U.S. President Donald Trump offered some revisionist election recollections on Monday, while predicting that Republicans “will do well” in 2018 when all seats in the House of Representatives are at stake and a third of those in the Senate.

In a Twitter comment, Trump claimed that Republicans had gone 5-0 in congressional races this year and that “the media refuses to mention this.” Actually, Republicans won five of six House races in 2017 and lost a Senate seat. 

Trump claimed to have predicted that Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie and Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore “would lose (for very different reasons) and they did.” Trump supported both candidates with numerous Twitter remarks through their respective election days, but after they lost, he said he knew they would.

“I also predicted ‘I’ would win” the 2016 presidential election, Trump said. “Republicans will do well in 2018, very well!”

Republicans, with Trump in the White House and majorities in both the Senate and House, control the U.S. government. But with Trump’s approval rating mired in the 30 to 40 percent range and Democrats winning two gubernatorial races and a Senate seat in the last six weeks, Republican control of Congress could be in play.

With the election of Democrat Doug Jones in last week’s Alabama race, the Republican majority in the Senate will shrink to 51-49 when Jones is sworn in in early January, leaving control of the chamber up for grabs in next November’s mid-presidential-term elections.

Democrats also are contending to take control of the House, where Republicans currently hold a 239-193 edge, with three vacancies. Democrats would need to win 25 more seats to control the chamber.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump’s new national security strategy will provide the country with a “clear and actionable playbook” to counter the most dangerous and persistent threats, according to senior administration officials.

 

The White House unveiled the strategic document Monday, almost 11 months after his administration began work on it.

President Trump explained how much of the strategy is already impacting U.S. policy during a speech Monday in Washington.

 

Senior administration officials say unlike recent, past strategies, it takes a “clear-eyed view” of the dangers and challenges facing the country, while prioritizing U.S. interests in line with the president’s calls to put “America First.”

 

“The global balance of power has shifted in unfavorable manners to American interests,” a senior administration official said Sunday. “This new strategy presents a plan of how America can regain momentum to reverse many of these trends.”

 

“[It] that will really serve as a foundation for subsequent strategies,” the official added, alluding to soon to be released defense and counterterrorism documents.

 

Administration officials say despite their concerns, the new national security strategy is not meant as a repudiation of the strategies laid out by former President Barack Obama or even former President George W. Bush.

 

Instead, they say the document is an “encapsulation” of the strategy President Trump has advocated, both while campaigning for the presidency and once in office.

 

“We do live in a global competition and how we advance our goals is more critical than ever,” the senior administration official said. “We must compete.”

 

To better compete on the global stage, Trump administration officials are focusing on what they describe as four, vital national interests: protecting the homeland, promoting American prosperity, preserving peace through strength, and advancing American influence.

 

“We have to work together harder than ever to ensure that nations uphold the rule of law, respect the sovereignty of their neighbors and support the post-World War II, post-Cold War order of peace, stability and collective security,” White House National Security Adviser Gen. H.R. McMaster said while previewing the new strategy last week in Washington.

 

The strategy identifies three groups of challengers to that order, officials say.

 

The first group includes nations like Russia and China, which are seeking to create a new global order, both militarily and economically, that officials believe will hurt or hamper U.S. interests.

 

The second group of challengers are rogue regimes, like North Korea and Iran, which are pursuing weapons of mass destruction while also supporting terrorism and other destabilizing activities.

 

The final group includes transnational terrorist groups and crime syndicates.

 

Administration officials say the new national security strategy will confront these different challengers on the global stage.

 

“We vacated a lot of competitive space in recent years and created opportunities,” McMaster said. “You’ll see a big emphasis on competitive engagement.”

 

But exactly how the U.S. will do that remains a bit of a question.

 

“This document is more high-level and over-arching,” said a second senior administration official. “It doesn’t move country-by-country.”

Still, some officials and analysts say elements of the new national security strategy are already evident in Washington’s approach to countries from Russia and China to North Korea, Iran and South Asia.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis “I think, is going to take a different approach to military conflict,” said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and a former Naval military strategist.

At the same time, the new strategy seeks to push back against the notion that President Trump’s campaign rallying cry of “America first,” should be interpreted as “American alone.”

Yet some see this as an area in which the Trump administration could struggle, especially given the way the new strategy priorities and emphasizes U.S. economic interests.

“Focusing on protection of American economic interests in a global marketplace painted with rivals, rather than partners, will discourage the use of multilateral trade agreements in a global economy marked by partnership,” said Nicholas Glavin, formerly a researcher at the U.S. Naval War College’s Center on Irregular Warfare and Armed Groups.

Glavin, who is currently studying at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, says  that could actually weaken U.S. attempt to compete against key rivals on the word stage.

“Where Washington won’t lead, others will, most notably Beijing,” he said. “In the long term, this hurts the U.S. much more than multilateralism in the global economy would.

 

But administration officials insist the strategy will reaffirm the United States’ commitment to its allies. They also say it affirms the U.S. commitment to NATO and the United Nations, though they are clear that Trump believes reforms at both organizations are long overdue.

 

Nor will the U.S. rule out working with countries like China and Russia.

 

“The nature of competition doesn’t mean you don’t also cooperate,” said another senior administration official. “We talk about cooperation, about cooperation with reciprocity.”

 

For example, officials said the U.S. sees China as a key partner in the effort to rein-in North Korea’s aggression and nuclear ambitions, despite what they described as Beijing’s economic aggression toward the U.S.

Already, there are some who doubt China will respond well.

“Trump’s words are always illogical,” said Shi Yinhong, the director of the U.S. Center at China People’s University in Beijing. “China doesn’t care much about what he says but what he does.”

“His flattering China visit is pleasing to Beijing, but what concerns Beijing the most is the U.S. doesn’t touch Taiwan,” Shi said.

Officials pointed to Sunday’s phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Trump, when Putin thanked the U.S. and the CIA for sharing intelligence to thwart a terror plot, as a “great example where there’s a shared interest.”

 

“We’ve seen some of that also this year in Syria against ISIS in deconfliction in trying to set up safe zones,” the official said.

 

“We’re certainly better off right now than we were several months ago when both the secretary of state and the president remarked that the [U.S.-Russia] relationship seemed to be at a low point,” the official added.  “But we still see a lot of areas where our interests just don’t align or directly conflict.”

 

A prime area of conflict with Russia is over what McMaster, the president’s national security adviser, has called “sophisticated campaigns of subversion and disinformation.”

 

And an unclassified U.S. intelligence report released last January concluded Russian President Vladimir Putin waged what it described as an unprecedented “influence campaign” in an effort to sway the 2016 U.S. presidential election in favor of then-candidate Donald Trump.

 

Yet when asked, other senior administration officials would not say how the new National Security Strategy will address such concerns, saying other actors, including China and terror groups have also increasingly used such techniques.

 

There are also areas where the new national security strategy departs dramatically from the previous administration’s policies.

 

President Barack Obama’s 2015 National Security Strategy placed an emphasis on promoting and defending democracy and human rights.

 

The new Trump doctrine takes a different tact.

 

“We mention all the components of making a democracy: tolerance, liberty, freedom of religion,” said one of the senior administration officials. “But building on what local partners want so we’re not imposing our way of life, so we’re not imposing democracy.”

 

Obama’s 2105 strategy also called on the U.S. to confront “the urgent crisis of climate change.”

 

The Trump national security strategy does not.

 

“Climate change is not identified as national security threat,” said one of the officials. “The importance of the environment and environmental stewardship are discussed.”

 

The new national security strategy has already gotten the approval of key officials, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, as well as Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

 
…

Democrat Doug Jones, who won election to the Senate from staunchly Republican Alabama, insisted to both parties in politically divided Washington Sunday that he’ll leave “all the options on the table” when it comes to his votes next year on issues from immigration to infrastructure.

“I’m going to consider anything,” said Jones, explaining that he doesn’t plan on labeling himself a progressive or a conservative Democrat but a “Doug Jones Democrat.”

In an early sign, Jones reiterated that he would oppose spending money to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, as President Donald Trump insists upon, and expressed concern that a sweeping GOP tax cut proposal that was on track for approval this week was being “plopped into a vote too quickly.” At the same time, Jones said people should not “expect me to vote solidly for Republicans or Democrats.”

The 63-year-old former U.S. attorney made clear he’s ready to move forward even though his Republican opponent in last Tuesday’s special election, Roy Moore, has yet to concede the race. “Alabama has spoken,” Jones said. “I will be ready to go regardless of whether he concedes or not.”

Jones’ election will cut the Republicans’ Senate majority to 51-49, when he takes office in early January.

White House legislative director Marc Short said the administration was eager to see whether Jones will “actually work to represent the people of Alabama” in a bipartisan way or side with liberal Democrats. Trump has also urged Moore to concede the race.

“We hope that frankly Doug Jones will help us change the climate here in Washington,” Short said. During the campaign, Trump chastised Jones as a liberal who would be “terrible” on crime and border security, and a “puppet” for Senate congressional leaders.

But on Sunday, Jones downplayed Trump’s earlier criticism as statements made “in the heat of a campaign,” and described the president’s congratulatory call after the election as “very gracious.”

“I’m going to be looking at issues on both sides,” he said.

Jones defeated Moore, by 20,000 votes, or 1.5 percent, to become the first Democrat elected to represent Alabama in the Senate in a quarter-century. He was lifted by African-American voters, independents and moderate Republicans who turned out to reject Moore, who faced newly raised allegations of sexual misconduct involving teenage girls decades ago.

Making his first Sunday talk show appearances since his win, Jones said he looked forward to meeting with Trump and believed his own mandate was to avoid rigid partisan positions in favor of compromise and “getting things done,” even if meant coming across as “pure pie-in-the-sky” and sometimes disappointing some of his core constituents.

On the one hand, Jones said that he doesn’t think Trump should resign over sexual misconduct claims, as some Democrats are calling for.

But siding with congressional Democrats, Jones made clear he wants to help devise safeguards for immigrants brought to the country illegally as children, but without funding for a border wall. The Obama administration program which provided those protections, the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program is set to expire in March.

“I have said before that I opposed the building of a wall. I think that’s an expense that the taxpayers just don’t have to incur because I do think you can increase border security without having to go to the incredible expense of building that wall,” Jones said. Referring to a broader immigration overhaul that would likely involve questions of a pathway to citizenship for immigrants living here illegally, he said: “I think it’s going to be very complicated. …I’m not as sure it’s as important as health care and some other things right now.”

He pointed to fixing roads and bridges, a priority of Trump’s, as a bipartisan issue that could benefit Alabama. “Let’s get on with the real issues that are facing people of this country right now,” Jones said.

Jones appeared on “Fox News Sunday” and CNN’s “State of the Union.” Short was on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
…

Near the end of his first year in office, President Donald Trump could be on the verge of his first major legislative victory: an overhaul of America’s tax code and a partial repeal of former President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.

“As a candidate, I promised we would pass a massive tax cut for the everyday working American families who are the backbone and the heartbeat of our country,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “Now, we are just days away.”

Congressional Republicans appear to have the votes to permanently slash corporate taxes, temporarily cut taxes paid by wage and salary earners, and increase America’s national debt by up to $1.5 trillion. The thousand-page bill was revealed Friday after days of bicameral negotiations yielded a final version of the legislation that gained the support of several Republican holdouts.

“I have decided to support the tax reform package,” Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee announced in a statement. “This bill is far from perfect … but after great thought and consideration, I believe that this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make U.S. businesses domestically more productive and internationally more competitive and is one we should not miss.”

 

Republicans are betting that eight consecutive years of U.S. economic growth can be extended and accelerated with a major dose of stimulus in the form of tax cuts.

Democrats argued the tax package is unfair and unwise.

“The bill is written to give massive, permanent tax breaks to the rich and corporate interests, many of which ship U.S. jobs overseas,” said California Congressman Mike Thompson, delivering the Democratic weekly address. “It does give a handful of temporary tax cuts to some middle-class taxpayers but actually raises taxes on millions of middle and working-class families.”

“It’s the height of hypocrisy for Republicans to vote for a tax cut that would add at least $1 trillion to the deficit after spending eight years railing against the national debt,” Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California wrote on Twitter.

History provides a less-than-clear picture of the impact of tax cuts. The U.S. economy expanded briskly after tax cuts in the 1980s, but had even higher growth rates after a tax hike in the 1990s. Tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 were followed by several years of moderately robust growth, then a major recession.

Republicans insisted Americans will be better off with a reduced tax burden.

“Everybody is going to benefit, but I think the greatest benefit is going to be for jobs and for the middle class,” Trump told reporters on Saturday. “Our economy is doing fantastically well.  But it has another big step to go, and it cannot take that step unless we do the tax bill.”

Democrats contended the bill’s benefits are heavily skewed to the wealthy and that America’s poor and elderly will pay a heavy price under the Republican agenda.

“Now they [Republicans] have blown a big hole in the debt,” Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen said on ABC’s “This Week” program. “And if you look at their budget, it is right there — their plan for dealing with that is to cut Medicare by $500 billion and Medicaid by over $1 trillion.”

Barring last-minute defections or absences among Republicans, Congress could send the tax bill to the White House for Trump’s signature as early as Wednesday.  Minority Democrats cannot block the bill on their own, but have pledged to make it a major campaign issue in next year’s midterm elections.   
…

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian contacts with President Donald Trump’s campaign has gained access to thousands of emails sent and received by Trump officials before the start of his administration, according to several people familiar with Trump’s transition organization.

But the investigators did not directly request the records from Trump’s still-existing transition group, Trump for America, and instead obtained them from a separate federal agency that stored the material, according to those familiar with the Trump transition organization.

Transition attorney complains

On Saturday, Kory Langhofer, general counsel for the transition group, sent a letter to two congressional committees arguing that the GSA had improperly provided the transition records to Mueller’s investigators.

In the letter to the Republican chairmen of the House Oversight and the Senate Homeland Security committees, Langhofer contends that the disclosure by GSA was unauthorized, and it considers the documents private and privileged and not government property. 

 

Langhofer also said that a GSA official appointed by Trump in May had assured the transition in June that any request for records from Mueller’s office would be referred to the transition’s attorneys. According to Langhofer, the assurance was made by then-GSA General Counsel Richard Beckler, who was hospitalized in August and has since died. A copy of the letter was viewed by the AP.

 

But late Saturday, another GSA official present for the conversation told Buzzfeed News that there was nothing improper about the disclosure of the emails to Mueller’s team. The GSA has provided office space and other aid to presidential transitions in recent years and typically houses electronic transition records in its computer system. 

GSA responds

 

GSA Deputy Counsel Lenny Loewentritt told Buzzfeed that Beckler didn’t make a commitment to the transition team that requests from law enforcement for materials would be routed through transition lawyers. 

 

Loewentritt said the transition was informed that by using government devices, the agency wouldn’t hold back records from law enforcement. Transition officials signed agreements that warn them that materials kept on the government servers are subject to monitoring and auditing, he told Buzzfeed, and there’s no expectation of privacy.

 

The documents were provided to Mueller’s team by the GSA in September in response to requests from the FBI, but the transition wasn’t informed at the time, according to people familiar with the transition organization. Officials with Trump for America learned last Wednesday that GSA officials had turned over the cache of emails to Mueller’s team. 

 

Among the officials who used transition email accounts was former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to a count of making false statements to FBI agents in January and is now cooperating with Mueller’s investigation. Flynn was fired by Trump in February for misleading senior administration officials about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.​

Emails’ value unclear

It’s unclear how revelatory the email accounts maintained by the GSA will be for Mueller. Several high-level Trump advisers sometimes used other email accounts to communicate about transition issues between Election Day and the inauguration.

Mueller’s spokesman, Peter Carr, declined to comment. Jay Sekulow, an attorney on Trump’s personal legal team, referred questions to the transition group. Neither GSA representatives nor Flynn attorney Robert Kelner were immediately available to respond to AP’s emailed requests for comment.

Officials with Trump for America learned last Wednesday that GSA officials had turned over the massive cache of emails to Mueller’s team. The transition group’s top officials were alarmed because many of the emails that Mueller’s investigators now have are sensitive records ranging from national security discussions about possible Trump international aims to candid assessments of candidates for top government posts, said those familiar with the transition.

Officials with Trump for America had been bracing for months for the prospect that Mueller’s team would demand its emails, but they had been assured that any requests to the GSA would be routed to the transition organization, which claims legal ownership of the records. According to those familiar with the transition group, a top GSA official informed Trump for America last June that any request from Mueller’s office would be referred to the transition.

On Sept. 1, after requests in late August from Mueller’s office, the GSA turned over a flash drive containing tens of thousands of records without informing Trump for America of its move, those familiar with the transition said.

Those records included emails sent and received by 13 senior Trump transition officials.

The media site Axios first reported on the transfer of the emails to Mueller’s team.
…

First-term U.S. Representative Ruben Kihuen, a Nevada Democrat who is at the center of sexual harassment allegations, announced Saturday he would not seek re-election.

Kihuen’s announcement came a day after the House Ethics Committee opened an investigation into whether Kihuen “may have engaged in sexual harassment” with a campaign aide and a lobbyist.

“I want to state clearly again that I deny the allegations in question,” Kihuen said. “I am committed to fully cooperating with the House Ethics Committee and I look forward to clearing my name.”

The freshman congressman said the accusations would be a distraction during a re-election campaign.

“Therefore, it is in the best interests of my family and my constituents to complete my term in Congress and not seek re-election,” Kihuen said.

Former aide’s allegations

A former campaign aide said Kihuen propositioned her for dates and sex despite her repeated rejections during his 2016 campaign. A lobbyist told the Nevada Independent that he touched her thighs and buttocks and made unwanted sexual advances while he was a state senator.

Ethics Committee leaders said Friday that the fact the committee was investigating the allegations did not indicate any violation had occurred and that the committee would make no further public statements pending completion of its initial review.

Kihuen’s decision may not be enough for some of his colleagues. The top House Democrat, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, has called on Kihuen to resign, a request that he has resisted. Kihuen also apologized after the first allegation was made public, but said he didn’t remember the events the way the former campaign aide had described.

A native of Mexico and the first Latino to represent Nevada in Congress, Kihuen represents the state’s 4th Congressional District, which stretches north from the Las Vegas metro area into sparsely populated central Nevada.

Kihuen is among a growing number of lawmakers whose political careers have been thrust into uncertainty or ended altogether by allegations of sexual misconduct. On Thursday, Representative Blake Farenthold, a Texas Republican, said he would not seek re-election amid sexual harassment allegations that he has denied.

Representative Trent Franks, an Arizona Republican, abruptly resigned last week over revelations that he’d asked two staff members to act as surrogates to have his child, offering one $5 million.

Also, Representative John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, retired weeks after former aides shared allegations of habitual sexual harassment. Senator Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat, announced he would step down after he was accused of improper behavior by at least eight women and his support from fellow Democrats collapsed.
…

The Pentagon acknowledged Saturday that its long-secret UFO investigation program ended in 2012, when U.S. defense officials shifted attention and funding to other priorities.

But whether the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program has continued to investigate UFO sightings since its funding ended five years ago could rank as an unexplained phenomenon.

The New York Times reported Saturday that the hush-hush program, tasked with investigating sightings of unidentified flying objects, ran from 2007 to 2012 with $22 million in annual funding secretly tucked away in U.S. Defense Department budgets worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Its initial funding came largely at the request of former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat long known for his enthusiasm for space phenomena, the newspaper said.

Yet according to its backers, the program remains in existence and officials continue to investigate UFO episodes brought to their attention by service members, the newspaper said.

Other issues pursued

The Pentagon openly acknowledged the fate of the program in response to a Reuters query.

“The Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program ended in the 2012 time frame,” Pentagon spokeswoman Laura Ochoa said in an email.

“It was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a change,” Ochoa said.

But the Pentagon was less clear about whether the UFO program continues to hover somewhere in the vast universe of the U.S. defense establishment.

“The DoD takes seriously all threats and potential threats to our people, our assets, and our mission and takes action whenever credible information is developed,” Ochoa said.

What is less in doubt is Reid’s enthusiasm for UFOs and his likely role in launching the Pentagon initiative to identify advanced aviation threats.

“If you’ve talked to Harry Reid for 60 seconds then it’s the least surprising thing ever that he loves UFOs and got an earmark to study them,” former Reid spokeswoman Kristen Orthman said in a message on Twitter.

Or as Reid himself said in a tweet that linked to the Times’ story: “The truth is out there. Seriously.” 
…

President Donald Trump frequently casts his first year in office as a string of successes and campaign promises fulfilled. But less than a quarter of Americans think Trump has made good on the pledges he made to voters while running for president, according to a new poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Among Republicans, just half say Trump has kept his promises, which included vows to overhaul his predecessor’s health care law, withdraw the United States from a nuclear accord with Iran and invest millions in new projects to fix the nation’s aging infrastructure. None of those steps have been taken.

“Everything has stalled out,” said Mark Krowski, 37, an independent from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who leans Republican but didn’t vote for Trump last year.

​Worrisome signs

As 2017 comes to a close, the majority of Americans painted a broadly pessimistic view of Trump’s presidency, the nation’s politics and the overall direction of the country. Just 3 in 10 Americans said the United States is heading in the right direction, and 52 percent said the country is worse off since Trump became president, worrisome signs for the White House and Republicans heading into a midterm election year where control of Congress will be at stake.

Along with the 23 percent who think Trump has kept his promises, another 30 percent think he has tried and failed and 45 percent think he hasn’t kept them at all.

In a second AP-NORC poll conducted this month, Trump’s job approval rating sits at just 32 percent, making him the least popular first-year president on record. A quarter of Republicans say they’re among those who disapprove of the president.

​Bit of a bright spot

One relative bright spot for Trump? The improving economy.

With a soaring stock market and unemployment hovering around 4 percent, 40 percent of Americans approved of Trump’s handling of the economy. That’s higher than the 3 in 10 Americans that approved of the president’s handling of health care, foreign policy or taxes.

Still, Trump continues to talk about his presidency with lofty rhetorical flourishes, declaring that his first months in office outshine those of his predecessors. But there’s no doubt that 2017 has been devoid of any significant legislative accomplishments, though Republicans are urgently trying to pass a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s tax system. The package would give generous tax cuts to corporations and the wealthiest Americans, and more modest tax cuts to low- and middle-income families.

“We’re very, very close to a historic legislative victory, the likes of which rarely has this country seen,” Trump said during a meeting with lawmakers earlier this week.

Republicans are banking on the tax overhaul being enough to carry them through next year’s House and Senate contests, elections that will largely be a referendum on Trump’s first two years in office and the GOP’s stewardship as the majority party on Capitol Hill. But with the legislation rushed through Congress and negotiated largely in private, Trump and lawmakers may have more work to do to sell the public on its benefits.

“There’s so much back and forth and so many adjustments being made. It’s just so uncertain,” Edward Hale, a 72-year-old independent, said of the tax legislation.

One thing Hale, a retired federal government employee from Clarion, Pennsylvania, is certain of in the proposal? “It definitely favors Mr. Trump and his wealthy friends,” he said.

The survey results suggest that with or without a tax overhaul, Trump has work to do in convincing the public that his presidency is benefiting them. Just 25 percent of Americans think the country is better off since Trump took office, and only 20 percent say they personally are doing better.

By contrast, an AP-NORC poll conducted a year ago found that Americans were more likely to think the country had become better off over the course of Barack Obama’s presidency than worse off, 46 percent to 33 percent.

Only 9 percent think the country has become more united as a result of Trump’s presidency, while 67 percent think the country is more divided because of Trump. That’s far higher than the 44 percent of Americans who said in a poll one year ago that Obama’s presidency had served to divide the country further.

Even Republicans are more likely to say Trump has divided America than united it, 41 percent to 17 percent.

Notably, the deep-seated pessimism about the president and national politics doesn’t extend to local communities. Overall, about half of Americans said they feel optimistic about their local communities. And that feeling is shared across the political spectrum: 55 percent of Democrats and 50 percent of Republicans feel optimistic about the way things are going locally.

Poll details

The AP-NORC polls surveyed 1,444 adults from Nov. 30-Dec. 4 and 1,020 adults from Dec. 7-11 using samples drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points for the first survey and plus or minus 4.3 percentage points for the second.

Interviews were conducted online and using landlines and cellphones.
…

Alabama Republican Roy Moore on Friday told supporters that the “battle is not over” in Alabama’s Senate race even though President Donald Trump and others have called on him to concede.

Moore sent a fundraising email to supporters asking for contributions to his “election integrity fund’ so he could investigate reports of voter fraud.

“I also wanted to let you know that this battle is NOT OVER!” he wrote.

Democrat Doug Jones on Tuesday defeated Moore by about 20,000 votes, or 1.5 percent, according to unofficial returns. But Moore, who has been accused of sexual misconduct with teenage girls when he was in his 30s, has not yet conceded the heated Alabama race to fill the seat that previously belonged to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Moore told supporters that the race was close and some military and provisional ballots had yet to be counted. Those are expected to be counted next week.

Moore said his campaign is collecting “numerous reported cases of voter fraud” to send to the secretary of state’s office.

Secretary of State John Merrill has said it is unlikely that the last-minute ballots will change the outcome of the election or even trigger a recount.

Merrill said his office has investigated reports of voting irregularities, but “we have not discovered any that have been proven factual in nature.”

Trump, who had endorsed Moore, called Jones to congratulate him on his win. Trump on Friday said that he believed Moore should concede the race.

The results of Alabama’s Senate race will be certified between Dec. 26 and Jan. 3 after counties report their official totals.
…

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday looked to clear any confusion regarding the U.S. position on negotiating with North Korea. During a special U.N. Security Council meeting focused on Pyongyang’s Nov. 28 missile launch, the top U.S. diplomat said North Korea must choose between giving up its “unlawful” nuclear weapons program or continuing to condemn its own citizens to poverty and isolation. VOA Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more from the State Department.
…

The House Ethics Committee said Friday it had opened an investigation into Democratic Rep. Ruben Kihuen over allegations of sexual harassment.

A former campaign aide said Kihuen, a freshman congressman, propositioned her for dates and sex despite her repeated rejections during his 2016 campaign. This week, a lobbyist told the Nevada Independent that he touched her thighs and buttocks and made unwanted sexual advances while he was a state senator.

In a statement, the Ethics panel said it was “aware of public allegations that Representative Ruben Kihuen may have engaged in sexual harassment.”

The top House Democrat, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, has called on Kihuen to resign, a request that he has resisted. Kihuen also apologized after the first allegation was made public, but said he didn’t remember the events the way the former campaign aide had described.

“As I’ve said previously, I intend to fully cooperate, and I welcome an opportunity to clear my name,” Kihuen said in response to the Ethics Committee one-page statement.

The announcement came from Republican Rep. Susan Brooks of Indiana, the panel’s chairwoman, and Rep. Ted Deutch of Florida, the ranking Democrat. They said the fact the committee was investigating the allegations does not indicate any violation has occurred and that the committee would make no further public statements pending completion of its initial review.

Kihuen is among a growing number of lawmakers whose political careers have been thrust into uncertainty or ended altogether by allegations of sexual misconduct.

On Thursday, Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, said he would not seek re-election amid sexual harassment allegations that he has denied.

Last week, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., retired weeks after former aides shared stories of habitual sexual harassment. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., announced he would step down after he was accused of improper behavior by at least eight women and his support from fellow Democrats collapsed.

On Friday, Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., abruptly resigned over revelations that he’d asked two staff members to act as surrogates to have his child, offering one $5 million.
…

The United States is expanding the requirements for dozens of countries taking part in the Visa Waiver Program, demanding that the countries check traveler information against U.S. counterterrorism information.

Trump administration officials said Friday that the countries will have to use U.S. information to screen travelers crossing their borders from third countries. Many countries in the program already do that, one administration official said.

The changes also affect VWP countries that have higher rates of citizens overstaying their visas to the U.S.

If more than 2 percent of a country’s visitors stay beyond the expiration of their visa, that country will be required to carry out a public information campaign aimed at reducing those overstay violations, the Department of Homeland Security announced.

In the 2016 fiscal year, four of the VWP countries —Greece, Hungary, Portugal, and San Marino, a wealthy enclave landlocked inside central Italy — had overstay rates higher than 2 percent, according to a DHS report.

The Visa Waiver Program permits citizens of 38 countries, mostly in Europe, to travel to the United States for business or tourism for up to 90 days without a visa.

President Donald Trump has sought to tighten the rules for those seeking to visit or live in the United States in several ways, saying restrictions are necessary for security reasons. The newly-confirmed Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, attributed the changes to anti-terrorism efforts.

“The United States faces an adaptive and agile enemy, as terrorists continue to explore ways to reach our country and to direct, enable, and inspire attacks against us. … These enhancements will strengthen the program, and they are part of our continued efforts to raise the baseline for homeland security across the board,” Nielsen said, via an emailed DHS statement announcing the modifications.

VWP and terror attacks

In a review of terror attacks on the U.S. from 1975 to 2015, a researcher for the Cato Institute found zero deaths attributable to people in the U.S. under the Visa Waiver Program.

The same report found three people out of nearly 400 million visitors under the VWP during that time committed non-lethal acts of terror. 

“That makes the VWP the safest visa category,” the report’s author concluded.

The three incidents involving visitors on VWP were:

• French national Zacarias Moussaoui, who was originally part of the 9/11 conspiracy but was in jail on immigration charges during the attacks;

• British national bomber Richard Reid, who tried but failed to light explosives hidden in his shoe during a transatlantic flight to the United States;

• British national Qaisar Shaffi, who was convicted in 2007 for his role in a foiled terror plot on financial landmarks in New York City.

The VWP changes will apply to all countries in the program.

Material from the Associated Press and Reuters was used in this report.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump Friday left open the possibility of a presidential pardon on behalf Michael Flynn, who Trump fired after serving just over three weeks as his national security adviser because Flynn lied about his interactions with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.

“I don’t want to talk about pardons for Michael Flynn yet,” Trump told reporters outside the White House before departing for the Federal Bureau of Investigation National Academy in nearby Quantico, Virginia. Trump added: “We’ll see what happens. Let’s see. I can say this: when you look at what’s gone on with the FBI and with the Justice Department, people are very, very angry.”

Following Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey while he led the agency’s probe into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia during the the 2016 election, the Justice Department appointed Robert Mueller to lead a special counsel probe into the matter.

Earlier this week, the Justice Department disclosed hundreds of text messages between two FBI officials on Mueller’s team of investigators that revealed an anti-Trump bias, prompting some, particularly Republicans, to question the non-partisan nature of the law enforcement agency and its investigation into Russia.

The number two person at the Justice Department, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, defended Mueller Wednesday in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee and said he had no reason to dismiss him.

“It’s a shame what happened to the FBI but we’re going to rebuild the FBI,” Trump said. “It’s going to be bigger and better than ever but it is very sad when you look at those documents and how they’ve done that is really, really disgraceful and you have a lot of very angry people who are seeing it.”

After agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors, Flynn pleaded guilty on December 1 to one felony count of lying to the FBI last January about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the United States. The conversations occurred weeks before Trump’s inauguration.

Amid mostly Democratic speculation Flynn’s plea might prompt the Trump administration and its allies to attempt to prematurely end Mueller’s probe and curtail several congressional investigations, Trump did not rule out the possibility of pardoning Flynn.

The president has the authority to issue pardons, as he did in August when he pardoned Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of criminal contempt charges stemming from the hard-line tactics he used when pursuing undocumented immigrants.

An individual who has been convicted of a federal crime and wants to be pardoned must submit a request to the Justice Department, which assists the president in exercising his authority to pardon. The Justice Department informs pardon seekers to wait at least five years after their conviction date or their release from prison, whichever is later, prior to submitting a pardon application.

Arpaio did not, however, submit an application to the Justice Department and his pardon took effect before he was sentenced.

 
…

With the ceremonial flourish of oversized golden scissors slicing a giant piece of red tape, U.S. President Donald Trump symbolically cut through decades of regulations on Thursday. 

“So, this is what we have now,” the former reality television program host said, gesturing toward a 190-centimeter-high pile of what was said to be 185,000 sheets of paper. “This is where we were in 1960,” he added, referencing a smaller stack representing an estimated 20,000 pages of federal regulations.

“When we’re finished, which won’t be in too long a period of time, we will be less than where we were in 1960, and we will have a great regulatory climate,” the president added at the event in the White House Roosevelt Room.

Trump decried that an “ever-growing maze of regulations, rules and restrictions has cost our country trillions and trillions of dollars, millions of jobs, countless American factories, and devastated many industries.”

The event took place just after the Federal Communications Commission, in a 3-2 vote, repealed a rule of the previous Obama administration calling for  “net neutrality,” the principle that all internet providers treat all web traffic equally. 

Lawsuits filed

The deregulatory zeal has generated a backlash. 

The state of California has filed seven lawsuits challenging part of the administration’s deregulatory efforts dealing with the environment, education and public health. 

The administration’s “rule rollbacks risk the health and well-being of Americans and are, in many cases, illegal,” according to California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. 

In his remarks Thursday, Trump touted his executive order, signed days after he took office in January, mandating that two federal regulations must be eliminated for every new regulation put on the books. 

His administration, Trump said, has exceeded that mandate by “a lot.” 

The president, who as a real estate developer long railed against government regulation, claimed that for every new rule adopted, his administration has killed 22 — far in excess of the 2-for-1 pledge. 

For the first time in “decades, the government achieved regulatory savings,” Trump said, boasting that “we blew our target out of the water.” 

The administration, over its first 11 months, according to the president, has “canceled or delayed more than 1,500 planned regulatory actions — more than any previous president by far.” 

He called for his Cabinet secretaries, agency heads and federal workers to “cut even more regulations in 2018.”

“And that should just about do it,” he said. “I don’t know if we’ll have any left to cut.”

$570M in savings seen

The cost savings, according to administration officials, will total $570 million per year. But they say there are benefits that go beyond money. 

“When the government is interfering less in people’s lives, they have greater opportunity to pursue their goals,” Neomi Rao, the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget, told reporters following the president’s ribbon-cutting event. 

Asked whether she could verify that this is, as Trump has declared, the largest deregulatory effort in American history, Rao hedged to echo such a sweeping statement, saying, “I don’t think there’s been anything like this since [Ronald] Reagan, at least.” Reagan was president from 1981 to 1989.

The president’s former strategist, Stephen Bannon, has said a primary goal of the Trump administration, through deregulation, is achieving “deconstruction of the administrative state.” 
…

Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear program with U.S. counterpart Donald Trump in a phone call Thursday, the Kremlin said.

The two heads of state discussed “the situation in several crisis zones, with a focus on solving the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula,” the Kremlin said in a statement, without elaborating.

Washington this week said it was ready to talk to North Korea — which has launched several intercontinental ballistic missiles in recent months — “without preconditions.”

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that while the Trump administration was still determined to force Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear arsenal, it was willing to “have the first meeting without preconditions.”

Putin, in his annual press conference Thursday with hundreds of journalists in Moscow, welcomed the United States’ “awareness of reality” in the crisis.

However, he called on all sides to “stop aggravating the situation” and said Moscow did not recognize North Korea’s status as a nuclear power.
…

Paul Ryan may be in his final term as speaker of the US House of Representatives and could leave Congress by the end of 2018, Politico reported Thursday, in a report that could set off a scramble for a successor.

The news outlet cited several people who know Ryan, including fellow lawmakers, congressional aides, conservative intellectuals and party lobbyists, saying they did not expect him to remain in Congress beyond 2018.

Asked directly after a Thursday press conference whether he would be stepping down soon, Ryan said, “I’m not … no.”

A spokeswoman for Ryan’s office, AshLee Strong, called the report “pure speculation.”

“As the speaker himself said today, he’s not going anywhere any time soon,” she added.

But the report appeared to heighten the conjecture about the Wisconsin lawmaker’s future.

Ryan, 47, made no secret about his hesitation in taking the top congressional job in 2015, after his predecessor John Boehner abruptly announced he was retiring when he faced a revolt from right-wing conservatives.

He also spoke out critically against Donald Trump during the presidential race.

But Ryan has developed a better-than-expected relationship with Trump, and has worked with him on several landmark issues including health care and the current big legislative push, tax reform.

The White House made it clear Trump wants Ryan to stay.

“The president did speak to the speaker not too long ago, and made sure that the speaker knew very clearly, in no uncertain terms, that if the news was true he was very unhappy about it,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said.

It is not known whether Ryan would run for his congressional seat in next November’s mid-term elections. But should he announce his departure well ahead of time, it would dramatically diminish his deal-making leverage and his ability to raise money for the party.

“Ryan’s preference has become clear: He would like to serve through Election Day 2018 and retire ahead of the next Congress,” Politico reported.

Some Republicans in Congress were already anticipating a leadership battle.

“Brace yourselves for the mother of all barn cleanings,” tweeted House conservative Thomas Massie, who has been a thorn in the Republican leadership’s side.
…

The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday introduced a bill to fund the government until January 19 while Congress works on longer-term legislation, the panel said in a statement.

The bill unveiled by Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen, a New Jersey Republican, would fully fund defense programs for all of fiscal 2018 and includes money for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the statement said.

Congress must pass a funding bill by December 23 to prevent a partial government shutdown.
…

Undocumented immigrants, DACA recipients and immigrant rights advocates on Wednesday officially opened Dream Act Central, a tent space on Washington’s National Mall that will serve as headquarters for a final push this year to urge Congress to pass legislation replacing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

More than 900 immigrant youths and their families are scheduled to stop at the temporary headquarters in the next two weeks to share their stories and visit lawmakers in Congress. 

In front of the tent, a large-screen television has been erected facing Capitol Hill, showing stories of young undocumented immigrants, known informally as Dreamers. The term is based on never-passed proposals in Congress called the DREAM Act — the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act — that would have provided residence and employment protections for young immigrants similar to those in DACA.

“I’m going to be here every day,” Nestor Ruiz told VOA. 

Ruiz immigrated to the United States along with his mother and siblings when he was 5. “This is my home. I don’t know anywhere else,” he said. 

Protection for young immigrants

Ruiz is a beneficiary of DACA, an administrative program begun during the administration of former President Barack Obama. The program protected certain undocumented immigrant youths from deportation and granted them work permits for renewable two-year periods. In September, President Donald Trump ended DACA. Permits will start to phase out in March 2018. Ruiz’s DACA permit is valid until June 2019.

“We have a huge screen behind our Congress. Basically, the goal is to get immigrant youth across the country who can’t make it to D.C. to be able to share their story, to share a picture of why they need a clean DREAM Act now,” he said. 

Organizers from United We Dream, the advocacy group behind Dream Act Central and the television display, said, “Anytime [House Speaker] Paul Ryan looks out the window, he’ll see the faces of immigrant youth who would be deported unless Congress passes the DREAM Act this year.”

The 22-foot-by-13-foot screen, dubbed the “DreamActTron,” will display 24-hour-a-day video and pictures of hundreds of DACA recipients. It will stay on for the next two weeks. The goal, advocates say, is to get DACA replacement legislation linked to the spending bill that is scheduled for a vote on December 22.

Some Democrats have remained firm in linking the spending legislation to a measure that would allow nearly 800,000 DACA immigrants to continue to work and study in the United States.

Speaking Wednesday at Dream Act Central, Democratic Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois said he wished he could “tell you that we’re totally confident we can get it done I can’t say that. I don’t want to mislead you.

“I’ll tell you this: You can count on me to give a total commitment to use every minute of every day to move us to the moment where the DREAM Act becomes the law of the land.”

‘We are here to stay’

Greisa Martinez, a DACA recipient and United We Dream advocacy director, said that with Dream Act Central, immigrant youth are declaring, “We are here, and we are here to stay.”

Martinez is one of the 1 million young immigrants who would qualify for protection under a new DREAM Act. “I’m unafraid, and I’m here to stay. … I’ve been fighting for this for the past 10 years,” she said. 

Martinez is from Hidalgo, Mexico, and moved to the U.S. with her family at an early age. She grew up in Dallas, Texas. 

Dream Act Central, she said, is an idea that comes from the “hearts of people” who want to make sure that lawmakers and their staffs can’t miss the fact “that we are holding space, and that we’re not going anywhere.” 

But Republican lawmakers are not in a hurry.

“There is no emergency. The president has given us until March to address it,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said Sunday on ABC’s This Week program. “I don’t think Democrats would be very smart to say they want to shut down the government over a nonemergency that we can address anytime between now and March.”
…

The political landscape in the United States looks a bit different in the wake of Tuesday’s Senate election victory by Democrat Doug Jones in Alabama.

In an outcome few could have imagined several weeks ago, Jones defeated controversial Republican candidate Roy Moore, who had the backing of President Donald Trump. In the wake of Jones’ victory, Democrats are more confident about success in next year’s congressional midterm elections, and Republicans are looking for a way to rebound.

Late Tuesday, Jones paid tribute to the voters and staffers who supported him in his longshot victory over Moore. “This campaign has been about common courtesy and decency and making sure everyone in this state, regardless of which ZIP code you live in, is going to get a fair shake in life!” he told supporters.

Republicans split on Moore

Moore was unable to overcome allegations of sexual misconduct stemming back decades involving several women who were teenagers at the time while Moore was in his 30s.

Moore stopped short of conceding the race, however, saying, “We have been painted in an unfavorable and unfaithful light. We have been put in a hole, if you will, and it reminds me of a [Bible] passage in Psalms 40, ‘I waited patiently for the Lord.’ That is what we have got to do.”

Moore had the full backing of the president in the final days of the campaign after Trump initially held back his endorsement in the wake of the allegations against Moore.

Trump: I wanted the seat

The president responded Wednesday to questions at the White House about the Alabama race and said that he had hoped for a different result.

“I wish we would have gotten the seat. A lot of Republicans feel differently. They are very happy with the way it turned out,” he said. “But as the leader of the party, I would have liked to have the seat. I want to endorse the people who are running.”

Jones won in large part because of a strong Democratic turnout, especially by African-Americans. Moore was hurt by a depressed Republican turnout and a write-in campaign that drained away votes.

Democrats also saw similarities between the Jones victory and Democratic wins last month in gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, which could portend a successful midterm congressional campaign in 2018.

“So you put all that together — the base being energized, millennials overwhelmingly Democratic, suburbs swinging back to the Democrats — and it means that things are looking good for us,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York told reporters at the Capitol.

‘A wave building’?

Jones’ victory in a heavily Republican state like Alabama is sure to send political shockwaves around the country as both parties look ahead to next year’s elections.

And some Republicans are growing increasingly concerned that Trump’s weak national approval rating fueled Democratic energy in the recent elections. In one new survey from Quinnipiac University, Trump’s approval rating bumped up slightly to 37 percent. Another new poll from Monmouth University, however, had the president down at 32 percent, a drop of eight points from its last survey in September.

In addition to Alabama, the recent Democratic statewide wins in Virginia and New Jersey have energized Democrats, according to several analysts.

“If I were running Republican campaigns for Senate, for the House, for governor, for state legislature, I would be really, really worried because there appears to be a wave building and it has a giant ‘D’ on it — ‘D’ for ‘Democrat,’ ” University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato said via Skype.

Governing becomes harder

Experts see the Democratic victory in Alabama not only as a rejection of Moore as a flawed candidate but also as a setback for Trump.

He defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in Alabama by a margin of 62 to 34 percent in the 2016 election. However, exit polls from Tuesday’s race found that Alabama voters were deadlocked on Trump’s job performance, with 48 percent approving and the same percentage disapproving.

Jones will now serve out the remaining two years of the term of Jeff Sessions, who left the Senate to serve as Trump’s attorney general. Republicans will now have to push through their agenda with one Senate seat fewer in a body that is already sharply divided.

“We see that Republicans, once Jones is seated, will now have a 51- instead of a 52-seat majority in the Senate, and we have seen time and again, over the course of the year, that they have trouble governing with just 52 seats. Those challenges won’t get easier when they lose one of those senators,” said analyst Molly Reynolds at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

As if to counter the Democrats’ good news on Wednesday, House and Senate Republican leaders said they had now agreed on a final version of a tax reform bill, a key campaign promise made by the president.

Republicans hope to iron out final differences in House and Senate versions of the tax cut bill, have it passed by both chambers and signed into law by the president in the next few weeks.
…

Abdellatif Nasser got what he thought was the best news possible in the summer of 2016: One of his lawyers called him at the Guantanamo Bay detention center and told him that the U.S. decided he no longer posed a threat and could go home to Morocco.

The prisoner allowed himself to get excited, to think about Moroccan food, imagining he would be home in no time. “I’ve been here 14 years,” he said at the time. “A few months more is nothing.”

But his optimism turned out to be misplaced. A diplomatic agreement that would have allowed him to go free was not returned by Morocco until Dec. 28, eight days too late to meet a deadline to be among the last prisoners to leave under President Barack Obama.

Now, he is one of five prisoners who the U.S. cleared to go but whose freedom is in doubt under President Donald Trump.

“We had hoped until the last moment that he might still be released,” said Shelby Sullivan-Bennis, the lawyer who told him about his pending release and shared her notes from the conversation. “When it didn’t happen we were crushed. That eight-day foible has turned into a potential lifetime of detention.”

The Trump administration has not released any prisoners and not added any to the list of cleared men who can go home, or to a third country, for resettlement. There were 197 transferred out under his predecessor and more than 500 under President George W. Bush.

Obama sought to close the detention center but was thwarted by Congress because of objections over transferring any of the remaining detainees to facilities in the U.S.

“It is entirely unprecedented for an administration to take the position that there will be no transfers out of Guantanamo without regard to the facts, without regard to individual circumstances,” said Pardiss Kebriaei, a detainee attorney with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

The administration has not announced its policy toward the detention center. But Trump said on Twitter before he took office that there should be no further releases from “Gitmo,” as it’s often called. “These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield,” he said.

Air Force Maj. Ben Sakrisson, a Pentagon spokesman for issues related to Guantanamo, said detainee case files will still be reviewed on a periodic basis but the government “is still considering whether or not to transfer detainees.”

A National Security Council spokeswoman, Tara Rigler, noted that the president has said the detention center will “remain an available option in the war on terrorism.” She said he will make any decisions related to detainees “on a case-by-case basis and in the best interest of the United States,” but she declined to go into further detail.

The possibility that former Guantanamo prisoners would resume hostile activities has long been a concern that has played into the debate over releases. The office of the Director of National Intelligence said this summer in its most recent report on the subject that about 17 percent of the 728 detainees who have been released are “confirmed” and 12 percent are “suspected” of re-engaging in such activities.

But the vast majority of those re-engagements occurred with former prisoners who did not go through the security review that was set up under Obama. A task force that included agencies such as the Defense Department and CIA analyzed who was held at Guantanamo and determined who could be released and who should continue in detention. The previous administration also created a Periodic Review Board that considered not just the potential threat, but also such factors as detainees’ behavior in custody and their prospects for meaningful work on the outside. The recidivism rate for those released after those measures were adopted dropped to 4 percent confirmed and 8 percent suspected.

The 41 remaining prisoners include the five approved for transfer and 10 who have been charged by military commission. That leaves 26 in indefinite confinement who could potentially be reviewed and added to the cleared list. Several may still be prosecuted and are unlikely to be set free, but lawyers for the rest are considering filing new legal challenges, arguing that a policy of no releases would mean their confinement can no longer legally be justified as a temporary wartime measure.

In addition to Nasser, the prisoners who have been cleared for release come from Algeria, Yemen and Tunisia. Another was born in the United Arab Emirates but has been identified in Pentagon documents as an ethnic Rohingya who is stateless.

A review board cleared the Algerian, Sufiyan Barhoumi, and he was expected to go just before Obama left office, but then Defense Secretary Ash Carter did not sign off on the transfer and he had to stay behind despite a last-minute legal appeal filed in a federal court in Washington on behalf of him and Nasser. The other three have been approved for release by the task force since at least 2010. It’s not publicly known why the U.S. has not been able to resettle them. A lawyer appointed to represent the one born in the U.A.E. says the man has never agreed to a meeting.

“The daily reality of what it means to them is really settling in,” said Sullivan-Bennis, who met with Nasser and other detainees at the base last week to discuss legal strategies as the men near their 16th year confined at the U.S. base on the southeastern coast of Cuba.

Nasser’s journey to the prison was a long one.

Now 53, he was a member of a non-violent but illegal Moroccan Sufi Islam group in the 1980s, according to his Pentagon file. In 1996, he was recruited to fight in Chechyna but ended up in Afghanistan, where he trained at an al-Qaida camp. He was captured after fighting U.S. forces there and sent to Guantanamo in May 2002.

An unidentified military official appointed to represent him before the review board said he studied math, computer science and English at Guantanamo, creating a 2,000-word Arabic-English dictionary. The official told the board that Nasser “deeply regrets his actions of the past” and expressed confidence he would reintegrate in society. The board approved him by consensus in July 2016.

When Nasser learned he wasn’t going home, he initially stopped taking calls from his lawyers and they feared he might try to kill himself, Sullivan-Bennis said. More recently, she said, he has tried not to lose hope.

Another of his reprieve attorneys, Clive Stafford-Smith, said after visiting the prisoner at Guantanamo last week that Nasser is worried some in his large extended family won’t recognize him if he does go home.

“He holds it in,” the lawyer said. “You can see tears welling up in his eyes but he tries to put up a positive front.”
…

U.S. President Donald Trump is facing a backlash after posting an insulting tweet about a Democratic senator from New York. Kirsten Gillibrand said Tuesday that the president is trying to silence her calls for his resignation following renewed allegations by women who claim that Trump harassed them sexually in the past. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports the White House has denied the allegations.
…

Democrat Doug Jones won the special election to fill a vacant U.S. Senate seat representing the southern state of Alabama, delivering what many see as a stunning setback to the Republican Party and a stinging rebuke to President Donald Trump, who urgently endorsed embattled Republican candidate Roy Moore despite a chorus of sexual misconduct allegations.

After a contentious campaign, voters backed Jones over Moore by a margin of 49.9 percent to 48.4 percent.

The result means that in January when Jones is sworn in, the Republican majority in the 100-seat Senate will shrink to 51-49 and make it tougher for President Trump to enact his agenda.

“We have shown not just around the state of Alabama, but we have shown the country the way, that we can be unified,” Jones told cheering supporters in a victory speech Tuesday night. He said the Senate has a lot of work to do on important issues facing the country, including health care, jobs and the economy.

Moore, at his own rally, did not concede the election to Jones.

“It’s not over. It’s going to take some time,” he said.

His campaign pointed to Alabama laws concerning recounts, including a provision that calls for an automatic recount of votes if the margin of victory is less than one-half of one percent.

​Speaking to CNN, Alabama’s Secretary of State John Merrill said he would find it “highly unlikely” that Jones will not be declared the winner when the vote tally is certified in the coming week. He said there are “not a whole lot of mistakes that are made” during the initial vote-counting process.

Moore had the backing of Trump, but faced opposition from other Republican leaders. He has been accused of sexual misconduct in the 1970s when his female accusers were teenagers and he was in his 30s.

Moore has consistently denied the allegations, but he initially admitted dating young women when he was an attorney general, before denying ever knowing any of his accusers.

Some Republicans, including Alabama’s other senator, Richard Shelby, opted to use write-in votes rather than support Moore. The number of total write-ins was about the same as the margin of victory for Jones.

Trump used Twitter to congratulate Jones while looking ahead to the next election for the Senate seat in 2020.

“The write-in votes played a very big factor, but a win is a win. The people of Alabama are great, and the Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time,” Trump wrote.

Jones is the first Democrat from Alabama to win a Senate seat since 1992 and will serve out the roughly three years remaining in the term Jeff Sessions won in 2014 before stepping down to serve as Trump’s attorney general.

Capri Cafaro, executive in residence at American University’s School of Public Affairs, told VOA that with the demographics of Alabama it is more likely than not that whoever challenges Jones in the 2020 race will win.

She said overall with Jones in the Senate she thinks there will be a slowdown in the Republicans’ legislative agenda, but with a major push already ongoing on tax reform in Congress, Republicans will do their best to finish that work before breaking for a holiday recess at the end of this month.

“Certainly now that the majority has shrunk by one seat and now they only have a one-seat margin, it will be more likely than not the Republicans will try to expedite the process,” she said.

Cafaro added that the controversies surrounding Moore, including his history of statements regarding the LGBT, Muslim and Jewish communities, as well as the recent rise in visibility and consequences surrounding high-profile sexual assault cases in the United States, made a difference in Tuesday’s result.

Jones, who said he was “overwhelmed” by the victory, did not specifically reference Moore in his victory speech, but did allude to some of the same themes.

“This entire race has been about dignity and respect. This campaign has been about the rule of law. This campaign has been about common courtesy and decency and making sure everyone in this state regardless of which zip code you live in is going to get a fair shake in life,” he said.

Senator Jeff Flake, a Republican who has announced he will not be running for re-election in his state of Arizona, posted on Twitter last week a picture of a campaign donation he was making to Jones. He followed that Tuesday night with a post that said, “Decency wins.”

Democratic Senator Cory Booker campaigned alongside Jones and said Alabama “gave the whole country a needed renewal of hope and the first ray of light of a rising sun and a coming new day.”
…

A new survey shows that nearly six in 10 Americans believe the level of government corruption has risen in the year since U.S. President Donald Trump was elected and that the White House is now a more corrupt institution than Congress.

Berlin-based Transparency International says its survey of 1,000 Americans in October and November revealed that 44 percent believe that Trump and White House officials are corrupt, up from 36 percent recorded in a similar survey in early 2016 at the start of former U.S. president Barack Obama’s last year in office.

The Trump White House responded Tuesday by saying it has acted to end corruption and increase transparency in government.

The anti-corruption group says nearly seven of 10 of those it surveyed believe the U.S. government is failing to fight corruption, up from half in 2016. The group defines corruption as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.

“I think the survey shows that Americans are disappointed that the government has not delivered on its promises to clean up government. Around the world we’ve seen that when elected officials fail to deliver on their anti-corruption promises, it has a corrosive effect on public trust in government,” said Zoe Reiter, Transparency International’s representative. “We are having a cultural moment in history in America that our elected officials really need to wake up to.” 

Responding for the White House, Principal Deputy White House Spokesman Raj Shah said, “Actually, we’ve done quite a bit to end corruption and increase transparency in government. We’ve elevated the status of the ethics office, issued guidance to staff to be more cooperative with congressional resolutions, and we’ve said we want government agencies to be as transparent as possible. We have worked hard to work back the backlog of FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] requests to make information about the government more available. What people say they believe in this [TI] survey has more to do with the media barrage of negative coverage than with actual corruption.”

Global perspective

In the survey, Transparency International asked people how well their government is doing at fighting corruption.

In 2016, people in the United States had slightly more faith in their government’s efforts than the global average.

“In 2017, citizens’ responses to this question are now much worse and similar to what people in Kenya, Malawi, Sierra Leone and Uganda told us. In terms of perceptions of the level of corruption in the Office of the President, the global average is that less than a third of people say their executive is highly corrupt,” said Transparency International researcher Coralie Pring.

“In 2016, the U.S. was already over this mark [36 percent]. However, the figure is now even worse at 44 percent — comparable to what people in Pakistan, Armenia and El Salvador told us,” Pring told VOA.

Survey numbers

The survey says 38 percent of Americans believe members of Congress are corrupt and 33 percent believe government officials are. Congress fared the worst in last year’s survey.

The poll says 32 percent think business executives are corrupt, 23 percent believe local government officials are corrupt and 22 percent believe religious leaders are corrupt. Judges and magistrates fare the best, with 16 percent of Americans believing they are corrupt.

The survey shows that close to a third of African-Americans believe police are corrupt, compared to a fifth of those polled overall. Slightly more than half say they feared retaliation for reporting what they believe to be wrongdoing, up from slightly less than a third in 2016.

Transparency International says its survey shows “people are now more critical of government efforts to fight corruption. From just over half in 2016, nearly seven in 10 people in the United States now say that the government is doing a bad job at combating corruption within its own institutions. This is despite widespread commitments to clean up government.”

Those surveyed said that while public protests and speaking out can be effective in fighting corruption, the best way is to vote out of office politicians they believe to be corrupt.

The anti-corruption group says that while Trump was elected on a vow to make government work better “for those who feel their interests have been neglected by political elites,” the opposite has happened.

“Rather than feeling better about progress in the fight against corruption over the past year,” the group said, “a clear majority of people in America now say that things have become worse.”

VOA’s Ken Bredemeier and Peter Heinlein contributed to this report.
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U.S. President Donald Trump blamed Democratic lawmakers Tuesday for fueling the controversy surrounding allegations of sexual misconduct before he was in the White House.

One day after 56 congresswomen, all members of the Democratic Women’s Working Group, called on House leaders to investigate the allegations, the president on Twitter accused Democrats of playing partisan politics and denied knowing any of the women who have leveled accusations against him.

“Despite thousands of hours wasted and many millions of dollars spent, the Democrats have been unable to show any collusion with Russia – so now they are moving on to the false accusations and fabricated stories of women who I don’t know and/or have never met.  FAKE NEWS!”

Trump also denounced New York Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who said Monday on CNN the “allegations are credible” and ” many of them are heartbreaking.”

“Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for [fellow New York Democratic Senator] Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office “begging” for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump.  Very disloyal to Bill & Crooked-USED!”

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Gillibrand responded with a tweet of her own, saying Trump is unable to deny women the right to voice their opinions about him.

“You cannot silence me or the millions of women who have gotten off the sidelines to speak out about the unfitness and shame you have brought to the Oval Office.”

The 56 representatives sent a letter Monday to Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy and Democrat Elijah Cummings of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

“At least 17 women have publicly accused the president of sexual misconduct,” the letter from the Democratic Women’s Working Group says.

“The American people deserve a full inquiry into the truth of these allegations.  The president’s own remarks appear to back up the allegations … he feels at liberty to perpetrate such conduct against women.  We cannot ignore the multitude of women who have come forward with accusations against Mr. Trump.”

The letter invites the president to bring forth present evidence in his own defense.

Gillibrand and five other U.S. senators have called for Trump to resign over the allegations.

Gillibrand said if Trump does not immediately resign, Congress “should have appropriate investigations of his behavior and hold him accountable.”

The remarks are similar to calls by Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent, and Democratic Senators Mazie Hirono, Jeff Merkley, Cory Booker and Ron Wyden.  All of them urged the president to step down following the announced resignations of three lawmakers: Democratic Senator Al Franken, Democratic Congressman John Conyers and Republican Congressman Trent Franks over sexual misconduct allegations.

Renewed accusations

Three women, who last year accused Donald Trump of making unwanted sexual advances, renewed their allegations Monday, saying it was time Congress investigate claims against the president in the wake of dozens of other powerful American men being held accountable for their treatment of women.

Rachel Crooks, who accused Trump of forcibly kissing her 12 years ago when she worked as a receptionist at his Trump Tower business headquarters in New York, said lawmakers should “put aside their party affiliations and investigate Mr. Trump’s history of sexual misconduct.”

She appeared alongside the two other Trump accusers at a New York news conference: Samantha Holvey, who alleged that Trump walked uninvited into a backstage dressing area where she and others were in various states of undress at a 2012 beauty pageant Trump owned, and Jessica Leeds, who accused Trump of groping her when she sat next to him on a commercial airline flight in the late 1970s.

During last year’s presidential campaign, more than a dozen women accused Trump of sexual misconduct extending over several decades, but he denied all the accusations, and said that an explicit 2005 taped comment of him boasting of groping women was merely “locker room talk.”

The White House again rejected the allegations.

“These false claims, totally disputed in most cases by eyewitness accounts, were addressed at length during last year’s campaign, and the American people voiced their judgment by delivering a decisive victory,” the White House said. “The timing and absurdity of these false claims speaks volumes and the publicity tour that has begun only further confirms the political motives behind them.”

Later, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “We feel these allegations have been answered” by the results of the 2016 election. “The American people knew this and voted for the president.”
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