think I’d want to hear it.” He added that he’d have no obligation to call the FBI. “There’s nothing wrong with listening.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller painstakingly documented Russian efforts to boost Trump’s campaign and undermine that of his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.
In segment released Friday from the president’s interview earlier this week, Trump told ABC that “it doesn’t matter” what former White House counsel Don McGahn told investigators and that McGahn may have been confused when he told prosecutors he had been instructed to seek Mueller’s removal.
McGahn was a crucial witness for Mueller, spending hours with investigators and offering detailed statements about episodes central to the special counsel’s investigation into possible obstruction of justice . McGahn described how Trump directed him to press the Justice Department for Mueller’s firing by insisting that he raise what the president perceived as the special counsel’s conflicts of interest.
Trump denied that account, saying, “The story on that very simply, No. 1, I was never going to fire Mueller. I never suggested firing Mueller.”
Asked why McGahn would have lied, Trump said, “Because he wanted to make himself look like a good lawyer. Or he believed it because I would constantly tell anybody that would listen — including you, including the media — that Robert Mueller was conflicted. Robert Mueller had a total conflict of interest.”
Though Trump tried to cast doubt on McGahn’s credibility, it is clear from the Mueller report that investigators took seriously his statements, which in many instances were accompanied by contemporaneous notes, and relied on his account to paint a portrait of the president’s conduct. It is also doubtful that McGahn, a lawyer, would have had any incentive to make a misstatement given that lying to law enforcement is a crime and Mueller’s team charged multiple Trump aides with false statements.
The Democratic National Committee has announced that 20 candidates have qualified for the party’s first presidential debates later this month.
Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts were the only major candidates out of the two dozen Democratic hopefuls who failed to meet the polling or grassroots fundraising measures required to get a debate spot. Two lesser-known candidates, former Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska and Miramar, Florida, Mayor Wayne Messam, also missed the cutoff, announced Thursday.
U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who recently had been on the bubble, both made the debate based on polling measures.
The campaign’s opening debates, set for June 26-27 in Miami, will offer a prime opportunity for many White House hopefuls to reshape a race defined in recent weeks by former Vice President Joe Biden’s domination of national and many early state polls.
An NBC News drawing Friday will divide the large field between the first and second debate night. Party officials have promised to weight the drawing with the intention of ensuring that top tier and lagging candidates are spread roughly evenly over the two nights.
Those assignments will determine the debate strategies for many campaigns. Candidates will have to decide whether to go after front-runners such as Biden, challenge others in the pack or stand out by remaining above the fray. They must also decide how much to focus on President Donald Trump.
Some candidates have criticized the debate-qualifying rules that the party chairman, Tom Perez, set this year. The polling and fundraising thresholds will remain the same for the July debates over two nights in Detroit .
Bullock’s campaign insists he has reached a party benchmark of a minimum 1 percent in at least three polls by approved organizations. But party officials say Bullock is wrongly counting a Washington Post-ABC poll from February.
He said Thursday that he was “certainly disappointed” by the DNC’s decision.
“But the greater point really is also that I’m the only one in the field that’s actually won in a Trump state, and we need to win back some of the places we’ve lost,” he said on MSNBC.
The polling and fundraising marks will double for the third and fourth debates in September and October. Candidates will have to meet both marks instead of one or the other. That means 2 percent in the approved polls and a donor list of at least 130,000 unique contributors.
Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, who will appear in the first debate, questioned some of the rules during a campaign stop Thursday before the DNC announcement, but said candidates have little choice other than to meet them.
“Fighting with the DNC is a little like fighting with the weather,” he said. “You can rage against the storm, but you will not have great effect. I think the rules are the rules.”
A Trump administration national security official has sought help from advisers to a think tank that disavows climate change to challenge widely accepted scientific findings on global warming, according to his emails.
The request from William Happer, a member of the National Security Council, is included in emails from 2018 and 2019 that were obtained by the Environmental Defense Fund under the federal Freedom of Information Act and provided to The Associated Press. That request was made this past March to policy advisers with the Heartland Institute, one of the most vocal challengers of mainstream scientific findings that emissions from burning coal, oil and gas are damaging the Earth’s atmosphere.
In a March 3 email exchange Happer and Heartland adviser Hal Doiron discuss Happer’s scientific arguments in a paper attempting to knock down climate change, as well as ideas to make the work “more useful to a wider readership.” Happer writes he had already discussed the work with another Heartland adviser, Thomas Wysmuller.
Actions denounced
Academic experts denounced the administration official’s continued involvement with groups and scientists who reject what numerous federal agencies say is the fact of climate change.
“These people are endangering all of us by promoting anti-science in service of fossil fuel interests over the American interests,’’ said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann.
“It’s the equivalent to formulating anti-terrorism policy by consulting with groups that deny terrorism exists,’’ said Northeastern University’s Matthew Nisbet, a professor of environmental communication and public policy.
The National Security Council declined to make Happer available to discuss the emails.
Challenging the science
The AP and others reported earlier this year that Happer was coordinating a proposed White House panel to challenge the findings from scientists in and out of government that carbon emissions are altering the Earth’s atmosphere and climate.
President Donald Trump in November rejected the warnings of a national climate-change assessment by more than a dozen government agencies.
“I don’t believe it,’’ he said.
Happer, a physicist who previously taught at Princeton University, has claimed that carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas from the burning of coal, oil and gas, is good for humans and that carbon emissions have been demonized like “the poor Jews under Hitler.” Trump appointed him in late 2018 to the National Security Council, which advises the president on security and foreign policy issues.
NASA administrator
The emails show Happer expressing surprise that NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, a former Oklahoma congressman who once questioned mainstream climate science, has come round to accepting that science.
A May 2018 email exchange between Heartland’s Wysmuller and Happer calls the NASA chief’s change of heart on climate science “a puzzle.” The exchange calls scientifically established rises in sea levels and temperatures under climate change “part of the nonsense” and urges the NASA head — copied in — to “systematically sidestep it.”
Happer at the time was not yet a security adviser, although he had advised the Trump EPA on climate change.
A NASA spokesman on Thursday upheld the space agency’s public statements on climate change.
“We provide the data that informs policymakers around the world,” spokesman Bob Jacobs said. “Our science information continues to be published publicly as it always has.”
Think tank defends the effort
But spokesman Jim Lakeley at the Heartland Institute defended the effort, saying in an email that NASA’s public characterization of climate change as manmade and a global threat “is a disservice to taxpayers and science that it is still pushed by NASA.”
After joining the agency, Happer sent a February 2019 email to NASA deputy administrator James Morhard relaying a complaint from an unidentified rejecter of man-made climate change about NASA’s website.
“I’m concerned that many children are being indoctrinated by this bad science,” said the email that Happer relayed.
Happer’s own message was redacted from the records obtained by the environmental group.
Two major U.S. science organizations took issue with Happer’s emails.
“We have concerns that there appear to be attempts by a member of the National Security Council to influence and interfere with the ability of NASA, a federal science agency, to communicate accurately about research findings on climate science,” said Rush Holt, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advance of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society.
There have been hundreds of scientific assessments by leading researchers and institutions the last few decades that look at all the evidence and have been “extremely credible and routinely withstand intense scrutiny,” said Keith Seitter, executive director of the American Meteorological Society. “Efforts to dismiss or discredit these rigorous scientific assessments in public venues does an incredible disservice to the public.”
U.S. Democrats swiftly responded to U.S. President Donald Trump’s assertion that there is nothing wrong with listening to information about a political opponent, even if it comes from a foreign country. Trump stunned even some fellow Republicans with his statement that he would accept information from a foreign government that could undermine his rival in the 2020 presidential election. In an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, aired late Wednesday, Trump said if he got such an offer, he would listen. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports critics see his remark as an invitation to foreign governments to further interfere with the U.S. democratic system at a time when lawmakers are trying to prevent a repeat of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
A U.S. government watchdog agency on Thursday recommended that Kellyanne Conway, one of President Donald Trump’s closest White House aides, be fired for repeatedly engaging in partisan political attacks while working as a federal employee.
The Office of Special Counsel, unrelated to special counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, said that Conway has become a “repeat offender” of the Hatch Act, which strictly limits federal workers from engaging in political activity while on the job.
“Given that Ms. Conway is a repeat offender and has shown disregard for the law, OSC recommends that she be removed from federal service,” the office said in a statement.
The agency’s report said she violated the law by “disparaging Democratic presidential candidates while speaking in her official capacity during television interviews and on social media.”
The agency said, “Ms. Conway’s violations, if left unpunished, would send a message to all federal employees that they need not abide by the Hatch Act’s restrictions. Her actions thus erode the principal foundation of our democratic system — the rule of law.”
The White House contested the OSC’s conclusions, with counsel Pat Cipollone saying in an 11-page letter the agency made “unfair and unsupported claims against a close adviser to the president” and a “rush to judgment” in accusing her. It asked the agency to withdraw and retract its report.
During a May 29 interview, Conway dismissed the relevance of the law as it related to her.
“If you’re trying to silence me through the Hatch Act, it’s not going to work,” she said. “Let me know when the jail sentence starts.”
Conway has often given television interviews from the White House grounds supporting Trump and deriding his Democratic opposition.
Government workers found to have violated the Hatch Act can be fired, suspended or demoted, and fined up to $1,000.
Trump has often praised Conway, while at the same attacking her husband, George Conway, a lawyer who has represented Trump in the past, but now often says the president is mentally unstable and should be impeached.
A U.S. congressional committee on Wednesday unanimously approved legislation to extend the fund compensating first responders to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center for the next 70 years, a move that would avoid steep benefit reductions over a lack of money.
The House Judiciary Committee acted one day after television personality and comedian Jon Stewart castigated lawmakers at a hearing for their slow response to helping New York City firefighters, police officers and other emergency personnel who rushed to the scene of the attacks that left two of Manhattan’s most well-known skyscrapers in rubble.
The fund also helps construction workers and victims of the attack.
“Your indifference costs these men and women their most valuable commodity – time,” Stewart said to a hearing room packed with lawmakers and first-responders, including those now suffering from cancer, respiratory problems and other serious health issues as a result of inhaling contaminated air nearly 18 years ago.
Before Wednesday’s vote, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, whose constituents live in New York City, said that despite federal officials’ statements that the air was safe in the aftermath of the attack, “more than 95,000 responders and survivors are sick.”
The bill, which next goes to the full House for debate, would extend the victims’ compensation fund to 2090, putting it on the same terms as a health program for World Trade Center victims. It also would reverse any benefit cuts due to insufficient funds.
Also on Wednesday, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York pleaded for fast passage in that chamber.
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked by a reporter whether he would advance the legislation.
“I hadn’t looked at that lately. I’ll have to. We’ve always dealt with that in a compassionate way and I assume we will again,” McConnell said.
In the past, some lawmakers have complained about the cost of helping 9-11 victims at a time of severe U.S. budget deficits.
“It’s shameful. There’s no other word for it. Shameful, that our brave first responders have had to suffer the indignity of delay after delay after delay,” Schumer said in a speech to the Senate.
Democrats are expressing alarm after U.S. President Donald Trump dismissed concerns about accepting information about electoral opponents from foreign powers and said such activity would not amount to interference in the U.S. political system.
“I think you might want to listen. There’s nothing wrong with listening,” he told ABC News in an interview released Wednesday. “If somebody called from a country — Norway — ‘We have information on your opponent.’ Oh, I think I’d want to hear it.”
When asked if he wants that kind of interference in the election process, Trump said, “It’s not interference,” and that members of Congress “all do it.”
“They always have, and that’s the way it is,” Trump said.
But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said those comments put Trump one step away from dictators and autocrats who manipulate elections to stay in power.
“The president’s comments are undemocratic, un-American and disgraceful. The president’s comments suggest he believes winning an election is more important than the integrity of the election,” Schumer said in morning floor remarks.
Trump clarified his remarks in a Thursday tweet, writing that he talks to foreign governments every day.
“Should I immediately call the FBI about these calls and meetings? How ridiculous! I would never be trusted again. With that being said, my full answer is rarely played by the Fake News Media. They purposely leave out the part that matters.”
Congress reacts
Rep. Brian Schatz rejected the president’s assertion, calling the prospect of accepting such information “crazy.”
“It is not customary or normal or legal or moral to accept campaign assistance from a foreign government. Nobody does that. Nobody,” he said.
Rep. Jim McGovern said getting information from a foreign adversary is “not normal” and that “most people would call the FBI.”
“Republicans and Democrats should both speak out — loudly and strongly — against this,” Sen. Chris Coons said. “Foreign interference in our elections is unacceptable. Period.”
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham did call the president’s comments “wrong and a mistake” Thursday morning. Graham told reporters, “If a public official is approached by a foreign government and offered anything of value, the answer is no — whether it’s money, opposition research.”
Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, told VOA, “I don’t give the president public advice (on what to say). Only in private.”
During the 2016 campaign that brought Trump to power, his son Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer who offered negative information about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. FBI Director Christopher Wray said that contact should have been reported to the agency.
“The FBI director is wrong,” Trump said when reminded of Wray’s statement.
“The duty of any patriotic American is to call the FBI if they encounter foreign interference in our elections,” said Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard. “Tragically, Donald Trump thinks patriotism is less important than his own power.”
In response to the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Russia operated a campaign to influence the 2016 elections with a preference for damaging Clinton’s chances and for Trump to win, the FBI launched its own campaign to combat foreign influence and encouraged both election officials and campaign staff to report suspicious activity to the agency.
Wray has also warned in recent months that Russia poses what he called a “significant counterintelligence threat” to the United States and is likely to intensify its efforts ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election that will be held in November of next year.
Special counsel Robert Mueller concluded that Trump had not colluded with Russia to help him win the election, but reached no decision on whether he, as president, had obstructed justice by trying to thwart Mueller’s probe.
During the campaign, Trump praised WikiLeaks, which released a trove of hacked Democratic National Committee emails. At a campaign rally, he also urged Russia to find 30,000 emails Clinton had reportedly deleted from a private email server during her time as secretary of state. Trump later said he was joking, but Mueller wrote in his report that Trump’s comments resulted in Russian military intelligence officers targeting Clinton’s personal office within hours.
Rep. Tom Malinowski released a statement Wednesday saying he was introducing legislation that would require political campaigns to file a report with the Justice Department if they receive an offer of assistance from a foreign power or from a domestic source that involves illegal activity such as hacking.
“If a foreign government offers to help us win an election, we should report that offer, not exploit it,” Malinowski said.
Former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks, once a close aide to President Donald Trump, has agreed to give a closed-door interview to the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on June 19, the panel’s chairman said on Wednesday.
Hicks last week agreed to supply documents from Trump’s 2016 campaign to the committee, despite a White House directive advising her not to provide the panel with material from her
subsequent time at the White House.
“We look forward to her testimony and plan to make the transcript promptly available to the public, committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said in a statement.
A day after the U.S. House passed a resolution authorizing its committees to take the Trump administration to court and pursue criminal contempt cases to enforce their subpoenas, the House Oversight Committee took the next step.
The House Oversight Committee on Wednesday voted in favor of holding Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt of Congress because of the Trump administration’s refusal to comply with the committee’s subpoena for information about why a U.S. citizenship question was added to the 2020 census.
Republican Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, a vocal supporter of impeaching U.S. President Donald Trump, voted with Democrats.
Trump claimed executive privilege Wednesday in refusing to hand over documents to Democratic lawmakers investigating the census question.
“I think it’s ridiculous that we would have a census without asking” about citizenship, Trump told reporters at the White House.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., answers the roll call as the House Oversight Committee votes to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt, on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 12, 2019.
The House panel’s chairman, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, delayed the contempt vote until later in the day to give the committee’s 42 members time to consider Trump’s executive privilege claim.
But he questioned why Trump was asserting executive privilege just before the contempt vote when the subpoenas for information were issued two months ago.
‘Blanket defiance’
“This begs the question: What is being hidden?” Cummings said. “This does not appear to be an effort to engage in good-faith negotiations or accommodations. Instead, it appears to be another example of the administration’s blanket defiance of Congress’ constitutionally mandated responsibilities.”
The Justice Department said it had already turned over thousands of pages of documents related to the citizenship question and was continuing to negotiate about more documents. It called the contempt-of-Congress vote “unnecessary and premature.”
The dispute is the latest between the White House and the Democratic-controlled House over documents related to investigations into Trump, his finances, the 2016 election and policies he has adopted during his 2½-year presidency.
The citizenship question would be answered easily by more than 300 million people, easily the U.S. majority. They are Americans by birth or naturalization.
FILE – Immigration activists rally outside the Supreme Court as the justices hear arguments over the Trump administration’s plan to ask about citizenship on the 2020 census, in Washington, April 23, 2019.
But for others — perhaps 11 million undocumented people living in the U.S. — the question is more problematic. Demographers and Democratic critics of Trump fear that non-U.S. citizens will skip the census if the question is included, leaving the government with an inaccurate count.
Some migrants have voiced fears that if they answer the citizenship question and they are in the U.S. without proper documentation, immigration agents could use the information to detain and deport them to their homelands.
In the U.S., the decennial census is used to allocate $800 billion in funding for government programs throughout the 50 states, and also to decide how many representatives each state should have in the House for the next 10 years.
The Trump administration says the citizenship question, which has been asked during past census-taking, but not since 1950, is necessary to better enforce the country’s Voting Rights Act.
Court ruling ahead
Later this month, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether the question can be included in the census.
But in May, after the high court heard legal arguments for and against use of the question, evidence emerged that it was added to the census specifically to give Republicans and non-Hispanic whites an electoral advantage.
The evidence came from the files of a prominent Republican redistricting strategist, who, before his death last August, had helped lay the groundwork for including the question in the census.
One of Trump’s White House advisers, Kellyanne Conway, said the administration was not hiding anything related to the motives behind the citizenship question and was awaiting the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Wednesday said she would shield six million undocumented immigrants from deportation, a significant expansion of an Obama-era program protecting “Dreamers” brought to the United States as children.
The California U.S. senator proposed using the powers of the presidency to create a “roadmap to citizenship” for Dreamers while also offering new protections to the parents of American citizens and legal permanent residents as well as other law-abiding immigrants with strong roots in the community.
The proposal, which would rely on the president’s executive authority over the nation’s immigration laws, is a direct rebuke to President Donald Trump’s efforts to clamp down on immigration and build a wall to restrict the flow of immigrants from Central America.
Harris is one of some two dozen Democrats seeking their party’s nomination for the 2020 presidential election.
“Dreamers cannot afford to sit around and wait for Congress to get its act together,” Harris said in a statement. “These young people are just as American as I am, and they deserve a president who will fight for them from day one.”
Harris released her plan a day before the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to discuss whether to take up the Trump administration’s challenge to a 2012 program established by former President Barack Obama that gave Dreamers temporary protections.
The program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, remains in place after lower courts blocked Trump’s attempt to cancel it. The Trump administration has argued that Obama exceeded his constitutional powers in creating DACA without congressional approval.
Last week, the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would end the threat of deportation for Dreamers, but the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate is unlikely to consider the legislation.
Harris would expand the eligibility for Dreamers to gain protection against deportation and apply for work permits. The plan calls for eliminating several legal roadblocks that currently prevent many Dreamers from adjusting their legal status.
In addition, the program would be open to other immigrants who pass background checks, based on factors such as military service, years of residence and family ties to others who have received protections.
Immigration, which was central to Trump’s 2016 campaign, is likely to play a major role in next year’s election.
Acting Pentagon chief Patrick Shanahan told troops and civilian workers Tuesday to avoid political displays while on the job, a reminder that comes after the White House told the Navy to keep the USS John S. McCain out of sight to avoid offending President Donald Trump during a visit to Japan.
In separate memos to civilian and military leaders, Shanahan said their mission to protect and defend the nation should be apolitical.
“Those of us privileged to serve our Nation, in and out of uniform, in the DoD must be the epitome of American values and ethics,” Shanahan said.
He told military commanders to remind those in uniform that they must avoid actions that imply Pentagon approval of political candidates or causes. In a memo to the civilian workforce he said personnel may take part in limited political activities, but “they may never engage in such activity while on-duty or in a Federal building.”
Both Shanahan and Trump have distanced themselves from the ship incident, in which an unknown official in the White House military office directed the Navy to keep the McCain out of sight, presumably to avoid reminding the president of the late Sen. John McCain.
The warship was named for McCain’s father and grandfather and was posthumously rededicated in the name of the senator and former prisoner of war.
FILE – The U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain is seen after a collision, in Singapore waters, Aug. 21, 2017.
The president blamed the order on “well-meaning” staff aware of his dislike of McCain.
Asked about the memos Tuesday, Shanahan said: “What I wanted to do is, after the McCain situation, remind everyone that we’re not going to politicize the military. So it’s just a good healthy reminder.”
Last week, Shanahan ordered his chief of staff deliver a similar message to the White House military office, reaffirming his mandate that the Defense Department must not be politicized.
Shanahan has asked his chief of staff to look into the ship incident and find out what happened, but he also said he is not planning to seek an investigation by the Pentagon’s internal watchdog.
Shanahan said he was told that, despite the White House request, the Navy did not move the ship and that a barge that was in front of it was moved before Trump arrived. He said a tarp that had been draped over the ship’s name was removed, but it was put there for maintenance, not to obscure its identity.
Seeking to rebut President Donald Trump’s attempts to cast him and Democrats as too liberal, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders plans to give a speech Wednesday on democratic socialism, the economic philosophy that has guided his political career.
He made similar remarks during his first presidential campaign in 2016, when he faced questions about his decadeslong association with democratic socialists. He’s again confronting criticism from in and out of his party during his second presidential bid, and the speech, which the campaign is billing as a major address, is an attempt to reframe the debate about his views.
But he’s doing this in a reshaped political landscape in which he’s no longer the sole progressive taking on an establishment candidate as he was in 2016 when he battled Hillary Clinton. He’s one of nearly two dozen Democratic White House hopefuls, several of whom are also unabashed liberals. And they’re all operating in an environment dominated by Trump.
“We now have a president who is attacking me and others because we believe in democratic socialism,” Sanders said in a Tuesday interview with The Associated Press in which he previewed his speech. “This is a president who believes in socialism, but the difference is he believes in socialism for large corporations and the wealthy, not the working people.”
“What tomorrow is about,” he added, “is defining what democratic socialism means to me.”
Shaping those terms will be crucial if Sanders is to convince voters that his embrace of democratic socialism isn’t a barrier to winning the White House. He’s argued that his populist appeal could help win back the working-class voters across the Midwest who swung from Democrats to Trump in 2016.
Sanders is fond of noting that many of his Democratic rivals now back policies, such as “Medicare for All,” that were seen as too costly and too liberal in previous elections. But few of the other Democrats seeking the White House share his support for democratic socialism.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, who has jumped to the top of the Democratic field in part because of a perception that he’s the most electable candidate in the race, has derided the notion that politicians must be socialists to prove they’re progressive. Other liberal candidates, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kamala Harris of California, have noted that while they have problems with the economic system, they remain capitalists.
Trump and his allies have nonetheless lambasted Sanders and the rest of the Democratic field, warning against what they call the threat of creeping socialism.
In this year’s State of the Union address, Trump declared that America “will never be a socialist country.” Weeks later, when Sanders entered the race, a spokeswoman for his campaign said that Sanders had “already won the debate in the Democrat primary because every candidate is embracing his brand of socialism” and that Trump is the only candidate who will keep the country “free, prosperous and safe.”
Last month in Louisiana, Trump referred to Sanders as “crazy” and told the crowd the senator had “not good energy.”
Sanders last spoke in depth about democratic socialism in November 2015. Also speaking in Washington, he invoked the legacies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., arguing that democratic socialism was reflected in their priorities.
While in Tuesday’s interview Sanders promised he would be more explicit this time in describing his belief in democratic socialism, some of the themes he will discuss echo the 2015 remarks, including positioning himself as the heir of the ideals that originated with Roosevelt in 1944.
“Over 80 years ago, Franklin Delano Roosevelt helped create a government that made huge progress in protecting the needs of working families,” Sanders will say, according to prepared remarks. “Today in the second decade of the 21st century, we must take up the unfinished business of the New Deal and carry it to completion. This is the unfinished business of the Democratic Party and the vision we must accomplish.”
As he did in his first presidential run, much of Sanders’ campaign speech is focused on promising a wholesale revolution, including a fundamental rethinking of the political system. Asked Tuesday how he would tangibly change Washington’s centers of political power to make his visions a reality, he said he would do so “by taking politics out of Washington.”
“What the political revolution means to me, above and beyond democratic socialism, is getting millions of people who have given up on the political process, working people and young people, to stand up and fight for their rights. So those are the profound changes that we will be bringing about,” he said.
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday urged a stop to the “endless war” that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and a return to the Iran nuclear deal and Paris climate accord scrapped by Republican President Donald Trump.
Buttigieg, a Navy reservist who was deployed to Afghanistan, repudiated Trump’s go-it-alone, America First approach to the world in the first foreign policy speech of his 2020 White House campaign. He outlined a policy based on “America at our best,” a foil to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
“The need for a new foreign policy vision could not be more urgent today,” Buttigieg said in Bloomington, Indiana. “This administration has embraced and emboldened autocrats, while alienating democracies and allies around the globe.”
He told an audience at Indiana University that the next American president must set the bar high on the use of force, especially if Washington acts alone, and urged Congress to repeal a law passed days after Sept. 11 that paved the way for campaigns against al-Qaida and Taliban militants in Afghanistan.
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Mayor Pete Buttigieg shakes hands with supporters after delivering remarks on foreign policy and national security in Bloomington, Indiana, June 11, 2019.
“The world needs an America free from entrapment in endless war and prepared to focus on future threats,” Buttigieg said.
U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, for example, must come to an end, he said.
The mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Buttigieg is one of three military veterans running for president and, at 37, the youngest in a field of more than 20 Democrats. He is polling in a second tier of candidates behind the two front-runners, former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
A Harvard University graduate and Rhodes Scholar who sprinkles French, Norwegian, Arabic and Italian in interviews, he is among the few Democratic candidates to issue a foreign policy agenda.
Abdication of responsibility
Buttigieg said the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force helped ensnare the United States in conflicts where the mission was not clearly defined and that Congress has abdicated its responsibility on waging war.
Republicans and Democrats have argued for years that Congress ceded too much authority to the White House after the Sept. 11 attacks. Divisions over how much control they should exert over the Pentagon have stymied efforts to pass a new law.
Buttigieg also vowed to return the United States to the landmark 2015 international Iran nuclear accord on the grounds the agreement was in the U.S. national security interest.
“Whatever its imperfections, this was perhaps as close to the real ‘art of the deal’ as diplomatic achievements get,” Buttigieg said, referring to the title of a Trump book.
Climate change
The United States needs to prioritize climate change as a national security issue and should rejoin the Paris climate accords limiting greenhouse gas emissions, he said.
Buttigieg criticized human rights abuses in China and the torture and execution of dissidents in Saudi Arabia, and took the view that people who support Israel can oppose the policies of its current right-wing government at the same time.
In another dig at Trump, who has generally fostered a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Buttigieg called Moscow “a self-interested, disruptive and adversarial actor.”
The U.S. House of Representatives is due to vote Tuesday on a measure authorizing lawsuits against Attorney General William Barr and former White House counsel Don McGahn over their refusal to cooperate with congressional subpoenas in connection with the investigation of Russian election interference.
Lawmakers want access to documents from special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on his probe into whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice by trying to thwart the investigation, and for McGahn to testify about what took place inside the White House.
Authorizing the lawsuits would allow leaders in the Democratic-led House to go forward with those steps if they choose to do so at a later date.
McGahn was a key witness for Mueller, but has declined to testify before congressional committees, complying with the wishes of the White House. Mueller’s team interviewed McGahn for 30 hours, with the lawyer telling prosecutors that Trump pressured him to try to get Mueller ousted from overseeing the investigation, a demand he ignored.
On Monday, the House reached a deal for the Justice Department to turn over crucial documents collected from the Mueller investigation.
Congressman Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the Justice Department would be opening Mueller’s “most important files to us, providing us with key evidence that the special counsel used to assess whether” Trump and others “obstructed justice or were engaged in other misconduct.”
Nadler said that all members of the Judiciary panel — Democrats and Republicans alike — would be able to see the documents, which he said “will allow us to perform our constitutional duties and decide how to respond to the allegations laid out against the president” by Mueller.
House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., gavels in a hearing on the Mueller report without witness Attorney General William Barr who refused to appear, on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 2, 2019.
With the agreement, Nadler said he would withdraw a vote set for Tuesday whether to hold Barr in criminal contempt of Congress for failing to comply with the House committee’s subpoena for the information.
Nadler said he is giving the Justice Department “time to demonstrate compliance with this agreement. If the department proceeds in good faith and we are able to obtain everything we need, then there will be no need to take further steps.” But he said if the agreement collapses, it “will have no choice” but to pursue a court case to try to obtain the underlying documents from the Mueller probe that it is seeking.
Nadler’s committee and others in the House are pursuing several investigations of Trump, along with the obstruction allegations, including about his business affairs, taxes and administration policies during his 29-month presidency. Trump has vowed to fight all Democratic subpoenas, but Nadler’s agreement for information from the Mueller probe signals there also is room for negotiation rather than to let every dispute end in a legal fight in a courtroom.
On Monday, the Judiciary panel heard from former White House counsel John Dean, who was instrumental 46 years ago in the downfall of another U.S. president, Richard Nixon. At the time, Dean testified before Congress about White House corruption that led to Nixon’s resignation as he was about to be impeached.
Mueller declined to exonerate Trump of obstruction allegations after a 22-month investigation. But he said that in any event Trump could not have been charged because a Justice Department policy prohibits filing criminal charges against sitting presidents. Subsequently, Barr and then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said criminal charges against Trump were not warranted.
About a quarter of the 235 Democrats in the 435-member House, along with one Republican, have called for Trump’s impeachment or the start of an impeachment inquiry. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has resisted such calls, saying she prefers continued investigations by several House committees.
Last week, the political news site Politico reported that she told Democratic colleagues that she does not want Trump impeached, but “in prison,” after facing criminal charges once he leaves office.
Trump retorted, “She’s a nasty, vindictive, horrible person.”
Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives reached a deal Monday for the Justice Department to turn over crucial documents collected by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice by trying to thwart his probe of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
Congressman Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the Justice Department would be opening Mueller’s “most important files to us, providing us with key evidence that the special counsel used to assess whether” Trump and others “obstructed justice or were engaged in other misconduct.”
Nadler said that all members of the Judiciary panel — Democrats and Republicans alike — would be able to see the documents, which he said “will allow us to perform our constitutional duties and decide how to respond to the allegations laid out against the president” by Mueller.
With the agreement, Nadler said he would withdraw a vote set for Tuesday whether to hold Attorney General William Barr in criminal contempt of Congress for failing to comply with the House committee’s subpoena for the information.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., arrives as House Democrats start their hearing to examine whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice on Capitol Hill, June 10, 2019.
Nadler said he is giving the Justice Department “time to demonstrate compliance with this agreement. If the department proceeds in good faith and we are able to obtain everything we need, then there will be no need to take further steps.” But he said if the agreement collapses, it “will have no choice” but to pursue a court case to try to obtain the underlying documents from the Mueller probe that it is seeking.
White House counsel testimony
The agreement did not address the committee’s request for testimony from former White House counsel Donald McGahn, who was a key witness for Mueller, but has declined to testify, complying with the wishes of the White House. Mueller’s team interviewed McGahn for 30 hours, with the lawyer telling prosecutors that Trump pressured him to try to get Mueller ousted from overseeing the investigation, a demand he ignored.
The full House is voting Tuesday whether to go to court under civil, not criminal law to enforce subpoenas against both Barr and McGahn.
Nadler’s committee and others in the House are pursuing several investigations of Trump, along with the obstruction allegations, including about his business affairs, taxes and administration policies during his 29-month presidency. Trump has vowed to fight all Democratic subpoenas, but Nadler’s agreement for information from the Mueller probe signals there also is room for negotiation rather than to let every dispute end in a legal fight in a courtroom.
Report did not exonerate Trump
Mueller declined to exonerate Trump of obstruction allegations after a 22-month investigation. But he said that in any event Trump could not have been charged because a Justice Department policy prohibits filing criminal charges against sitting presidents. Subsequently, Barr and then Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said criminal charges against Trump were not warranted.
About a quarter of the 235 Democrats in the 435-member House, along with one Republican, have called for Trump’s impeachment or the start of an impeachment inquiry. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has resisted such calls, saying she prefers continued investigations by several House committees.
Last week, the political news site Politico reported that she told Democratic colleagues that she does not want Trump impeached, but “in prison,” after facing criminal charges once he leaves office.
Trump retorted, “She’s a nasty, vindictive, horrible person.”
U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday claimed Sunday that Mexico “for many years” has not been cooperative to curb the surge of migrants traveling through it to reach the United States, but believes a new agreement will alleviate the problem.
The U.S. leader warned, however, that “if for some unknown reason” Mexico does not stanch the flow of Central American migrants heading north to the U.S., “we can always go back to our previous, very profitable” imposition of tariffs on Mexican exports sent to the United States. “But I don’t believe that will be necessary,” he added.
A deal announced Friday calls for Mexico to dispatch 6,000 troops to its border with Guatemala to halt the flow of migrants, while the U.S. gained new authority to force asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their legal cases in the U.S. are pending. Trump said there is one particular provision of the pact that has yet to be disclosed but will be announced “at the appropriate time.”
“There is now going to be great cooperation between Mexico & the USA, something that didn’t exist for decades,” he said on Twitter.
“Now I have full confidence, especially after speaking to their President (Andrés Manuel López Obrador) yesterday, that they will be very cooperative and want to get the job properly done,” Trump said.
He dismissed an account in The New York Times as “another false report” that key parts of the deal had been reached in December. He contended that the “failing” newspaper and the “ratings challenged” CNN television network “will do anything possible to see our Country fail! They are truly The Enemy of the People!”
Trump’s acting Homeland Security secretary, Kevin McAleenan, told Fox News Sunday “There’s a mechanism to make sure that [Mexico does] what they promised to do, that there’s an actual result, that we see a vast reduction in those [migration] numbers.”
He said the arriving migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras largely amounted to “an economic migration that we need to stop with enforcement. We need to be able to repatriate people successfully.”
McAleenan said that “people can disagree with the tactics” — Trump’s threat to impose a 5% tariff on Mexican imports starting Monday but that “Mexico came to the table with real proposals. We have an agreement that, if they implement, will be effective.”
But he said Congress still needs to enact other immigration reforms, including the right to detain migrant families beyond 20 days and change the provisions of asylum requests to more closely align with the likelihood of whether migrants ultimately will be successful in their bids to stay permanently in the United States.
The new voter protection director for Florida Democrats told party activists on Saturday that they should assume there will be a recount during next year’s presidential election.
“We are going to be prepared,” Brandon Peters told a packed room of Democratic activists at the state party’s Leadership Blue 2019 meeting at Walt Disney World in Orlando.
Peters, who was hired by the state party last month, said there will be teams of volunteers trained in how to monitor county canvassing boards for recount problems around the state, should one take place in the 2020 presidential election.
Florida became famous for recounts after the 2000 presidential election, and last year there were recounts in three statewide races. The Florida Democratic Party is the second state Democratic party in the nation to hire a voter protection director, behind the Georgia Democratic Party.
Peters said by July 2020 he hopes to have 15,000 lawyers and volunteers in place around the state to address any voter problems.
Those problems include making it difficult for ex-convicts to register after Florida voters last year passed a constitutional amendment restoring voting rights to as many as 1.4 million felons and creating earlier deadlines for mail-in ballots, Peters said.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has pledged to sign a bill requiring repayment of financial obligations before felons’ voting rights are restored.
Other nonelectoral changes in Florida could have consequences for voters, such as the rollout this month of new driver’s licenses with magnetic strips removed, Peters said.
Voters often check in at polls where information on the strip is run against a database for ID verification. Without that, poll workers may have to resort to manually checking the ID against paper rolls, creating long lines, Peters said.
The state party is coordinating with the Democratic National Party to set up a tool to track election problems in real time. There also will be a hotline for volunteers to call in problems, Peters said.
If you see something, say something,'' Peters said.Once we are aware of the problem, we will do something about it.”
Even though President Trump is announcing his re-election campaign in Orlando in less than two weeks, and Florida promises to be crucial for any path to the White House, none of the major Democratic presidential candidates were at the Florida conference since most of them were attending a competing event hosted by Iowa Democrats this weekend.
Some candidates sent video messages that were played at a dinner for the Florida Democrats, and two candidates, U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris and South Bend Mayor Peter Buttigieg, made plans to send their spouses. But Buttigieg’s husband, Chasten, was a no-show after running into a transportation snafu.
Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez encouraged the Florida Democrats “to date” all the presidential candidates.
Fall in love with multiple people at one time. Date as many people as you want,'' Perez said.And then when we have our nominee, fall in line together as Democrats. Our unity is our greatest strength and it’s Donald Trump’s biggest fear.” …
As Washington and Mexico City both took victory laps Saturday over a deal that headed off threatened tariffs on Mexican imports, it remained to be seen how effective it may be, and migration experts raised concerns about what it could mean for people fleeing poverty and violence in Central America.
Other than a vague reiteration of a joint commitment to promote development, security and growth in Central America, the agreement focuses almost exclusively on enforcement and says little about the root causes driving the surge in migrants seen in recent months.
My sense is overall the Mexican government got out of this better than they thought. The agreement though leaves a lot of big question marks,'' said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute.It’s good that the two sides reached an agreement which allows both of them to save face, but it’s not clear how easy it is to implement.”
Guard deployment
The deployment of 6,000 National Guard troops appears to be the key commitment in what was described as “unprecedented steps” by Mexico to ramp up enforcement, though Interior Secretary Olga Sanchez Cordero said that had already been planned and was not a result of external pressure.
I have said before, migration into Mexico also has to be regulated ... orderly, legal and safe,'' Sanchez Cordero told The Associated Press.So the National Guard that we were going to deploy anyway, we’re going to deploy. It’s not because they tell us to, but rather because we’re going to do it anyway.”
Mexican measures
Mexico was already increasing enforcement with detentions, deportations and checkpoints. In recent weeks it broke up the latest migrant caravan, snuffing out most of the appetite for traveling in large, visible groups.
If Mexico does more as promised, it’s likely to be seen in intensification of those same efforts, experts said — raids on hotels where migrants stay or on bus companies transporting them north to the U.S. border. The two countries also agreed to share information on and disrupt people-smuggling networks, a new focus seen earlier this week when Mexico arrested two migration activists and froze accounts of over two dozen people alleged to have organized caravans.
A concern is that even more aggressive enforcement could put migrants with legitimate asylum claims at risk of being deported from Mexico to the dangers they fled in the first place. Also, Mexican security forces are known for often being corrupt and shaking migrants down for bribes. A renewed crackdown is seen as making migration through Mexico more difficult and more dangerous, but doing little to discourage Central Americans desperate to escape poverty, hunger and violence.
People are fleeing their homes regardless of what the journey might mean and regardless of what chance they may have for seeking protections in Mexico or in the United States,'' said Maureen Meyer, an immigration expert at the Washington Office on Latin America,simply because they need to leave.”
Human element missing
It seems like in all these discussions [about tariffs and immigration], the human reality of these people and why they're leaving Central America was lost,'' she continued.It was ‘what can we do to stop them,’ and not ‘what can we really do to create the conditions in their home countries so that people don’t have to leave.’ ”
Another key element of the deal is that the United States will expand a program known as the Migrant Protection Protocol, or MPP. According to Mexican immigration authorities, since January there have been 10,393 returns by migrants to Mexico while their cases wend their way through U.S. courts.
MPP has been plagued by glitches and so far has been introduced only in California and El Paso, Texas, and Selee said there are logistical hurdles to further expansion. Right now the MPP figure of 10,000 or so represents “a drop in the bucket” compared with overall migration, he added.
Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard, who led the negotiations, said the agreement does not include any quotas.
If MPP does roll out on a mass scale along the United States’ entire southern border, it could overwhelm Mexican border cities. Mexico promised to offer jobs, health care and education for returnees, but has little infrastructure to do so. Currently most shelters and support programs are run by the likes of NGOs and the Roman Catholic Church.
And if the program were to include places like Tamaulipas, the Gulf coast state where cartels and gangs control large swaths of territory, migrants could be at even greater risk.
Dangerous area
This is an area that the U.S. government considers that it's not safe for any American citizen,'' Meyer said, referring to the State Department's highest-level warning against all travel to Tamaulipas because of crime and kidnappings.And yet it’s OK for us to send people back there?”
Still, the deal was hailed by many in Mexican industry and politics.
Arturo Rocha, a Foreign Relations Department spokesman, tweeted late Friday that it was an unquestionable triumph for Mexico.'' Avoiding tariffs sends a calming message to ratings agencies worried about a possible trade war, he said, adding that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's government had won U.S. recommitment to Central American development and resistedsafe third country” designation, a concession sought by Washington that would have required asylum seekers to apply first in Mexico.
However, Abdel Camargo, an anthropologist at the Frontera Sur College in southern Mexico, said that by accepting MPP returnees, “Mexico does not become a safe third country but de facto is going to act as one.”
Some such as ex-President Felipe Calderon of the conservative opposition National Action Party questioned whether Mexico was truly master of its own migratory policy. But Jose Antonio Meade, a five-time Cabinet minister who lost last year’s election to Lopez Obrador, praised Ebrard for avoiding damaging tariffs “in the face of very complex conditions.”
In San Jose del Cabo for a summit of North American mayors, Juan Manuel Gastelum of Tijuana, across from San Diego, said he’s fine with more migrants being returned to his city as long as the federal government invests in caring for them. He added that the threat of tariffs may have been necessary to force his country’s hand.
“How else was Mexico going to understand that it is not right to leave migration uncontrolled?” said Gastelum, who is also a member of National Action.
Tijuana rally
Meanwhile, a rally later Saturday in Tijuana that Lopez Obrador called to defend Mexican pride and dignity was expected to take on more of a festive atmosphere.
It was [originally supposed to be] a meeting to show support for the incoming governor ... that turned into a demand for peace and respect on the tariffs issue,'' local restaurateur and businessman Francisco Villegas said.But since the tariffs issue was sorted out by having Marcelo Ebrard and his team up there, it is now turning into a celebration.” …
To save babies from brain-damaging birth defects, University of Pittsburgh scientist Carolyn Coyne studies placentas from fetuses that otherwise would be discarded — and she’s worried this kind of research is headed for the chopping block.
The Trump administration is cracking down on fetal tissue research , with new hurdles for government-funded scientists around the country who call the special cells vital for fighting a range of health threats. Already, the administration has shut down one university’s work using fetal tissue to test HIV treatments, and is ending other fetal tissue research at the National Institutes of Health.<
“I knew this was something that’s going to trickle down to the rest of us,” said Coyne. She uses the placenta, which people may not think of as fetal tissue but technically is classified as such because the fetus produced it, to study how viruses such as Zika get past that protective barrier early in pregnancy.
“It seems to me what we’re moving toward is a ban,” she added. If so, when it comes to unraveling what happens in pregnancy and fetal development, “we’re going to stay ignorant to a lot of things.”
Different types of tissue left over from elective abortions have been used in scientific research for decades, and the work has been credited with leading to lifesaving vaccines and other advances. Under orders from President Donald Trump, the Health and Human Services Department abruptly announced on Wednesday the new restrictions on taxpayer-funded research, but not privately funded work.
Aside from the cancellation of an HIV-related project at the University of California, San Francisco, university-led projects that are funded by the NIH — estimated to be fewer than 200 — aren’t affected right away.
But as researchers seek to renew their funding or propose new studies, HHS said it will have to pass an extra layer of review, beyond today’s strict scientific scrutiny. Each project will have a federal ethics board appointed to recommend whether NIH should grant the money.
HHS hasn’t offered details but under the law authorizing the review process, that board must include not just biomedical experts but a theologian, and the nation’s health secretary can overrule its advice.
“I predict over time we will see a slow and steady elimination of federal funding for research that uses fetal tissue, regardless of how necessary it is,” said University of Wisconsin law professor Alta Charo, a nationally recognized bioethics expert.
Necessity is the crux of a fierce debate between abortion foes and scientists about whether there are alternatives to fetal tissue for research.
Zika offers a glimpse at the difficulty. Somehow, the Zika virus can sneak from the mother’s bloodstream across the placenta, which protects and nourishes the fetus, and target the fetus’ brain. It’s something researchers hope to learn to block.
Studying the placentas of small animals or even monkeys isn’t a substitute because they differ from the human organ, said Emory University researcher Mehul Suthar. For example, the specific type of placental cell where Zika can lurk in humans isn’t thought to be present in mouse placentas.
And because the placenta continually changes as the fetus that created it grows, first-trimester tissue may show a very different vulnerability than a placenta that’s expelled during full-term birth, when it’s no longer defined as fetal tissue but as medical waste.
Suthar recently submitted a new grant application to study first- and second-trimester placental tissue, and is worried about its fate under the still uncertain ethics provision.
It “sounds a bit murky as to what the impact could be,” he said. It could be small, “or it could be an outright ban on what we’re doing.”
Anti-abortion groups argue there are alternatives, such as stem cells, growing organ-like clumps of cells in lab dishes, or using tissue taken from newborns as they have heart surgery.
Indeed, NIH is funding a $20 million program to research alternatives to fetal tissue and to prove whether they work as well.
“Taxpayer funding ought to go to promote alternatives that are already being used in the production of treatments, vaccines and medicines, and to expand approaches that do not depend on the destruction of unborn children,” said Mallory Quigley of the Susan B. Anthony List, which works to elect anti-abortion candidates to public office.
But dozens of medical and science organizations have told HHS there is no substitute for fetal tissue in studying certain — not all — health disorders, such as HIV, Zika, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, spinal cord injury, and a variety of eye diseases.
To Pittsburgh’s Coyne, part of the political debate is a “completely unsubstantiated belief that not allowing research and science is going to prevent or stop abortions, which is not the case.”
Medical research using fetal tissue won’t stop but will move to other countries, said Charo, who advised the Obama administration. The United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore and China are among the countries using fetal tissue to seek breakthroughs.
“Other countries work with this in a regulated fashion and they will continue to outstrip us,” she said. “We have allowed patients’ interests to become collateral damage in the abortion wars.”
