As he threatens to shut down the southern border, President Donald Trump is considering bringing on a “border” or “immigration czar” to coordinate immigration policies across various federal agencies, according to four people familiar with the discussions.

Trump is weighing at least two potential candidates for the post: Former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli — two far-right conservatives with strong views on immigration, according to the people, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the conversations publicly.

The planning comes as Trump is threatening anew to close the U.S.-Mexico border as soon as this week if Mexico does not completely halt illegal immigration into the U.S. And it serves as the latest sign that the president plans to continue to hammer his hardline immigration rhetoric and policies as he moves past the special counsel’s Russia investigation and works to rally his base heading into his 2020 re-election campaign.

Aides hope the potential appointment, which they caution is still in the planning stages, would be the administration’s new “face” of the immigration issue and would placate both the president and his supporters, showing he is serious about the issue and taking action.

White House press aides, Kobach and Cuccinelli did not immediately respond Monday to requests for comment. Kobach previously served as vice chair of the president’s short-lived election fraud commission, which was disbanded after finding little evidence of widespread fraud.

Trump has often complained, both publicly and privately, about how he has not been able to do more to stop the tide of illegal immigration, which he has likened to an “invasion” and labeled a national security crisis. Arrests along the southern border have skyrocketed in recent months and border agents are now on track to make 100,000 arrests or denials of entry there this month. More than half are families with children.

Trump in December forced a government shutdown to try to pressure Congress to provide more money for his long-promised border wall and eventually signed an emergency declaration to circumvent them. He also moved Saturday to cut direct aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, where citizens are fleeing north and overwhelming U.S. resources at the southern border.

That focus on immigration has touched on numerous government agencies, including the departments of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, State, Defense and Justice. But not all of those departments are always on the same page.

One of the most glaring examples came last summer, when former Attorney General Jeff Sessions instituted a “zero tolerance” policy at the border without consulting others that caused a spike in the number of migrant children separated from their families.

The separated children were placed in HHS custody, but there was no tracking system in place to link parents with their children until a federal judge ordered one, causing widespread fear and concern about whether families would ever see each other again. Homeland Security also has to coordinate with the Pentagon on space to detain migrants as well as on wall funding.

It has yet to be decided whether the czar position, if Trump goes through with the plan, would be housed within Homeland Security or within the White House, which would not require Senate confirmation.

A person positioned within the White House could coordinate immigration policy across various agencies, working closely with aides who are deeply involved in immigration policy, including Stephen Miller, Jared Kushner, national security adviser John Bolton and Kirstjen Nielsen, the Homeland Security secretary.

Appointing a person who is based within Homeland Security could be trickier because the department’s agency heads are all Senate-confirmed positions and, in the case of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, are longtime immigration officials with decades of experience dealing with the border.

While immigration officials would welcome an adviser focused specifically on policy across the varying agencies, the names being floated are likely to spark backlash and criticism.

Kobach, an immigration hardliner, ran a failed bid for governor promising to drive immigrants living in the U.S. illegally out of the country and has recently been working for a nonprofit corporation, WeBuildtheWall Inc., which has been raising private money to build Trump’s wall. Cuccinelli, meanwhile, has advocated for denying citizenship to American-born children of parents living in the U.S. illegally, limiting in-state tuition at public universities only to those who are citizens or legal residents, and allowing workers to file lawsuits when an employer knowingly hires someone living in the country illegally for taking a job from a “law abiding competitor.”

Thomas Homan, the former acting ICE director, has also been mentioned as a potential pick, according to one of the people familiar with the talks.
…

Aides to Joe Biden struck a more aggressive tone on Monday as the former vice president faced scrutiny over his past behavior toward women.

In a statement, Biden spokesman Bill Russo blasted “right wing trolls” from “the dark recesses of the internet” for conflating images of Biden embracing acquaintances, colleagues and friends in his official capacity during swearing-in ceremonies with uninvited touching. 

The move came on a day in which a second woman said Biden had acted inappropriately, touching her face with both hands and rubbing noses with her in 2009. The allegation by Amy Lappos, a former aide to Democratic Rep. Jim Hines of Connecticut, followed a magazine essay by former Nevada politician Lucy Flores, who wrote that Biden kissed her on the back of the head in 2014.

Affectionate mannerisms

The developments underscored the challenge facing Biden should he decide to seek the White House. Following historic wins in the 2018 midterms, Democratic politics is dominated by energy from women. The allegations could leave the 76-year-old Biden, long known for his affectionate mannerisms, appearing out of touch with the party as the Democratic presidential primary begins.

Lappos told The Associated Press that she and other Himes aides were helping out at a fundraiser in a private home in Hartford, Connecticut, in October 2009 when Biden entered the kitchen to thank the group for pitching in. 

“After he finished speaking, he stopped to talk to us about how important a congressional staff is, which I thought was awesome,” Lappos said.

She said she was stunned as Biden moved toward her. 

“He wrapped both his hands around my face and pulled me in,” said Lappos, who is now 43. “I thought, `Oh, God, he’s going to kiss me.’ Instead, he rubbed noses with me.” Biden said nothing, she said, then moved off. She said the experience left her feeling “weird and uncomfortable” and was “absolutely disrespectful of my personal boundaries.” 

The Hartford Courant first reported Lappos’ assertion. 

Russo didn’t directly respond to Lappos, instead referring to a Sunday statement in which Biden said he doesn’t believe he has acted inappropriately during his long public life. The former vice president said in that statement: “We have arrived at an important time when women feel they can and should relate their experiences, and men should pay attention. And I will.”

Biden hasn’t made a final decision on whether to run for the White House. But aides who weren’t authorized to discuss internal conversations and spoke on condition of anonymity said there were no signs that his team was slowing its preparations for a campaign.

Light response from rivals 

Biden’s potential Democratic rivals haven’t rushed to back him up. Over the weekend, presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand came closest to calling out the former vice president. Warren said Biden “needs to give an answer” about what occurred. Gillibrand said, “If Vice President Biden becomes a candidate, this is a topic he’ll have to engage on further.”

Ultraviolet, a women’s advocacy group, tweeted: “Joe Biden cannot paint himself as a champion of women and then refuse to listen and learn from a woman who says his actions demeaned her. Good intentions don’t matter if the actions are inappropriate. Do better, Joe. And thank you (at)LucyFlores for coming forward.”
…

When Kamala Harris made her much-heralded arrival in Washington as California’s first black U.S. senator, she made a curious early decision.

 

Within months of her swearing-in, she sponsored a bill urging states to eliminate cash bail, denouncing the system as a scourge on the poor and communities of color.

 

That position would become a key part of her criminal justice reform platform. But her choice surprised some bail reform advocates back in California. In her seven years as a district attorney, and then six as attorney general, Harris was absent on the issue, they say. In fact, less than a year earlier, her office defended the cash bail system in a pair of federal court cases, shifting course only weeks before she entered the Senate.

 

“For her entire career she used some of the highest money bail amounts in the country to keep people in jail cells and saddle poor families with financial debt,” said Alec Karakatsanis, an attorney who has brought several legal challenges to California’s bail system, “and as soon as she had no influence on that issue practically, she announces she has a different view on it.”

 

Now a presidential candidate, Harris is casting herself as a progressive who consistently leveraged her power in the justice system to further civil rights causes and advocate for the disadvantaged. She has pledged a wholesale overhaul of the country’s fractured criminal justice system, arguing for marijuana legalization, bail reform and a moratorium on the death penalty.

 

But when she had a chance to take a bold stand on these issues as a top law enforcement officer, Harris often opted for a careful approach or defended the status quo. Observers of her career note some of her key positions, like her opposition to cash bail, came at politically opportune moments, after public views had shifted on race, inequality and bias in the justice system.

 

“I never had a sense she was forward thinking or reforming,” said John Raphling, a bail reform advocate and senior researcher at Human Rights Watch who faced off against Harris’s state Justice Department as a criminal defense attorney. “Bail reform is a trendy issue, and a lot of politicians are jumping on it and saying this is unfair. I don’t have any evidence that Harris was seeing that unfairness back when she was attorney general — but to her credit, we evolve, we learn, we see things.”

California Attorney General

 

Harris’ supporters say as a prosecutor she was tasked with upholding the law and, as attorney general, defending the state, not making policy. She had limited ability to effect change within the rigid structure of the courts, they argue.

 

“Everyone who has experienced the criminal justice system knows it’s broken,” said Lateefah Simon, a civil rights activist who worked for Harris in San Francisco. “She would say, ‘we’re confined by the rules of the law, and in the areas where we have discretion, we are going to work to try to move justice.'”

 

“I deeply know her convictions about what could be possible and what we needed to do, but also what the boundaries and limitations were,” she said.

 

Simon said Harris worked to hire more people of color as prosecutors. In her first year as San Francisco district attorney, she launched a re-entry program designed to keep low-level drug offenders from returning to prison. That same year she refused to seek the death penalty for a man who killed a police officer, infuriating the Bay Area political establishment and creating friction with the law enforcement community.

 

But in many cases throughout her career Harris embraced the traditional role of prosecutor.

 

Her office defended wrongful convictions, fighting to keep behind bars those who judges determined should go free. She refused to take a position on a pair of sentencing reform ballot measures, arguing she must remain neutral because her office was responsible for preparing ballot text. She defended the death penalty in court, setting aside her personal opposition to capital punishment.

 

In response to critics who’ve pushed her to use her power in the courts to usher in change, she told The New York Times in 2016, “I have a client, I don’t get to choose my client.”

Moratorium on Death Penalty, Criminalizing Truancy

 

Harris says she would call for a federal moratorium on the death penalty if elected president.

 

Harris’ law enforcement approach has at times put her out of step with California’s activist community. When she pushed a controversial policy that criminalized truancy, threatening to jail parents of children who missed too much school, even Harris’ staff “winced at the plan,” she wrote in her first book released just in time for her campaign for attorney general in 2010.

 

The program has since become a source of tension with criminal justice advocates, who see it as sign of Harris’ outdated approach to dealing with problems that stem from poverty.

 

In a recent NPR interview, Harris said her truancy initiative was not designed to punish vulnerable families, but “put a spotlight” on the problem and direct resources to needy families. Her campaign hails the effort as a success, and supporters have lauded Harris for prioritizing a child’s education.

 

“As a result of our initiative, which never resulted in any parent going to jail — never — because that was never the goal,” Harris said.

 

But Harris’s legacy remains on the state’s books: She authored a state-wide truancy law modeled after her San Francisco program. It has resulted in hundreds of parents in often less affluent and less politically liberal California counties being prosecuted.

 

Harris’ approach at the time was considered smart politics for a politician seeking to run statewide. Throughout her career, Harris worked to win over powerful police unions. She refused to support a bill requiring her office to investigate shootings involving law enforcement officers. In 2015, she declined to back statewide standards for body cameras, arguing that individual departments should decide how to use the technology.

 

“If you offend all the police chiefs and sheriffs of California, you’re probably not going to get re-elected as the attorney general of California, and if you’re not elected, how do you engage in any of the reforms you want to do?” said Jim Bueermann, a former California police chief who worked on Harris’ transition to the attorney general’s office.

From Law Enforcement to Legislating

 

As Harris transitioned from law enforcement to legislating, the politics of criminal justice issues were changing fast.

 

The deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police in 2014 and 2015 prompted outcry and spawned the Black Lives Matter movement. Democrats began rethinking their tough-on-crime strategies, focusing more on inequality and abuse in the system. Prosecutors and police came under increasing scrutiny for their roles.

 

Harris’ views appear to have been changing, too.

 

In 2014, she was opposed to legalizing recreational marijuana, and when she ran against a Republican challenger for re-election as attorney general she took the more conservative view: He wanted to legalize. Harris laughed at the idea in a local television interview.

 

But Harris’s public tone changed as speculation grew about her running for president in 2020. Last year, Harris endorsed Democratic Rep. Cory Booker’s bill for federal legalization of marijuana. She argued on Twitter that “making marijuana legal at the federal level is the smart thing to do and it’s the right thing to do.” She released a video declaring that “marijuana laws are not applied and enforced in the same way for all people.”

 

Last month, she went as far as acknowledging to a pair of morning radio hosts that she’s used recreational marijuana: “I have, and I did inhale; that was a long time ago.”

 

For Ron Gold, the Republican who ran against her in 2014 and who supported recreational legalization when she did not, Harris’ stance on marijuana is indicative of her tendency to take a position “that’s popular, but not necessarily held strongly by the candidate, it’s a position that curries favor with a segment of the population,” he said.

 

Some see a similar pattern when it comes to the call for bail reform.

 

Shortly after announcing her presidential bid in January, Harris declared on Twitter: “It’s long past time to address bail reform across the country.”

 

“This is a serious injustice,” she wrote.

 

Three years earlier, Harris’s office was defending cash bail in a federal case.

 

“Neither the bail law nor the bail schedule discriminate on the basis of wealth, poverty, or economic status of any kind,” she wrote. In response to the notion that money bail schemes unfairly punish low-income defendants, Harris wrote, “the state is not constitutionally required to remove obstacles not of its own creation.”

 

Harris appears to have shifted her stance 10 months later. In December of 2016, Harris filed a motion in a case challenging the application of California’s money bail laws saying the system is deserving “of intense scrutiny.” She pledged not to defend any bail scheme that fails to take into account a defendant’s ability to pay. Three weeks later she was sworn in to the Senate.

 

Still, she asked the judge to toss the case, arguing that the laws were constitutional even if the way some counties implemented those laws was not.

 

“The bail system at issue here does not categorically deny bail to any group of individuals,” she wrote.

 

The move perplexed bail reform advocates who say she could have used her position of power to do more as the top law enforcement official in the state, overseeing thousands of prosecutors who each day requested cash bail for those they charged with crimes.

 

“I’m glad she’s come to the right position now, but it’s too late for tens of thousands of Californians, real human beings who have been detained in jail every day in California throughout the whole state, that the attorney general could have stopped,” said Phil Telfeyan, one of the plaintiff’s attorneys in the bail cases.

 

Harris’ campaign declined to answer questions about when and why Harris’ views on marijuana and bail reform shifted.

 

Campaign spokesman Ian Sams noted the political arena, not the courtroom, is the appropriate place to address policy problems.

 

“As senator,” he said, “she has aggressively confronted the policy question by proposing a bipartisan federal law to end cash bail.”

 

Simon, the civil rights advocate who worked with Harris, said she often say Harris spoke, privately, in frustration about cash bail and other elements of the criminal justice system while she was a prosecutor. But still, Harris had to work within its confines, Simon said.

 

“Prosecutors and lawmakers are different,” she said, “as a lawmaker, you actually get to make laws. As a prosecutor, you must follow them.”

 

Advocates say they’re cautiously optimistic about Harris’ legislative efforts, and are glad to see the issue in the political spotlight. But they note her bill, which she co-wrote with Republican Sen. Rand Paul, endorsed the use of controversial risk-assessment tools to determine who should be released from jail and who should remain behind bars.

 

Raphling said Harris’ office has been receptive to feedback. Still, he said she never indicated a progressive stance on the issue before and her commitment remains to be seen.

 

“I give her credit for wanting to tackle bail reform, and people are listening,” Raphling said. “The question is, and this is an open question, what kind of reform is she going to push?”
…

After losing in Congress, President Donald Trump is counting on the courts to kill off “Obamacare.” But some cases are going against him, and time is not on his side as he tries to score a big win for his re-election campaign.

Two federal judges in Washington, D.C., this past week blocked parts of Trump’s health care agenda: work requirements for some low-income people on Medicaid, and new small business health plans that don’t have to provide full benefits required by the Affordable Care Act.

But in the biggest case, a federal judge in Texas ruled last December that the ACA is unconstitutional and should be struck down in its entirety. That ruling is now on appeal. At the urging of the White House, the Justice Department said this past week it will support the Texas judge’s position and argue that all of “Obamacare” must go.

A problem for Trump is that the litigation could take months to resolve — or longer — and there’s no guarantee he’ll get the outcomes he wants before the 2020 election.

“Was this a good week for the Trump administration? No,” said economist Gail Wilensky, who headed up Medicare under former Republican President George H.W. Bush. “But this is the beginning of a series of judicial challenges.”

It’s early innings in the court cases, and “the clock is going to run out,” said Timothy Jost, a retired law professor who has followed the Obama health law since its inception.

“By the time these cases get through the courts there simply isn’t going to be time for the administration to straighten out any messes that get created, much less get a comprehensive plan through Congress,” added Jost, who supports the ACA.

In the Texas case, Trump could lose by winning.

If former President Barack Obama’s health law is struck down entirely, Congress would face an impossible task: pass a comprehensive health overhaul to replace it that both Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Trump can agree to. The failed attempt to repeal “Obamacare” in 2017 proved to be toxic for congressional Republicans in last year’s midterm elections and they are in no mood to repeat it.

“The ACA now is nine years old and it would be incredibly disruptive to uproot the whole thing,” said Thomas Barker, an attorney with the law firm Foley Hoag, who served as a top lawyer at the federal Health and Human Services department under former Republican President George W. Bush. “It seems to me that you can resolve this issue more narrowly than by striking down the ACA.”

Trump seems unfazed by the potential risks.

“Right now, it’s losing in court,” he asserted Friday, referring to the Texas case against “Obamacare.”

The case “probably ends up in the Supreme Court,” Trump continued. “But we’re doing something that is going to be much less expensive than Obamacare for the people … and we’re going to have (protections for) pre-existing conditions and will have a much lower deductible. So, and I’ve been saying that, the Republicans are going to end up being the party of health care.”

There’s no sign that his administration has a comprehensive health care plan, and there doesn’t seem to be a consensus among Republicans in Congress.

A common thread in the various health care cases is that they involve lower-court rulings for now, and there’s no telling how they may ultimately be decided. Here’s a status check on major lawsuits:

‘Obamacare’ repeal

U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth, Texas, ruled that when Congress repealed the ACA’s fines for being uninsured, it knocked the constitutional foundation out from under the entire law. His ruling is being appealed by attorneys general from Democratic-led states to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

The challenge to the ACA was filed by officials from Texas and other GOP-led states. It’s now fully supported by the Trump administration, which earlier had argued that only the law’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions and its limits on how much insurers could charge older, sicker customers were constitutionally tainted. All sides expect the case to go to the Supreme Court, which has twice before upheld the ACA.

Medicaid work requirements

U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg in Washington, D.C., last week blocked Medicaid work requirements in Kentucky and Arkansas approved by the Trump administration. The judge questioned whether the requirements were compatible with Medicaid’s central purpose of providing “medical assistance” to low-income people. He found that administration officials failed to account for coverage losses and other potential harm, and sent the Health and Human Services Department back to the drawing board.

The Trump administration says it will continue to approve state requests for work requirements, but has not indicated if it will appeal.

Small-business health plans

U.S. District Court Judge John D. Bates last week struck down the administration’s health plans for small business and sole proprietors, which allowed less generous benefits than required by the ACA. Bates found that administration regulations creating the plans were “clearly an end-run” around the Obama health law and also ran afoul of other federal laws governing employee benefits.

The administration said it disagrees but hasn’t formally announced an appeal.

Also facing challenges in courts around the country are an administration regulation that bars federally funded family planning clinics from referring women for abortions and a rule that allows employers with religious and moral objections to opt out of offering free birth control to women workers as a preventive care service.
…

Washington is focused yet again on immigration and border security after President Donald Trump threatened to close America’s southern border with Mexico and declared he wants U.S. aid terminated to three Central American nations. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, Trump’s moves come amid a continuing surge of undocumented migrant arrivals that have strained federal resources and personnel along the U.S.-Mexico border.
…

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, a possible Democratic challenger to President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, denied Sunday that he “acted inappropriately” in the face of allegations from a Nevada lawmaker that he unexpectedly  touched her shoulders and kissed her hair at a 2014 political rally.

Lucy Flores, a former Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor in the western state of Nevada, recalled the incident on CNN, saying that “very unexpectedly and out of nowhere, I feel Joe Biden put his hands on my shoulders, get up very close to me from behind, lean in, smell my hair and then plant a slow kiss on the top of my head.”

She called the moment “shocking,” adding, “You don’t expect that kind of intimacy from someone so powerful and someone who you just have no relationship (with) whatsoever to touch you and to feel you and to be so close to you in that way.”

Biden said: “In my many years on the campaign trail and in public life, I have offered countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support and comfort. And not once – never – did I believe I acted inappropriately. If it is suggested I did so, I will listen respectfully. But it was never my intention.”

Political surveys show the 76-year-old Biden leading a long list of Democrats seeking the party’s nomination to oust Trump from the White House, but he has not yet formally declared his candidacy even as he has made frequent speeches at campaign-style rallies in recent weeks.

He has twice unsuccessfully sought the party’s presidential nomination, before serving for eight years as vice president under former President Barack Obama, ending in early 2017.

In the lead-up to his presumed candidacy, Biden has faced new questions about his public hands-on attention to women in public settings over the years and notably his 1991 treatment of Anita Hill when Biden, as a U.S. senator, chaired the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.

Hill is a college law professor who accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment when they worked together at a U.S. government agency, but the all-male panel headed by Biden largely dismissed her allegations, with Thomas winning narrow confirmation to the country’s highest court, where he still sits.

Biden in recent days has said he regretted that he “couldn’t come up with a way to get her the kind of hearing she deserved,” even though he led the committee.

Biden is not believed to have apologized personally to Hill in the nearly three decades since the hearing. But as he seemingly moves toward another presidential candidacy in an era of new accountability for men in powerful positions of their treatment of women in years past, Biden is facing new calls for further explanation of his role in the Thomas confirmation hearings.
…

Several Republican-led state legislatures are advocating for women to gain over-the-counter access to birth control in what they say is an effort to reduce unplanned pregnancies and abortions.

State legislatures in Arkansas and Iowa, for example, are working on legislation that would allow women older than 18 the ability to receive birth control from a pharmacist rather than going first to a doctor for a prescription. The measures are seeing bipartisanship support in those states and come after similar laws have passed in nearly a dozen other states.

​Arkansas legislation

Arkansas state Representative Aaron Pilkington, a Republican, said he started working on the bill after seeing “about a 15 percent decrease of teen births” after other states passed similar legislation. Arkansas consistently has one of the highest birth rates among teenagers in the country.

Pilkington said support for the bill “in many ways, it’s very generational. … I find that a lot of younger people and women are really in favor of this, especially mothers.”

According to the Oral Contraceptive (OCs) Over the Counter (OTC) Working Group, a reproductive rights group, more than 100 countries, including Russia, much of South America and countries in Africa, allow access to birth control without a prescription. 

Women are required to get a doctor’s prescription to obtain and renew birth control in most of the U.S., much of Europe, Canada and Australia, according to the reproductive rights group.

Pilkington, who identifies as a “pro-life legislator,” said he brought the bill forward partly as an effort to counter unwanted pregnancies and abortions. The bill would require a doctor’s visit about every two years to renew the prescription.

Rural residents

Arkansas has a population of about 3 million people, a third of whom live in rural areas. Pilkington said the bill would likely benefit women who reside in rural areas or those who have moved to new cities and aren’t under a doctor’s care yet.

“A lot of times when they’re on the pill and they run out, they’ve gotta get a doctor’s appointment, and the doctor says, ‘I can’t see you for two months,’” he said. “Some people have to drive an hour and a half to see their PCP (primary care physician) or OB-GYN (obstetrician-gynecologist), so this makes a lot of sense.”

What Pilkington is proposing is not new. In 2012, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists endorsed the idea of making birth control available without a prescription. Today, at least 11 other states have passed legislation allowing for patients to go directly to the pharmacist, with some caveats.

In October, ahead of a tight midterm race, Iowa Republican Governor Kim Reynolds raised a few eyebrows when she announced she would prioritize over-the-counter access to birth control in her state. Like Pilkington, she cited countering abortion as a main driver behind the proposed legislation. The bill closely models much of the language used in another Republican-sponsored bill In Utah that passed last year with unanimous support.

The planned Iowa legislation comes after the Republican-led state Legislature passed a bill in 2017 that rejected $3 million in federal funds for family-planning centers like Planned Parenthood.

The loss of federal funds forced Planned Parenthood, a nonprofit organization that provides health care and contraception for women, to close four of its 12 clinics in the state.

Since then, Jamie Burch Elliott, public affairs manager of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland in Iowa, said that anecdotal evidence shows that sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies have gone up.

“With family planning, it takes time to see the impacts, so there are long-term studies going on to really study the impact of this,” said Burch Elliott. “Right away, we saw STI (sexually transmitted infections) and STD (sexually transmitted diseases) rates go up, particularly chlamydia and gonorrhea. As far as unintended pregnancy rates, we are hearing that they are rising, although the data is not out yet.”

Pro-life pushback

So far the Iowa legislation has received some pushback, mostly from a few pro-life groups.

The Iowa Right to Life organization has remained neutral on the issue of birth control, but the Iowa Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the bishops of Iowa, and Iowans for LIFE, a nonprofit anti-abortion organization, have come out against the bill, citing concerns that birth control should not be administered without a visit to a physician.

Maggie DeWitte, executive director of Iowans for LIFE, also pointed out that oral contraception can be an “abortifacient [that] sometimes cause abortions,” challenging Reynolds’ motivation for introducing the bill.

On the other hand, Iowa family-planning organizations and Democratic legislators are mostly on board.

“Policywise, I think this is really good,” said Heather Matson, a state representative of a district located just outside the state capital, Des Moines. She appreciated that insurance will still cover birth control, but took issue with the age restriction, saying she would like to see an option for people younger than 18. “Is it exactly the bill that I would have written, if given the opportunity? Not exactly.”

While Matson represents one of the fastest-growing districts in the country, she pointed to the number of “health care deserts” in rural Iowa, where a shortage of OB-GYNs is leading to the closure of some maternity wards.

Like Planned Parenthood’s Burch Elliott, Matson agreed that this bill would be just one step in providing more access to birth control for women in rural parts of the state.

“Even before Planned Parenthood was defunded, there wasn’t great access to birth control in Iowa to begin with,” Burch Elliott said. “Having said that, [this bill] is not a solution. Pharmacists are never going to be a replacement for Planned Parenthood, for example, where you’ll get STI and STD screenings, and any other cancer screenings or other preventive care that you might need.”

Regardless of whether the bills pass in Des Moines or Little Rock, Arkansas Representative Pilkington expects other states to follow suit.

“As the times have changed and you have a lot of conservative states like Tennessee, Arkansas, Utah (pass this legislation), I think it makes it way less of a partisan issue” and more of a good governance issue, he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we see other states kind of pushing this as well. Especially when they see the success that other states are having with this.”
…

The Trump administration wants to halt funding to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, the State Department confirmed Saturday.

“We are carrying out the president’s direction and ending [fiscal year] 2017 and [fiscal year] 2018 foreign assistance programs for the Northern Triangle,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement. “We will be engaging Congress as part of this process.”

The Northern Triangle refers to the three northern Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The three countries were set to receive about $500 million in aid in the 2018 fiscal year plus millions more that were left over from 2017, according to The Washington Post.

The move comes a day after U.S. President Donald Trump said the countries had “set up” migrant caravans that make their way to the United States.

“We were giving them $500 million. We were paying them tremendous amounts of money, and we’re not paying them anymore because they haven’t done a thing for us,” Trump said Friday. Trump also warned he was ready to close the southern border if Mexico doesn’t do more to push back migrants.

Congressional action would be needed to cut off aid to the three countries.

New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called Trump’s order a “reckless announcement” and urged Democrats and Republicans alike to reject it.

Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat and chairman of the Hispanic Caucus, warned in a statement released Saturday that cutting off aid will further destabilize these countries.

“By cutting off desperately needed aid, the administration will deprive El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras of critical funds that help stabilize these countries by curbing migration push factors such as violence, gangs, poverty and insecurity. Ultimately, this short-sighted and flawed decision lays the groundwork for the humanitarian crisis at our border to escalate further,” he said.

Foreign aid and stability

The U.S. has viewed foreign aid programs to Central American countries as a vital component in stabilizing these countries, potentially reducing the flow of immigrants seeking to migrate to the United States. Under the Trump administration, aid to those countries began falling.

The U.S. provided about $131 million in aid to Guatemala, $98 million to Honduras, and $68 million to El Salvador in 2016, according to Reuters. The following year the funding fell to about $69 million for Guatemala, $66 million for Honduras and $46 million for El Salvador.

Michael Clemens, a senior fellow at The Center for Global Development, says the administration’s strategy to shape migration through aid needs to be done right.

“If what the United States wants to do is prevent irregular child migration in a way that works and is cost-effective, it should not do what it has traditionally done — spend 10 times as much on border enforcement trying to keep child migrants out as it spends on security assistance to the region. In fact, smartly packaged security assistance is the only things that have been shown to reduce violence effectively and cost effectively,” he said.

The U.S. has had an inconstant history of involvement in Central America, with some arguing that it is American foreign policy in the region has caused the instability and inequality at the root of the current crisis.

Jeff Faux, at the left-leaning think tank the Economic Policy Institute, argues that U.S. policy created the immigration crisis.

“For at least 150 years, the United States has intervened in these countries with arms, political pressure and money in order to support alliances between our business and military elites and theirs — who prosper by impoverishing their people,” Faux wrote in an article for The American Prospect magazine last year.
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A federal judge in Alaska has overturned U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempt to open vast areas of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans to oil and gas leasing. 

 

The decision issued late Friday by U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason leaves intact President Barack Obama’s policies putting the Arctic’s Chukchi Sea, part of the Arctic’s Beaufort Sea and a large swath of the Atlantic Ocean off the U.S. East Coast off-limits to oil leasing. 

 

Trump’s attempt to undo Obama’s protections was unlawful and a violation of the federal Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, Gleason ruled. Presidents have the power under that law to withdraw areas from the national oil and gas leasing program, as Obama did, but only Congress has the power to add areas to the leasing program, she said. 

 

The Obama-imposed leasing prohibitions will remain in effect unless and until revoked by Congress, Gleason said in her ruling. 

 

Trump’s move to put offshore Arctic and Atlantic areas back into play for oil development came in a 2017 executive order that was part of his energy dominance agenda. The order was among a series of actions that jettisoned Obama administration environmental and climate-change initiatives. 

 

Expanded program

The Trump administration has proposed a vastly expanded offshore oil leasing program to start this year. The five-year Trump leasing program would offer two lease sales a year in Arctic waters and at least two lease sales a year in the Atlantic. The Trump plan also calls for several lease sales in remote marine areas off Alaska, like the southern Bering Sea, that are considered to hold negligible potential for oil. 

 

Obama had pulled much of the Arctic off the auction block following a troubled offshore Arctic exploration program pursued by Royal Dutch Shell. Shell spent at least $7 billion trying to explore the Chukchi and part of the Beaufort. The company wrecked one of its drill ships in a grounding and completed only one well to depth. It abandoned the program in 2015 and relinquished its leases.  

Gleason, in a separate case, delivered another decision Friday that blocked the Trump administration’s effort to overturn an Obama-era environmental decision. 

 

Gleason struck down a land trade intended to clear the way for a road to be built though sensitive wetlands in Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. The Obama administration, after a four-year environmental impact statement process, determined that the land trade and road would cause too much harm to the refuge to be justified.

Trump’s then-interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, broke the law when he summarily reversed the Obama policy without addressing the facts found in the previous administration’s study of the issue, Gleason ruled.
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The United States is calling on China to stop what it calls its growing oppression of people of faith, noting the detention of a million ethnic Uighur Muslims. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has the story from the State Department.
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Twenty years ago, Yang Li left northeast China in the prime of her life and crossed the Pacific Ocean borne by her own American dream.

She became an American citizen, founded a spa and massage business in Florida, participated in community activities, attended events where American politicians appeared, and posted on social media photos of herself with U.S. President Donald Trump.

That photo opportunity ignited a media firestorm around Yang amid accusations that she sold Chinese businessmen access to American politicians, actions that may have violated the U.S. campaign finance laws.

Robert Kraft’s arrest

Yang’s name surfaced in the U.S. media March 8. That was days after police in Florida arrested Robert Kraft, the owner of American football’s New England Patriots, on Feb. 22, on allegations that he was soliciting prostitution at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Florida. Kraft has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Yang told NBC News on March 20 that she sold the spa seven years ago.

At the time Kraft was arrested, Yang ran a public relations business that provided opportunities for Chinese businessmen to have access to Trump at his Florida hotel and golf course. Yang’s company, GY US Investments LLC, also helped U.S. firms “expand their brand image in the modern Chinese marketplace.” Although the GY US website is down, the business remains open, according to public records in Palm Beach County.

The Miami Herald reported a trail of campaign donations to Trump funneled by Yang through family, her work, and business associates.

Yang told NBC News she does not know Trump despite the selfie she posted after a Super Bowl football championship party Feb. 3 at Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club.

“I love Americans,” Yang told NBC, adding that she immigrated in 1999 and is now a U.S. citizen. “I love our president. I don’t do anything wrong.”

Suggestions of espionage

But media speculation about her ties to the Chinese government has dogged Yang since the days after Kraft’s arrest, as have suggestions that she may be a spy.

The result is that Democratic leadership in both houses of Congress have asked the FBI to launch criminal and anti-espionage investigations into Yang’s businesses and activities.

Yang, 45, has in turn used the media to say the American institutions she has long cherished are unfairly targeting her. She has scoffed at the spy charges and said she had never been involved with prostitution and did not violate any laws when she brought guests to Trump events.

“I’m a Republican,” she told NBC. “I am Chinese. That’s why the Democrats are investigating me.”

Yang took the English name Cindy, an homage to the American supermodel turned businesswoman, Cindy Crawford.

“I like her,” Yang told NBC News.

Entering the political fray

Yang has worked as a journalist, ran a media company and an art promotion agency, sold medical supplies, and worked in the spa/massage industry long before entering the American political fray.

Through Yang’s lawyer, Voice of America has requested the opportunity to interview Yang. Although no decision has been reached, the invitation remains open.

Yang was active in Chinese political and social circles in South Florida.

Yang served as president of the Florida branch of the Chinese Cheongsam Association, which celebrates the traditional form-fitting Chinese dress, also known as a qipao. On the website of her consulting company, Yang said she was vice president of the Miami branch of the Chinese Association for Science and Technology, USA. The association was established in 2016.

According to Chinese media reports, Yang participated in the local chapter of the Council for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reunification of China (CPPRC), which was founded in 2016. The organization is believed to have close ties to Beijing.

Yang also set up a non-governmental organization, the Women’s Charity Foundation, in 2015.

Suddenly a public figure

Outside southern Florida, Yang wasn’t a public figure until she became national news.

Cliff Zhonggang Li, executive director of the National Committee of Asian American Republicans (Asian GOP) has worked with Yang. 

“Yang Li has tried a lot of business,” he told VOA. “She’s a very energetic and capable person, and I think she’s always on the lookout for new opportunities.”

Li Zhonggang first met Yang at a May 2015 cheongsam association event she had organized. In the midst of founding the Asian GOP, Li Zhonggang pegged Yang as a people person with organizational skills.

“I thought it would be very good if her energy could help us to promote Chinese-American political participation,” Li Zhonggang said.

Yang helped mobilize more than 200 Chinese-Americans to attend a June 15 rally where Jeb Bush announced his candidacy for president. Asian GOP supporters occupied VIP seats as the group made its debut.

Volunteering as fundraiser

At other Republican Party events, Yang met Karyn Turk, who was Mrs. Florida 2016, a conservative commentator and a radio host.

“I found her to be a very friendly person, who did not have English as the first language,” Turk told VOA. “So she was kind of hard to communicate with, but she always seemed to be very friendly with a smile on her face.”

Li Zhonggang said that after the Bush rally, Yang volunteered to be a fundraiser for the Asian GOP and act as an outreach director for its Florida chapter.

Now Karyn Turk, and her husband, Evan Turk, are respectively Yang’s spokesperson and lawyer, helping Yang deal with what Karyn Turk calls “another media hype.” Li Zhonggang believes that a media “witch hunt” targeting Trump ensnared an innocent Yang.

The Turks and others who know Yang told VOA she has become caught in a web of negative exposure and false speculation. American political insiders say it’s not difficult to make contact with Trump, or other politicians, and that people who are politically active or who make donations, often have opportunities to meet high-ranking officials.

However, Li Zhonggang, of the Asian GOP, said some Chinese-Americans use photo ops with political figures to improve their visibility in the community as a way of making money for themselves.

Amid the publicity, Li Zhonggang’s organization has severed ties with Yang. He said that this is not because Yang did anything wrong, but because his organization was overwhelmed by the media “bombardment.”

​Investigation sought

Democratic leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, asked FBI Director Christopher Wray last week to launch a criminal and counterintelligence investigation into Yang.

In a letter, House Democrats such as Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, wrote: “Ms. Yang’s activities may only be those of an unscrupulous actor allegedly selling access to politicians for profit, her activities also could permit adversary governments or their agents access to these same politicians to acquire potential material for blackmail or other even more nefarious purposes.”

The FBI has not commented.

Yang’s attorney, Evan Turk, said his client’s reputation had been damaged and she is another Trump supporter who’s become a media casualty.

Yang said that after the exposure, she couldn’t eat or sleep well and lost 15 pounds because, she told NBC News, “I’m so scared.”
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U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar has a way of attracting attention.

Four months ago, the Minnesota Democrat became the first Somali-American and one of the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress. Her election was heralded by many as a sign of a more diverse generation of politicians coming to power on Capitol Hill.

But just weeks into her first congressional term, Omar ignited a controversy with a tweet invoking an offensive trope suggesting U.S. lawmakers’ support for Israel was swayed by money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful lobbying group.

Shortly after her apology for that tweet, Omar suggested in a public statement that lawmakers held a dual loyalty to the U.S. and Israel. 

Omar’s comments triggered two congressional resolutions condemning hate speech.

Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, including senior Democratic leadership, strongly criticized Omar for making remarks that many felt crossed the line into anti-Semitism.

In a speech on Sunday to the opening session of AIPAC’s annual conference in Washington, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland declared that “what weakens us … is when, instead of engaging in legitimate debate about policies, someone questions the motives of his or her fellow citizens.”

The controversy jeopardized Omar’s high-profile assignment on the House Foreign Relations Committee while giving a House freshman an unusually high-profile role in a long-running and contentious U.S. foreign policy debate over Israel and its treatment of Palestinians. 

But in the Minneapolis-centered 5th Congressional District that Omar represents, the nation’s largest Somali-American community sees the controversy differently. The Somali-Americans who watched the election of one-time refugee Omar with pride just a short time ago are now suspicious of and troubled by the negative attention.

WATCH: Controversial Start for Rep. Ilhan Omar

“The reason there is a lot of attention on Ilhan Omar is because a lot of differences came into the Congress  a Muslim woman, a hijab woman, an African woman — a lot of differences. That’s what brings attention,” Somali-American Bashir Jama told VOA recently at Village Market, one of Minneapolis’ largest Somali malls. 

“We were watching the criticism of Ilhan Omar but we do not believe she is behaving with hatred towards Jewish people. I think that’s a misinterpretation against her,” Ali Muse, a Somali-American, told VOA. 

Somali-Americans make up only part of Omar’s racially diverse district. Overall, it’s 70 percent white and trends toward a young, urban and highly educated population. The district was the first to elect a Muslim to Congress, sending now-Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to Washington beginning in 2006. 

The district also includes the St. Louis Park suburbs that are home to a strong Jewish population. Leaders in the Minnesota Jewish community have been deeply hurt by Omar’s allegations but are also aware of the fine line they have to walk to maintain the historically close ties between the Somali and Jewish communities here in Minnesota. 

“This is not an attack or critique on Congresswoman Omar because she’s a woman of color because she’s of Somali descent, because she wears a hijab,” said  Avi S. Olitzky, a senior rabbi at Beth El Synagogue. But he says Omar’s comments are particularly dangerous in a growing atmosphere of anti-Semitism. 

“The language really echoed upon anti-Semitic tropes that have been used throughout the centuries, accusations of Jews having dual loyalties to foreign countries — specifically Israel — or Jews with their associations with money and buying political favor,” Olitzky told VOA. 

Jewish leaders have met with Omar and her staff to follow up on her comments and inform her about their hurtful consequences. They say this controversy should be an opportunity to inform the public about damaging stereotypes and caricatures, not about cutting off informed debate over U.S. foreign policy. 

“There is no reason why Israel, Palestine, the United States relationship with Israel should not be the subject of robust debate and discussion,” said Steve Hunegs, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas. “That’s the hallmark of American democracy. But when we descend to ugly comments, or indulgent stereotypes, or casting aspersions, that degrades our democracy.” 

Hunegs said he showed Omar and her staff a photograph of his cousin, who was killed in action fighting in World War II, to make the point that Jewish families are loyal to the United States and have made considerable sacrifices for that loyalty. 

Local Jewish leaders emphasize the ongoing conversation with Omar and her staff is ultimately about seeking better representation for this diverse district while avoiding divisiveness. 

“White nationalists seeking to divide natural allies of communities of color or Jewish people from Muslims — if we are challenging or fighting one another as opposed to challenging that ideology, they are able to continue to cause all of our communities harm,” Rabbi Michael Latz of the Shirtikvah Congregation in Minneapolis told VOA.  

Abdullahi Farah, the executive director of the Abubakar Islamic Center, one of the largest mosques in the Minneapolis area, told VOA the community did not support hateful speech in any form and looked forward to an ongoing dialogue in the community.

Omar’s own history, first as a refugee fleeing violence in Somalia to a camp in Kenya and then immigrating to the United States, informs her perspective on democratic debate, Khalid Mohammed told VOA. Mohammed worked on Omar’s campaign last year. 

“She is a war survivor,” Mohammed said. “So when you see her talking about injustices happening across the globe, it’s not because she just saying it for the sake of saying it. She deeply cares about it because she’d been through a struggle.” 

He does not see Omar’s challenge to U.S. foreign policy as an attack against Jews, but a criticism of what some see as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s increasingly harsh policies in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“When she talked about Israel, I don’t think she was going after Jewish people or their faith,” Mohammed said. “She was going after one individual — the prime minister of Israel and the violations that he’s been committing for a while and how the U.S. just turned its back on those policies.”  

Omar could not be reached for comment. In a March 17 Washington Post commentary, Omar said her experience as a refugee informed her desire to find “a balanced, inclusive approach” to a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians.

“When I criticize certain Israeli government actions in Gaza or settlements in the West Bank, it is because I believe these actions not only threaten the possibility of peace in the region — they also threaten the United States’ own national security interests,” Omar wrote.

Omar’s outspokenness has invited more than controversy. Mohammed pointed to an FBI investigation into a death threat against Omar written on the wall of a gas station in her district. Somali-Americans in Minneapolis also brought up a poster at a Republican-sponsored gathering in West Virginia linking Omar with the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the U.S. The state party denounced the sign even as Omar called it “the GOP’s anti-Muslim display.”

Ultimately, Omar’s re-election in 2020 could be at risk as voters in the 5th District weigh the consequences of a representative who courts controversy while provoking debate. The district is one of the most Democratic in the nation, meaning that a party primary challenge would be the best opportunity to unseat Omar. 

Olitzky said that while his synagogue does not get involved in endorsing candidates, challengers are already eyeing the seat a year and a half ahead of a potential primary.

Olitzky said, “I can probably count five to 10 off the top of my head right now of folks who are already considering running.”  
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