In the foreign policy section of his State of the Union Address, U.S. President Donald Trump spoke of ending conflicts where American troops have fought for years, and preventing what he sees as inevitable future conflicts if not for the policies enacted by his administration.

Afghanistan, Iraq wars

Trump noted the vast costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have resulted in the deaths of nearly 7,000 U.S. military personnel since 2001.

He said that after so many years of fighting in Afghanistan, now is the time “to at least try for peace,” saying the Taliban wants the same.

“My administration is holding constructive talks with a number of Afghan groups, including the Taliban.  As we make progress in these negotiations, we will be able to reduce our troop presence and focus on counterterrorism,” Trump said.

He has also ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, where they have been fighting to dislodge the Islamic State group since the militants swept through large areas of northern Iraq and eastern Syria in 2014.

“Today, we have liberated virtually all of the territory from the grip of these bloodthirsty monsters.  Now, as we work with our allies to destroy the remnants of ISIS, it is time to give our brave warriors in Syria a warm welcome home,” Trump said, using an acronym for the militant group.

North Korea

Following up on a June 2018 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump announced Tuesday he would again meet with Kim on February 27 in Vietnam.

He touted a list of what he said were the successes of a “bold new diplomacy” toward North Korea, including the return of American hostages and a halt in nuclear and missile testing that followed the first summit.

“If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea,” Trump said, adding that his relationship with Kim “is a good one.”

Iran

His rhetoric toward Iran was much stronger, remaining consistent with the tone he has struck since before becoming president when he was strongly critical of the international agreement that limited Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

“My administration has acted decisively to confront the world’s leading state sponsor of terror: the radical regime in Iran,” Trump said in his address.  “It is a radical regime.  They do bad, bad things.”

Last year, Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.  Partners Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany have remained committed to the deal, along with Iran, and the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency has certified in multiple reports that Iran remains in compliance with measures meant to ensure it cannot develop a nuclear weapon.

Nuclear Arms Treaty

Trump last week announced the U.S. withdrawal from a 30-year-old nuclear arms treaty with Russia that banned the countries from possessing certain missiles.  He says Russia violated the pact, which Russia denies.

Trump suggested in his speech Tuesday the possibility of negotiating a new agreement that would add other nuclear powers such as China.  But in a comment that came shortly after he highlighted an increase in U.S. military spending, he warned that in the absence of such a deal, “we will outspend and out-innovate all others by far.”

Venezuela

Trump also used part of his speech to express support for the people of Venezuela, saying the United States stands with them “in their noble quest for freedom.”

The country has seen massive protests ahead of and following President Nicolas Maduro’s re-election last year in a vote the opposition called a sham.

The U.S. leader condemned what he called “the brutality” of Maduro’s government, saying its policies have put the country “into a state of abject poverty and despair.”

Trump reiterated U.S. support for Juan Guaido, who has also received the support of a number of European and South American countries since declaring himself president last month.  Russia and China are among the governments insisting Maduro remains president.

China and economic conflict

China featured in a much shorter section of Trump’s speech that dealt with economic conflict.

“We are now making it clear to China that after years of targeting our industries, and stealing our intellectual property, the theft of American jobs and wealth has come to an end,” Trump said.

He cited new tariffs he has imposed on imports of Chinese goods, and said negotiations continue toward a new U.S.-China trade deal that he is insisting includes protecting American jobs, reducing the U.S. trade deficit with China and ending unfair trade practices.

In one of the few specific requests he made to the joint session of Congress gathered to listen to his speech, Trump asked lawmakers to pass legislation that would respond to a country placing tariffs on U.S. goods by enacting equivalent tariffs on imports of the same products from that country coming into the United States.

Trade with Canada, Mexico

His other economic focus was trade with neighbors Canada and Mexico.

After his decision to abandon the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, representatives from the three countries came together last year to craft a new trade deal known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

The new deal has not yet been ratified, but Trump said Tuesday it would boost U.S. manufacturing jobs and automobile production, while also helping the agriculture sector and offering protections for intellectual property.
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Stacey Abrams, former Georgia state legislative leader who fell short last fall in her bid to become first African-American woman to win a governorship, gave the Democratic response to President Donald Trump’s address
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Stacey Abrams, a former Georgia state legislative leader who fell short last fall in her bid to become the first African-American woman to win a governorship, gave the Democratic response to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union message Tuesday night.

Here are highlights of her remarks.

Abrams stressed the need for bipartisanship and the need to avoid a repeat of the recent 35-day partial government shutdown that left 800,000 federal workers furloughed and without pay. She accused Trump of “making their livelihoods a pawn for a political game” in pressing for $5.7 billion in government funds to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border that most Americans don’t want.

 
Abrams, who accused her Republican opponent for governor  -- Secretary of State Brian Kemp – of voter suppression, called for reforms to assure voting rights and ballot access to African Americans and other minorities. “This is the next battle for our democracy, one where all eligible citizens can have their say about the vision we want for our country,” she said. “We must reject the cynicism that says allowing every eligible vote to be cast and counted is a 'power grab.”

 
She called on Congress to craft a bipartisan, humane “21st century immigration plan, while complaining that “this administration chooses to cage children and tea families apart.” She said that “compassionate treatment at the border is not the same as open borders.”

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Stacey Abrams, who has been chosen to give the Democratic response to the State of the Union, is a rising political star in the Democratic Party and the first African-American woman to deliver the address.

Abrams recently showed that she can mobilize the power of black women voters in her close but unsuccessful bid to become Georgia’s governor, and Democratic leaders are hoping that her selection to give the prominent address will energize the party’s base.

“She is just a great spokesperson. She is an incredible leader. She has led the charge for voting rights, which is at the root of just about everything else,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Schumer, along with other top Democrats, have been urging Abrams to challenge Georgia’s Republican Sen. David Perdue, one of President Donald Trump’s most outspoken allies in Congress, as part of an effort to gain Democratic control of the Senate.

Boost for fellow Democrats

While Abrams narrowly lost the Georgia governor’s race last year to Republican Brian Kemp, her presence at the top of the ticket boosted Democratic votes in the state and helped other state Democrats win office.

Democrats flipped a House seat in a suburban Atlanta congressional district that Republicans had held for decades and also flipped at least a dozen state legislative seats across the Atlanta suburbs.

The fact that Abrams, 45, nearly won the governor’s race in the reliably Republican Southern state has been seen by Democrats as reinforcing her ability to gain supporters and energize voters. 

Following the race, Abrams challenged the results, sharply accusing Kemp of deliberately suppressing thousands of votes. A group backed by Abrams filed a federal lawsuit this month saying Georgia deprived many low-income people and minorities of their voting rights during the race, which was overseen by Kemp, then secretary of state.

Abrams is a Yale Law School graduate who was elected to Georgia’s General Assembly in 2006. She rose to lead the Democrats in the assembly, taking over as the minority leader in 2011. She was known by her colleagues for being well-prepared, a good listener and someone who inspired others to trust and follow her. Although she ran unapologetically as a liberal, she was still able to earn the respect of many of her Republican colleagues and work with them across the aisle.  

‘Vision for prosperity and equality’

Abrams has said she is “honored” to be delivering the response to the State of the Union address. She has said that she intends to “deliver a vision for prosperity and equality, where everyone in our nation has a voice and where each of those voices is heard.” 

In recent years, the response to the State of the Union speech has usually given by someone whom party leaders see as a rising political star. But delivering the response can also be a thankless task that is heavily scrutinized.

“Stacey Abrams embodies the American Dream, and her powerful message of progress for all is deeply needed during this time for our country,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. 
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President Donald Trump will enjoy the backdrop of a mostly solid economy as he delivers his second State of the Union address Tuesday night, though questions about its sustainability linger.

Trump will likely tout the latest signs of strength: Friday’s jobs report showed that employers added the most jobs in January in nearly a year. The proportion of Americans working or looking for work reached a roughly five-year high. And a separate report showed that factory output rose at a healthy clip in December.

Those figures, however, haven’t fully erased concerns about an array of headwinds facing the U.S. economy this year.

Several challenges loom: Overseas growth is stumbling, led by weakness in China, the world’s second-largest economy. Europe is hamstrung by a recession in Italy and the potential for an unruly Brexit. A trade war between the U.S. and China and higher U.S. mortgage rates, partly engineered by the Federal Reserve, remain threats. The impact of the administration’s tax cut may fade. And a 35-day partial government shutdown will likely trim official measures of growth for the first quarter, economists say.

U.S. businesses are defying those headwinds, for now. Many analysts attribute the economy’s current health to Trump’s tax cuts in late 2017 and a jump in government spending last year, as part of a budget deal between the administration and Congress.

“No other major economy in the world did what we did,” said Ethan Harris, global economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “The stimulus did a very good job of covering up all the blemishes of the economy, including the risks of the trade war.”

Economic growth reached 3.8 percent last spring and summer, the fastest six-month pace in four years. It also accelerated job gains at a time when many economists expected hiring to slow. With the unemployment rate already low, analysts figured that companies would have fewer unemployed people to hire.

Yet employers stepped up their hiring and drove the unemployment rate down to 3.7 percent in November, the lowest in five decades. It has since ticked up to 4 percent, partly because of government workers who were temporarily unemployed because of the shutdown.

White House officials say the good times will continue. Kevin Hassett, a top administration economist, forecasts that growth will clock in at 3 percent a year for the next decade. He predicts that the administration’s corporate tax cuts will entice businesses to invest more in machinery, software and buildings, which will make workers more productive and generate longer-term growth.

So far there is little evidence that that is happening, economists say. After a burst of investment in the first half of last year, companies have since pulled back on spending. Some economists attribute their caution to the administration’s trade war with China.

“They’re willing to add more people — that’s good,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton, referring to U.S. businesses. But “right now they’re not willing to pull the trigger and bet on building more capacity. That undermines your foundation for future growth.”

Most economists expect the impact of the tax cuts and extra government spending to fade as the year progresses and for the rate hikes the Fed has already imposed to hold back growth somewhat. Inevitably, too, a prolonged global slump would weaken the U.S. economy as well.

Harris forecasts that growth will slow to a 2 percent annual rate in the final three months of this year. Economists at JPMorgan Chase expect it will be just 1.5 percent.

Exactly how the U.S. economy is faring is harder than usual to judge because many data reports, including the quarterly figures on growth, are still delayed from the shutdown. The government hasn’t yet said when it will release its first estimate of gross domestic product — the broadest gauge of the economy — for the final three months of 2018.

Trends that had looked alarming a month or two ago now appear benign, perhaps even supportive of growth. The stock market, having plunged nearly 20 percent late last year, rose 8 percent in January, its best monthly performance since 2015. Americans who are invested in stocks typically cut spending when market indexes fall steadily. That is now less likely to happen.

And suddenly the Fed under Chairman Jerome Powell looks like an economic ally. The central bank had raised its benchmark short-term interest rate four times last year — action that helped make mortgages and other consumer and business loans costlier. In December, the Fed’s policymakers said they envisioned raising rates twice more this year.

But this week, the Fed held its benchmark rate steady and sent its strongest signal to date that it saw no need to raise rates in the coming months — perhaps even for the rest of the year. Its message ignited a rally on Wall Street, which cheered the prospect of continued modest borrowing rates for the near future.

At the same time, Swonk points out that home and auto sales are declining, suggesting they have peaked. A slowdown in such major purchases could weigh on growth in the coming months.

 
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Both the president and lawmakers invite guests to the State of the Union address, usually to make a statement on an issue they wish to highlight. Here are some notable officials and the guests they plan to bring to the address.

President Donald Trump

The president has invited Judah Samet, who survived the Holocaust and the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in October 2018 that killed 11 people, as well as Timothy Matson, a member of the Pittsburgh Police Department SWAT team, which responded to the shooting. Trump has invited several other people, including family members of Gerald and Sharon David, a Nevada couple who were killed in their home in January by an illegal immigrant; Matthew Charles, who was sentenced in 1996 to 35 years in prison for selling crack cocaine, among other charges, and was released in January as a result of Trump’s prison reforms; and Elvin Hernandez, a special agent with the Trafficking in Persons Unit of the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations division.

​House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

The Democratic minority leader is bringing Elizabeth Guzman, the Virginia delegate who will deliver the Spanish response to the State of the Union address. Pelosi has also invited Melody Klingenfuss, who was brought illegally to the United States a child, also known as a “Dreamer.” 

Senator Rick Scott

Republican Scott’s guest for the State of the Union address is Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow was one of 17 people killed in the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school shooting. Scott, who was the governor of Florida when the shooting took place, appointed Pollack to Florida’s education board. However, Scott’s successor, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, rescinded that appointment along with dozens of others made by Scott.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Democrat Ocasio-Cortez is taking Ana Maria Archila, a woman who cornered former Senator Jeff Flake on live television to protest his support for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Archila, who lives in Ocasio-Cortez’s New York district, confronted Flake in a Senate elevator along with another woman last September and yelled at him over his support of Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual assault. The women described themselves as survivors of sexual assault and asked Flake to reconsider his support of Kavanaugh, a moment that was replayed throughout the media. Kavanaugh denied the accusation and was later confirmed to the high court.

Representative Jeff Fortenberry

Republican Fortenberry, from Nebraska, has invited Nadia Murad, an Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist who escaped captivity by the Islamic State and went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

​Representative Jimmy Gomez 

Democrat Gomez, from California, is bringing Sandra Diaz, a formerly undocumented immigrant who worked as a housekeeper from 2010-2013 at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Diaz is from Costa Rica and has since become a legal U.S. resident. Democratic Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey has invited Victorina Morales, another undocumented worker who previously worked at the same Trump property. Morales was fired from working as a maid in the golf club after coming forward to the media about being undocumented.

Senator Thom Tillis

Republican Tillis, from North Carolina, will attend the State of the Union with evangelical pastor Andrew Brunson, who was released from a Turkish prison last year. The detention of Brunson, on charges of espionage in 2016, strained U.S.-Turkey relations. The Trump administration had strongly pressed Turkey for his release.

Representative Chris Pappas

Democrat Pappas, from New Hampshire, is one of at least four members of Congress who is bringing a transgender service member or veteran to the address. Pappas, an openly gay congressman, has invited Tavion Dignard, who served in the U.S. Navy from 1998-2002. The Trump administration has banned most openly transgender men and women from serving in the military, and the Supreme Court ruled last month the government could carry out the policy while legal challenges to it play out in the court system. 
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White House officials are expressing anger after an insider leaked months of President Donald Trump’s private schedules.  

The release of the information is a “disgraceful breach of trust,” according to Madeleine Westerhout, the director of Oval Office operations.

In a tweet, Westerhout said what the documents do not show “are the hundreds of calls and meetings” the president takes every day.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders is also pushing back on the assessment that the schedules reveal the majority of Trump’s time is spent in unstructured “executive time” – reinforcing the image the president prefers to devote many hours every day watching news on cable television and tweeting about it.

“President Trump has a different leadership style than his predecessors and the results speak for themselves,” said Sanders, adding that the president “spends much of his average day in scheduled meetings, events, and calls.”

The 95 pages of private Trump schedules were obtained by the Axios website, which posted the material online Sunday.

It shows 60 percent of the president’s schedule since last November’s midterm elections is set aside for him to casually meet with staff members, peruse the stack of newspapers delivered to his office, watch television and make phone calls to officials and informal advisers.  

“What’s not entirely unusual are swaths of unscheduled time on the public schedule. It’s true that not all of the commander-in-chief’s engagements can be broadcast to the world,” explains Ned Price, a special assistant to the president during the administration of former President Barack Obama.

“What’s stunning in this case is that there’s nothing behind the curtain for Trump. Nothing. And the fact that they delineate ‘policy time’ – an hour every once in a while – speaks to the fact that the remainder of the time is taken up with Fox News and other favored presidential past times,” Price, a former National Security Council high-ranking official, tells VOA.

Sanders disputes that assessment, contending Trump’s schedule allows “for a more creative environment that has helped make him the most productive president in modern history.”

What is indisputable is that different presidents have had individual management styles.

Historians note that early in his presidency, Bill Clinton was habitually late and often deviated from the planned schedule.

Obama and his predecessor, George W. Bush, were more disciplined. Former administration officials say Bush’s schedule was tight and planned months in advance. Obama occasionally had blocks of unscheduled time, but that usually was for preparation ahead of a big speech or major international travel.

Recent news articles and books by former administration officials have spoken of Trump having a short attention span and expressing impatience in briefings about military and intelligence matters.

White House officials dispute the characterization Trump is not interested in such topics or has only a superficial understanding of them. What is clear, according to news reports and those close to the president, is that he prefers succinct presentations with more visual elements than those that were prepared for his predecessors.

The concept of “executive time” was introduced for Trump by former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly for a president bristling in response to being locked into a fixed schedule.

Indeed, many of this president’s meetings and discussions occur on the spur of the moment.

Reporters sometimes find out details about such events when the rotational pool of journalists always standing by for presidential events is summoned to the Oval Office, the Roosevelt Room or elsewhere at the White House. At other times, Trump will make an announcement on Twitter, his favorite social media platform, giving insight into which issue he has suddenly prioritized.

 
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It’s one of the most sensitive security challenges in America: The State of the Union address puts the president, his Cabinet, members of Congress, military leaders, top diplomats and Supreme Court justices all in the same place at the same time for all the world to see.

Protecting everyone requires months of planning and coordination involving multiple law enforcement agencies, led by the U.S. Secret Service. Thousands of officers work across agencies in ways seen and unseen.

Security for the speech was in the spotlight during the partial government shutdown, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi cited safety concerns as her reason for delaying President Donald Trump’s speech. But law enforcement officials said the shutdown would not have compromised security if the speech had gone forward as originally scheduled.

Now the speech is set for Tuesday. The Secret Service is, well, secretive about its plans, though it provides some details:

Long before the speech, a steering committee is formed to explore the best way to secure the event. The Secret Service works with U.S. military, parks and local police, Capitol police, emergency management experts and the FBI. There are 19 subcommittees on areas like crowd management, intelligence and counterterrorism, traffic and crisis. Each subcommittee contains experts across law enforcement.

Teams run drills. Officials perform tabletop exercises, running through potential disasters and pore over the report from the previous year to see how they can improve. Analysts comb social media for signs of threatening behavior and monitor world events to help inform how security should be tailored for the event.

The tradition and familiarity of the event is also the biggest security challenge; it’s basically the same every year, officials said. And there are only so many ways officials can vary traffic routes or arrivals and departures.

“You have to be creative,” said Wes Schwark, assistant to the special agent in charge of the Dignitary Protective Division. “You try not to stick our head out in the same place twice.”

On the day of the event, an operations center is set up at an undisclosed location where law enforcement officials scan social media, monitor traffic and protests, drones and other aircraft and communicate potential threats with agents in the field.

“We don’t want the problem to be in the chamber, we want the problem to be as far away from the chamber as possible,” said Ken Valentine, special agent in charge of the Dignitary Protective Division, which is tasked with coordinating the event. “We’re trying to push that out so if there is an issue, we’re dealing with it as far away as possible.”

The streets around the building are frozen and secured. The Capitol Plaza is locked down and those inside are limited from moving around the building. The president and his entourage typically gather in a room off the House floor to await their entrances to the House chamber.

Metro stations are checked, counter-sniper teams with long-arm rifles perch on rooftops, bomb-sniffing dogs, uniformed officers and plainclothes agents patrol. Traffic is locked down. The House Chamber is swept randomly and consistently for explosives.

“All of those are more traditional means of countering an attack, but they serve as a deterrent,” Valentine said.

The biggest shift in recent history has been the prevalence of technology, both as a possible security concern and a tool.

“It gives us a heads-up, or a warning when we are going to start engaging in something that maybe before would have been right up on us,” Schwark said on technology. “It allows us to start taking some type of action sooner.”

Despite the heavy security, there is a traditional precaution in case of a disaster: At least one Cabinet member in the line of presidential succession, and at least one Supreme Court justice, stay away from the speech.

“Given their public profile, National Special Security Events are potentially attractive targets for malicious actors who may seek to hurt attendees or incite fear into our way of life,” said Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. “DHS, our component agencies and federal partners work tirelessly to secure the State of the Union.”

In the end, Secret Service agents are trained to protect the president and do it every day, so shifting from working the South Lawn to the State of the Union isn’t much of a difference for them, officials said.

“It’s just another day at work,” Valentine said.
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Worried about a potential Republican primary challenge, President Donald Trump’s campaign has launched a state-by-state effort to prevent an intraparty fight that could spill over into the general-election campaign.

The nascent initiative has been an intense focus in recent weeks and includes taking steps to change state party rules, crowd out potential rivals and quell any early signs of opposition that could embarrass the president.

It is an acknowledgment that Trump, who effectively hijacked the Republican Party in 2016, hasn’t completely cemented his grip on the GOP and, in any event, is not likely to coast to the 2020 GOP nomination without some form of opposition. While any primary challenge would almost certainly be unsuccessful, Trump aides are looking to prevent a repeat of the convention discord that highlighted the electoral weaknesses of Presidents George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter in their failed re-election campaigns.

To defend against that prospect, Trump’s campaign has deployed what it calls an unprecedented effort to monitor and influence local party operations. It has used endorsements, lobbying and rule changes to increase the likelihood that only loyal Trump activists make it to the Republican nominating convention in August 2020.

Bill Stepien, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, calls it all a “process of ensuring that the national convention is a television commercial for the president for an audience of 300 million and not an internal fight.”

One early success for Trump’s campaign was in Massachusetts, where Trump backer and former state Rep. Jim Lyons last month defeated the candidate backed by Massachusetts Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, a Trump critic, to serve as the state party chairman.

“We have a constant focus on tracking everything regarding this process,” Stepien said. “Who’s running, what their level of support for the president is and what their vote counts are.”

The campaign’s work extends beyond state party leadership races, which are taking place in many key states in the coming weeks. Trump’s team plans to organize at county and state caucuses and conventions over the next 18 months to elevate pro-Trump leaders and potential delegates. Ahead of the convention, it aims to have complete control of the convention agenda, rules and platform — and to identify any potential trouble-makers well in advance.

That sort of organization is a leap from Trump’s 2016 delegate operation, which faced challenges by anti-Trump activists in the party. Trump aides say it’s the most aggressive effort ever launched to protect an incumbent.

Nick Trainer, a White House veteran named last month as the campaign’s director of delegates and party organization, is leading a team of three to coordinate with state and local parties in the run-up to the convention.

Yet the efforts to protect Trump simply highlight his vulnerability, said an adviser to one potential Republican opponent.

“They’re not talented, but they’re not idiotic. They rightfully understand that he could be badly damaged or lose in a nomination battle. They’re doing too much. It looks weak,” said John Weaver, a senior adviser to former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, one of the few high-profile Republicans seriously contemplating a primary challenge.

Trump’s campaign is closely monitoring the intentions of Kasich and other potential primary challengers, and aides said they expect someone to mount a campaign for the nomination. But they insist their efforts are not borne out of fear that Trump is vulnerable.

Primary challenges against incumbent presidents have never been successful in the modern era. And Trump’s poll numbers among Republican voters have proven to be resilient. Still, his aides said they are taking lessons from one-term leaders who lost their re-elections after embarrassing nominating fights.

Those in the past who challenged a president both distracted the incumbent from the November campaign and offered a voice to intraparty discontent, seeding weaknesses that were exploited by a general-election rival.

Pat Buchanan’s campaign against Bush in 1992 focused in part on highlighting Bush’s broken pledge not to raise taxes, a vulnerability that dogged Bush throughout the campaign. In a show of party unity Buchanan was awarded the opening night keynote at that year’s GOP convention. He delivered a “culture war” speech that Bush loyalists believed contributed to his loss.

As an incumbent, Trump already wields control over the Republican National Committee, which voted last month to express its “undivided support” for Trump and his “effective presidency.” But he’s getting a boost from well-placed allies at the state level.

In Iowa, the state Republican Party adopted new rules more than a year ago to seize control of the delegate selection process in direct response to the messy convention floor fight in Cleveland in 2016. Virtually all of Iowa’s delegates had preferred Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and they fought unsuccessfully to oppose Trump at the convention.

“It was embarrassing. It was troubling. To be honest with you, it made me mad,” said Iowa GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufman, a strong Trump supporter. “Donald Trump won the Republican nomination fair and square. That was about people not accepting a loss.”

The new rules, made in consultation with the White House, would make it much more difficult for a Trump challenger to install anti-Trump delegates after the caucuses. Smart campaigns with energized activists, like Cruz’s and Ron Paul’s before him, had been able to send their own loyalists to the national convention regardless of the wishes of party leaders or caucus voters. No more.

Going forward, a nominating committee that’s already been named by the pro-Trump state central committee will control the delegate selection process.

Kaufman said that technically, he and the rest of the state GOP would be neutral should Trump face a primary challenge. He makes clear, however, that he’s been a strong supporter of the president and doesn’t see a serious primary challenge on the horizon.

It’s much the same in New Hampshire, where party leaders must technically remain neutral to preserve their status as the first-in-the-nation primary. But the Trump campaign backed Saturday’s election of new state GOP Chairman Stephen Stepanek, who served as Trump’s state co-chairman in 2016.

Stepanek was the preferred choice over former state chair Jennifer Horn, who emerged as an outspoken Trump critic since leaving the chairmanship after the 2016 election.

Meanwhile, states like South Carolina and Kansas are openly discussing cancelling their primaries and caucuses, but the Trump campaign insists it is staying out of those discussions, noting that state parties in some states are required to foot the bill for nominating contests.

 
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This week, U.S. President Donald Trump delivers his State of the Union address to a very different and more combative Congress than the one he spoke to last year. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, Tuesday’s address comes as another government funding deadline looms—and one week after America’s intelligence chiefs contradicted the president’s assertions on Syria, North Korea and Iran.
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U.S. President Donald Trump is refusing to rule out the possibility of another partial government shutdown to win congressional approval of funding for a wall along the southern border with Mexico. But he also signaled strongly he plans to declare a national emergency to build the barrier without assent from lawmakers.

“I don’t take anything off the table,” Trump told the CBS News show “Face the Nation” in an interview broadcast Sunday, a week after a record 35-day shutdown of a quarter of government operations was ended. “I don’t like to take things off the table. It’s that alternative.”

But the U.S. leader said, “It’s national emergency, it’s other things and you know there have been plenty national emergencies called. And this really is an invasion of our country by human traffickers.”

“These are people that are horrible people bringing in women mostly, but bringing in women and children into our country,” he said. “Human trafficking. And we’re going to have a strong border. And the only way you have a strong border is you need a physical barrier. You need a wall. And anybody that says you don’t, they’re just playing games.”

He assailed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, leader of the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, for continuing to oppose U.S. taxpayer-funding of the wall. Construction of the wall — and Mexico paying for it — was Trump’s favorite 2016 campaign pledge during his successful run for the White House, but he now is calling for congressional approval of wall construction money.

“I think she [Pelosi] is very bad for our country,” Trump said. “She knows that you need a barrier. She knows that we need border security. She wanted to win a political point. I happen to think it’s very bad politics because basically she wants open borders. She doesn’t mind human trafficking or she wouldn’t do this.”

Trump, ahead of the CBS interview that was taped Friday, had suggested he could announce that he is taking executive action to build the wall during Tuesday’s annual State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress. But he also suggested he could also let a decision on the wall wait until Feb. 15, when funding runs out again for the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies that were shuttered.

A bipartisan congressional panel is negotiating over a border security plan, but opposition Democrats have so far offered no money for Trump’s wall and he has called the border security discussions a waste of time. He wants $5.7 billion in wall funding, while Democratic lawmakers have offered more money for other border security provisions.

Trump said Pelosi is “costing the country hundreds of billions of dollars because what’s happening is when you have a porous border, and when you have drugs pouring in, and when you have people dying all over the country because of people like Nancy Pelosi who don’t want to give proper border security for political reasons, she’s doing a terrible disservice to our country. And on the 15th we have now set the table beautifully” for an emergency declaration.

“She can keep playing her games, but we will win,” Trump said. “Because we have a much better issue. On a political basis, what she’s doing is — I actually think it’s bad politics — but much more importantly it’s very bad for our country.”

Trump touched on a wide range of issues during the interview.

Afghanistan

He questioned whether the U.S. should have invaded Afghanistan in 2001 under the administration of former President George W. Bush to destroy al-Qaida training grounds after the terrorist group’s attacks on the U.S. killed nearly 3,000 people.

“Look, whether we should have been there in the first place, that’s first question,” Trump said.

Now, 18 years later, he said it was time for the U.S. to end its military operations in Afghanistan in a negotiated settlement with Taliban fighters opposing the Afghan government.

“I think they’re tired and, I think everybody’s tired,” he said. “We got to get out of these endless wars and bring our folks back home. Now, that doesn’t mean we’re not going to be watching with intelligence. We’re going to be watching, and watching closely. But, you know you pay a big price for troops on the ground. We’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars on military. We’re the policemen of the world.”

He added, “We’ll come back if we have to. We have very fast airplanes, we have very good cargo planes. We can come back very quickly, and I’m not leaving [the Middle East.] We have a base in Iraq and the base is a fantastic edifice.”

Middle East

But he called Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction that were never found “one of the greatest mistakes going into the Middle East that our country has ever made. One of the greatest mistakes that we’ve ever made.”

Trump said he wants to keep the U.S. military base in Iraq rather than pull troops out like in Syria and Afghanistan “because I want to be able to watch Iran. All I want to do is be able to watch. We have an unbelievable and expensive military base built in Iraq. It’s perfectly situated for looking at all over different parts of the troubled Middle East rather than pulling up.”

“And this is what a lot of people don’t understand,” he said. “We’re going to keep watching and we’re going to keep seeing and if there’s trouble, if somebody is looking to do nuclear weapons or other things, we’re going to know it before they do.”

Nuclear weapons

U.S. intelligence chiefs last week told a congressional panel that Iran was abiding by a 2015 international pact to curtail its nuclear weapons program, an agreement Trump abrogated. The intelligence leaders reached the same assessment the United Nations atomic watchdog agency concluded after 13 inspections. Trump disagreed, however.

“I have intel people, but that doesn’t mean I have to agree,” he said. “So when my intelligence people tell me how wonderful Iran is- if you don’t mind, I’m going to just go by my own counsel.”

Russia probe

Trump, as he has often, also bashed the ongoing 21-month criminal investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election led by special counsel Robert Mueller, and whether Trump, as president, sought to obstruct it.

“It’s a terrible witch hunt and it’s a disgrace,” he said, adding that he would leave it up to the U.S. attorney general to decide whether to release Mueller’s eventual report. “I have no idea what it’s going to say.” He said the investigation “doesn’t implicate me in any way. There was no collusion. There was no obstruction. There was no nothing.”

On a day when millions of Americans watch the annual Super Bowl, the championship of American professional football, Trump said he would not steer his 12-year-old son Barron to play football but would allow him to if he wanted to. Trump said his aversion to letting his son play football is because “it’s a dangerous sport and I think it’s really tough.”

“He actually plays a lot of soccer,” Trump said of the youngest of his five children. “He’s liking soccer.”

 
…

U.S. President Donald Trump waded into the controversy surrounding the governor of Virginia over a racist photo that appeared on the governor’s medical school yearbook page.

Trump tweeted late Saturday that Gov. Ralph Northam’s initial apology for the photo and subsequent denial that he was in the picture are “Unforgiveable!”

The president’s tweet also referenced a controversy surrounding comments Northam made earlier last week about late term abortion.

Northam, a Democrat, quickly apologized Friday after reports emerged of a photo in his 1984 yearbook page that shows a man in blackface standing next to a person dressed as a Ku Klux Klan member.

“I cannot change the decisions I made, nor can I undo the harm my behavior caused then and today,” he said in a video posted to Twitter.

But the following day, amid numerous calls for Northam to resign, the governor held a press conference to say he did not believe that either of the people in the photo were him and that the photo appeared on his page due to an error.

“That is not me in that photo… That is not who I am,” the governor said.

He claimed he did not buy a copy of the yearbook and was unaware until Friday the picture was even there.

At the same he said the appearance of the photo on his page was “horrific” and “just unacceptable.”

Northam did admit Saturday to having worn blackface when he was 25 years old as part of costume for a dance contest in which he impersonated the African-American pop star Michael Jackson. He expressed remorse for that event, saying he learned after that why blackface is offensive.

Despite that admission, Northam said he does not intend to resign.

“Today I am not ready to ask Virginians to grant me forgiveness for my past actions… I am asking for the opportunity to earn your forgiveness,” he said.

But a growing chorus Democrats — including most of the party’s 2020 presidential hopefuls — are calling on Northam to step down.

Both of Virginia’s U.S. senators and one congressman issued a joint statement after Northam addressed the media Saturday saying the governor “must resign.”

“He should step down and allow the Commonwealth to begin healing,” the statement from Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine and Representative Bobby Scott read.

Former Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also released statements on Saturday calling for Northam to resign.

If Northam does resign, Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, who is African-American, would assume the governor’s office.
…

President Donald Trump claimed great progress in building the border wall even though it’s no longer than before he took office. He dismissed the reality of global warming because of a fierce, passing cold spell. He described the steel industry as “totally revived” despite 20,000 job losses over the past decade.

A look at his recent rhetoric and the reality:

The border wall

TRUMP: “The chant now should be ‘finish the wall’ as opposed to ‘Build the Wall’ because we’re building a lot of wall. I started this six months ago — we really started going to town — because I could see we were going nowhere with the Democrats.” — comments Friday.

TRUMP: “Large sections of WALL have already been built with much more either under construction or ready to go. Renovation of existing WALLS is also a very big part of the plan to finally, after many decades, properly Secure Our Border. The Wall is getting done one way or the other!” — tweet Thursday.

THE FACTS: Despite all his talk of progress, he’s added no extra miles of barrier to the border to date. Construction is to start this month on a levee wall system in the Rio Grande Valley that will add 14 miles of barrier, the first lengthening in his presidency. That will be paid for as part of $1.4 billion approved by Congress last year.

Most of the work under contracts awarded by the Trump administration has been for replacement of existing barrier.

When Trump says large parts of the wall “have already been built,” he’s not acknowledging that previous administrations built those sections. Barriers currently extend for 654 miles (1,052 kilometers), or about one-third of the border. That construction was mostly done from 2006 to 2009.

​The steel industry

TRUMP: “Tariffs on the ‘dumping’ of Steel in the United States have totally revived our Steel Industry. New and expanded plants are happening all over the U.S. We have not only saved this important industry, but created many jobs. Also, billions paid to our treasury. A BIG WIN FOR U.S.” — tweet Monday.

THE FACTS: He’s exaggerating the recovery of the steel industry, particularly when it comes to jobs.

In December, the steel industry employed 141,600 people, the Labor Department says in its latest data. Last March, when Trump said he would impose the tariffs, it was 139,400. That’s a gain of 2,200 jobs during a period when the overall economy added nearly 2 million jobs. On a percentage basis, steel industry jobs grew 1.6 percent, barely higher than the 1.3 percent increase in all jobs.

Yet those figures still lag behind where they were before the 2008-2009 recession. When that downturn began, there were nearly 162,000 steelworkers.

Some companies have said they will add or expand plants. It’s difficult to know just how many jobs will be added by newly planned mills. But construction spending on factories has yet to take off significantly after having been in decline between 2016 and much of 2018. Construction spending on factories has been flat in the past year, according to the Census Bureau.

Trump’s reference to “billions paid to our treasury” concerns money raised from tariffs on foreign steel and other products. Such tariffs are generally paid by U.S. importers, not foreign countries or companies, and the costs are often passed on to consumers. So that money going to the government is mostly coming from Americans.

​Voter fraud

TRUMP: “58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas, with 95,000 non-citizens registered to vote. These numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. All over the country, especially in California, voter fraud is rampant. Must be stopped. Strong voter ID!” — tweet Jan. 27.

THE FACTS: That “iceberg” quickly began to melt as officials found serious problems with a report from the Texas secretary of state’s office on voter fraud. More broadly, Trump is overstating the magnitude of such fraud across the U.S.

The Texas report suggested as many as 95,000 non-U.S. citizens may be on the state’s voter rolls and as many as 58,000 may have cast a ballot at least once since 1996. Since it came out, however, state elections officials have been notifying county election chiefs of problems with the findings. Local officials told The Associated Press that they received calls from Texas Secretary of State David Whitley’s office indicating that some citizens had been wrongly included in the original data.

So far no one on the lists has been confirmed as a noncitizen voter. Election officials in Texas’ largest county say about 18,000 voters in the Houston area were wrongfully flagged as potentially ineligible to vote and those officials expect more such mistakes to be found on their list.

Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Trump ally, acknowledged problems in the report, saying “many of these individuals may have been naturalized before registering and voting, which makes their conduct perfectly legal.”

Early claims by other states of possible illegal voting on a rampant scale haven’t held up.

When Florida began searching for noncitizens in 2012, for instance, state officials initially found 180,000 people suspected of being ineligible to vote when comparing databases of registered voters and driver’s licenses. Florida officials later assembled a purge list of more than 2,600 names but that, too, was beset by inaccuracies. Eventually, a revised list of 198 names of possible noncitizens was produced through the use of a federal database.

In the U.S. overall, the actual number of fraud cases has been very small, and the type that voter IDs are designed to prevent — voter impersonation at the ballot box — is almost nonexistent. In court cases that have invalidated some ID laws as having discriminatory effects, election officials could barely cite a case in which a person was charged with in-person voting fraud.

​Federal judges

TRUMP: “After all that I have done for the Military, our great Veterans, Judges (99), Justices (2) … does anybody really think I won’t build the WALL?” — tweet Jan. 27.

THE FACTS: He’s boasting here about his record of getting federal judges and justices on the bench. But that record is not extraordinary. He also misstates the total number of judges who have been confirmed by the Senate — it’s 85, not 99.

While Trump did successfully nominate two justices to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, during his first two years in office, four other modern presidents did the same — Democrats Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy, and Republican Richard Nixon. Trump, meanwhile, is surpassed in the number of confirmed justices by Warren Harding (four), William Taft (five), Abraham Lincoln (three) and George Washington (six), according to Russell Wheeler, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and expert on judicial appointments.

Trump’s 85 total judicial appointees lag behind five former presidents at comparable points in office.

The five are George W. Bush, 99; Clinton, 128; Ronald Reagan, 88; Nixon, 91; and Kennedy, 111, according to Wheeler’s analysis.

​Climate change

TRUMP: “In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!” — tweet Monday.

THE FACTS: Global warming does not need to make a comeback because it hasn’t gone away. Extreme cold spells in parts of the globe do not signal a retreat.

Earth is considerably warmer than it was 30 years ago and especially 100 years ago. The lower 48 states make up only 1.6 percent of the globe, so what’s happening there at any particular time is not a yardstick of the planet’s climate. Even so, despite the brutal cold in the Midwest and East, five Western states are warmer than normal.

“This is simply an extreme weather event and not representative of global scale temperature trends,” said Northern Illinois University climate scientist Victor Gensini. “The exact opposite is happening in Australia,” which has been broiling with triple-digit heat that is setting records.

Trump’s own administration released a scientific report last year saying that while human-caused climate change will reduce cold weather deaths “in 49 large cities in the United States, changes in extreme hot and extreme cold temperatures are projected to result in more than 9,000 additional premature deaths per year” by the end of this century if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at recent rates.

Trump routinely conflates weather and climate. Weather is like mood, which is fleeting. Climate is like personality, which is long term.
…

The Trump administration says it would require extraordinary effort to reunite what may be thousands of migrant children who have been separated from their parents and, even if it could, the children would likely be emotionally harmed. 

Health and Human Services Department officials said in court filings late Friday that removing children from “sponsor” homes to rejoin their parents would endanger their welfare. The officials say they don’t have authority to take children away from sponsors and that the effort would be cost-prohibitive.

The government didn’t adequately track separated children before a judge in San Diego ruled in June that children in its custody be reunited with their parents.

The American Civil Liberties Union wants the order to apply to children who were separated before June. Officials say there may be thousands.
…

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam repeated Saturday that he would not resign over a photograph in his school yearbook showing a man in blackface standing next to a person dressed as a Ku Klux Klan member.

In comments to reporters, Northam said, “I am neither of the people in that photo.” He said he did not buy a copy of the 1984 yearbook in which the picture appears, and he was unaware until Friday the picture was even there.

He also said, “That is not me in that photo. … That is not who I am.”

He also said, “It was horrific, and the fact that it was on my page was just unacceptable.”

Northam said he and his staff would continue to work to prove that he wasn’t in the photo.

The governor said he submitted the other three photos on his page in the medical school yearbook and that he suspected the placing of the racist photo was the result of a mix-up. Responding to a question from a reporter, he said there were multiple episodes of blackface use at the medical school. 

Previous mistakes

He said if he had posed for that picture, “I would have remembered that.” He added, “My belief that I did not wear that costume or attend that party [where the offending photo was taken] stems from my clear memory of other mistakes that I made in that same year of my life.”

Northam admitted that during that year, when he was 25, he appeared in blackface for a dance contest in San Antonio, Texas, in which he impersonated African-American pop star Michael Jackson. He expressed remorse for that event, saying he had learned since then why “blackfacing,” as he called it, is offensive. He said upon learning that lesson and discussing it with a younger employee, he vowed never to appear in blackface again.

Northam said Saturday: “Today I am not ready to ask Virginians to grant me forgiveness for my past actions. … I am asking for the opportunity to earn your forgiveness.” 

The New York Times reported that since the story broke on Friday, Northam has been making calls to political allies and former classmates in attempts to shore up support and get more information about the photo.

CNN said classmates had told Northam that some yearbook photos were mixed up.

Many of Northam’s former allies said he could not stay in office after Friday’s apology for the photo.

In a video statement Friday, Northam said the photo does not reflect the person he is today. He added that “I cannot change the decisions I made, nor can I undo the harm my behavior caused then and today. But I accept responsibility for my past actions and I am ready to do the hard work of regaining your trust.” 

Calls for resignation

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, both Democrats, released statements on Saturday calling for Northam to resign.

Biden tweeted Northam “has lost all moral authority” and said Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who is African-American, should move into the governor’s office. Pelosi said Northam should “do the right thing” by stepping down and letting Virginians “heal and move forward.”

The Congressional Black Caucus and the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus also urged Northam to step down. 

“Ralph Northam has had three decades to know better but only now does he acknowledge this racist act,” the Congressional Black Caucus posted on Twitter. “An apology now isn’t enough. He must resign.”

The Virginia Legislative Black Caucus posted a statement on Twitter that said of Northam: “We fully appreciate all that he has contributed to our Commonwealth. But given what was revealed today, it is clear that he can no longer effectively serve as Governor.  It is time for him to resign, so that Virginia can begin the process of healing.”

“Leaders are called to a higher standard, and the stain of racism should nave no place in the halls of government,” presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, a California Democrat, posted on Twitter in her statement urging Northam to resign. “The Governor of Virginia should step aside so the public can heal and move forward together.”

‘Centuries of anger, anguish’

Another Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, also took to Twitter, posting, “These images arouse centuries of anger, anguish, and racist violence and they’ve eroded all confidence in Gov. Northam’s ability to lead. We should expect more from our elected officials.  He should resign.” 

Harris and Booker were joined by other presidential hopefuls — former Housing Secretary Julian Castro, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, all Democrats — who said they thought Northam should resign.  

“There is no circumstance where this behavior should ever be tolerated or excused; and now more than ever we need leaders that demonstrate high character and unquestionable moral fortitude to lead us through these times of uncertainty,” the Fairfax County (Va.) NAACP said in a statement.

News of the photos from Northam’s medical school yearbook came a week after Florida’s secretary of state resigned; photos from a 2005 Halloween party showed him in blackface while dressed as a Hurricane Katrina victim.

The Virginia Legislative Black Caucus perhaps explained best in its statement why the photo is resulting in calls for Northam’s resignation:  “(W)hat has been revealed is disgusting, reprehensible, and offensive. … The legacy of slavery, racism and Jim Crow has been an albatross around the necks of African-Americans for over 400 years.  These pictures rip off the scabs of an excruciatingly painful history and are a piercing reminder of this nation’s sins. Those who would excuse the pictures are just as culpable.” 
…

The United States announced Friday it is pulling back from a decades-old treaty that banned an entire class of nuclear weapons, sparking concern among some analysts the move could trigger a new arms race. VOA’s diplomatic correspondent Cindy Saine has more from the State Department.
…

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump is to give his second State of the Union speech after a fight with lawmakers over border wall funding that triggered the longest partial government shutdown in U.S. history. Trump will address a Congress with a record number of younger members, minorities and women. He will also have to contend with Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to avoid another shutdown in less than two weeks. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has more from the White House.
…

The president of the United States has lambasted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, calling her “very bad for our country” and saying that “she doesn’t mind human trafficking” because she opposes designating money for a wall at the U.S. border with Mexico.

In an interview Friday with CBS News, Donald Trump said Pelosi is “very rigid” and that she is attempting “to win a political point’ by refusing to give him money for the wall that was a major component of his successful presidential campaign.

During the campaign, however, Trump promised that Mexico would pay for the wall. Mexico has refused. Now Trump wants Congress to give him money for the border wall, and the Democrats who are in control of the House of Representatives have refused.

“Democrats have put forward strong, smart and effective border security solutions in the bipartisan conference committee,” said Drew Hammill, a Pelosi spokesman, adding that the president “still refuses to take a second shutdown off the table.”

Trump recently ended a 35-day partial government shutdown without getting the $5.7 billion he wanted for the wall.

​National emergency option

The president said Friday he will consider calling for a “national emergency” as the path forward to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border because he doesn’t think negotiations among lawmakers will produce the necessary funding.

“We will be looking at a national emergency because I don’t think anything is going to happen. I think Democrats don’t want border security. And when I hear them talking about the fact that walls are immoral, walls don’t work — they know they work,” Trump said Friday.

However, The Washington Post reports that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is a Republican, has privately warned Trump that a declaration of a national emergency could divide the Republican Party.

The Post, citing two Republican sources, said McConnell told Trump that such a declaration could lead Congress to pass a resolution disapproving the emergency declaration.

On Thursday, the president called bipartisan congressional talks over border wall funding a “waste of time.”

In a White House interview with The New York Times Thursday, Trump again hinted he may declare a national emergency in order to bypass Congress and build the wall without its approval.

“I’ll continue to build the wall and we’ll get the wall finished. Now whether or not I declare a national emergency, that you’ll see … I’ve set the table, I’ve set the stage for doing what I’m going to do.”

Government shutdown option

In less than three weeks, if there is no deal on border security that Trump would sign, there could be another government shutdown.

If Trump does declare a national emergency, Democrats who don’t want any money for a border wall will probably immediately challenge Trump in court.

The president had strong words for Pelosi who has said over and over again she will not agree to give Trump the $5.7 billion he wants for a wall.

Pelosi has said she was open to other kinds of barriers along the border, but Trump said that was unacceptable.

​More troops to the border

Meanwhile, the Pentagon said it is sending an additional 3,500 troops to the U.S. southern border with Mexico to assist with border security measures.

Democrat Adam Smith, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, released the latest troop numbers after slamming the Pentagon’s lack of transparency in a letter to Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan.

A defense official confirmed that the Pentagon was sending 3,500 more active duty troops to the border, for a total of 5,800 active duty troops and 2,300 National Guard troops supporting the Department of Homeland Security’s request for additional border security.

The official, who spoke to VOA on the condition of anonymity, added that this “initial pop” in the number of troops would not be sustained through September.

Some of these 3,500 will be replacing troops who will be leaving soon, while others are only assigned to the border for 30 or 60 days in order to set up large coiled barbed wire in specific areas, according to the official.

Without giving any details, Trump tweeted Thursday “More troops being sent to the Southern Border to stop the attempted Invasion of Illegals, through large caravans, into our Country. We have stopped the previous Caravans, and we will stop these also. With a Wall it would be soooo much easier and less expensive.”

Trump, as he often has, claimed erroneously that “Large sections of WALL have already been built with much more either under construction or ready to go.” The U.S. has been repairing existing barriers, which Trump called “a very big part of the plan to finally, after many decades, properly Secure Our Border. The Wall is getting done one way or the other!”

At various times, Trump has called the barriers at the border an impenetrable concrete wall, and other times “steel slats,” or a see-through barrier, even “peaches,” if people preferred.

On Thursday, though, Trump said, “Let’s just call them WALLS from now on and stop playing political games! A WALL is a WALL!”
…

Pelosi behind and above. Female immigrants, gazing down from the balcony. A black woman who ran a close race for governor of Georgia, rebutting.

When President Donald Trump delivers his first State of the Union address under divided government on Tuesday, he’ll be surrounded by these and other living reminders of the 2018 elections that delivered Democrats the House majority and a record number of women to Congress.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will sit just over his shoulder on the dais, on-camera, looking out at the assembled lawmakers, Cabinet members, Supreme Court justices and diplomats. Seated in front of Trump will be a record number of women House members, most Democrats and some dressed in easy-to-spot white. And in the gallery overhead? Two former employees of Trump’s New Jersey golf club, women and immigrants, who have spoken out about its hiring practices.

Afterward, Stacey Abrams will become the first black woman to deliver the Democratic rebuttal.

“I hope she does a good job. I respect her,” Trump said Thursday of Abrams, who narrowly lost the race for Georgia governor to the president’s ally, Brian Kemp. The president pledged to deliver a speech rooted in a theme of “unity,” even as he renewed his demand for a border wall as a condition of keeping the government open past Feb. 15. Before he spoke in the Oval Office Thursday, Pelosi again rebuffed the demand and belittled him on national security matters.

Trump will give his speech Tuesday before a joint session of Congress at a sensitive time in talks to prevent agencies from shuttering after the longest government shutdown in history. Members of Congress are inviting federal workers who went without pay for 35 days and are worried about a repeat.

But the striking visual is shaping up to be the new lawmakers who will be arrayed around the president and elected in the wake of Trump’s inflammatory statements about women, immigrants, Muslims and more.

Two female immigrants will be among the lawmakers’ guests and seated in the gallery above the House chamber. One is Victorina Morales, who worked for one of Trump’s clubs in New Jersey for years even though she was born in Guatemala and lived in the U.S. illegally. Morales, a guest of New Jersey Democratic Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, said in an interview that she feels respectful toward the president. But she does have a message for him after years of hearing Trump describe immigrants as a scourge that takes jobs from Americans.

“Forget about the wall, stop separating families and focus on immigration reform,” she said in an interview with The Associated Press, conducted in Spanish.

Another woman who cleaned the president’s clothes and made his bed at his Bedminster, N.J., club is attending the address, too.

Sandra Diaz, 46, a native of Costa Rica who worked at Trump’s club from 2010 to 2013, will be attending as a guest of Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez of California, according to the lawyer for both women, Anibal Romero. Diaz told the AP last month that she was also hired without legal papers and supervisors at the club knew it. She is now a legal permanent U.S. resident. Diaz said she decided to speak out because she is angry about the president describing immigrants as violent.

Abrams speaks both before and after Trump. The Georgia Democrat, heavily courted by Democrats to run for a Senate seat in 2020, lost her bid to be the nation’s first African-American woman governor after a protracted fight.

On Sunday, the 45-year-old Democrat will take her push for voting rights to the airwaves in her home state during the Super Bowl. Abrams’ political group, Fair Fight, has bought airtime on Georgia affiliates broadcasting the game so the Atlanta Democrat can push for election law changes.

Abrams said she’ll speak about inclusion “at a moment when our nation needs to hear from leaders who can unite for a common purpose.”

 
…

President Donald Trump’s longtime adviser Roger Stone made multiple media appearances Thursday in Washington, talking freely with reporters before he was set to appear in court Friday and likely face a gag order from a judge.

Charged by Special Counsel Robert Mueller with obstructing a congressional probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Stone will appear before U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is widely expected to bar him from discussing the case in the press after imposing a similar gag order on Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort.

Criminal defendants typically shun the media spotlight, but Stone, a 66-year-old self-proclaimed Republican “dirty trickster,” has embraced it since his arrest Jan. 25 in Florida.

He has pleaded not guilty to charges of obstructing the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, making false statements to Congress and witness tampering.

The indictment alleged Stone told several unidentified members of Trump’s 2016 campaign that he had advance knowledge of plans by the WikiLeaks website to release damaging emails about Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Stone lied to Congress about those interactions and misled the congressional panel about his efforts to learn more about WikiLeaks’ planned releases, the indictment said.

‘Honest mistake’

On Thursday, Stone dismissed the charges as mere “process crimes” that did not involve any intentional lies, and called Mueller’s probe politically motivated.

“Perjury requires both intent and materiality,” Stone told Reuters in an interview, adding that any failure to disclose emails or text messages was just an “honest mistake.”

“I testified truthfully on any matter of importance,” he said.

Stone is the 34th person to be swept up into Mueller’s probe into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia. Trump denies any collusion and has called Mueller’s investigation a witch hunt. Russia denies meddling in the election.

Stone said he did not even know for sure which Trump campaign officials were being referenced in the indictment and that he was never directed by the campaign to learn about future releases by WikiLeaks.

‘Epic fight’ ahead

A court filing Thursday showed Mueller’s investigators had collected several terabytes of evidence from multiple electronic devices.

Stone said he did not yet know what other evidence Mueller might possess. While expressing confidence in his innocence, he was not so confident about the outcome of the case.

“It’s the District of Columbia. It’s a difficult venue,” he said. “I certainly face an extraordinary and epic fight.”
…

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker on Friday declared his bid for the presidency in 2020 with a sweeping call to unite a deeply polarized nation around a “common purpose.”

The New Jersey Democrat, who is the second black candidate in a primary field that’s already historically diverse, delivered his message of unity amid an era marked by bitter political division.

“I believe that we can build a country where no one is forgotten, no one is left behind; where parents can put food on the table; where there are good-paying jobs with good benefits in every neighborhood; where our criminal justice system keeps us safe, instead of shuffling more children into cages and coffins; where we see the faces of our leaders on television and feel pride, not shame,” Booker said in the video, subtly jabbing at President Donald Trump.

“It is not a matter of can we, it’s a matter of do we have the collective will, the American will?” he added. “I believe we do.”

Booker enters what’s shaping up to be a crowded presidential primary, with three of his fellow Democratic senators – Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kamala Harris of California and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York –  already either declared or exploring a run. But he’s spent months telegraphing his intentions to join the race, visiting the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina to build connections with key powerbrokers.

Booker, a former mayor of Newark, New Jersey’s largest city, won a special Senate election in 2013 to replace Democrat Frank Lautenberg and then won a full Senate term in 2014. He will be able to run for a second full Senate term in 2020 while running for president, thanks to a law that New Jersey’s governor signed in November.

But that doesn’t mean the 49-year-old’s path to the nomination will be easy. As many as five more Democratic senators could soon mount their own primary bids, creating a competition for voters’ attention, and several of Booker’s rival presidential hopefuls bring higher name recognition to a race that may also feature popular former Vice President Joe Biden. Booker also will likely stand alone as an unmarried candidate, though he brings a compelling personal biography that could help elevate his message of bringing Americans together around what he described as “common purpose.”

Booker’s father grew up in a low-income community in North Carolina, and the senator has recalled his family’s later struggle to settle in suburban New Jersey amid discrimination against black homebuyers. The senator has brought a heartfelt and passionate style to his achievements in the Senate, at times fusing his personal spirituality with policy proposals that focus on social justice. Booker played a key role in the bipartisan criminal justice reform bill that Trump supported last year, for example, a deal he helped strike two months after sparring with Republicans during the battle over Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

In his announcement video, Booker invoked the fight against slavery and the role of immigration in building the nation’s character.

“The history of our nation is defined by collective action; by interwoven destinies of slaves and abolitionists; of those born here and those who chose America as home; of those who took up arms to defend our country and those who linked arms to challenge and change it,” he said.

Born in the nation’s capital but raised in New Jersey, Booker made a name for himself as Newark mayor by personally shoveling the snow of residents. He has $4.1 million left in his campaign coffers that could also be used to assist his presidential run. Rather than opening an exploratory committee to test the waters, Booker took the direct step to open a campaign seeking the Democratic nomination.

 
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A day after he lashed out at U.S. intelligence agency chiefs over their assessments of global threats, President Donald Trump abruptly reversed course Thursday and said that he and the intelligence community “are all on the same page.”

Trump met with his director of national intelligence and other top security officials in the Oval Office and said afterward that they told him their testimony at a Senate hearing had been “mischaracterized” by the news media.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats had slammed the president for his comments disparaging Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, CIA Director Gina Haspel and other top security officials.

The officials told Congress on Tuesday that North Korea is unlikely to dismantle its nuclear arsenal and that the Iran nuclear deal is working, contrary to what Trump has claimed.

The intelligence agency chiefs “said that they were totally misquoted and … it was taken out of context,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “They said it was fake news.”

Coats and other officials presented an update to the Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday on their annual assessment of global threats. In a public report and testimony broadcast on C-SPAN, they warned of an increasingly diverse range of security dangers around the globe, from North Korean nuclear weapons to Chinese cyber espionage to Russian campaigns to undermine Western democracies.

Trump tweeted Thursday that he and the intelligence leaders “are very much in agreement on Iran, ISIS, North Korea, etc.” and that he values their service.

“Happily, we had a very good meeting, and we are all on the same page!” he wrote.

Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters that the intelligence officials were “courageous” in speaking “truth to power” by publicly contradicting Trump.

“One dismaying factor of it all is that the president just doesn’t seem to have the attention span or the desire to hear what the intelligence community has been telling him,” Pelosi said Thursday, calling Trump’s comments attacking the intelligence leaders “cause for concern.”

Trump said earlier that intelligence officials were wrong about North Korea, Iran and the Islamic State, which they said remains a terrorist and insurgent threat.

“Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!” Trump tweeted Wednesday.

Pelosi said Trump’s comments were “stunning.”

“It’s important for the Republicans in Congress to recognize they have to weigh in with the president to say, ‘You can’t act without knowledge,’”Pelosi said.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said it was “past time” for U.S. intelligence officials to stage an intervention with Trump.

In a letter to Coats, Schumer called Trump’s criticism of intelligence agencies “extraordinarily inappropriate” and said it could undermine public confidence in the government’s ability to protect Americans.

Schumer urged Coats and other officials to “educate” Trump about the facts and raw intelligence underlying threat assessments so the administration can speak “with a unified and accurate voice about national security threats.”

Asked about his tweets earlier Thursday, Trump did not back away from questioning the assessment by Coats and Haspel.

“I disagree with certain things that they said. I think I’m right, but time will prove that, time will prove me right probably,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “I think Iran is a threat. I think I did a great thing when I terminated the ridiculous Iran nuclear deal. It was a horrible one-sided deal.”

Speaking about intelligence agencies generally, Trump added: “I have great respect for a lot people but I don’t always agree with everybody.”

At a hearing Tuesday, Coats said intelligence information does not support the idea that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will eliminate his nuclear weapons.

Trump later insisted on Twitter that the U.S. relationship with North Korea “is the best it has ever been.” He pointed to the North’s halt in nuclear and missile tests, the return of some U.S. service members’ remains and the release of detained Americans as signs of progress.

U.S. intelligence agencies also said Iran continues to work with other parties to the nuclear deal it reached with the U.S. and other world powers. In doing so, they said, Iran has at least temporarily lessened the nuclear threat. In May 2018, Trump withdrew the U.S. from that accord, which he said would not deter Iran.

“The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran,” Trump tweeted. “They are wrong!”

 
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U.S. immigration officials blame the government shutdown and the extreme winter weather for confusion about immigration court hearings. 

In an emailed statement, the part of the Justice Department overseeing immigration courts said some immigrants with notices to appear Thursday wouldn’t be able to proceed with those hearings. 

The Executive Office for Immigration Review said the shutdown prevented immigration courts from issuing new hearing notices. Weather-related closures this week also slowed the agency’s processing of cases. 

The agency also said in some cases, courts didn’t receive the required paperwork.  

Separately, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the overflow of hearings scheduled Thursday had been expected because of the shutdown. 

Similar backlogs have occurred nationwide since a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling addressed how to provide notices to immigrants to appear in court.
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A recent Harvard University graduate who is the first so-called Dreamer to receive a Rhodes scholarship will attend President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address as a guest of a New York congresswoman. 

Democratic Rep. Grace Meng said she invited Jin Park to attend Trump’s address Tuesday in the hope of bringing more attention to his plight and that of thousands of other young immigrants. 

The 22-year-old Queens resident told The Associated Press he might not be allowed back in the country if he attends the University of Oxford in England this fall.

Park is a native of South Korea and has Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status, which protects him from deportation. But Trump has rescinded overseas travel benefits for DACA holders as he seeks to end the Obama-era program.
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