An Oregon state appeals court Thursday let stand $135,000 in damages levied against the owners of a Portland-area bakery for discrimination after they refused on religious grounds to prepare a wedding cake for a local lesbian couple.

A three-judge panel of the Oregon Court of Appeals rejected a petition by Melissa and Aaron Klein, former owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, to overturn the ruling by the state’s labor commissioner as a violation of their rights under the U.S. Constitution to freedom of religion and expression.

An attorney for the Kleins, who closed their bakery not long after being ordered to pay the heavy fine, could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.

“Today’s ruling sends a strong signal that Oregon remains open to all,” Brad Avakian, the state’s labor commissioner, said in a written statement.

“Within Oregon’s public accommodations law is the basic principle of human decency that every person, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, has the freedom to fully participate in society,” Avakian said.

The case stems from Aaron Klein’s refusal to bake a wedding cake for Rachel Bowman-Cryer in January 2013 because she was planning a same-sex wedding with her partner Laurel, which he said violated his religious convictions.

Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer filed a formal complaint with the state labor bureau, which found the bakery had violated anti-discrimination laws and awarded the damages.

The Bowman-Cryers were married in 2014 after a federal judge struck down Oregon’s same-sex marriage ban.

The bakery case is one of many disputes nationwide since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June 2015 to legalize same-sex marriage in all 50 states.
…

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has touted the diplomatic accomplishments of President Donald Trump’s administration this year, saying “Americans should be encouraged” by its dealings with the U.S.’ “greatest security threat,” North Korea, along with China and Russia.

In an opinion piece published Thursday in The New York Times, Tillerson wrote that Trump “abandoned the failed policy of strategic patience” and adopted a “policy of pressure” toward North Korea “through diplomatic and economic sanctions.”

The United Nations Security Council imposed new sanctions on North Korea last Friday, slashing fuel supplies, tightening shipping restrictions and appealing for the expulsion of North Koreans working abroad — a significant source of revenue for Pyongyang.

Tillerson also said pressure from the U.S. and its allies “has cut off roughly 90 percent of North Korea’s export revenue,” much of which he said Pyongyang used to fund the development of illegal weapons.

“We hope that this international isolation will pressure the regime into serious negotiations on the abandonment of its nuclear and ballistic missile programs,” Tillerson wrote.

After overcoming technological obstacles this year to develop a modern nuclear weapons program, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un denounced the new sanctions on Christmas Day, saying that they represent “an act of war” and that relinquishing his country’s nuclear weapons was a “pipe dream.”

Tillerson said China has imposed some import bans and sanctions against North Korea, “but it could and should do more.” He said the U.S. would pursue talks with China on issues such as trade imbalances and China’s “troubling” military activities in the South China Sea. The U.S. will also “carefully consider” how to manage its long-term relationship with China, which Tillerson described as a rising “economic and military power.”

Tillerson praised the U.S. role in the recapture of Islamic State territory in Iraq and Syria and the administration’s new Afghanistan-focused South Asia strategy. Tilllerson said Afghanistan “cannot become a safe haven for terrorists” and called on Pakistan to fight terrorists “on its own soil.”

“We are prepared to partner with Pakistan to defeat terrorists organizations seeking safe havens, but Pakistan must demonstrate its desire to partner with us,” he wrote.

The top American diplomat acknowledged the U.S. has a poor relationship with a “resurgent Russia” that has invaded neighboring countries Georgia and Ukraine and “undermined the sovereignty of Western nations by meddling in our election and others.”

Shortly after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, who was leading the probe into Russia, former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel of an investigation into whether any members of Trump’s campaign conspired with Russian agents during the campaign.

Earlier this year, the U.S. intelligence community released a report concluding Russia had meddled in the 2016 presidential election, showing a preference for Trump over Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent. There are also several congressional probes into the matter. Russia denies meddling in the election, and Trump has denied any collusion with the Russians.

“While we are on guard against Russian aggression, we recognize the need to work with Russia where mutual interests intersect,” Tillerson wrote, citing the Syrian civil war where the two countries have supported opposing sides but pushed for peace negotiations.

Tillerson’s remarks about Iran were less conciliatory. He said the U.S. has abandoned the “flawed Iran nuclear deal” as the focus of its policy toward the Persian Gulf country, adding, “We are now confronting the totality of Iranian threats.”

The assessment of the administration’s diplomatic successes this year belies the tension that has existed between Tillerson and Trump. Senior administration officials said last month the White House has developed a plan to push Tillerson out of office. The two men have disagreed on a number of significant issues, including the confrontation with North Korea and the Iran nuclear deal.

Tilllerson reportedly called the president a “moron” and Trump publicly disparaged Tillerson for “wasting his time” by reaching out diplomatically to North Korea.
…

Democrat Doug Jones has been certified as the winner of the U.S. Senate race in Alabama that was challenged by Republican Roy Moore, after a judge rejected Moore’s appeal to stop the certification of the election results.

Jones was officially declared the winner Thursday afternoon by a three-person panel consisting of Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey and state Attorney General Steve Marshall.

More than two weeks after losing a special election, Moore filed a last-minute court challenge to prevent Alabama election officials from certifying his Democratic opponent’s victory. 

Moore filed the complaint in a state courthouse late Wednesday afternoon, just hours before Jones was set to be officially declared the winner of the December 12 election, which Jones won by just over 20,000 votes. 

The complaint alleged Moore lost due to “systematic voter fraud,” citing higher than expected turnout in Jefferson County, the state’s most populous area, along with irregularities in 20 voting precincts in the county. 

Moore’s lawyers demanded an investigation into their claims, and for the state to hold a new election. Moore has rejected calls to concede the race to Jones.

Before he certified Jones the winner, Merrill said he had not uncovered any evidence of voter fraud.

“Will this [the complaint] affect anything?” Moore asked Thursday on CNN. “The short answer is no.”

Now that Jones has been certified the victor, Merrill said he will be sworn in next week to succeed Jeff Sessions, who became attorney general in President Donald Trump’s cabinet earlier this year.

Jones is the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from the heavily Republican state in 25 years.

Moore is a former Alabama state supreme court judge known for his staunch religious views. His campaign was derailed when The Washington Post published allegations made by several women of sexual misconduct when they were teenagers, and Moore was in his 30s.

Included in the complaint was an affidavit from Moore stating he passed a polygraph test that confirmed the charges of misconduct “are completely false.”

“It’s appalling that the Democrat Senate Majority PAC and the Republican Senate Leadership Fund both spent millions to run false and malicious ads against me in this campaign,” Moore said.

Jones’ election narrows the Republican lead in the Senate to a 51-49 margin.
…

More than two weeks after losing a special election to the U.S. Senate, Alabama Republican Roy Moore has filed a last-minute court challenge to prevent state election officials from certifying his Democratic opponent’s victory.

Moore filed a complaint in a state courthouse late Wednesday afternoon, just hours before Doug Jones is set to be officially declared the winner of the December 12 election, which Jones won by just over 20,000 votes.

The complaint alleges Moore lost due to “systematic voter fraud,” citing higher than expected turnout in Jefferson County, the state’s most populous area, along with irregularities in 20 voting precincts in the county.

Moore’s lawyers are demanding an investigation into their claims, and for the state to hold a new election. Moore has rejected calls to concede the race to Jones.

John Merrill, Alabama’s secretary of state, says he has not uncovered any evidence of voter fraud. If Jones’s victory is certified Thursday, he will be sworn in sometime next week to succeed Jeff Sessions, who became attorney general in President Donald Trump’s cabinet earlier this year.

Jones is the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from the heavily Republican state in 25 years.

Moore is a former Alabama state supreme court judge known for his staunch religious views. His campaign was derailed when The Washington Post published allegations made by several women of sexual misconduct when they were teenagers, and Jones was a grown man in his 30s.

 
…

If there is a single word that has dogged and defined Donald Trump’s presidency, it is Russia. VOA White House correspondent Peter Heinlein has a look at how Trump’s relationship with Russia, and the Kremlin’s role in his election, has hung over every moment of his term in office.
…

Eager for more legislative achievements before Washington’s focus shifts to the midterm elections, President Donald Trump plans to start the new year by meeting with Republican congressional leaders to plot the 2018 legislative agenda, the White House said.

After returning to Washington from Florida, where he is spending the holidays, Trump will host House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky at the rustic Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland during the weekend of Jan. 6-7.

Spokesmen for Ryan and McConnell have confirmed they will attend.

The powwow will follow the recent enactment of legislation to cut taxes, beginning next year, for corporations and individuals at an estimated cost of $1.5 trillion added to the national debt over 10 years.

The bill marked the first big legislative achievement for Trump and congressional Republicans, who made cutting taxes a must-do this year after the Senate failed to close the deal on another top GOP promise: to repeal and replace the Obama health care law.

While the tax bill ends the requirement that all Americans buy health insurance or pay a fine, which is a key component of the Affordable Care Act, it leaves intact other features of the health care law. No Democrats voted for the tax bill, which Trump signed during a hastily arranged White House ceremony, without any lawmakers present, before he flew to Florida last Friday.

Lengthy agenda

Trump predicted in a tweet earlier this week that Democrats and Republicans will “eventually come together” to develop a new health care plan. The president is also forecasting unity between the parties on spending to upgrade aging roads, bridges and other transportation. The White House has said Trump will unveil his long-awaited infrastructure plan in January.

Ryan, meanwhile, has talked about overhauling Medicaid and Medicare and other welfare programs, but McConnell has signaled an unwillingness to go that route unless there’s Democratic support for any changes. Trump has also said he wants to pursue “welfare reform” next year because “people are taking advantage of the system.”

Backlog from 2017

Congress, meanwhile, will open the year facing a backlog from 2017.

The list includes agreeing by Jan. 19 on a government funding bill to avert a partial government shutdown and to boost Pentagon spending. Lawmakers also must agree on billions in additional aid to help hurricane victims, lifting the debt ceiling so the United States can pay its bills, extending a children’s health insurance program and drafting protections for immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

Trump tweeted earlier in the year that he was ending the program for the immigrants. He gave lawmakers until March 5 to come up with a legislative solution, or the individuals will begin to face the risk of being deported.

Much of the work will need to be done before Republicans shift their focus to retaining their House and Senate majorities in midterm elections taking place in November 2018. The GOP’s slim Senate majority will get even slimmer come January, when Democrat Doug Jones of Alabama is sworn in, leaving Republicans with a 51-49 edge in the chamber.
…

Former U.S. President Barack Obama and former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton remain the world’s most admired man and woman among Americans, according to a new Gallup poll.

The poll found Obama and Clinton have retained their most admired status as they have for the past 10 years, but by much narrower margins compared to past yearly surveys.

Seventeen percent of those questioned said Obama was the world’s most admired man, compared to 14 percent for President Donald Trump who came in second.

Clinton, also a former secretary of state, edged out former first lady Michelle Obama, 9 percent to 7 percent, respectively.

This is the 16th straight year the poll showed Clinton was the most admired woman.

It was the 22nd time Clinton was perceived as such, more than anyone else, with former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt coming in second with 13 wins.

Obama has earned the distinction as the most admired man 10 times, coming in second to 12-time winner former President Dwight Eisenhower.

Clinton’s and Obama’s latest standings, however, are not as robust as they were in previous years. Clinton’s 9 percent rating is the lowest she has received since 2002, when 7 percent of the respondents gave her another narrow first-place finish. Obama’s 17 percent showing is lower than last year’s 22 percent mark but more consistent with the support he received in several previous polls.

Rounding out the top five most admired men were Pope Francis, 3 percent; the Reverend Billy Graham, 2 percent, and Senator John McCain, 2 percent.

Oprah Winfrey came in third as the most admired woman with 4 percent, followed by Senator Elizabeth Warren, 3 percent, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with 2 percent.
…

U.S. President Barack Obama told Britain’s Prince Harry one danger of the internet is “that people can have entirely different realities” and surround themselves in information that “reinforces their current biases.”

Harry interviewed Obama in September for Wednesday’s broadcast on BBC Radio.

The former U.S. leader, who left office in January after serving eight years, said it is important that online communities move offline and allow people to get to know each other.

“On the internet everything is amplified, and when you meet people face-to-face it turns out they’re complicated,” Obama said. “You find areas of common ground because you see that things are not as simple as have been portrayed in whatever chat room you’ve been in.”

He added that in person it is more difficult to be “as obnoxious and cruel” as people can be online.

Obama said he missed the work of the president, “because it was fascinating,” but that he had a sense of “serenity” in leaving the office and now has the ability to focus his efforts on long-term problems in a way he could not while in the White House.

“It allows me to focus on how do I transmit whatever knowledge or experience that I’ve gained to others to help them become more effective and more powerful,” he said. “And I’m really obsessed now with training the next generation of leaders to be able to make their mark in the world.”

He pointed to the example of recent hurricanes in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico, saying as president his primary job would have been to make sure the people in those areas got help.

“Today those aren’t my direct responsibilities, but I can focus over the next 20 years on making sure we don’t have more hurricanes and natural disasters that are accelerated as a consequence of climate change,” Obama said.

He also spoke about the importance of empowering young people to make decisions and said there is an “energy and spirit” to the younger generation that cannot be matched by someone his age.

“There is a freshness to what young people perceive as possible,” he said.

Obama also talked about leadership, saying that he does not believe someone in a position of power can do their job well if they lack “the capacity to feel deeply about the people they are serving.”

“If you don’t understand that what you do every day has a profound impact on somebody else, then you shouldn’t be there.”
…

With a tweet in early January saying, “It won’t happen!” Donald Trump, who had not yet been inaugurated president of the United States, set upon a confrontational course to stop North Korea from developing a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S. 

During the presidential campaign, Trump unnerved allies in Asia with his “America First” threats to withdraw U.S. forces from South Korea and Japan unless they significantly increased defense-sharing payments, and his expressed willingness to negotiate with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over hamburgers.

But after taking office Trump made ending the North Korean nuclear threat a top national security priority, and he embraced a “maximum pressure” strategy of imposing crippling sanctions on the Kim government, backed by the credible threat of military force.

“He has raised all kinds of expectations about what he’s going to do about North Korea. And if he doesn’t do those things, then it seriously threatens his identity, it undermines him, it undercuts him,” said North Korea analyst John Delury with Yonsei University in Seoul. 

Japan’s support

Meeting with Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe, Trump found strong support for his hard-line North Korea policy from a key Asian ally.

In February, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis traveled to Tokyo and Seoul to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to maintaining a strong military presence in the region, while downplaying the president’s past criticisms of defense costs.

In April, on the same day Trump dined at his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort with Chinese President Xi Jinping, he ordered a unilateral missile strike on Syria for allegedly using chemical weapons against civilians.

Trump’s demonstration of military force, his supporters said, sent a message to Xi that if China did not act to curtail North Korean provocations, the U.S. would.

Both Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Vice President Mike Pence also went to the region, warning that the U.S. would not rule out preemptive military action to eliminate the growing North Korean nuclear threat to the U.S. mainland.

However, South Korea, after the impeachment of conservative President Park Geun-hye, elected the liberal Moon Jae-in, who strongly opposes the use of offensive military force on the Korean Peninsula.

“President Moon has been quite clear that he believes that war on the Korean Peninsula should never be considered an option, unless the North Koreans start it first, of course,” said David Straub, a North Korea analyst with the Sejong Institute.

Moon, though, has also aligned closely with the U.S. on deterrence and sanctions as his efforts to reduce regional tensions through engagement and dialogue have been rejected by the North.

​Strategic confusion

Proponents of military intervention, like Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, argue that it would be justifiable to use force to prevent a North Korean nuclear attack on the U.S. mainland. But even Mattis acknowledged a military conflict with North Korea would be “tragic on an unbelievable scale” and most likely trigger attacks against South Korea or Japan that could quickly escalate into widespread war.

During the year, Tillerson seemed to soften his hard-line position, moving to support unconditional talks with leaders in Pyongyang and dropping any demand that they first agree to give up their nuclear program.

“We have said, from the diplomatic side, we are ready to talk anytime North Korea would like to talk, and we are ready to have the first meeting without preconditions.” Tillerson said in December.

But Trump has repeatedly rebuked his top diplomat, publicly tweeting in October that Tillerson was “wasting his time” trying to restart talks with North Korea.

Tillerson later clarified that North Korea must earn its way to the negotiations table by suspending further missile and nuclear tests.

Trump’s critics have dubbed the mixed messages coming from the White House as a policy of “strategic confusion.”

Brutal nature

Undeterred by Washington’s threats and increasing economic sanctions, Pyongyang continued to test ballistic missiles throughout the year, steadily improving their range and technical capability.

In February, the brutal nature of the repressive regime was again exposed when alleged North Korean agents using poison were charged with assassinating Kim Jong Nam, the half brother of leader Kim Jong Un, at the Kuala Lumpur airport in Malaysia.

And in June, Americans reacted with outrage when North Korea released American student Otto Warmbier in comatose state. Warmbier was arrested in 2016 for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster from his hotel and soon fell into a coma from which he never awoke. He died soon after returning home.

In response, Congress passed a bill banning most U.S. travel to North Korea.

War of words

In August, tensions escalated to the brink of conflict when Trump warned that North Korea would face “fire and fury” if it threatened the U.S. Pyongyang responded by saying it was considering test-firing an ICBM into waters near the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam.

Pyongyang would back down from this threat, but soon launched two long-range missiles over Japan, and in September it conducted its sixth nuclear test.

The U.S. and its allies did not respond with military strikes, but did persuade China and Russia to support stronger international sanctions that banned the North’s lucrative coal and mineral exports and cut off one-third of oil imports.

Trump escalated a war of words with Kim during his address to the Untied Nations in September. The president referred to the North Korean leader as a “Rocket Man” on a suicide mission.

Kim responded in a statement calling Trump a “dotard” — an old person, especially one who might be weak or senile — and described his behavior as “mentally deranged.”

​Provocation pause

After conducting a successful test in November of a long-range Hwasong-15 missile that has the potential to reach the U.S. mainland, North Korea announced it had reached its goal of developing operational ICBM capability. Some U.S. and South Korean experts said the North was still a year or so away from having an “operational” ICBM armed with a miniaturized nuclear weapon.

Few expect diplomatic breakthroughs anytime soon, but with South Korea hosting the upcoming Winter Olympics, there may be a new opportunity to reduce the potential for conflict in the region. Seoul is encouraging North Korea to participate in the Olympics, and there is talk that the U.S. and South Korea may postpone joint military exercises until after the games. These developments could bring a needed pause to the provocations.

Youmi Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.
…

Before becoming president, Donald Trump railed against US wars overseas, saying it was better to spend money at home than, in his words, “waste” it overseas. But as VOA’s Bill Gallo reports, Trump has at times struggled to carry out what he calls his “America First” approach to the world during his first year as president.
…

With the number of journalists imprisoned worldwide at an all-time high, press freedom groups are drawing a direct line between President Donald Trump’s verbal slugfest with some of America’s most venerable news institutions and the adoption of his “fake news” mantra by autocrats and dictators around the world.

“We’re seeing an unprecedented attack on both the institution of journalism and the media, as well as very personal attacks on individual journalists and individual media outlets,” says Courtney Radsch, advocacy director for the Committee to Protect Journalists.  “And what this does is it creates an environment in which journalists operate less safely.”

 

The CPJ’s 2017 press freedom survey shows 262 journalists are behind bars worldwide, slightly higher than the number a year ago.  More than half the total are in Turkey, China, and Egypt.

 

“We saw the term ‘fake news’ being used in the Philippines, in Russia, in China, in Egypt to justify their own oppression of the media in attempts to delegitimize journalists” Radsch told VOA.  “We’ve also seen China saying, ‘Hey the U.S. is finally waking up to what we’ve been saying the whole time about the media being problematic,’ and that’s not what we want to see around the world.”

 

An opinion piece in China’s Communist Party’s People’s Daily newspaper this month said, “If the president of the United States calls leading media outlets a stain on America, then negative news about China and other countries should be taken with a grain of salt, since it is likely that bias and political agendas are distorting the real picture.”

 

British scholar Hisham Hellyer, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, says fallout from Trump’s “fake news” charges is serious and should not be underestimated.

 

“When Trump uses his own freedom of expression to denigrate the media’s ability to report the facts, and often puts forward his own ‘fake news’, it has the effect of empowering others who would like to do the same,” Hellyer said.

Trump has hammered at the “fake news” theme in hundreds of Twitter posts, public comments and speeches, singling out media powerhouses like CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times for special criticism.

 

He once called CNN, “the enemy of the people.”

The president’s tactics have fueled a polarizing national debate about what Trump defenders call persistent media bias, and critics describe as hard-nosed reporting.

Studies show coverage of Trump has tilted heavily negative.  An analysis by the nonprofit Pew Research Center showed reporting about the first months of the Trump presidency was 62 percent negative and 5 percent positive.

Coverage for the same period of President Barack Obama’s presidency was 42 percent positive and 20 percent negative, according to Pew.  The leader of the Pew Journalism Project cautioned the result is not evidence of media bias.

Trump’s critics see nothing exceptional in those figures given the volume of missteps and misstatements coming from the White House, but the president and his supporters cite them as evidence of the media’s malign intent.

Stung by Trump’s criticisms and polls showing low public trust in the media, CNN and the big newspapers have fought back with ad campaigns and fresh slogans emphasizing their accuracy and objectivity.

 

But a series of recent high-profile reporting blunders in stories about the White House has damaged the media’s reputation for trustworthiness, and given Trump fresh ammunition.

Earlier this month, CNN erroneously reported that the Trump campaign had been offered the contents of hacked emails from the campaign of his Democratic Party competitor, Hillary Clinton, before they were released by Wikileaks last year. The Washington Post later reported accurately that the offer came days after Wikileaks published the emails.

Now, some of the world’s worst violators of media freedom are using Trump’s “fake news” refrain to justify press restrictions.

 

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, asked about an Amnesty International report on systematic killings in Syrian prison, replied, “We’re living in a fake news era, as you know.  Everybody knows it.”

 

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro complained international media are spreading lies about him, saying, “This is what we call fake news, isn’t it?”

Cambodia’s Hun Sen, who regularly quotes Trump’s “fake news” rhetoric, has ordered more than a dozen radio stations to close or stop broadcasting programming from the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, and shut down a leading independent newspaper.

Libyan media used the term in trying to discredit a CNN report on slavery among migrants, and Russia’s foreign ministry has begun posting stories it considers false on its website covered by the words “FAKE NEWS” in big red letters.

China’s top cyber security official cited “fake news” about a report ranking China last in the world in internet freedom.  

Trump has welcomed several known foes of free media to the White House.  He hailed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a friend, despite that country’s reputation as the world’s leading jailer of journalists.

 

With Trump at his side during a recent ASEAN summit, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte called reporters “spies.”

Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha and Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak have raised the issue of “fake news.”

 

“It’s hard enough to be a journalist in dictatorships like Cambodia when the United States is setting a good example,” Tom Malinowski, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy and Labor, told VOA.

 

“Now every dictator who wants to ban media he doesn’t like can say, ‘Trump does it so why can’t I?'” said Malinowski, who served under President Obama.
…

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump promised a radically different approach to foreign intervention than that of his predecessors.

At campaign events, Trump railed against U.S. military intervention so frequently that it eventually became a part of his stump speech.

“We’ve spent $6 trillion in the Middle East,” Trump repeatedly lamented. “We could have rebuilt our country twice.”

In his first year as president, Pentagon data suggests Trump has struggled to carry out his “America First” approach to the world, at least when it comes to the use of force.

Instead, Trump has sent more U.S. troops to conflict zones in the Middle East and South Asia. He’s dropped more bombs on Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. And he’s expanded a global campaign of targeted drone killings.

Add it all up, and it’s hard to see how Trump’s foreign policy is any less interventionist than his predecessors. If anything, Trump’s policies are a little more hawkish than those of Barack Obama, says Christopher Preble, with the CATO Institute.

“He’s largely continued what he’s inherited, with some additional increment of the use of force,” says Preble.

Doubling down in Afghanistan

Perhaps no conflict exemplifies Trump’s approach more than Afghanistan, where the U.S. has been fighting Taliban insurgents for 16 years.

Before becoming president, Trump was a regular critic of the war, calling it a waste of lives and money and demanding an immediate withdrawal.

But six months into his presidency, Trump reversed his position, instead deciding to indefinitely extend the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan.

Under Trump’s plan, 3,000 more U.S. troops will be sent to Afghanistan, backed by an expanded U.S.-led bombing campaign.

According to U.S. military figures, the NATO coalition is on pace to triple the number of bombs dropped on Afghanistan in 2017 compared to the previous year.

The bombing could continue to expand in 2018, in part because of the relaxed rules of engagement that allow the U.S. military to go after insurgent targets.

More bombs, more troops

It’s part of a larger pattern of a bigger Pentagon footprint across the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa.

Since Trump took office, there has been a 31 percent increase in the number of U.S. troops and civilians working for the Pentagon in the Middle East and North Africa, according to Pentagon data.

That includes increases not only in well-known conflict areas, such as Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, but also in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain.

The U.S. military also recently acknowledged it has about 2,000 troops in Syria – four times as many as Pentagon officials previously said. According to a recent report, the U.S. forces will stay in Syria indefinitely.

Under Trump, the U.S. is also dropping more bombs.

The international coalition fighting the so-called Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria is on pace to drop 30 percent more bombs in 2017 compared to the previous year, according to official figures, though that campaign appears to be winding down as the Islamist group is forced out of its so-called caliphate.

Drone war expanded

Drone strikes have also continued in non-battlefield settings, including Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and Libya – a continuation of President Barack Obama’s global campaign of targeted killings.

“If Obama expanded the U.S. drone program, Trump has expanded it even more, both in terms of geography and frequency,” says Rachel Stohl, who specializes in drones at the Stimson Center, a research group.

In Yemen, U.S. airstrikes have tripled, and in Somalia they have doubled this year compared to last, according to Jessica Purkiss with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which tracks U.S. drone and other airstrikes.

“The uptick in strikes in these countries is largely because parts of both these countries were declared areas of active hostilities, which effectively means the U.S. can launch strikes with fewer constraints,” Purkiss says.

The U.S. military could also soon conduct drone strikes in Niger, after the African country last month granted the U.S. permission to conduct armed drone flights.

Not surprising?

Trump’s hawkish tendencies aren’t surprising to some analysts, such as the CATO Institute’s Preble. “The totality of Donald Trump’s statements as a candidate, and even before, did tend to be fairly hawkish,” he says.

As a candidate, Trump did, after all, vow to “bomb the s**t” out of Islamic State. He also consistently threatened to “take the oil” as compensation for U.S. military intervention in countries such as Iraq and Libya. And he pledged to make the U.S. military more powerful than ever.

“That’s not exactly an argument for not fighting wars that he didn’t like,” concedes Preble.

Trump isn’t the only president who has struggled to fulfill his campaign promises on foreign policy. President Obama, for instance, campaigned on bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq. And he did, before eventually sending them back to fight Islamic State.

It’s perhaps a reminder that presidential candidates promise a lot when it comes to foreign policy. But they can’t always deliver.

 
…

Doug Jones was a little speechless at first. Then he thanked the various voters who elected him the first Democratic senator from Alabama in 25 years.

“I have always believed that the people of Alabama have more in common than to divide us.” His stunning victory was a fallout from a barrage of sexual harassment allegations that shook the country in late 2017.

His Republican opponent, Roy Moore, campaigned while denying at least nine allegations of sexual misconduct, some involving women when they were teenagers. Accuser Beverly Young says she was terrified at the time.

“I thought he was going to rape me,” she said.

Despite an endorsement from President Donald Trump, and Moore’s insistence that the “allegations are completely false … malicious,” Moore lost.

​Opening the floodgates

By the end of 2017, more than 60 prominent men were suspended, fired or forced to resign from their highly visible jobs because of allegations of sexual harassment and even assault against women, some occurring years ago. More than 100 stand accused of sexual harassment or misconduct. The trend began in October when movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, was exposed as an alleged serial predator of young actresses who wanted to be stars.

Louisette Geiss says her heart raced as he told her “he could get me a three-picture deal, but that I had to watch him masturbate.” By December, more than 80 women had accused Weinstein of sexual harassment.

He admitted, “I got to get help, guys,” as he left for an Arizona rehabilitation facility. He stayed for a week. His business, the Weinstein Company, co-founded with his brother, is in jeopardy, plagued by lawsuits from women who claim the company knew about and hid his harassment.

WATCH: Dozens Shamed in Sexual Harassment Charges in 2017

The Weinstein effect

The public accusations against Harvey Weinstein emboldened other women to tell their stories. Suddenly, other high-profile men began to fall in what would be known as the “Weinstein Effect.”

Melissa Silverstein writes the blog “Women and Hollywood.” She says the outpouring of accusations proves that women are “reacting that our rights are being rolled back and we are tired of it.”

The “Weinstein Effect” hit others in Hollywood, including House of Cards star Kevin Spacey, accused of sexual harassment of a teenaged boy. Netflix suspended its filming of the show’s last season, then announced it would resume without Spacey as the main character.

In other media, NBC fired its Today show host of 20 years, Matt Lauer, after accusations of inappropriate sexual behavior on the job. CBS suspended its morning anchor, Charlie Rose, for similar allegations.

Comedian Louis C.K. is accused by five women of sexual misconduct for actions including stripping and masturbating in front of them. Louisiana Celebrity Chef John Besh, who’s known for the country’s southern food trend, stepped down after several dozen women claimed harassment and that his restaurant atmosphere allowed it to thrive.

In music, Russell Simmons, co-founder of the hip-hop music label Def Jam Recordings, and James Levine, the conductor of the Metropolitan Opera, face sexual assault allegations.

​More political fallout

Moore was not the only politician accused of improper behavior. A radio news anchor accused U.S. Senator Al Franken of groping her while she slept on a military plane headed home from a USO tour. Leeann Tweeden posted the photo as part of an essay she wrote about the 2006 incident. Tweeden also accused Franken of forcibly kissing her. 

“He just smashed his lips against my face,” she said in the news conference, “and he stuck his tongue in my mouth so fast.”

More complaints would come forward, and Franken announced in December he would step down: “I will be resigning as a member of the United States Senate.” Franken’s last day in office will be Jan. 2.

In late December, a group of Democratic senators used Franken’s resignation as a reason to demand President Donald Trump resign. They cited at least 15 women who have accused the president of improper conduct. Trump was elected U.S. president more than a year ago, despite the public accusations.

​#MeToo rally, Time award

The shift in attitudes against sexual harassment triggered a social media campaign. #MeToo became the rallying cry for women worldwide. Women posted the hashtag on Twitter and Facebook to acknowledge publicly their experiences and to demonstrate the extent of the problem.

Time magazine named “The Silence Breakers” as its “Person of the Year” for 2017. The issue is dedicated to those who have accused powerful figures of sexual misconduct, calling them the “voices that launched a movement.”

A Time magazine survey shows that 82 percent think women are more likely to speak out about harassment since the Weinstein allegations.

By the end of 2017, the movement changed the nation’s mores, as men and women better understood the definition of sexual harassment and no longer ignored it.
…

Widespread allegations of sexual harassment rocked many American institutions in 2017, including Congress, the media and the film industry. By the end of the year, numerous prominent men were suspended, fired or forced to resign from their highly visible jobs because of allegations of sexual harassment and even assault against women that happened in many cases years ago. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti explains the change in social attitudes.
…

With control of the White House and Congress, Republicans expected a historic opportunity to carry out an ambitious legislative agenda in 2017. But the party’s narrow margins in the Senate slowed progress on a range of priorities. VOA’s congressional reporter Katherine Gypson looks back on a consequential, and often unexpected, year for the U.S. Congress.
…

Two recent incidents have bolstered the Trump administration’s stance against the United States’ family-based immigration system, which the president says threatens national security.

Tyler Houlton, acting press secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement Saturday that his agency could “confirm the suspect involved in a terror attack in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and another suspect arrested on terror-related money-laundering charges were both beneficiaries of extended family chain migration.”

He said both cases “highlight the Trump administration’s concerns with extended family chain migration.”

Pennsylvania case

On Friday, a gunman in Harrisburg, who was an immigrant from Egypt, fired at police and state troopers in several locations before they shot and killed him.

Ahmed Aminamin El-Mofty shot one state trooper, but officials say she is expected to make a full recovery.

A relative of El-Mofty said the family is perplexed by his actions. Ahmed Soweilam told the media that his sister had been married to El-Mofty, but they separated six years ago. He said his brother-in-law had worked as a security guard and had moved back to Egypt, but returned to the U.S. a few months ago.

“He’s not the perfect guy, but he’s not an aggressive person,” Soweilam said.

“The long chain of migration” that led to El-Mofty’s “admission into the United States was initiated years ago by a distant relative of the suspect,” said Homeland Security’s Houlton.

Pakistani woman charged

In a separate incident, a Pakistani woman who entered the U.S. through the family-based immigration system has been accused of laundering bitcoin and wiring money to Islamic State jihadists. Zoobia Shahnaz’s lawyer says her client was trying to help Syrian refugees.

Houlton said family-based migration has “been exploited by terrorists to attack our country.” He said the family-based system makes it “more difficult to keep dangerous people out of the United States and to protect the safety of every American.” He said a merit-based immigration system is “used by nearly all other countries.”

​Merit-based immigration

Proponents of merit-based immigration say the current system lowers wages and discourages assimilation.

Supporters say a merit-based system also would help lower immigration rates and ensure that the immigrants who do come are highly skilled and less likely to need public assistance.

Earlier this year, President Trump said, “For decades, the United States was operated and has operated a very low-skill immigration system, issuing record numbers of green cards to low-wage immigrants.”

“This (family-based) policy has placed substantial pressure on American workers, taxpayers and community resources,” Trump added.

Critics of merit-based system

But critics say the American economy also needs low-skilled workers and a merit-based system would hurt industries that rely on them.

A merit-based system would also cost the government more because the government would have to review the applications and pay resettlement costs that are currently covered by sponsoring families.

Critics also see the merit-based system as un-American.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has said the merit-based system “abandons the fundamental respect for family, at the heart of our faith, at the heart of who we are as Americans.” 
…

The year has been a tough one for Puerto Ricans, Floridians, Texans and Californians, and recovery efforts continue for those three areas hit by hurricanes and one, California, struggling to contain wildfires. In a year of disasters, even the Federal Emergency Management Agency is struggling to cope.

At a hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee November 30, FEMA head Brock Long asked lawmakers for supplemental funding to handle its operations after a year studded with natural disasters.

Long told lawmakers that Hurricanes Harvey, which hit Texas, Irma, which targeted Florida, and Maria, which walloped the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, added to the ongoing California fires “have compelled FEMA to push its limits.”

Long noted that about 25.8 million people were affected by the three hurricanes, which took place in rapid succession in August and September. He said that as of November 13, more than 4½ million storm survivors had registered for FEMA assistance. He asked for $23.5 billion for FEMA’s disaster relief fund for fiscal 2018 to help with continuing recovery efforts. He said the agency is “committed to the long-term recovery of all impacted individuals as well as conducting this recovery in a fiscally responsible and prudent manner.”

​Puerto Rico response criticized

But FEMA has been criticized for its response to the crisis in the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, Caribbean islands that took a double hit from Irma and Maria within the space of a month. Three months after the second storm, only 65 percent of Puerto Rico has its power restored, thanks to an aging infrastructure and bungled reconstruction deals. The Army Corps of Engineers now estimates that power may not be fully restored to all communities until May.

Puerto Rican newspaper El Nuevo Dia reported that protests broke out in the municipalities of Aguas Buenas and Trujillo Alto Thursday, among frustrated residents who want the lights back on.

Vox News, citing statistics by the research firm Rhodium Group, reports that Puerto Rico is now the site of the longest blackout in U.S. history in terms of lost customer-hours of service.

FEMA has reported that more than 450 people are still living in shelters in Puerto Rico, and it is still distributing tarps, food and water to some communities. More troubling, Florida officials say more than 269,000 people have arrived in Florida from Puerto Rico since the storm, and some 10,000 Puerto Rican children have enrolled in Florida schools.

The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at City University of New York says the exodus is likely not over. It estimates that 470,335 Puerto Ricans will leave the island by the end of 2019, driven out by poor services and slow recovery. Experts fear that many of the displaced may not return to the island; as full U.S. citizens, they are legally able to move anywhere within the United States.

Virgin Islands overshadowed

In the nearby U.S. Virgin Islands, often overshadowed by its more populous neighbor, conditions are similar. The San Juan Daily Star reports about half of electrical customers remain without power, and about one quarter of the tourism-reliant island still lacks mobile phone service.

FEMA reported Thursday that more than $870 million in federal funds have been provided to survivors of Irma and Maria in U.S. territories, including grants, low-interest loans, and flood insurance claims.

But the tough times may get tougher before they ease: FEMA’s voucher program for displaced storm victims expires January 15.

Death toll

One more major point on which U.S. officials have been criticized is the storm-related death toll in Puerto Rico. The official total was placed at 64, but both Vox news and the New York Times published analyses in the past week comparing historic death rates from September and October with the death tolls from this year. They both found more than 1,000 more deaths occurred this year than in previous years, and both publications attributed the higher tolls to the stresses of storm recovery.
…

A federal judge in Seattle on Saturday partly lifted a Trump administration ban on certain refugees after two groups argued that the policy prevented people from some mostly Muslim countries from reuniting with family living legally in the United States.

U.S. District Judge James Robart heard arguments Thursday in lawsuits from the American Civil Liberties Union and Jewish Family Service, which said the ban was causing irreparable harm and put some people at risk. Government lawyers argued that the ban was needed to protect national security.

Robart ordered the federal government to process certain refugee applications but said his directive did not apply to people without a “bona fide relationship” to a person or entity in the United States.

President Donald Trump restarted the refugee program in October “with enhanced vetting capabilities.”

Agency chiefs’ memo

The day before his executive order, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke and Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats sent a memo to Trump saying certain refugees had to be banned unless additional security measures were implemented.

It applied to the spouses and minor children of refugees who had already settled in the U.S. and suspended the refugee program for people coming from 11 countries, nine of which are mostly Muslim. 

In his decision, Robart wrote that “former officials detailed concretely how the agency memo will harm the United States’ national security and foreign policy interests.”

Robart said his order restored refugee procedures in programs to what they were before the memo and noted that this already included very thorough vetting of individuals.

The ACLU argued the memo provided no evidence for why additional security was needed and didn’t specify a time frame for implementing the changes. The groups said the process for imposing the policy violated a federal law.

August Flentje, a Justice Department attorney, told the judge that the ban was temporary and “was a reasonable and appropriate way for agency heads to tackle gaps” in the screening process.

Lawsuits consolidated

The lawsuits from the two groups were consolidated; they represent refugees who have been blocked from entering the country.

The ACLU represents a Somali man living in Washington state who is trying to bring his family to the U.S. They have gone through extensive vetting, have passed security and medical clearances, and just need travel papers, but those were denied after the ban.

Lisa Nowlin, staff attorney for the ACLU of Washington, said in a statement they were happy that their client, “who has not yet had the opportunity to celebrate a single birthday with his younger son in person, will soon have the opportunity to hold his children, hug his wife in the very near future, and be together again as a family for the first time in four years.” 

Two other refugees included in the Jewish Family Service lawsuit are former Iraqi interpreters for the U.S. Army whose lives are at risk because of their service.

Another is a transgender woman in Egypt “living in such extremely dangerous circumstances that the U.S. government itself had expedited her case until the ban came down,” said Mariko Hirose, a lawyer with the Jewish Family Service case.

Yet another is a single woman in Iraq, Hirose said. Her husband divorced her after she was kidnapped and raped by militants because she worked with an American company. Her family is in the U.S. but she’s stranded by the ban, Hirose said.
…

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the focus of criticism over the past year from President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress, plans to retire in 2018, The Washington Post reported Saturday.

McCabe, 49, is the No. 2 official in the FBI and had been acting director after Trump fired the former director, James Comey, in May. According to the Post, McCabe plans to retire once he becomes eligible for a full pension in March.

Shortly after the newspaper report was published, Trump retweeted his earlier contention that McCabe’s wife, Jill, who ran unsuccessfully for the Virginia Senate in 2015, had been given nearly $700,000 by allies of Hillary Clinton at a time when Andrew McCabe was involved in the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state.

The FBI has said McCabe did not start overseeing the Clinton investigation until his wife’s state Senate campaign was over. According to the Virginia Public Access Project, the two major donations that Jill McCabe received, totaling nearly $700,000, came from a political action committee of Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat and Clinton friend, and from the Virginia Democratic Party.

Trump, who is spending the holidays at his Florida resort, said in a second tweet Saturday, “FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!” 

An FBI spokesperson declined to comment.

Under pressure

McCabe has come under fire from Republicans over the past year because of the bureau’s investigation into the Clinton email issue as well as the probe into possible collusion between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia. 

Earlier this year, the U.S. intelligence community released a report that stated Russia had meddled in the 2016 election, showing a preference for Trump over Clinton, his opponent. Russia denies meddling in the election, and Trump has denied any collusion.

Shortly after Comey’s firing, former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel of an investigation into whether any members of Trump’s campaign conspired with Russian agents during the campaign. 

McCabe faced questions about that probe as well as the email issue when he testified earlier this week before three congressional committees.

“Andy’s in a difficult position now … because of the hyperpartisan political environment,” John Pistole, who held the FBI’s No. 2 job for six years under Mueller, told the Post. He said McCabe was “weathering the storm.”

Republicans have said they want answers to why Comey publicly discussed the Clinton investigation and then announced that the bureau would not seek to bring charges. Critics say the Republicans’ focus on Clinton is merely a tactic to distract from Mueller’s investigation.
…

The United States on Friday backed the re-election of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez despite widespread misgivings about the vote count, prompting the opposition candidate to bow out of the race.

The Honduran electoral tribunal declared Hernandez the winner of the Nov. 26 election last weekend amid strident opposition protests over the vote count in the impoverished Central American country, which is a major hub for drug trafficking.

The vote tally had initially clearly favored opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla, a center-leftist, but it swung in favor of the incumbent after a 36-hour delay.

Nasralla contested the vote count, but after the United States backed Hernandez, he declared his bid for the presidency a “lost cause.”

“The situation is practically decided,” he said in an interview with TV network France 24. “I no longer have anything to do in politics, but the people, which are 80 percent in my favor, will continue the fight.”

The United States followed Mexico and other Latin American countries in supporting Hernandez, who has been a reliable U.S. ally.

The U.S. State Department congratulated Hernandez and said Honduras should pursue a “long-term effort to heal the political divide in the country and enact much-needed electoral reforms,” spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement.

Protest, calls for new vote

The Honduras election tribunal’s declaration in Hernandez’s favor last week sparked violent protests in Honduras, and the Organization of American States (OAS) called for new elections to resolve the dispute, a proposal that was rejected by the Honduran government.

Although he has proclaimed an end to his political career, Nasralla still maintains that he is the rightful winner of the election.

“The Organization of American States has made clear that there was a monumental fraud,” he said.

Nasralla had been backed by former President Manuel Zelaya, a leftist who was ousted in a 2009 coup after he proposed a referendum on his re-election, which was barred by the constitution at the time.

“He is no longer with the Alliance,” Zelaya said of Nasralla on Friday.

Streets calm

The streets of the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa and other major cities were largely calm Friday with a few protests cleared by the armed forces. By midweek some 27 people had died in clashes, according to local human rights group COFADEH.

The State Department called for all sides to refrain from violence, for those who wish to challenge the result to use legal means, and for the government to ensure that security services respect the rights of peaceful protesters.

It also called for the electoral tribunal “to transparently and fully review any challenges filed by political parties.”

Hernandez has led a military crackdown against gangs in the Central American country, and Honduras’ notoriously high murder rate has slid since he took power in 2014.

Strategic concerns

Nasralla, a television host, traveled to Washington this week to urge the United States not to recognize the vote, but a senior State Department official said Wednesday the government had not seen any evidence that would alter the vote’s outcome.

Nasralla said the U.S. decision reflected Washington’s strategic concerns over a leftist government in Honduras.

“They’re afraid of losing Honduras,” he told local television.
…

An immigrant teen who was denied an abortion by a U.S. government official, even though her pregnancy was caused by rape, had threatened to harm herself if she was forced to have the child, according to a government memo released Friday.

The memo is addressed to Scott Lloyd, director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which shelters thousands of unaccompanied immigrant minors who are in the U.S. without legal permission. The American Civil Liberties Union posted the memo as part of its lawsuit over abortion access for immigrant minors in custody.

The document describes how the teen was raped in her home country and believed she had become pregnant as a result. According to the memo, written by the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s deputy director, she told a doctor during her first prenatal visit that she wanted an abortion. The teen “disclosed to the medical doctor that she preferred to harm herself rather than to continue with her pregnancy.”

In later visits, the teen reported the pressure her mother and a potential sponsor were putting on her to maintain the pregnancy. At one point, she reported facing “physical harm” if she had an abortion.

“She felt pressured by her mother and potential sponsor to continue the pregnancy, but she wants to terminate the pregnancy,” the memo said.

‘Disapproved’

While the recommendation of the deputy director is blacked out, Lloyd circled the word “disapproved” at the bottom of the memo and signed it.

The teen and another minor eventually received access to abortions after U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled in their favor this week.

In a letter about the case that was disclosed in court filings Thursday, Lloyd argued he saw no obligation under the law or the U.S. Constitution to allow abortions for people in his office’s custody, even though government policy restricting abortion broadly has an exemption for women who were victims of rape.

He also said an abortion would not “cure the reality” of the woman’s rape. Both abortion and rape are forms of violence, he said in his letter.

“Implicit here are the dubious notions that it is possible to cure violence with further violence,” he said.

The ACLU accused Lloyd of implementing a “cruel and heartless policy,” and pledged to continue fighting it.
…

U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Friday that Congress would address immigration early next year, including a program that gives immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally as children the opportunity to become citizens. 

Democrats demanded, but were denied, a vote this week on a measure that would allow an estimated 1.2 million immigrants to remain legally in the U.S.

McConnell, of Kentucky, told reporters on Capitol Hill, “We have a commitment on a bipartisan basis to address the DACA issue. We’ll devote full time to that in January.”

DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, was instituted by former President Barack Obama, and it protected nearly 800,000 immigrants from deportation, allowing them to legally live and work in the United States.

Trump rescinded the program in September and has given Congress until March 5 to agree on legislation that would provide equivalent protections to those offered under DACA. 

“They embody the best in our nation: patriotism, hard work, perseverance,” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said Thursday of DACA beneficiaries. “We should not leave them to celebrate the holidays in fear.”

​Other changes

McConnell said a working group that includes Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois also must “do other things” to “improve the legal immigration system,” particularly with respect to what some call chain migration — a community- or extended-family-based process by which immigrants from a particular area follow others from that area to specific U.S. cities or neighborhoods.

Additionally, Republican lawmakers and President Donald Trump are pushing for more border security.

Democratic lawmakers who support the protection of DACA beneficiaries enjoy broad public support. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday found that 62 percent of those surveyed said Congress should approve protections for DACA immigrants, while 19 percent said Congress should allow DACA to lapse.
…

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Friday said a shifting landscape will lead him to work with Democrats on immigration and financial regulation early in the new year, following a year of acrimony and partisan legislation.

In an end-of-year news conference, McConnell touted a list of Republican accomplishments since President Donald Trump took office in January. It started with the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and ended with an overhaul of the U.S. tax code.

But in January, McConnell’s already razor-thin 52-48 Republican majority will shrink to 51-49 with the swearing in of Senator-elect Doug Jones, the Democrat who surprised the political world with a win in a special election in the deeply Republican state of Alabama.

Adding to McConnell’s difficulties, special Senate procedures are fading that allowed him to pass a tax bill and try to repeal the Affordable Care Act this year without any Democratic support.

That means that McConnell’s victories — if he has them — will require more collaboration and less confrontation. The pivot was the centerpiece of his news conference remarks.

“There are areas where I think we can get bipartisan agreement,” McConnell said. First on his list was legislation to change Dodd-Frank banking regulations that he said would help smaller financial institutions.

The Kentucky senator noted that Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo has advanced legislation that is co-sponsored by several Democrats.

McConnell also pointed to bipartisan efforts to help undocumented immigrants, known as “Dreamers,” who were brought into the United States when they were children.

If negotiators from both parties can come to a deal for the Dreamers that Trump’s administration can support, “we’ll spend floor time on that in January,” McConnell said.

On Thursday, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer complained that throughout 2017 Republicans “have been hell-bent on pursuing a partisan agenda.”

When asked by a reporter of possible bipartisan successes in 2018, Schumer pointed to the need for infrastructure improvements but said that Trump has been “all over the lot” on how to accomplish road, airport and other construction projects.

With the November 2018 congressional elections approaching, Democrats might have less incentive to cooperate with Republicans, especially after Schumer’s party won decisive victories in special elections this month and last in Alabama and Virginia.

McConnell hinted it would be tougher to find agreement with Democrats on some other legislative issues, including welfare reform, which Trump says he wants to push ahead with in 2018.

McConnell said he would consult with Trump and House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan in January over prospects for welfare reform.
…

In a remarkably strong show of consumer demand, nearly 9 million people signed up for “Obamacare” next year, as government numbers out Thursday proved predictions of its collapse wrong yet again.

 

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said more than 8.8 million people have signed up in the 39 states served by the federal HealthCare.gov website.

 

That compares to 9.2 million last year in the same states – or 96 percent of the previous total.

 

The level exceeds what experts thought was possible after another year of political battles over the Affordable Care Act, not to mention market problems like rising premiums and insurer exits. On top of that, the Trump administration cut enrollment season in half, slashed the ad budget, terminated major payments to insurers, and scaled back grants for consumer counselors.

 

“This level of enrollment is truly remarkable, especially given the headwinds faced by the program,” said Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

 

President Donald Trump insistently predicted “Obamacare” would implode as he pursued unsuccessful efforts to repeal it in Congress. This week he incorrectly declared the GOP tax bill had essentially repealed it.

 

Despite all that, more than 1 million new customers signed up last week, ahead of a December 15 deadline for HealthCare.gov. That’s a sign of solid interest in the program, which offers subsidized private health insurance to people who don’t have access to job-based coverage.

 

It’s possible that final HealthCare.gov numbers could end up somewhat higher than reported Thursday, partly because late sign-ups in the Midwest and the West have yet to be added in.

 

The nationwide enrollment total won’t be known for weeks, since some states running their own health insurance markets – or exchanges – continue signing up customers through January.

 

Total national enrollment could wind up near last year’s final number of 12.2 million.

 

“We know anecdotally that many state exchanges are running ahead of last year, (and) we could actually make up the national enrollment deficit with higher state-run exchange enrollment,” said Chris Sloan of the consulting firm Avalere Health.

 

Among the HealthCare.gov states, Florida led in enrollments, with 1.7 million people so far. Texas was next, with 1.1 million. Sign-ups for those states could rise, since a deadline extension is available for people in hurricane-affected areas.

 

In Austin, Texas, a nonprofit group that helps low-income working people surpassed its enrollments for last year, and then some. Foundation Communities signed up 5,323 people this year, or about 20 percent more than last year.

 

‘Obamacare is working’

Health insurance program director Elizabeth Colvin credited squads of volunteers who helped steer consumers through a sign-up process that includes having to estimate their income for next year and other challenges.

 

“The number that came out today proves that Obamacare is working,” said Colvin.

 

Lori Lodes, a former Obama administration official who once helped direct the enrollment campaign, said it’s likely that last week saw the biggest number of sign-ups in the program’s history.

 

That’s certain to lead to more criticism of the Trump administration for shortening open enrollment and other actions that Democrats call “sabotage.”

 

“The American people surged to defend this historic law from the cruelty of Trumpcare, and they enrolled at a record pace in quality, affordable health coverage on HealthCare.gov,” said House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California.

 

However, the administration also took other less noticed steps to facilitate enrollment, such as creating an easier path for insurers and brokers to sign up customers.

 

The strong numbers for HealthCare.gov came a day after Trump proclaimed that the GOP tax bill “essentially repealed Obamacare.”

 

But the tax overhaul only repealed the health law’s fines on people who don’t carry health insurance, starting in 2019. Other major elements of former president Barack Obama’s law remain in place, including its Medicaid expansion tailored to low-income adults, protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions, subsidies to help consumers pay their premiums, and requirements that insurers cover “essential” health benefits.

 

First word of the enrollment numbers came via Twitter from Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

 

She struck an upbeat tone:

 

“We take pride in providing great customer service,” she wrote, congratulating her agency on “the smoothest experience for consumers to date.”

 

In an interview Thursday with The Associated Press, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, indicated he’s skeptical at best about revisiting botched efforts to dismantle the health care law.

 

Bipartisan legislation to shore up insurance markets is pending before the Senate, but its fate is also uncertain.

 
…