The White House says President Donald Trump will nominate Pat Shanahan as the next secretary of defense.

Shanahan, who has served as acting secretary of defense since January, “has proven over the last several months that he is beyond qualified to lead the Department of Defense, and he will continue to do an excellent job,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders tweeted Thursday.

“I am honored,” Shanahan poster on Twitter. “If confirmed by the Senate … I remain committed to modernizing the force so our remarkable Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines have everything they need to keep our military lethal and our country safe.”

Shanahan told reporters at the Pentagon that he first heard of the president’s intent to nominate him while he was at the White House earlier Thursday.

Unlike his predecessor, retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis, who served more than 40 years in the military before taking the Pentagon’s top civilian post, Shanahan spent more than 30 years in private industry working for the Boeing aircraft manufacturing company.

Critics have raised concern about his lack of military experience and about the potential bias toward his old company, which wins many Pentagon contracts to build military technologies.

If confirmed, he would not be the first to lead the department without having served in the military. The most recent example is Ash Carter, who served as defense secretary under former President Barack Obama.

And an ethics investigation into potential bias earlier this year concluded that Shanahan did not violate ethics agreements or promote his longtime employer, according to the Defense Department inspector general.

Pentagon officials told VOA they felt that the probe’s findings had cleared the way for Shanahan’s nomination.
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The number of Americans who said President Donald Trump should be impeached rose 5 percentage points since mid-April, to 45 percent, while more than half said that continued congressional probes of Trump would interfere with key government business, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Thursday.

The opinion poll, conducted Monday, did not make clear whether investigation-fatigued Americans wanted House of Representatives Democrats to pull back on their probes or press forward aggressively and just get impeachment over with. 

The question is an urgent one for senior Democrats in the House, who are wrestling with whether to launch impeachment proceedings despite likely insurmountable opposition to it in the Republican-controlled Senate. 

On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi re-emphasized that leaders of the investigative committees in the House were taking a step-by-step approach. 

​Following facts

“This is very methodical. It’s very Constitution-based,” the California Democrat said. “We won’t go any faster than the facts take us, or any slower than the facts take us.”

In addition to the 45 percent pro-impeachment figure, the Monday poll found that 42 percent of Americans said Trump should not be impeached. The rest said they had no opinion. 

In comparison, an April 18-19 survey found that 40 percent of all Americans wanted Trump impeached. 

The latest poll showed stronger support for impeachment among Democrats and independents. 

It also showed that 57 percent of adults agreed that continued investigations into Trump would interfere with important government business. That included about half of all Democrats and three-quarters of all Republicans. 

After a nearly two-year investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller of Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, House Democrats are pursuing multiple inquiries into Trump’s presidency, his family and his business interests. 

Trump is declining to cooperate with at least a half-dozen such inquiries, refusing to disclose his tax returns, invoking executive privilege to keep the unredacted Mueller report under wraps and filing unprecedented lawsuits to block House investigators. 

‘A circus’

“It’s becoming a circus over there” in Washington, said Fatima Alsrogy, 36, a T-shirt designer from Dallas who took the poll. “There are so many more important things the country needs to pay attention to right now.”

Alsrogy, an independent, thinks Trump should be impeached. Yet she also wishes lawmakers would do more to improve the health care system for self-employed people like her. 

“I bought my own [health] insurance on an Obamacare exchange,” she said. “It’s a huge expense, and I don’t know if Obamacare is going to be amended or taken away. It’s stressful.” 

The poll also found that 32 percent said Congress treated the Mueller report fairly, while 47 percent disagreed. 

Trump’s popularity was unchanged from a similar poll that ran last week — 39 percent of adults said they approved of Trump, while 55 percent said they disapproved. 

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English, throughout the United States. It gathered responses from 1,006 adults and had a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of about 4 percentage points. 
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U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday accused President Donald Trump and his administration of “every day … advertising their obstruction of justice by ignoring subpoenas” issued by opposition Democratic lawmakers for oversight of him, the White House and government agencies.

Pelosi, the leader of the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, unleashed her verbal attack a day after the House Judiciary Committee overrode Republican opposition and voted to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress. Lawmakers cited Barr for refusing to turn over an unredacted copy of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on his 22-month investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and allegations that Trump, as president, obstructed justice by trying to thwart the probe.

Pelosi said she agreed with Congressman Jerrold Nadler, the Judiciary panel’s chairman, that the U.S. is in “a constitutional crisis,” as the stalemate continues between House Democrats and Trump, a Republican who has vowed to fight all Democratic subpoenas demanding testimony from his administration’s top officials and key documents.

Earlier in the week, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin rebuffed a request by the House Ways and Means Committee for six years of Trump’s federal tax returns to examine whether he has hidden overseas investments, particularly in Russia. The committee’s chairman, Congressman Richard Neal, said he would decide by week’s end whether to subpoena the returns or file a court challenge to try to force Mnuchin to turn over the secret annual documents.

Pelosi said at a news conference that the House Democrats’ investigations “will give us the facts and the truth. This is not about Congress or any committee of Congress. It’s about the American people and their right to know, and their election that is at stake, and that a foreign government intervened in our election, and the president thinks it is a laughing matter.”

Pelosi said, “It’s appalling that this administration would not even pretend to want to protect our elections, and in fact, be an obstacle to our finding out more about how it happened, so we can prevent it from happening again.”

‘Self-impeachable’

Pelosi, however, has resisted calls by some Democrats to start impeachment proceedings against Trump.

Earlier in the week, Pelosi said, “Every single day the president is making the case. He’s becoming self-impeachable.”

But she told reporters Thursday, “Impeachment is one of the most divisive things that you can do, dividing a country, unless you really have your case with great clarity for the American people.”

With the Judiciary Committee voting to hold Barr in contempt of Congress, the full House must now consider the contempt citation. But Pelosi said she is not rushing toward a vote.

Mueller testimony

Pelosi said she is waiting to see whether Mueller testifies before Nadler’s committee about his handling of the Russia investigation.

Trump has said he does not think Mueller should testify, considering it a “redo” of the investigation. But Trump said Thursday he would leave it up to Barr.

The Trump-appointed attorney general, the country’s top law enforcement official, has said he has no objection to Mueller testifying before congressional panels.
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Reporting from The New York Times shows that between 1985 and 1994, President Donald Trump reported $1.2 billion in losses, allowing him not to pay income taxes during most of that period. While Democrats demand Trump’s tax returns, other battles are heating up. The White House is asserting executive privilege over special counsel Robert Mueller’s unredacted report, and Democrats are preparing to hold Trump’s attorney general in contempt. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has more.
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U.S. lawmakers used an event at the Capitol Wednesday afternoon to praise Taiwan as an ally and a healthy alternative to China.

Relations between Washington and Beijing have been strained because of a growing trade dispute, China’s unwillingness to democratize and the threat of the spread of its illiberal influence as it reaches more regions of the world.

Wednesday’s event marked the 40th anniversary of the enactment of the Taiwan Relations Act, which provides a framework for continuing bilateral ties after Washington established official diplomatic ties with Beijing in 1979.

​In praise of Taiwan

Some lawmakers used the occasion to praise relations between Washington and Taipei.

“We have to stick with the folks that are most like us and that we are most like, that is just how it has to be, and we should be unafraid to say it,” Congressman Scott Perry, a Republican who represents Pennsylvania, said.

“If we want to be leaders in the world and we do, we have to stick with our friends and our allies very closely and show the world who we believe in and where our allegiances lie,” Perry said. “We still want to trade with China, we still want to be good partners, however, we have a better partner.”

Perry told VOA that Taiwan is a natural partner and ally “especially compared to the government of China.” He quickly added that it is important to clarify that there’s a difference between the government of China and the people of China, “because there are many Chinese people who also agree with our values.”

Bipartisan, bicameral gathering

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also attended the event, which she described as a “celebration of the relationship” between the United States and Taiwan.

Pelosi pointed to the congressional members who were present at the event as evidence of “bipartisan, bicameral expression and manifestation of support and recognition of the importance of the Taiwan Relations Act,” which she described as having fostered an “unshakable bond between the United States and Taiwan.”

She also spoke about how impressed she was with the “vitality of the country” on her visit to the island, adding, “I can’t wait to go back again … my understanding is, the best Chinese food in the world is in Taiwan!”

The event, co-hosted by Taiwan Causes in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, drew more than two dozen senators and congressmen.

Humbled by US support

As the event concluded, Stanley Kao, Taiwan’s representative to the United States, told VOA that he was humbled by the broad show of support for Taiwan among U.S. lawmakers.

Kao said Taiwan will continue to uphold the values that endear it to the United States and other democracies around the world.

“We ourselves must zheng-qi,” he said, invoking the traditional Chinese phrase meaning “fight for and be worthy of one’s own breath.”
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President Donald Trump brought his enduring fiction about hurricane aid for Puerto Rico to a rally crowd in Florida Wednesday.

Pledging unstinting support for more hurricane recovery money for Floridians, he vastly exaggerated how much Puerto Rico has received.

Trump laced his speech in Panama City Beach with a recitation of falsehoods that never quit, touching on veterans’ health care, the economy, visas and more. 

A sampling:

Puerto Rico hurricane aid

TRUMP: “We gave to Puerto Rico $91 billion” — and that’s more, he said, than any U.S. state or entity has received for hurricane aid.

THE FACTS: His number is wrong, as is his assertion that the U.S. territory has set some record for federal disaster aid. Congress has so far distributed only about $11 billion for Puerto Rico, not $91 billion.

He’s stuck to his figure for some time. The White House has said the estimate includes about $50 billion in expected future disaster disbursements that could span decades, along with $41 billion approved.

That $50 billion in additional money is speculative. It is based on Puerto Rico’s eligibility for federal emergency disaster funds for years ahead, involving calamities that haven’t happened.

That money would require future appropriations by Congress.

Even if correct, $91 billion would not be the most ever provided for hurricane rebuilding efforts. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 cost the U.S government more than $120 billion, the bulk of it going to Louisiana.

​Economy and income levels

TRUMP, boasting that his economic record has delivered the “highest income ever in history for the different groups — highest income.”

THE FACTS: Not so. He did not achieve the best income numbers for all the racial groups. Both African Americans and Asian Americans had higher income before the Trump administration.

The median income last year for a black household was $40,258, according to the Census Bureau. That’s below a 2000 peak of $42,348 and also statistically no better than 2016, President Barack Obama’s last year in office.

Many economists view the continued economic growth since the middle of 2009, in Obama’s first term, as the primary explanation for recent hiring and income gains. More important, there are multiple signs that the racial wealth gap is now worsening even as unemployment rates have come down.

As for Asian Americans, the median income for a typical household last year was $81,331. It was $83,182 in 2016.

Visa lottery and ‘rough people’

TRUMP, claiming countries are taking advantage of the U.S. diversity visa lottery program: “They’re giving us some rough people.”

THE FACTS: A perpetual falsehood from the president. Countries don’t nominate their citizens for the program. They don’t get to select people they’d like to get rid of.

Foreigners apply for the visas on their own. Under the program, citizens of countries named by the U.S. can bid for visas if they have enough education or work experience in desired fields. Out of that pool of qualified applicants, the State Department randomly selects a much smaller pool of tentative winners. Not all winners will have visas approved because they still must compete for a smaller number of slots by getting their applications in quickly.

Those who are ultimately offered visas still need to go through background checks, like other immigrants.

​VA Choice

TRUMP, describing how veterans used to wait weeks and months for a VA appointment: “For the veterans, we passed VA Choice. … (Now) they immediately go outside, find a good local doctor, get themselves fixed up and we pay the bill.”

THE FACTS: No, veterans still must wait for weeks for a medical appointment.

While it’s true the VA recently announced plans to expand eligibility for veterans in the Veterans Choice program, it remains limited in part because of uncertain money and longer waits.

The program currently allows veterans to see doctors outside the VA system if they must wait more than 30 days for an appointment or drive more than 40 miles to a VA facility. Under new rules to take effect in June, veterans will have that option for a private doctor if their VA wait is only 20 days (28 for specialty care) or their drive is only 30 minutes.

But the expanded Choice eligibility may do little to provide immediate help.

That’s because veterans often must wait even longer for an appointment in the private sector. In 2018, 34 percent of all VA appointments were with outside physicians, down from 36 percent in 2017. Then-Secretary David Shulkin said VA care was “often 40 percent better in terms of wait times” compared with the private sector.

Choice came into effect after some veterans died while waiting months for appointments at the Phoenix VA medical center.

When VA Choice passed

TRUMP, on the Choice program: “That’s a great thing for our veterans. They’ve been trying to get it passed for 44 years. We got it passed.”

THE FACTS: He’s incorrect. Congress approved the private-sector Veterans Choice health program in 2014 and President Barack Obama signed it into law. Trump is expanding it.

Crowd sizes

TRUMP, on Democrat Beto O’Rourke’s crowd size at a Texas rally before he launched his presidential campaign: “He had like 502 people.”

THE FACTS: Trump sells short O’Rourke’s crowd, though it has grown in his mind since he claimed the Democrat only got 200-300 at his El Paso gathering in February. Trump had a rally there the same day.

O’Rourke’s march and rally drew thousands. Police did not give an estimate, but his crowd filled nearly all of a baseball field from the stage at the infield to the edge of outfield and was tightly packed.
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In the U.S., there’s an old saying that there are only two things that are certain in life: death and taxes.

But as it turns out, death is way more certain than taxes in the United States.

Corporations and some wealthy individuals, including President Donald Trump, are able to legally avoid any federal taxation in some years by deducting business expenses such as capital investments, charitable donations, interest on their home loans, health care costs and numerous other write-offs from their corporate or personal income.

In a report late Tuesday, The New York Times said from 1985 to 1994, Trump lost more than $1 billion in his real estate business operations and paid no federal income taxes in eight of those 10 years.

Trump called the report inaccurate but did not dispute any specific facts. He said it was “sport” for developers to game the U.S. tax code so they did not have to pay taxes.

Unlike U.S. presidents for the past four decades, Trump has balked at releasing his tax returns, although opposition Democratic lawmakers in the House of Representatives are seeking, so far unsuccessfully, to get him to divulge his returns for the last six years. A court fight over the dispute is possible.

The independent Tax Policy Center estimates that in 2018, 44% of Americans paid no federal income tax under the country’s progressive sliding scale of taxation, where those making the most money, in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, pay a higher percentage tax than those with way less annual income.

Various provisions of the U.S. tax code, such as the standard deduction to reduce taxable income or such allowable itemized deductions as for making donations to charities or for expenses to operate a business from home, can sharply reduce income subject to federal taxation.

But even those individuals not subject to any federal taxation, however, likely have paid payroll taxes, payments to cover mandatory withholding from their paychecks to fund the government’s pension plan for older and retired workers, and health insurance for Americans over 65. About three-quarters of American households pay federal income taxes, the payroll taxes or both.

The median annual U.S. household income is $56,516, meaning half earn more, half less.

According to one recent survey of nearly 130,000 American consumers, the average American spends $10,489 each year in federal, state, and local income taxes, about 14% of the average survey respondent’s gross income.

In the corporate world, however, with the tax overhaul pushed to passage by Trump and Republican lawmakers in 2017 that cut the basic federal corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, 60 of the biggest U.S. corporations avoided paying any taxes last year, according to the Washington-based Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

The research group said these companies should have paid a collective $16.4 billion in federal income taxes, but instead, with various legal deductions from their income, received a net tax rebate of $4.3 billion.

It reported that among the 60 profitable U.S. corporations paying no federal income taxes last year were some of the country’s best known businesses, including General Motors, Amazon, Chevron, Netflix, Delta Air Lines, IBM, Goodyear Tire & Rubber, and Eli Lilly.

 
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U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday belittled a report that he lost more than $1 billion as a New York real estate mogul between 1985 and 1994, claiming it was “sport” for developers to write off such losses to legally avoid paying federal taxes.

In a pair of tweets, the president called the report in The New York Times “very old information … a highly inaccurate Fake News hit job!” but did not dispute that he avoided paying federal income taxes in eight of the 10 years in question.

“Real estate developers in the 1980’s & 1990’s, more than 30 years ago, were entitled to massive write offs and depreciation which would, if one was actively building, show losses and tax losses in almost all cases,” Trump said. “Much was non monetary. Sometimes considered “tax shelter,…” you would get it by building, or even buying. You always wanted to show losses for tax purposes….almost all real estate developers did – and often re-negotiate with banks, it was sport.”

As he ran for the presidency in 2016 and since assuming power, Trump has often portrayed himself as a successful entrepreneur worth billions of dollars. But unlike U.S. presidents for the last four decades, he has balked at voluntarily disclosing his personal federal income tax returns.

He wrote a best-selling book, “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” but the newspaper called his financial dealings three decades ago a “Decade in the Red,” and “The Art of Losing Money.”

The Times said that in the 10-year period in question Trump lost more money year after year than any other U.S. taxpayer. The newspaper did not use the actual returns for its report but instead used information provided by someone who had access to the documents.

The bulk of Trump’s losses during that period came from his core businesses, including hotels, casinos and retail space inside apartment buildings.

They also include failed investments in an airline, a professional football team and unfinished plans for real estate developments.

According to the Times, Trump was able to maintain a life of luxury all those years because most of his money came from banks and bond holders who invested in the Trump empire. Trump also relied on his father’s wealth, according to the report.

But it appears Trump did not break any federal laws because the U.S. tax code allows people to deduct substantial business losses from their income, cutting their tax bills to little or nothing.

One of the president’s lawyers, Charles Harder, told the newspaper that the tax information it used was “demonstrably false.”

“IRS (Internal Revenue Service) transcripts, particularly before the days of electronic filing, are notoriously inaccurate … would not be able to provide a reasonable picture of any taxpayer’s return,” he told the Times.

Opposition Democratic lawmakers in the House of Representatives are trying to get their hands on Trump’s tax returns from 2013 to 2018 as part of their investigation into the president’s foreign business deals.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has so far declined, saying the request has no “legitimate legislative purpose.”

Disclosure of Trump’s tax returns is one of several current legislative oversight disputes the majority bloc of House Democrats is waging with Trump and his administration. Several panels are seeking background information uncovered by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump campaign links to Russia in 2016 and whether Trump, as president, obstructed justice by trying to thwart Mueller’s probe.

House Democrats are threatening to hold key Trump administration officials in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over information or to testify about their actions.

 
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VOA’s White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee was due to vote Wednesday on holding hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress over the Justice Department’s refusal to provide an unredacted copy of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on his investigation of Russian election interference.

Before the vote was held, the White House said President Donald Trump has “no other option than to make a protective assertion of executive privilege” over the materials the committee asked for in its subpoena, due to what Press Secretary Sarah Sanders called a “blatant abuse of power” by committee chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler.

“The American people see through Chairman Nadler’s desperate ploy to distract from the President’s historically successful agenda and our booming economy. Neither the White House nor Attorney General Barr will comply with Chairman Nadler’s unlawful and reckless demands,” Sanders said in a statement.

Committee leaders and Justice Department officials had met Tuesday to try to resolve their dispute, but the two sides each issued statements late in the day indicating they remained far apart.

The Justice Department’s positions came in the form of a letter to Nadler from Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd who accused Nadler’s committee of making “unreasonable demands” and provoking “an unnecessary conflict between our respective branches of government.”

Boyd said the Justice Department had acted within the law and regulations by offering a copy of the Mueller report “with as few redactions as possible,” but said committee leaders escalated the dispute by demanding all committee members be allowed to review that version, something he said would “risk violating court orders” in some ongoing cases.

Nadler in his statement said the White House had long ago waived its executive privilege over the materials requested in the subpoena, which include not only the full Mueller report but also the underlying documents from the investigation of Russia’s interference with the 2016 election, whether members of Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia, and whether the president obstructed justice.

If the Democrat-controlled Judiciary Committee approves the contempt citation for the attorney general, it would be taken up by the full House of Representatives. In theory, someone held in contempt could eventually be tried and, if convicted, face up to a year in prison. The Justice Department rarely pursues such referrals from Congress.

Nadler’s committee is also considering whether to hold Donald McGahn, the former White House counsel, in contempt of Congress if he refuses to testify before the committee later this month about the Mueller probe.

McGahn on Tuesday refused to comply with a subpoena for documents related to the investigation.  The White House had demanded he ignore the subpoena, and his lawyer said the documents were property of the White House and as such McGahn had no right to them.

Barr last month released a redacted copy of the Mueller report, with the prosecutor concluding neither Trump nor his campaign colluded with Russia, but reached no conclusion whether Trump, as president, obstructed justice during the 22-month investigation.  Barr decided the findings did not warrant obstruction charges against the president.

In an online statement under the name DOJ Alumni, more than 700 former federal prosecutors, so far, who worked in Republican and Democratic administrations said evidence Mueller uncovered would have resulted in obstruction charges against Trump, were it not for the long-standing Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot be charged with a criminal offense.

U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell says it is time for lawmakers to move on from the Russia investigation.

But top Democratic leaders immediately disputed McConnell. Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer called McConnell’s remarks “an astounding bit of whitewashing,” while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “That’s just not a fact. The case is not closed.”
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