Missouri Governor Eric Greitens, a sometimes brash outsider whose unconventional resume as a Rhodes Scholar and Navy SEAL officer made him a rising star in Republican politics, abruptly announced his resignation Tuesday after a scandal involving an affair with his former hairdresser led to a broader investigation by prosecutors and state legislators.

The 44-year-old governor made the announcement nearly 17 months after taking the oath as Missouri’s chief executive with a pledge to root out “corrupt career politicians.” The investigations of him widened to include questions about whether he had violated the law in financing the campaign.

Greitens said his resignation would take effect Friday.

A St. Louis grand jury indicted Greitens on Feb. 22 on one felony count of invasion of privacy for allegedly taking a photo of the woman without her consent at his home in 2015, before he was elected governor. The charge was dismissed during jury selection, but a special prosecutor was considering whether to refile charges.

In April, the local St. Louis prosecutor’s office charged Greitens with another felony, alleging that he improperly used the donor list for a charity that he’d founded to raise money for his 2016 campaign.

Less than two weeks ago, the Missouri Legislature began meeting in special session to consider whether to pursue impeachment proceedings to try to oust Greitens from office.

A special House investigatory committee had subpoenaed Greitens to testify next Monday.

Greitens’ brashness alienated some GOP legislators even before his affair became public in January.

The woman’s then-husband released a secretly recorded conversation in which she described the alleged incident. The woman later told a Missouri House investigative committee that Greitens restrained, slapped, shoved and threatened her during a series of sexual encounters that at times left her crying and afraid.

Greitens said the allegations amounted to a “political witch hunt,” and vowed to stay in office. But the report’s release created a firestorm, with both Republicans and Democrats calling for his resignation.

His departure elevates fellow Republican Lieutenant Governor Mike Parson to the governor’s office.

Greitens’ administration was thrown into chaos the night of Jan. 10, when a St. Louis TV station aired a report about Greitens allegedly taking the compromising photo and threatening to blackmail the woman if she ever spoke of their encounter. The report aired shortly after Greitens delivered his State of the State address to lawmakers.

Greitens admitted to having an affair but denied any criminal wrongdoing. He said the criminal case was politically motivated and called St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, a Democrat, a “reckless liberal prosecutor.”

Lawmakers from both parties immediately began questioning whether Greitens could continue to lead the state in the wake of the scandal. The House authorized the legislative investigation a week after the indictment.

Charity questions

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley also launched an inquiry into a veterans charity Greitens founded. Federal law bars 501(c)(3) charities such as The Mission Continues from intervening in political campaigns on behalf of candidates.

The Associated Press first reported in October 2016 that Greitens’ campaign had obtained a list of individuals, corporations and other nonprofits that had given at least $1,000 to The Mission Continues. The AP reported that Greitens raised about $2 million from those who had previously given significant amounts to the charity.

Hawley, a Republican running for U.S. Senate, turned evidence over to Gardner, saying April 17 that he believed Greitens had broken the law. Her office charged him with tampering with computer data for allegedly disclosing the donor list without the charity’s permission.

A May 2 report from a special House investigatory committee indicated that Greitens himself received the donor list and later directed aides to work off it to raise money for his gubernatorial campaign. A former campaign aide testified that he was duped into taking the fall when the campaign tried to explain how it had gotten the list.

Invasion-of-privacy indictment

The invasion-of-privacy indictment stated that on March 21, 2015, Greitens photographed the woman and transmitted the photo “in a manner that allowed access to that image via a computer.”

During her testimony to the House investigative committee, the woman said Greitens invited her to his home and offered to show her “how to do a proper pull-up.” The woman said she initially thought “this is going to be some sort of sexy workout.” But once in his basement, Greitens taped her hands to pull-up rings, blindfolded her, and started kissing and disrobing her without her consent, according to her testimony.

Then she saw a flash and heard a click, like a cellphone picture, she said. The woman testified that Greitens told her: “Don’t even mention my name to anybody at all, because if you do, I’m going to take these pictures, and I’m going to put them everywhere I can. They are going to be everywhere, and then everyone will know what a little whore you are.”

Greitens, a married father of two young boys, repeatedly denied blackmailing the woman. He declined to say whether he took a photo.

Greitens, who had also served as a White House fellow and written a best-selling book, entered the 2016 gubernatorial race as a brash outsider. He won an expensive Republican primary, then defeated Democratic Attorney General Chris Koster in the general election to give Republicans control of the governor’s mansion for the first time in eight years. Some considered him a potential future presidential contender.

Republicans also controlled the Missouri House and Senate, but there were frequent clashes between lawmakers and Greitens, who compared them to third-graders and labeled them “career politicians.”

He confronted criticism from some educators and lawmakers for working to pack the State Board of Education with members who would fire the education commissioner. Greitens’ use of a secretive app that deletes messages after they’re read also sparked a review by Hawley.
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President Donald Trump on Tuesday seized on an error by liberal activists who tweeted photos of young-looking immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in steel cages and blamed the current administration for separating immigrant children from their parents.

The photos were taken by The Associated Press in 2014, when President Barack Obama was in office. The photo captions reference children who crossed the border as unaccompanied minors.

Early Tuesday, Trump tweeted: “Democrats mistakenly tweet 2014 pictures from Obama’s term showing children from the Border in steel cages. They thought it was recent pictures in order to make us look bad, but backfires. Dems must agree to Wall and new Border Protection for good of country…Bipartisan Bill!”

The immigration debate has reached a fever pitch in recent months following reports that since October about 700 children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border have been separated from their parents.

The number of separated minors is expected to jump once Trump’s new “zero tolerance” policy is enacted. That policy, embraced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, would enforce criminal charges against people crossing the border illegally with few or no previous offenses. Under U.S. protocol, if parents are jailed, their children would be separated from them.

“The parents are subject to prosecution while children may not be,” Sessions said earlier this month. “So, if we do our duty and prosecute those cases, then children inevitably for a period of time might be in different conditions.”

Enter a June 2014 online story by The Arizona Republic titled “First peek: Immigrant children flood detention center.”

The story linked to photos taken by AP’s Ross D. Franklin at a center run by the Customs and Border Protection Agency in Nogales, Arizona. One photo shows two unidentified female detainees sleeping in a holding cell. The caption references U.S. efforts to process 47,000 unaccompanied children at the Nogales center and another one in Brownsville, Texas.

How or why the story resurfaced on social media four years after it was published is unclear. But among those who took notice was Jon Favreau, Obama’s former speechwriter.

In a now-deleted tweet, Favreau wrote: “This is happening right now, and the only debate that matters is how we force our government to get these kids back to their families as fast as humanly possible.”

Other liberal activists also linked to the Arizona Republic story using the hashtag “WhereAreOurChildren,” which grew out of testimony in April by a federal official that the U.S. government had lost track of nearly 1,500 unaccompanied minor children it placed with adult sponsors in the U.S.

Favreau did not immediately respond to a phone call seeking comment. But he later issued a corrected tweet: “These awful pictures are from 2014 when the government’s challenge was reconnecting unaccompanied minors.”

He added: “Today, in 2018, the government is CREATING unaccompanied minors by tearing them away from family at the border.”

As the immigration debate lit up social media over the weekend, Trump on Saturday falsely claimed that there was a “horrible law” that separates children from their parents after they cross the border. He has said previously that “we have to break up families” at the border because “the Democrats gave us that law.”

That’s not true. There’s no law mandating that parents must be separated from their children. But if an administration opts to impose harsh criminal charges against an adult for crossing the border illegally, their children would be separated from them as a result.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has defended the Trump administration’s practice of separating children from parents when the family is being prosecuted for entering the U.S. illegally, telling a Senate committee earlier this month that removing children from parents facing criminal charges happens “in the United States every day.”

A 2008 law, passed unanimously by Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush, says children traveling alone from countries other than Mexico or Canada must be released in the “least restrictive setting” – often to family or a government-run shelter – while their cases slowly wind through immigration court. It was designed to accommodate an influx of children fleeing to the United States from Central America.
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Diving into the midterm elections, President Donald Trump is seeking to build a stable of Republicans who will help promote his agenda and serve as a check on Democrats aiming to win majorities in Congress.

Trump is traveling to Nashville, Tennessee, on Tuesday to raise campaign cash for Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the party’s leading U.S. Senate hopeful in Tennessee, and headline a rally with his most loyal supporters.

Blackburn is expected to face Democratic former Gov. Phil Bredesen to replace Republican Sen. Bob Corker, who is retiring. The Tennessee campaign is among several races crucial to Trump’s plans to maintain control of the Senate, where Republicans are defending a narrow two-seat majority.

Trump is planning a series of political rallies and events in the coming months to boost Republicans and brand Democrats as obstructionists to his agenda. The president held a similar rally in Indiana earlier this month, appearing with Republican businessman Mike Braun and ripping Democratic U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelly as a “swamp person” who refused to aid the GOP agenda.

“We’re not getting complacent. We can’t,” Trump said in Elkhart, Indiana. “If we elect more Republicans we can truly deliver for all of our citizens.”

Earlier Tuesday, Trump raised the prospect of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe affecting the November elections and blamed Democrats for “Collusion.” On Twitter, he said the “13 Angry Democrats” on Mueller’s team “will be MEDDLING with the mid-term elections, especially now that Republicans [stay tough!] are taking the lead in Polls.” Mueller is a Republican.

Beyond Indiana, Trump has used his Twitter page to boost California Republican gubernatorial candidate John Cox, hoping to strengthen the party’s chances of securing a spot on the ballot in November. He has also set his sights on Montana, where Democratic Sen. Jon Tester is seeking re-election in a state Trump carried in a landslide. The two states have primaries on June 5.

The president is raising money later in the week in Texas to benefit Senate Republicans and his 2020 campaign.

Tennessee has a history of electing centrist senators and the race could be complicated by Corker’s up-and-down relationship with Trump. Corker once said Trump had turned the White House into an “adult day care center” and the president tweeted that Corker “couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Tennessee.”

Yet Corker was in the Oval Office on Saturday, receiving praise from the president for his help in securing the release of a man imprisoned in Venezuela. The breakthrough happened after Corker held a surprise meeting in Caracas with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

In his final year in the Senate, Corker has called Bredesen a friend and said he won’t actively campaign against him.

Trump, meanwhile, offered an early endorsement of Blackburn in April, calling her on Twitter “a wonderful woman who has always been there when we have needed her. Great on the Military, Border Security and Crime.”

Blackburn, who served on Trump’s transition team, has embraced the president and called herself a “hardcore, card-carrying Tennessee conservative.”

Bredesen, who is attempting to become the first Democrat to win a Senate campaign in Tennessee since Al Gore in 1990, has aired TV ads in which he says that he’s “not running against Donald Trump” and that he learned long ago to “separate the message from the messenger.”

 
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U.S. President Donald Trump “adamantly’ wants to answer questions in the criminal investigation of his 2016 campaign’s links with Russia, but one of his lawyers says he remains skeptical about allowing Trump to face prosecutors’ queries about whether he obstructed justice by trying to thwart the probe.

Trump lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, told CNN on Sunday that special counsel Robert Mueller wants to question the president about two key topics: possible collusion with Russia in the months before the election and whether he sought as president to block the investigation by firing FBI director James Comey while he was heading the Russia probe before Mueller was appointed to take over.

“The collusion part we’re pretty comfortable about because there has been none,” Giuliani said. “The obstruction part I’m not as comfortable with. I’m not. The president’s fine with it. He’s innocent. I’m not comfortable because it’s a matter of interpretation, not just hard and fast, true and not true.”

Giuliani added that “if you interpret his comment about firing Comey … if you interpret that as obstructing the investigation, as opposed to removing a guy who’s doing a bad job …. if you see it as obstructing the investigation, then you can say it’s obstruction.”

Giuliani said the president’s legal team is worried that Trump could be trapped into perjury — the criminal offense of lying under oath — in answering prosecutors’ questions about his reasoning for firing Comey. Initially, the White House said Trump ousted Comey because he allegedly mishandled the FBI’s investigation into the use of a private email server by Trump’s 2016 opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, while she was the U.S. secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

Within days, however, Trump told NBC that he was going to fire Comey in any event and was thinking of “this Russia thing” when he ousted him because he thought it was a phony investigation used by Democrats to explain Clinton’s upset loss.

Whatever the misgivings of Trump’s lawyers about letting him face prosecutors’ questions, Giuliani said, “He’s adamantly wanting to do it.”

But Giuliani said that ultimately the decision of whether Trump meets with Mueller’s team depends on “how comfortable we are in them being open-minded” and believing that prosecutors had not decided in advance that Trump was complicit in wrong-doing.

Asked how he was “so sure” there had not been any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian interests, Giuliani, a one-time prosecutor, said, “Fifty years of investigative experience tells me they don’t have a darn thing.”

Giuliani said that when he was part of the campaign, “No one knew about Russia, nobody talked about Russia.”

Trump has often assailed the investigation and did so again Sunday, calling it a “phony Russia Collusion Wiitch Hunt,” and a “Rigged Investigation!”

Giuliani has said in recent days that ultimately there won’t be any criminal charges brought against Trump, in keeping with long-standing Justice Department guidelines that a sitting president cannot be charged. But Giuliani said, based on what Mueller concludes about Trump’s actions, Congress could eventually face a decision whether to impeach Trump, leading to a Senate trial on whether he should be removed from office.

The Trump lawyer said that any sit-down with Mueller’s prosecutors would not occur until after the still-possible June 12 summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore.

 
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President Donald Trump accused The New York Times on Saturday of inventing a source for a story who, in fact, was a White House official conducting a briefing for reporters under the condition that the official not be named.

Trump tweeted that the Times quoted an official “who doesn’t exist” and referenced a line in the story about a possible summit with North Korea, which read: “a senior White House official told reporters that even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed.”

Said Trump: “WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources.”

The Times reported in a story about the tweet that it had cited “a senior White House official speaking to a large group of reporters in the White House briefing room.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump has repeatedly criticized the use of unnamed sources and labeled information related by unnamed officials “fake news.” Still, his White House regularly arranges briefings with officials who demand anonymity before relaying information, a practice also used by previous administrations.

At the briefing, which was attended by The Associated Press, the official cast doubt on the feasibility of a June 12 summit.

“I think that the main point, I suppose, is that the ball is in North Korea’s court right now. There’s really not a lot of time,” the official said. “There’s a certain amount of actual dialogue that needs to take place at the working level with your counterparts to ensure that the agenda is clear in the minds of those two leaders when they sit down to actually meet and talk and negotiate and hopefully make a deal. And June 12 is in 10 minutes.”

The White House press office invited reporters to the background briefing, both to attend in person or to call-in and insisted that the official not be named. The AP reporter in attendance questioned why the briefing was not on the record, meaning that the official’s name could be used. The official said the president had been talking publicly during the day, as well as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and that the briefing was intended to provide “background context.”
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A flood of lawsuits over LGBT rights is making its way through courts and will continue, no matter the outcome in the Supreme Court’s highly anticipated decision in the case of a Colorado baker who would not create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

Courts are engaged in two broad types of cases on this issue, weighing whether sex discrimination laws apply to LGBT people and also whether businesses can assert religious objections to avoid complying with anti-discrimination measures in serving customers, hiring and firing employees, providing health care and placing children with foster or adoptive parents.

The outcome of baker Jack Phillips’ fight at the Supreme Court could indicate how willing the justices are to carve out exceptions to anti-discrimination laws; that’s something the court has refused to do in the areas of race and sex.

The result was hard to predict based on arguments in December. But however the justices rule, it won’t be their last word on the topic.

Boost from Trump

Religious conservatives have gotten a big boost from the Trump administration, which has taken a more restrictive view of LGBT rights and intervened on their side in several cases, including Phillips’.

“There is a constellation of hugely significant cases that are likely to be heard by the court in the near future and those are going to significantly shape the legal landscape going forward,” said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

Several legal disputes are pending over wedding services, similar to the Phillips case. Video producers, graphic artists and florists are among business owners who say they oppose same-sex marriage on religious grounds and don’t want to participate in same-sex weddings. They live in the 21 states that have anti-discrimination laws that specifically include gay and lesbian people.

In California and Texas, courts are dealing with lawsuits over the refusal of hospitals, citing religious beliefs, to perform hysterectomies on people transitioning from female to male. In Michigan, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the state’s practice of allowing faith-based child placement agencies to reject same-sex couples.

Stark differences

Advocates of both sides see the essence of these cases in starkly different terms.

“What the religious right is asking for is a new rule specific to same-sex couples that would not only affect same-sex couples but also carve a hole in nondiscrimination laws that could affect all communities,” said Camilla Taylor, director of constitutional litigation at Lambda Legal, which supports civil rights for LGBT people.

Jim Campbell of the Christian public interest law firm Alliance Defending Freedom said the cases will determine whether “people like Jack Phillips who believe marriage is the union of a man and a woman, that they too have a legitimate place in public life. Or does he have to hide or ignore those beliefs when he’s participating in the public square?” ADF represents Phillips at the Supreme Court.

Civil rights complaints

The other category of cases concerns protections for LGBT people under civil rights law. One case expected to reach the court this summer involves a Michigan funeral home that fired an employee who disclosed that she was transitioning from male to female and dressed as a woman.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the firing constituted sex discrimination under federal civil rights law. That court is one of several that have applied anti-sex discrimination provisions to transgender people, but the Supreme Court has yet to take up a case.

The funeral home argues in part that Congress was not thinking about transgender people when it included sex discrimination in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. A trial judge had ruled for the funeral home, saying it was entitled to a religious exemption from the civil rights law.

“Congress has not weighed in to say sex includes gender identity. We should certainly make sure that’s a conscious choice of Congress and not just the overexpansion of the law by courts,” Campbell said. ADF also represents the funeral home.

In just the past week, two federal courts ruled in favor of transgender students who want to use school facilities that correspond to their sexual identity. Those cases turn on whether the prohibition on sex discrimination in education applies to transgender people. Appeals in both cases are possible.

In the past 13 months, federal appeals courts in Chicago and New York also have ruled that gay and lesbian employees are entitled to protection from discrimination under Title VII. Those courts overruled earlier decisions. Title VII does not specifically mention sexual orientation, but the courts said it was covered under the ban on sex bias.

Trump changes course

The Obama administration had supported treating LGBT discrimination claims as sex discrimination, but the Trump administration has changed course. In the New York case, for instance, the Trump administration filed a legal brief arguing that Title VII was not intended to provide protections to gay workers. It also withdrew Obama-era guidance to educators to treat claims of transgender students as sex discrimination.

There is no appeal pending or expected on the sexual orientation issue, and there is no guarantee that the court will take up the funeral home’s appeal over transgender discrimination.

Changes on the court

The trend in the lower courts has been in favor of extending civil rights protections to LGBT employees and students. Their prospects at the Supreme Court may be harder to discern, not least because it’s unclear whether the court’s composition will change soon.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, 81, has been the subject of retirement speculation, though he has not indicated he is planning to retire. When Justice Stephen Breyer turns 80 in August, he will join Kennedy and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 85, as octogenarians on the bench.

If President Donald Trump were to replace any of those justices, the court probably would be much less receptive to LGBT rights. Even the landmark gay marriage ruling in 2015 that Kennedy wrote was a 5-4 decision.

“We’re very concerned about the composition of the federal bench. Under the Trump administration, we’ve seen a number of federal nominees who have been ideologues, who have taken positions about the very right to exist of LGBT people that is simply inconsistent with fitness to serve as a federal judge,” Taylor of Lambda Legal said.

The ADF’s Campbell said even with the current justices, he holds out some hope that the court would not extend anti-discrimination protections. 

“Justice Kennedy has undoubtedly been the person who has decided the major LGBT cases, but to my knowledge he hasn’t weighed in some of these other issues,” he said.
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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo outlined the Trump administration’s efforts to end Iran’s nuclear program in an exclusive interview with VOA’s Persian service. VOA’s Julie Taboh reports, Thursday’s conversation also covered recent protests in Iran and the administration’s efforts to free Americans detained by Iran.
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Though U.S. President Donald Trump decided Thursday to not hold direct talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump has suggested he’s open to talks down the road, if relations improve. That offer of new talks, on his terms, is part of a pattern for Trump when it comes to negotiations. And it’s something that has had mixed results, as VOA’s Bill Gallo reports.
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The chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee met with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Friday, less than a week after the embattled socialist leader was re-elected in a vote the U.S. condemned and he kicked out the top American diplomat in the country.

The visit appeared to be an attempt by Sen. Bob Corker to push for the release of Joshua Holt, a U.S. citizen who has been held for two years in a Caracas jail without a trial on what he has called trumped-up weapons charges.

Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, was seen live on state TV shaking hands with Maduro and being greeted by first lady Cilia Flores as he entered the presidential palace. He left an hour later, and neither the senator nor the president made any statements.

Maduro easily won a second, six-year term in Sunday’s election, which was criticized by the U.S. and other nations as a “sham” after several of his key rivals were barred from running. After his victory, Maduro expelled U.S. charge d’affaires Todd Robinson and his deputy for allegedly conspiring to sabotage the vote by pressuring opposition parties to boycott the election, which had the lowest voter turnout in decades.

Corker was accompanied by an aide, Caleb McCarry, who led backchannel talks earlier this year with a close associate of Maduro aimed at securing the release of Holt.

Speculation on social media

Holt, a 26-year-old from Utah, traveled to Venezuela in June 2016 to marry a woman he had met online while looking for Spanish-speaking Mormons to help him improve his Spanish. He was arrested after police said they found an assault rifle and grenades during a raid on the public housing complex where the couple lived. He has denied the charge.

Shortly after Corker’s meeting with Maduro, social media in Venezuela lit up with speculation that Holt and his wife, Thamara Caleno, would be released as a good will gesture to improve relations, much as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un did by freeing three American detainees.

In a previous visit to Caracas in 2015, Corker was shunned by Maduro after having been promised a meeting with the president. Upon his return to Washington, Corker blasted Maduro’s government, saying its “flawed economic policies and political system” had put Venezuela on a “destructive path.”

There was no immediate comment from Corker’s office about the nature of his latest visit.

​Other senators 

Last month, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, also met with Maduro to press for Holt’s release.

The Maduro government has been seeking contacts in the U.S. to stave off the threat of crippling oil sanctions that could further damage an economy already staggering from hyperinflation and widespread shortages.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, an outspoken critic of Maduro who has President Donald Trump’s ear on Venezuela, played down Corker’s visit.

“Any U.S. Senator can meet with whoever they want,” Rubio tweeted. “But no matter how many senators dictator (at)NicolasMaduro gets to meet with him, U.S. sanctions will go away when Maduro leaves & democracy returns.”

Venezuelan Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez described Maduro’s conversation with Corker as “very good meeting, good news for the Venezuelan people” but gave no details of what the two discussed.

A close Maduro ally, socialist party boss Diosdado Cabello, accused Holt of being the CIA’s spy chief in Latin America after the prisoner appeared in a video last week pleading for help, saying his life had been threatened during a riot by inmates in the Caracas jail where he and dozens of Maduro’s opponents are being held.

Before he left Venezuela on Thursday on Maduro’s orders, Robinson had been pushing unsuccessfully to see Holt.

However, on Friday, U.S. officials were allowed entry to the prison, according to a message posted by Holt’s mother, Laurie Holt, on her Facebook page. She said her son “was in good spirits,” except for discomfort from dozens of mosquito bites. She said his visitors gave him bug repellant.
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A coalition of conservation groups sued the Trump administration on Thursday, accusing the government of slashing protections for migratory birds.

At issue is the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which the National Audubon Society and other plaintiffs say has been undermined. In the past, the act helped hold parties responsible for actions that killed or injured migratory birds.

But in December, the Trump administration said energy companies and other businesses that accidentally kill migratory birds will no longer be criminally prosecuted.

“As you can imagine, many causes of bird fatalities — including oil spills — could fall into this ‘unintentional’ category, so we’re taking the administration to court,” David Yarnold, president and CEO of the National Audubon Society, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement.

Plaintiffs also include the American Bird Conservancy, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Defenders of Wildlife. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Defendants are the U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Daniel Jorjani, the Interior Department’s principal deputy solicitor.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, representing the government in the lawsuit, declined to comment. Representatives for the Fish and Wildlife Service, interior and justice departments also declined comment.

The Trump administration’s December move, in a legal memo from the Interior Department, reversed a longstanding practice at the agency and a last-minute rule implemented by the outgoing Obama administration. It came after several appeals courts ruled that the government was interpreting a century-old law aimed at protecting birds too broadly.

In the legal opinion, Jorjani said that a 1918 law that officials have used to prosecute those who kill birds “incidentally” as part of doing business was really aimed at preventing poaching and hunting without a license.

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act “applies only to direct and affirmative purposeful actions that reduce migratory birds, their eggs, or their nests, by killing or capturing, to human control,” Jorjani wrote.

The memo is already being followed, the lawsuit said, and one or more companies constructing natural gas pipelines were told they may cut down trees with nesting birds during the breeding season.

The conservation groups request that the court vacate the memo and declare the defendants “revert to their prior, correct longstanding interpretation and policy,” the lawsuit said.
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Former U.S. FBI Director James Comey said that social media companies needed to “worry” about foreign political propaganda on their networks, but he had few ideas on how to counter it.

In an interview with Reuters, Comey also said he would be leery of the Federal Bureau of Investigation trying to track propaganda in the United States, let alone take action against it, while acknowledging that it was a major problem for the U.S. political system.

“I don’t have a great answer for them,” Comey said of social media companies including Facebook and Twitter, which were major venues for what U.S. intelligence agencies have said was a Russian-sponsored effort to help President Donald Trump win the 2016 U.S. election.

Comey’s comments on Wednesday follow former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s conclusion in a new book that the Russian election meddling, which allegedly included illegal hacking and leaking of stolen information as well as propaganda, had a decisive influence in electing Trump.

Trump fired Comey as the FBI investigated the Russian election interference, setting the stage for the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his wide-ranging inquiries.

Comey has been criticized for the FBI’s failure to counter Russia’s election meddling while it was happening.

But Comey said the FBI should not get involved in fighting propaganda because it is a “rule-bound institution,” with strict policies that serve as an appropriate check on its power.

“You’d want to be very thoughtful about having the FBI, without having a predicated investigation, be monitoring speech in the U.S., because it’s often very difficult to tell, is it coming from a nation state?” Comey said. “So, in theory, that might involve collecting more broadly on speech in the United States.”

He said those same concerns had kept the FBI from tracking an influence campaign that included Russian-driven Facebook posts that reached more than 100 million people on that social network alone ahead of the 2016 election.

Spy claims

Comey avoided answering questions about the ongoing Mueller probe and his own role in the earlier version of the investigation, but he scoffed at Trump’s accusation this week that the FBI had planted a spy inside his 2016 campaign.

Comey said he could not comment directly on the claim, floated this week by Trump and Republican supporters in Congress.

More generally, Comey said, “The word ‘spy’ is not an accurate characterization in any case of the FBI’s use of confidential human sources, which are a critical tool in all of our investigations — people telling us things that they know.”

Asked whether he could deny that the FBI sent someone to get a job working full-time inside Trump’s presidential campaign, Comey laughed and said: “I’m tempted, but I’ve got to leave it to the Bureau to comment.”

Uncrackable encryption

Comey is best known in Silicon Valley for leading an Obama administration charge against end-to-end encryption uncrackable by law enforcement.

In the interview, he conceded that one of the technology companies’ major objections to giving U.S. authorities special access — that it would then have to do the same for governments in Russia, China and elsewhere — was “reasonable.”

But he said some companies were already aiding such regimes by storing data in those countries and allowing access to source code. If they were sufficiently worried, he said, they could stop doing business in those places.

Comey said his goal was a process under which companies would grant access to authorities only according to strict standards of due process, such as relying on independent judges.

If the companies refused backdoor access until the other countries changed their legal system, “it would be good for the people of China and Russia.”
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Imer still has fragments from a bullet in his back. The 43-year-old Mexican immigrant, who asked to be identified only by his first name, fled the Mexican state of Guerrero more than 20 years ago after he was shot in the back by a Mexican drug gang.

He entered the U.S. illegally in 1998 and settled in Norristown, Pennsylvania, where he made a living working in construction. Two months ago he was arrested and put in detention in the York County Prison in south-central Pennsylvania.

“I’ve never committed a crime, not even a traffic ticket,” he said, as he choked up with tears. “Now, I don’t know what’s going to happen to my family if I am deported,” he said. Imer has two American-born children.

Recently, he was among a dozen detained undocumented immigrants, all from Latin America and dressed in orange prison overalls, sitting at a long table in a small room inside the detention center listening to a presentation in Spanish about their legal options. Fernanda Castillo, a staffer from the Pennsylvania Immigration Resources, or PIRC, explained the legal remedies they might pursue.

“Our main goal is to let them know what are their rights, what to expect in immigration court,” Castillo later told VOA. “We’ll talk about a couple of defenses to see if they are eligible for something and we talk about bond and voluntary departure as well.”

PIRC’s orientation class is indirectly funded by the U.S. Justice Department under the Legal Orientation Program, or LOP. Created in 2003 under the Bush administration, the LOP is aimed at giving detained immigrants some understanding of their rights and possible relief under U.S. immigration law. Administered by the Vera Institute of Justice, the $8 million-a-year program is carried out by PIRC and 17 other nonprofits in more than 30 detention centers from California to Virginia.

​Legal orientation program

The orientation class lasts about an hour, as Castillo explained what the detainees could expect when they appear before a U.S. immigration judge. Most wanted to know about getting bail.

“Am I eligible for bond? How low is the bond, how high is the bond,” Castillo said. “We get a lot of voluntary departure questions as well, a lot of people will not know the difference between a voluntary departure and a removal order, which can be an excruciating decision.”

Voluntary departure means someone may be able to return legally someday, though usually years later. With removal, there’s no chance, as Castillo explained to the class.

PIRC gets $200,000 a year for the information sessions and one-on-one workshops it conducts at the York County Prison.

PIRC Executive Director Mary Studzinski says the sessions have a direct impact on the immigration court process, now laboring under a backlog of more than 700,000 cases.

“It allows someone when they’re done with that class to have a better sense of whether they have any hope of staying, and if they do, what might be an avenue that they could pursue,” Studzinski told VOA in her office less than 2 kilometers from the prison. 

“If you know you have no remedy under law and there’s no way you can stay, then probably your best answer is that, ‘No, your honor, I would like to leave.’ (LOP) has an impact on the courts; it makes the courts more efficient,” she said.

This kind of impact saves the U.S. Treasury almost $18-million-a-year, according to a 2012 Vera Institute study of the LOP. A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) memo last year endorsed the LOP, saying informed detainees complete their cases faster.

Yet U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has expressed concerns about the program. Earlier this year, he suspended funding pending a review. But responding to congressional pressure, Sessions later told a Senate panel last month that funding would continue as the LOP is evaluated.

The judge’s job

A Justice Department spokesperson later told VOA that it is time for a new review.

“We believe the reviews should be done on a more frequent basis,” the spokesperson said. “There’s a question about the (Vera Institute) methodology, and also we maintain that there’s a large overlap between what the LOP does and what the immigration judges do. They (the LOP) explain the rights to the detainees but this is also done by the immigration judges.”

But PIRC’s Studzinski says there’s no comparison. While some judges are more thorough than others, “I’ve seen it done in less than five minutes and they certainly don’t take an hour. … So if you ask me if a judge’s advisal is the same thing as a legal orientation, I would say no. Do I think advisals are important, yes they absolutely should remain in place but they are in no way a substitute for the Legal Orientation Program.”

Studzinski adds that PIRC this year is on track to orient 2,600 detainees, a figure much higher than two years ago.

“The increase we’re seeing is people being swept in from the community who in the previous administration would never have been picked up,” Studzinski said. “These are people who have been in the community for 10, 15, 20 years, who have not violated any laws.”

Like Imer, who is hoping to apply for asylum. During the recent PIRC orientation class Imer said he had paid a lawyer $3,000 but had not heard from him in the two months he has been in jail. PIRC later found out the “lawyer” was simply a notary. The organization is now working to help Imer find legal representation.
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U.S. tech companies would be forced to disclose if they allowed American adversaries, like Russia and China, to examine the inner workings of software sold to the U.S. military under proposed legislation, Senate staff told Reuters on Thursday.

The bill, approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, comes after a year-long Reuters investigation found software makers allowed a Russian defense agency to hunt for vulnerabilities in software that was already deeply embedded in some of the most sensitive parts of the U.S. government, including the Pentagon, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and intelligence agencies.

Security experts say allowing Russian authorities to conduct the reviews of internal software instructions — known as source code — could help Russia find vulnerabilities and more easily attack key systems that protect the United States. 

The new source code disclosure rules were included in Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act, the Pentagon’s spending bill, according to staffers of Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen.

​Details of bill, which passed the committee 25-2, are not yet public. And the legislation still needs to be voted on by the full Senate and reconciled with a House version of the legislation before it can be signed into law by President Donald Trump.

If passed into law, the legislation would require companies that do business with the U.S. military to disclose any source code review of the software done by adversaries, staffers for Shaheen told Reuters. If the Pentagon deems a source code review a risk, military officials and the software company would need to agree on how to contain the threat. It could, for example, involve limiting the software’s use to non-classified settings.

The details of the foreign source code reviews, and any steps the company agreed to take to reduce the risks, would be stored in a database accessible to military officials, Shaheen’s staffers said. For most products, the military notification will only apply to countries determined to be cybersecurity threats, such as Russia and China.

Shaheen has been a key voice on cybersecurity in Congress. The New Hampshire senator last year led successful efforts in Congress to ban all government use of software provided by Moscow-based antivirus firm Kaspersky Lab, amid allegations the company is linked to Russian intelligence. Kaspersky denies such links.

In order to sell in the Russian market, tech companies including Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co, SAP and McAfee have allowed a Russian defense agency to scour software source code for vulnerabilities, Reuters found. In many cases, Reuters found that the software companies had not previously informed U.S. agencies that Russian authorities had been allowed to conduct the source code reviews. In most cases, the U.S. military does not require comparable source code reviews before it buys software, procurement experts have told Reuters. 

The companies have said the source code reviews were conducted by the Russians in company-controlled facilities, where the reviewer could not copy or alter the software. McAfee announced last year that it no longer allows government source code reviews. Hewlett Packard Enterprise has said none of its current software offerings have gone through the process.
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The U.S. Senate on Thursday unanimously approved legislation that would step up protections for congressional staffers facing workplace harassment,

including requiring lawmakers to use their personal funds to cover the cost of settlements if they were the alleged harassers.

The bipartisan legislation, which had more than 40 co-sponsors in the 100-seat Senate, would also make public the harassment settlements and the lawmakers involved, automatically refer such settlements to the Senate Ethics Committee and more closely track allegations of harassment within the U.S. Capitol.

“Hardworking taxpayers should not foot the bill for a member’s misconduct, and victims should not have to navigate a system that stands in the way of accountability,” Republican Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri said in a statement with Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.

Klobuchar said the bill would “help bring accountability and transparency to a broken process, ensure victims can immediately seek justice and hold members of Congress accountable.”

Reconciliation needed

The measure would update employee protections enacted in 1995. The House of Representatives passed its own version of the legislation in February. The two chambers need to reconcile the differences between the two bills before the measure can be signed into law by President Donald Trump.

The push to pass legislation to protect congressional employees follows allegations of sexual harassment against dozens of high-profile men in politics, media, entertainment and business. Both the House and Senate bills would require lawmakers to use their own money to cover the cost of settling

such matters.

Currently, there is a congressional fund that pays for harassment settlements, including those involving the conduct of House and Senate lawmakers.

Republican Representatives Blake Farenthold and Patrick Meehan are among those who have resigned from Congress because of allegations of sexual harassment. Both said they would repay the U.S. Treasury for the congressional funds used for the settlements. Farenthold has since said he will not do so.

The House Ethics Committee released a statement Thursday reiterating it does not have jurisdiction over House members once they resign. The committee urged Congress to pass legislation that would ensure lawmakers are personally liable for their conduct, even after they leave office.
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When it comes to rhetoric about North Korea, U.S. President Donald Trump has been the master of both the bellicose taunt and soothing benevolence, often in close proximity to each other.

Trump’s duality on the reclusive communist pariah nation was on display again Thursday as he canceled the planned June 12 summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

On the one hand, Trump told Kim that he was “very much looking forward to being there with you.” But then he said he was canceling because, “Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting.”

Trump warned, “You talk about your nuclear capabilities, but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.”

Still, wait a minute, Trump seemed to say. “I felt a wonderful dialogue was building up between you and me,” he said, adding his thanks for releasing three Americans who had been held in North Korea. He held out hope to get together in the future, saying, “If you change your mind having to do with this most important summit, please do not hesitate to call me or write.”

Mostly, through his 16-month presidency and in the years before he transformed himself from a New York real estate mogul into a Republican presidential contender, Trump warned of the dangers of a nuclear North Korea. His barbed comments about Kim and North Korea’s broken promises in years past to denuclearize echoed the sentiment of many U.S. politicians, but often included an extra helping of ridicule.

Trading insults

In 2013, two years before he announced his presidential candidacy, Trump warned former President Barack Obama to be cautious with Kim, calling the North Korea leader a “whack job.”

During a debate in the run-up to the November 2016 presidential election, Trump assailed Kim as a “maniac” who “actually has nuclear weapons.” 

He said that if Kim came to the United States, “I’d accept him, but I wouldn’t give him a state dinner like we do for China and all these other people that rip us off.”

At another point in the campaign, Trump seemed accepting about the possibility of assassinating Kim, saying in an interview he could “get China to make [Kim] disappear in one form or another.”

As president, through much of his first year in office in 2017, Trump regularly excoriated Kim, including at the U.N. General Assembly. On various occasions, Trump called him a “sick puppy” and “Little Rocket Man,” and questioned why Kim would call him a dotard, or a weak-minded old person.

“Why would Kim Jong Un insult me by calling me ‘old,’ when I would NEVER call him ‘short and fat’?” Trump retorted. 

Fire and fury

As North Korea carried out numerous missile and nuclear tests last year, Trump became more bellicose, saying, “Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!”

Trump warned that if North Korea attacked the U.S. or its allies, he would launch “fire, fury and, frankly, power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.”

The U.S. leader rebuked former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for suggesting that negotiations with North Korea could be fruitful and lead to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, saying he was “wasting his time.”

“The U.S. has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money, for 25 years. Talking is not the answer!” Trump declared.

Talks on, then off

But late last year and into 2018, Trump watched as South Korea welcomed North Korean athletes at the Winter Olympics and said it was his administration’s imposition of economic sanctions against North Korea that forced it to open talks with South Korea.

Trump said he, too, would be open to negotiations with North Korea.

In March, when South Korean envoys conveyed a message from Pyongyang that it was willing to meet with Trump, he accepted immediately. In recent weeks, there were direct, high-level talks between Kim and Mike Pompeo, first in his role as director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and then as secretary of state, all aimed at arranging the summit in Singapore.

Pompeo returned from Pyongyang with three Americans who had been detained by North Korea on spurious charges. Details were being worked out for the U.S.-North Korea summit. One U.S. group even minted a medallion commemorating the would-be meeting.

But then North Korea attacked U.S. calls for unilateral denuclearization, criticizing the views of Trump national security adviser John Bolton and describing U.S. Vice President Mike Pence as a “political dummy.”

For Trump, that was enough. With his signature on a single-page letter, he called off the summit.
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Senior U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials are set to give separate briefings to two sets of lawmakers Thursday in connection with the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.

In the first session, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, National Intelligence Director Dan Coats and FBI Director Christopher Wray will meet with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Trey Gowdy.

​The White House arranged those talks with the two Republican lawmakers, who want more information about an FBI informant who had contact with Trump campaign officials during the 2016 race.

Democrats complained the meeting was inappropriate and asked for an expanded session that would include the so-called Gang of Eight bipartisan group of senior members of both parties.

That request was granted, but not in place of the Nunes and Gowdy talks, and will take place a few hours after the Republican-only session.

The expanded talks will include Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Paul Ryan, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, and the ranking Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees, Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Adam Schiff, according to the Justice Department.

Foreign policy scholar

Trump has seized on the FBI’s use of Stefan Halper to talk to three of his campaign associates as part of the Russia probe, claiming Halper was working to “spy for political reasons” in order to help Democrat Hillary Clinton win the election.

Halper is an American foreign policy scholar at Britain’s University of Cambridge, and worked as a secret informant to report on foreign affairs conversations he had with the three Trump advisers: Carter Page, Sam Clovis and George Papadopoulos. Decades ago, Halper served in three Republican U.S. administrations in various domestic policy roles.

The FBI, at the time it used Halper as an informant, was looking into Trump campaign links to Russian interests during the latter stages of the 2016 campaign, part of what eventually became special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing criminal investigation. Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his contacts with Russians.

Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion between his campaign and Russia.

Russia election meddling

Last year, the U.S. intelligence community assessed that Russia carried out an influence campaign meant to disrupt the election and help Trump’s chances of winning.

After Trump earlier this week demanded the FBI and the Justice Department disclose confidential records about the use of Halper, Rosenstein and Wray agreed to Thursday’s meeting with Nunes and Gowdy to show them the information.

Trump told White House reporters he was not “undercutting” the Justice Department by making his demand for the information about Halper.

“We’re cleaning everything up. This was a terrible situation,” he said. “I want total transparency … because this issue supersedes Republicans and Democrats.”

Defense contracts

It has not been disclosed how much the FBI paid Halper. But U.S. financial records show that since 2012 Halper has had contracts with the Defense Department for more than $1 million for research and development in the social sciences and humanities, although the money did not go solely to him. He hired other academics to help with the research and prepare reports.

Trump said in another tweet, using his  oft-repeated pejorative for his 2016 Democratic challenger, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Rosenstein has also asked the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate the FBI’s use of Halper.

“If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action,” Rosenstein said.

 
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The top U.S. diplomat who held face-to-face talks with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un has assured lawmakers the U.S. will negotiate only a strong denuclearization deal with Pyongyang. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo testified on Capitol Hill Wednesday ahead of an expected June 12 summit in Singapore between President Donald Trump and North Korea’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong Un. VOA’s Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports.
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U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed to make “radical” changes to U.S. aid practices by withholding government assistance from countries that allow criminals to sneak into the United States. Trump spoke Wednesday at a forum in New York, a U.S. state that is battling gang activity. New York officials briefed Trump on the progress they have made in dismantling the violent Mara Salvatrucha gang, also known as MS-13. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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Georgia Democrats gave Atlanta lawyer Stacey Abrams a chance to become the first black female governor in American history on a primary night that ended well for several women seeking office.

Abrams set new historical marks with a primary victory Tuesday that made her the first black nominee and first female nominee for governor of either majority party in Georgia.

Voters also picked nominees in Kentucky, Arkansas and Texas ahead of the November midterms. A closer look at key story lines:

Georgia governor’s race

Democrats were set to nominate a woman for governor either way, with Stacey Abrams and Stacey Evans battling it out in a pitched primary fight.

But the 44-year-old Abrams stood out in her bid to be the nation’s first African-American woman to lead a state. The former state General Assembly leader was insistent that the way to dent Republican domination in Georgia wasn’t by cautiously pursuing the older white voters who had abandoned Democrats over recent decades. Rather, she wanted to widen the electorate by attracting young voters and nonwhites who hadn’t been casting ballots.

She will test her theory as the underdog against either Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle or Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who will meet in Republican runoff in July. Cagle led a five-man Republican field, with Kemp qualifying for the second spot after a campaign that was a sprint to the right on everything from immigration to support for President Donald Trump.

Kemp promised to keep pulling in that direction, with Cagle trying to balance the demands of a conservative primary electorate with his support from the business establishment. The scenario worried some Georgia Republicans who were accustomed to centrist, business-aligned governors who rarely flouted Atlanta-based behemoths like Delta and Coca-Cola.

Some GOP figures worried the GOP gamesmanship on immigration and gay rights, in particular, already had ensured Georgia wouldn’t land Amazon’s second headquarters.

Texas congressional runoffs

Texas had three House runoffs that will be key to whether Democrats can flip the minimum 24 GOP-held seats they would need for a majority in next year’s Congress. All three were among 25 districts nationally where Trump ran behind Hillary Clinton in 2016. Democrats nominated women in two of the districts and a black man in the third.

Attorney Lizzie Fletcher far outpaced activist Laura Moser in a metro-Houston congressional contest that became a proxy for Democrats’ fight between liberals and moderates. National Democrats’ campaign committee never endorsed Fletcher, but released opposition research against Moser amid fears that she was too liberal to knock off vulnerable Republican Rep. John Culberson in the fall.

In a San Antonio-Mexican border district, Gina Ortiz Jones, an Air Force veteran and former intelligence officer, got Democrats’ nod to face Republican Rep. Will Hurd in November. Jones would be the first openly lesbian congresswoman from her state. Hurd is black.

Former NFL player Colin Allred won a battle of two attorneys and former Obama administration officials in a metro-Dallas House district. Allred, who is black, topped Lillian Salerno and will face Republican Rep. Pete Sessions in November. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee lined up behind Allred after the group’s initial favorite failed to make the runoff.

Among Republicans, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz showed off his endorsement muscle, with his former chief of staff, Chip Roy, winning a competitive runoff for a San Antonio-area congressional seat opened by the retirement of Rep. Lamar Smith.

In the governor’s race, Democrats tapped former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez to take on Republican incumbent Greg Abbott in November. Valdez is Texas’ first openly gay and first Latina nominee for governor.

Democrats battle in Kentucky

Voters in a central Kentucky congressional district opted for retired Marine officer and fighter pilot Amy McGrath over Lexington Mayor Jim Gray to advance to a fall campaign against Republican Rep. Andy Barr.

National Democrats once touted Gray as one of their best recruits in their efforts for a House majority. They said in recent weeks they’d be happy with McGrath, but the race still shaped up as a battle between rank-and-file activists and the party establishment.

McGrath was making her first bid for public office, among a handful of female Naval Academy graduates running for Congress this year.

Gray also lost a 2016 Senate race.

In eastern Kentucky’s Rowan County, voters denied the Democratic nomination to a gay candidate who wanted to challenge the local clerk who denied him and others same-sex marriage licenses.

David Ermold had wanted to face Republican Kim Davis, who went to jail three years ago for denying marriage licenses in the aftermath of an historic U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

Arkansas health care preview

While Washington fixates on the daily developments in the Russia election meddling investigation, Democratic congressional candidates insist they’ll win in November arguing about bread-and-butter issues like health care.

Arkansas state Rep. Clarke Tucker captured Democrats’ congressional nomination in a Little Rock-based district by telling his story as a cancer survivor. Though he faced a crowded primary field, his real target all along has been Republican Rep. French Hill, who voted many times to repeal the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

The Arkansas district may not be at the top of Democrats’ national target list, but it’s the kind of district the party might have to win to be assured of regaining House control in November.

The state’s Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, dispatched primary opposition as he sought another term. Democrats nominated former Teach for America executive Jared Henderson.
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Members of the U.S. Congress and former professional athletes took to the soccer pitch Tuesday in Washington, as Republicans and Democrats fought for bragging rights during the annual Congressional Soccer Match. All to benefit charity. From Washington, VOA’s Jill Craig has more.
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The rate of incarceration in the U.S. is the world’s highest, leading to what many lawmakers and policy analysts say is a nationwide imprisonment epidemic. But the beginning of the end of that epidemic started Tuesday, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat from New York, told VOA.

A bipartisan prison reform bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a 360-59 vote “strikes an opening blow against the overcriminalization of the nation,” Jeffries, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said.

U.S. President Donald Trump said “the strong bipartisan vote paces the way for action by the Senate.” Last week, Trump endorsed the bill at a White House summit on prison reform, saying, “Our whole nation benefits if former inmates are able to reenter society as productive, law-abiding citizens.”

If the bill reaches the president’s desk for a signature, it would provide $50 million in funding for five years to provide job training, education and substance abuse treatment for prisoners as well as a number of quality-of-life measures aimed at reducing chronically high rates of recidivism among former inmates.

Contentious issue

But the contentious issue of criminal justice reform has split Democrats and Republicans within their own parties, possibly jeopardizing the bill’s chances of passage as it heads to the U.S. Senate.

In a letter to colleagues last week, Democratic Senators Kamala Harris, Dick Durbin and Cory Booker joined two House Democratic colleagues, Representatives John Lewis and Sheila Jackson Lee, in saying the bill could not be implemented effectively and could possibly lead to prison privatization.

Jeffries told VOA many of the arguments against the First Step Act “were anchored in falsehoods.”

He added the legislation passed today “is a first step towards eradicating the cancer of mass incarceration”  a move also welcomed by many House Republicans.

“Rather than allowing the cycle of crime to continue, this legislation takes a practical, intelligent approach to rehabilitation,” House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Republican from Virginia, said, speaking of the bill’s reform measures on the House floor Tuesday.

The bill represents the first significant criminal justice reform effort since the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, a measure that reduced the disparity in the amount of crack cocaine and powder cocaine required to trigger mandatory sentences for drug offenders.

But the First Step Act faces tough odds in the Senate, where a bipartisan group of senators is pushing for more comprehensive criminal justice reform.

The rival Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, championed by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, a Republican, promises lower sentences for nonviolent, low-level offenders and gives judges greater discretion at sentencing, among other provisions.

Nearly two dozen senators have signed on to the bill, but the White House opposes the measure.   

“We need a more strategic approach to drug sentencing that focuses law enforcement resources on violent career criminals and drug kingpins instead of nonviolent, lower-level offenders,” Grassley wrote in a recent op-ed for Fox News.

Sentencing laws

Mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, instituted in the 1970s and 1980s, are widely blamed for a sharp rise in the number of U.S. prisoners in recent decades.

Though the number of U.S. prisoners has fallen in recent years, nearly half of the 184,000 inmates currently held in federal correction facilities are serving time for drug offenses, according to the Bureau of Prisons.

The divide in Congress over prison reform mirrors an unusual schism among longtime advocates of overhauling America’s criminal justice system.

At one end of the spectrum is a coalition of more than 100 advocacy groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who say the bill falls short of bringing about “meaningful” criminal justice reform.

In a letter on Monday, the group urged House members to vote down the bill, saying it fails to address “racial disparities, draconian mandatory sentences, persistent overcrowding, lack of rehabilitation, and the exorbitant costs of incarceration.”

At the other end of the divide is an unlikely grouping of more than 70 other organizations that support the legislation, ranging from Koch Industries, headed by the conservative billionaire Koch brothers, to Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that opposes mandatory minimum sentencing laws.

Kevin Ring, the group’s president, says the prospect of sentencing reform under the Trump administration is slim, leaving prison reform as the only viable alternative.

“What we don’t want to do is make the perfect the enemy of the good: kill a bill that has modest reforms that will help real people just because we’re waiting for something that’s not likely to happen in this administration,” Ring said.

Ring said he hopes negotiations in the Senate can lead to a compromise between the First Step Act and the bill advocated by Grassley.

At the White House summit last week, Trump urged lawmakers to “work out their differences” and send him a reform bill to sign.
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The U.S. Department of Justice is expanding an internal probe into whether there was any political motivation when the FBI first began investigating Russian meddling in 2016 during the presidential election. President Trump met with top Justice Department officials Monday following his claim via Twitter that the FBI used an informant to spy on his campaign. It was Trump’s latest in a series of escalating attacks on the Russia probe led by special counsel Robert Mueller. VOA national correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.
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Former CIA officer Gina Haspel has become the first woman to head the U.S. spy agency after a swearing-in ceremony Monday. Haspel has overcome the criticism by lawmakers of both parties for her involvement in the torture of terror suspects after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump praised her ability to overcome what he called “a lot of very negative politics” and said no one was more qualified the job. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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A commemorative coin featuring U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un has been struck by the White House Communications Agency ahead of their planned summit next month.

In a statement, deputy spokesman Raj Shah insisted that “the White House did not have any input into the design and manufacture of the coin.”

The coin depicts Trump and Kim, described as North Korea’s “Supreme Leader,” in profile facing each other in front of a background of U.S. and North Korean flags.

At the top of the front, the words “Peace Talks” are emblazoned, with the date “2018” beneath.

The back of the coin features a picture of the White House, Air Force One and the presidential seal.

Trump is scheduled to hold a landmark summit with the North Korean leader in Singapore on June 12, but Pyongyang has recently threatened to pull out over U.S. demands for “unilateral nuclear abandonment.”

The White House Communications Agency regularly issues commemorative or challenge coins to present to foreign guests, diplomats and members of the military.

A number of the coins are available for sale through the White House Gift Office.

“Since 2003, White House Communications Agency members have ordered a limited number of commercially designed and manufactured souvenir travel coins for purchase,” Shah explained.

“These coins are designed, manufactured and made by an American coin manufacturer. These souvenir coins are only ordered after a trip has been publicly announced.”
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