Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the global coalition fighting the Islamic State group, has resigned in protest over President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, a U.S. official said, joining Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in an administration exodus of experienced national security figures.

Only 11 days ago, McGurk had said it would be “reckless” to consider IS defeated and therefore would be unwise to bring American forces home. McGurk decided to speed up his original plan to leave his post in mid-February.

Appointed to the post by President Barack Obama in 2015 and retained by Trump, McGurk said in his resignation letter that the militants were on the run, but not yet defeated, and that the premature pullout of American forces from Syria would create the conditions that gave rise to IS. He also cited gains in accelerating the campaign against IS, but that the work was not yet done.

His letter, submitted Friday to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, was described to The Associated Press on Saturday by an official familiar with its contents. The official was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter before the letter was released and spoke on condition of anonymity.

In a tweet shortly after news of McGurk’s resignation broke, Trump again defended his decision to pull all of the roughly 2,000 U.S. forces from Syria in the coming weeks.

“We were originally going to be there for three months, and that was seven years ago – we never left,” Trump tweeted. “When I became President, ISIS was going wild. Now ISIS is largely defeated and other local countries, including Turkey, should be able to easily take care of whatever remains. We’re coming home!”

Although the civil war in Syria has gone on since 2011, the U.S. did not begin launching airstrikes against IS until September 2014, and American troops did not go into Syria until 2015.

McGurk, whose resignation is effective Dec. 31, was planning to leave the job in mid-February after a U.S.-hosted meeting of foreign ministers from the coalition countries, but he felt he could continue no longer after Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria and Mattis’ resignation, according to the official.

Trump declaration of a victory over IS has been roundly contradicted by his own experts’ assessments, and his decision to pull troops out was widely denounced by members of Congress, who called his action rash and dangerous.

Mattis, perhaps the most respected foreign policy official in the administration, announced on Thursday that he will leave by the end of February. He told Trump in a letter that he was departing because “you have a right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours.”

Trump defended his decision Saturday to order the troop withdrawal, tweeting, “Now ISIS is largely defeated and other local countries, including Turkey, should be able to easily take care of whatever remains. We’re coming home!”

The withdrawal decision will fulfill Trump’s goal of bringing troops home from Syria, but military leaders have pushed back for months, arguing that the IS group remains a threat and could regroup in Syria’s long-running civil war. U.S. policy has been to keep troops in place until the extremists are eradicated.

Among officials’ key concerns is that a U.S. pullout will leave U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces vulnerable to attacks by Turkey, the Syrian government and remaining IS fighters. The SDF, a Kurdish-led force, is America’s only military partner in Syria

A second official said McGurk on Friday was pushing for the U.S. to allow the SDF to reach out to troops allied with Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government for protection. McGurk argued that America had a moral obligation to help prevent the allied fighters from being slaughtered by Turkey, which considers the SDF an enemy.

McGurk said at a State Department briefing on Dec. 11 that “it would be reckless if we were just to say, ‘Well, the physical caliphate is defeated, so we can just leave now.’ I think anyone who’s looked at a conflict like this would agree with that.”

A week before that, Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. had a long way to go in training local Syrian forces to prevent a resurgence of IS and stabilize Syria. He said it would take 35,000 to 40,000 local troops in northeastern Syria to maintain security over the long term, but only about 20 percent of that number had been trained.

McGurk, 45, previously served as a deputy assistant secretary of state for Iraq and Iran, and during the negotiations for the landmark Iran nuclear deal by the Obama administration, led secret side talks with Tehran on the release of Americans imprisoned there.

McGurk, was briefly considered for the post of ambassador to Iraq after having served as a senior official covering Iraq and Afghanistan during President George W. Bush’s administration.

A former Supreme Court law clerk to the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, McGurk worked as a lawyer for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and joined Bush’s National Security Council staff, where in 2007 and 2008, he was the lead U.S. negotiator on security agreements with Iraq.

Taking over for now for McGurk will be his deputy, retired Lt. Gen. Terry Wolff, who served three tours of active duty in Iraq.

Jim Jeffrey, a veteran diplomat who was appointed special representative for Syria engagement in August, is expected to stay in his position, officials said.

IS militants still hold a string of villages and towns along the Euphrates River in eastern Syria, where they have resisted weeks of attacks by the U.S.-supported Syrian Democratic Forces to drive them out. The pocket is home to about 15,000 people, among them 2,000 IS fighters, according to U.S. military estimates.

But that figure could be as high as 8,000 militants, if fighters hiding out in the deserts south of the Euphrates River are also counted, according to according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict through networks of local informants. Military officials have also made it clear that IS fighters fleeing Euphrates River region have found refuge in other areas of the country, fueling concerns that they could regroup and rise again.

The SDF said Thursday: “The war against Islamic State has not ended and the group has not been defeated.”

VOA contributed to this report.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump has discussed firing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, Bloomberg reported Saturday.

Citing four people familiar with the discussions, Bloomberg reported Trump has become more frustrated with Powell after months of stock market losses and the central bank’s interest rate hike on Wednesday.

Advisers reportedly have warned Trump that firing Powell would further roil financial markets, yet they said Trump has discussed the matter many times in the past few days.

The sources who spoke with Bloomberg on condition of anonymity were not convinced Trump would fire Powell, and were hopeful the president’s anger over the situation would subside over the holidays.The White House and the Federal Reserve have declined to comment.

A firing of Powell would come after weeks of heavy losses in the markets. On Friday, equities closed their worst week since 2011, with the S&P 500 Index plummeting more than 7 percent and the Nasdaq Composite Index plunging into a bear market.

Trump has been busy shaking up his administration since the November midterm elections. He has announced the departures of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Defense Secretary James Mattis.
…

Christmas-season gridlock descended on the nation’s capital Saturday like an unwelcomed present just before the holiday as America’s elected leaders partially closed down the government over their inability to compromise on money for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Congressional Democrats are refusing to accede to President Donald Trump’s demands for $5 billion to start erecting his long-promised barrier, and the stalemate is a chaotic coda for Republicans in the waning days of their two-year reign controlling government.

Vice President Mike Pence, Trump son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner and White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney left the Capitol late Friday after hours of bargaining with congressional leaders produced no apparent compromise.

Mulvaney sent agency heads a memorandum telling them to “execute plans for an orderly shutdown.” He wrote that administration officials were “hopeful that this lapse in appropriations will be of short duration.” That expectation was widely shared.

With negotiations expected to resume, the House and Senate scheduled rare Saturday sessions. House members were told they would receive 24 hours’ notice before any vote.

The impasse blocks money for nine of 15 Cabinet-level departments and dozens of agencies, including the departments of Homeland Security, Transportation, Interior, Agriculture, State and Justice.

The disruption affects many government operations and the routines of 800,000 federal employees. Roughly 420,000 workers were deemed essential and will work unpaid just days before Christmas. An additional 380,000 will be furloughed, meaning they will stay home without pay.

Federal employees already were granted an extra day of vacation on Monday, Christmas Eve, thanks to an executive order that Trump signed this past week. The president did not go to Florida on Friday as planned for the holiday.

Those being furloughed include nearly everyone at NASA and 52,000 workers at the Internal Revenue Service. About 8 in 10 employees of the National Park Service were to stay home; many parks were expected to close.

The Senate passed legislation ensuring that workers will receive back pay. The House seemed sure to follow suit.

Some agencies, including the Pentagon and the departments of Veterans Affairs and Health and Human Services, were already funded and will operate as usual.

The U.S. Postal Service, busy delivering packages for the holiday season, will not be affected because it’s an independent agency. Social Security checks will be mailed, troops will remain on duty and food inspections will continue.

Also still functioning will be the FBI, the Border Patrol and the Coast Guard. Transportation Security Administration officers will continue to staff airport checkpoints and air traffic controllers will be on the job.

Trump has savored the prospect of a shutdown over the wall for months. Last week he said he would be “proud” to close down the government, and on Friday said he was “totally prepared for a very long” closure. Many of Congress’ most conservative Republicans welcomed such a confrontation, but most GOP lawmakers have wanted to avoid one because polling shows the public broadly opposes the wall and a shutdown over it.

Initial Republican reaction to the shutdown was muted. Among the few GOP lawmakers who issued statements as it began were Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who expressed disappointment at the lack of a deal, and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. “This is a complete failure of negotiations and a success for no one,” Alexander said.

The Democratic leaders, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California and Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, said in a statement that Trump “threw a temper tantrum and convinced House Republicans to push our nation into a destructive Trump Shutdown in the middle of the holiday season.”

Trump had made clear last week that he would not blame Democrats for any closure. Now, he and his GOP allies have spent the past few days saying Democrats bear responsibility.

The president said now was the time for Congress to provide taxpayers’ money for the wall, even though he long had claimed Mexico would pay for it. Mexico repeatedly has rebuffed that idea.

 
…

As U.S. Senate leaders continued negotiating funding for border security measures, a partial government shutdown seemed all but assured as the U.S. House of Representatives adjourned late Friday.

Lawmakers have until midnight in Washington to enact a spending bill or portions of the federal government will close.

But with the House voting to adjourn until noon Saturday, it appeared that operations for about a quarter of the government would cease early Saturday, meaning more than 800,000 federal employees’ jobs would be disrupted, and more than half of those employees would be required to work without pay.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell indicated that while talks were continuing among lawmakers and with the White House, no deal on a spending bill had yet been reached to avert the problem.

Earlier Friday, the Senate had voted to advance a House-passed bill that included $5 billion for President Donald Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall. The procedural vote gave the Senate “flexibility” to continue negotiating, McConnell said.

Senate leaders gave no time for a vote on a spending bill, with leaders saying a vote would occur only when a deal had been reached.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told The Washington Post that Democrats were open to discussions but would not agree to any new funding for a border wall.

On Thursday, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed a temporary spending bill that included billions for Trump’s proposed wall along the southern U.S. border.

After previously saying he would “proudly” accept responsibility for a partial U.S. government shutdown if Congress did not pass legislation that included funding for his proposed border wall, Trump early Friday tweeted, “The Democrats now own the shutdown!”

Friday afternoon he tweeted, “If the Dems vote no, there will be a shutdown that will last a very long time.”

Later Friday at the White House, Trump doubled down on his 11th-hour effort to blame the impending shutdown on Democratic lawmakers.

In an attempt to bolster the slim chances of the measure’s passage in the Senate, Trump summoned Senate Republicans to the White House Friday morning to discuss the bill and border security.

Trump repeatedly has demanded funds to build the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and he told House Republican leaders before Thursday’s vote he would not sign a bill approved by the Senate that did not include funding for the wall.

Schumer told colleagues Friday on the Senate floor that Trump was making unilateral decisions that were creating chaos throughout the world.

“All of this turmoil is causing chaos in the markets, chaos abroad, and it’s making the United States less prosperous and less secure,” Schumer said. “There are not the votes in the Senate for an expensive taxpayer-funded border wall. So President Trump, you will not get your wall. Abandon your shutdown strategy. You’re not getting your wall today, next week or on January 3rd, when Democrats take control of the House.”

McConnell argued for the wall’s funding, saying, “The need for greater security on our southern border is not some partisan invention. It’s an empirical fact and the need is only growing.”
…

Russia, China and Iran sought to meddle in the recent U.S. midterm election, but their actions did not compromise the “nation’s election infrastructure that would have prevented voting, changed vote counts, or disrupted the ability to tally votes,” according to a report released Friday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Director Dan Coats said U.S. intelligence did find “Russia, and other foreign countries, including China and Iran, conducted influence activities and messaging campaigns targeted at the United States to promote their strategic interests.”

But he said the intelligence community “did not make an assessment of the impact that these activities had on the outcome of the 2018 election.”

The ODNI report on election meddling now goes to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the attorney general (AG), who have another 45 days to review the findings. If both the AG and DHS concur with the findings, the report could trigger automatic sanctions against Russia, China and Iran.

The U.S. intelligence community findings on election meddling support the initial assessment by DHS in the days and weeks following November’s midterm elections.

“There were no indications at the time of any foreign compromises of election equipment that would disrupt the ability to cast or count a vote,” Christopher Krebs, head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, said in mid-November, adding at the time, “We haven’t changed that assessment.”

Quick reaction to the new report came from Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Mark Warner, who said in a statement, “As the Director of National Intelligence reminds us, the Russians did not go away after the 2016 election.

“Now that the Russian playbook is out in the open, we’re going to see more and more adversaries trying to take advantage. … Congress has to step up and enact some much-needed guardrails on social media.”
…

U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis Thursday announced he was quitting, personally handing his letter of resignation to U.S. President Donald Trump following a lunch meeting at the White House.

 

While not mentioning Trump by name, the letter from Mattis outlined sharp differences between his views and those of the president, notably on the importance of allies and the use of U.S. power.

 

“We must be resolute and unambiguous in our approach to those countries whose strategic interests are increasingly in tension with ours,” Mattis wrote, warning that Russia and China in particular “want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model-gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic and security decisions.”

“Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down,” Mattis concluded, saying he would step down at the end of February.

 

The defense secretary’s decision came one day after Trump announced he would withdraw some 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria, a move the Pentagon opposed. 

 

Mattis did not mention the dispute over Syria in his letter, but he did note his “core belief” that U.S. strength is “inextricably linked” with the nation’s alliances with other countries. 

 

President Trump first announced Mattis’s departure on Twitter, saying the former four-star Marine general will retire “with distinction.”

 

“During Jim’s tenure, tremendous progress has been made, especially with respect to the purchase of new fighting equipment. General Mattis was a great help to me in getting allies and other countries to pay their share of military obligations. A new Secretary of Defense will be named shortly. I greatly thank Jim for his service!”

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters late Thursday that Trump and Mattis are on good terms despite not agreeing on foreign policy and other issues. 

 

“He and the president have a good relationship, but sometimes they disagree,” Sanders said. “That doesn’t mean you don’t have a good relationship with somebody. He was laying out the reasons he was stepping down from his post.”

 

Still, the resignation has sparked an outpouring of anger and despair from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, and even top U.S. officials.

 

“I was deeply saddened,” U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said in an official statement Friday, describing Mattis as a “national treasure.”

 

“The experience and sound judgement that Secretary Mattis has brought to our decision-making process is invaluable,” Coats continued. “His leadership of our military won the admiration of our troops and respect of our allies and adversaries.” 

 

Much of the pushback from U.S. officials and lawmakers has centered on the decision to withdraw U.S. troops from the fight against the Islamic State terror group in Syria – a decision that, according to some officials, ultimately convinced Mattis to resign.

 

U.S.-backed forces have made steady progress against Islamic State over the past several years. Last week, taking advantage of a dramatic increase in U.S. and coalition airstrikes, the forces were able to enter the town of Hajin, part of the terror group’s last stronghold in eastern Syria.

 

But despite Trump’s declaration of victory against IS, senior administration officials have said it will be up to the U.S. partner forces to liberate the rest of Hajin and the surrounding areas, where about 2,000 IS fighters have been mounting a stubborn last stand for several months.

 

Pentagon officials have also warned that despite the gains, IS was still well-positioned to rebuild. And Mattis had said that before leaving, the U.S. must train enough local troops to assume the role of suppressing the militants. He said the United Nations peace process in Syria must progress toward a resolution of the country’s eight-year-old civil war.

 

While a relatively small number of troops are involved, their withdrawal will have sweeping consequences in Syria’s long-running civil war. Allies will be more heavily burdened with confronting energized adversaries and Turkey, Iran and Russia’s influence in Syria will increase.

 

“This is scary,” said Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, a Democrat. “Secretary Mattis has been an island of stability amidst the chaos of the Trump administration.”

 

Republican senator and former presidential hopeful Marco Rubio tweeted, “It makes it abundantly clear that we are headed toward a series of grave policy errors which will endanger our nation, damage our alliances and empower our adversaries.”

 

While the decision to pull out of Syria may have been the last straw for Mattis, tensions have been simmering over other issues for quite some time, including on Russia and Iran.

 

Mattis believed Russian President Vladimir Putin has been trying to undermine NATO and assaulting Western democracies.

 

“[Putin’s] actions are designed not to challenge our arms at this point, but to undercut and compromise our belief in our ideals,” Mattis told U.S. Naval War College graduates at a commencement ceremony in June.

 

But Trump has praised Putin’s leadership skills and recently caused concern among U.S. allies by calling for Russia’s reinstatement in the group of major industrial nations. Russia was expelled from what was then the Group of Eight after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

 

Another point of contention between the two men involved the Iran nuclear deal.

 

Mattis argued the U.S. should consider staying in the Iran nuclear deal unless Tehran was found not to be abiding by the agreement. Iran was following the pact’s rules, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors the use of nuclear energy and has verified Iranian compliance with the accord multiple times since 2015.

 

Despite Mattis’s position, Trump pulled out of the deal in May, saying it had been poorly negotiated during the administration of former President Barack Obama.

 

As Mattis turned in his resignation, the Defense Department was preparing plans to withdraw up to half of the 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan in the coming months, U.S. officials said. The development marks a sharp departure from the Trump administration’s policy to force the Taliban to the negotiating table after more than 17 years of war.

 

Rumors of Mattis leaving the Defense Department have been circulating for months.

 

In October, Trump appeared on the television news show 60 Minutes, where he told TV anchor Lesley Stahl that while “I like General Mattis,” he believed he knew more about NATO than his defense secretary. 

 

“I think he’s sort of a Democrat, if you wanna know the truth,” Trump said. “But General Mattis is a good guy. We get along very well. He may leave. I mean, at some point, everybody leaves. Everybody. People leave. That’s Washington.”

 

Mattis became secretary of defense shortly after Trump’s inauguration and is one of the longest-serving Cabinet members.

 

Before that, Mattis served 44 years in the Marine Corps and led the Marines and British troops during the bloody Battle of Fallujah in Iraq in 2004.
…

China denounced the United States on Thursday for passing a new law on restive Tibet, saying it was “resolutely opposed” to the U.S. legislation on what China considers an internal affair, and it risked causing “serious harm” to their relations.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed into law the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act.

The law seeks to promote access to Tibet for U.S. diplomats and other officials, journalists and other citizens by denying U.S. entry for Chinese officials deemed responsible for restricting access to Tibet.

Beijing sent troops into remote, mountainous Tibet in 1950 in what it officially terms a peaceful liberation and has ruled there with an iron fist ever since.

China: wrong signals

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a daily briefing that the law “sent seriously wrong signals to Tibetan separatist elements,” as well as threatening to worsen bilateral ties strained by trade tension and other issues.

“If the United States implements this law, it will cause serious harm to China-U.S. relations and to the cooperation in important areas between the two countries,” Hua said.

The United States should be fully aware of the high sensitivity of the Tibet issue and should stop its interference, otherwise the United States would have to accept responsibility for the consequences, she added, without elaborating.

Difficult life in Tibet

Rights groups say the situation for ethnic Tibetans inside what China calls the Tibet Autonomous Region remains extremely difficult. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said in June conditions were “fast deteriorating” in Tibet.

All foreigners need special permission to enter Tibet, which is generally granted to tourists, who are allowed to go on often tightly monitored tours, but very infrequently to foreign diplomats and journalists.

Hua said Tibet was open to foreign visitors, as shown by the 40,000 American visitors to the region since 2015.

At the same time, she said it was “absolutely necessary and understandable” that the government administered controls on the entry of foreigners given “local geographic and climate reasons.”

Rights groups welcome law

Tibetan rights groups have welcomed the U.S. legislation. The International Campaign for Tibet said the “impactful and innovative” law marked a “new era of American support” and was a challenge to China’s policies in Tibet.

“The U.S. let Beijing know that its officials will face real consequences for discriminating against Americans and Tibetans and has blazed a path for other countries to follow,” the group’s president, Matteo Mecacci, said in a statement.

Next year marks the sensitive 60th anniversary of the flight into exile in India of the Dalai Lama, the highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism, after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

China routinely denounces him as a dangerous separatist, although the Dalai Lama says he merely wants genuine autonomy for his homeland.
…

A mother from Yemen cradled her dying infant son in a California hospital Thursday when, just a few days ago, she thought she would never be able to tell him goodbye.

The State Department granted Shaima Swileh a waiver to President Donald Trump’s travel ban, allowing her to hold her baby and tell him how much she loves him, perhaps for the last time.

Friends and reporters mobbed Swileh when she arrived at the San Francisco airport Wednesday night.

Husband, son US citizens

Two-year-old Abdullah Hassan, a U.S. citizen, is on life support with a rare genetic brain condition. His father, Ali Hassan, also an American citizen, has been at the hospital with his son.

The couple married in Egypt in 2016. But Swileh, a Yemeni, was not allowed to come to the United States because of the travel ban.

Hassan has said he was ready to take his son off life support, giving up hope his wife would ever be able to see the child.

State Department grants waiver

Lawyers from the Council on American-Islamic Relations sued the State Department, which granted her a visa earlier this week.

State Department spokesman Robert Palladino called it a “very sad case” and said U.S. officials struggle to determine which appeals for waivers are legitimate while balancing national security concerns.

“These are not easy questions. We’ve got a lot of foreign service officers deployed all over the world that are making these decisions on a daily basis, and they are trying to do the right thing at all times,” Palladino said earlier this week.

Trump’s travel ban restricts citizens from Yemen and six other mostly Muslim countries, along with North Korea and Venezuela, from coming to the United States, citing a threat of terrorism.

But critics of the ban have pointed to the Swileh case as an example of what they call discrimination against Muslims.

U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, a Democrat from California, also intervened on the family’s behalf, calling the travel ban “heinous” and “un-American.”
…

The Trump administration is setting out to do what this year’s farm bill didn’t: tighten work requirements for millions of Americans who receive federal food assistance.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Thursday proposed a rule that would restrict the ability of states to exempt work-eligible adults from having to obtain steady employment to receive food stamps.

The move comes the same day that President Donald Trump signed an $867 billion farm bill that reauthorized agriculture and conservation programs while leaving the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which serves roughly 40 million Americans, virtually untouched.

Passage of the farm bill followed months of tense negotiations over House efforts to significantly tighten work requirements and the Senate’s refusal to accept the provisions.

Currently, able-bodied adults ages 18-49 without children are required to work 20 hours a week to maintain their SNAP benefits. The House bill would have raised the age of recipients subject to work requirements from 49 to 59 and required parents with children older than 6 to work or participate in job training. The House measure also sought to limit circumstances under which families that qualify for other poverty programs can automatically be eligible for SNAP.

Measures don’t make final farm bill

None of those measures made it into the final farm bill despite Trump’s endorsement. Now the administration is using regulatory rule making to try to scale back the SNAP program.

Work-eligible able-bodied adults without dependents, known as ABAWDs, can currently receive only three months of SNAP benefits in a three-year period if they don’t meet the 20-hour work requirement. But states with an unemployment rate of 10 percent or higher or a demonstrable lack of sufficient jobs can waive those limitations.

States are also allowed to grant benefit extensions for 15 percent of their work-eligible adult population without a waiver. If a state doesn’t use its 15 percent, it can bank the exemptions to distribute later, creating what Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue referred to as a “stockpile.”

The USDA’s proposed rule would strip states’ ability to issue waivers unless a city or county has an unemployment rate of 7 percent or higher. The waivers would be good for one year and would require the governor to support the request. States would no longer be able to bank their 15 percent exemptions. The new rule also would forbid states from granting waivers for geographic areas larger than a specific jurisdiction.

​Proposed rule a tradeoff

Perdue said the proposed rule is a tradeoff for Trump’s support of the farm bill, which Trump signed Thursday.

“I have directed Secretary Perdue to use his authority to close work requirement loopholes in the food stamp program,” Trump said at the signing ceremony. “That was a difficult thing to get done, but the farmers wanted it done, we all wanted it done, and in the end, it’s going to make a lot of people happy.”

Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday slammed the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict SNAP.

“Why at Christmas would you take food out of the mouths of American people?” she said.

The USDA in February solicited public comment on ways to reform SNAP, and Perdue has repeatedly voiced support for scaling back the program.

The Trump administration’s effort, while celebrated by some conservatives, has been met with criticism from advocates who say tightening restrictions will result in more vulnerable Americans, including children, going hungry.

A Brookings Institution study published this summer said more stringent work requirements are likely to hurt those who are already part of the workforce but whose employment is sporadic.

Conaway leads the way

House Agriculture Chairman Michael Conaway, R-Texas, was the primary champion for tighter SNAP work requirements in the House farm bill and remained committed to the provision throughout negotiations.

Conaway praised the rule Thursday for “creating a roadmap for states to more effectively engage ABAWDs in this booming economy.”

Conaway in September blasted the Senate for refusing to adopt work requirements and suggested that Perdue doesn’t have the authority to make broad changes to the SNAP program.

“The Senate seems to have abandoned the idea that it is Congress’ responsibility to fix the waiver issue and that somehow Secretary Perdue could wave a magic wand and fix that. It’s not his responsibility; he does not have the authority,” Conaway said in an interview with Pro Farmer, a trade publication.

Democrats blast farm bill

On Thursday, Conaway spokeswoman Rachel Millard said the congressman was referring to Perdue’s authority to change laws, which he does not have, not the secretary’s ability to pursue regulatory action. She said Conaway continues to support Perdue’s efforts to limit SNAP.

The top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, who along with its Republican chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, crafted the bipartisan Senate bill without any changes to SNAP, blasted the Trump administration for its attempt to restrict the program.

“This regulation blatantly ignores the bipartisan farm bill that the president is signing today and disregards over 20 years of history giving states flexibility to request waivers based on local job conditions,” Stabenow said. “I expect the rule will face significant opposition and legal challenges.”
…

With a single tweet, U.S. President Donald Trump shocked many in Washington, changing the course of U.S. policy in Syria and, simultaneously, announcing an end to the fight against the Islamic State terror group’s self-declared caliphate. But as U.S. officials scurry to explain the change, many questions remain unanswered. VOA national security correspondent Jeff Seldin has more.
…

North Korea’s human rights record is emerging as the latest issue separating Washington and Pyongyang, as denuclearization talks have stalled.

Often condemned as having one of the worst human rights records in the world — in a 2017 report, the U.S. State Department called the violations “egregious” — North Korea has rejected such criticisms, calling them ploys to overthrow its political system.

President Donald Trump said he raised North Korea’s human rights issue to Kim during the Singapore summit in June and that Kim responded “very well.” But Trump was criticized for failing to obtain a concrete human rights agreement in the joint statement signed by the two leaders at the summit.

US sanctions

The latest tension is triggered by sanctions imposed by the U.S. under the “maximum pressure” campaign designed to push Pyongyang toward denuclearization.

The North Korean Foreign Ministry said that “it will block the path to denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula forever” if the U.S. escalates the human rights campaign against its country and increases sanctions.

The ministry said that it would be the “greatest miscalculation” to think such a campaign would cause it to denuclearize.

The statement issued Sunday came after the U.S. Treasury Department last week blacklisted three top North Korean officials suspected of human rights abuses and censorship, including a top aide to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The sanctions bar the three senior officials from engaging in transactions with anyone in the U.S. and freeze their assets within U.S. jurisdiction.

​UN resolution

On Monday, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution condemning North Korea’s “systematic, widespread and gross violation of human rights.”In response, North Korea’s U.N. Ambassador Kim Song said the resolution is “a product of a political plot and hostile forces,” which Pyongyang “categorically rejects.”

A State Department official said the U.S. will continue to bring up North Korea’s human rights issues.

“The president raised North Korea’s human rights record in his summit meeting with Chairman Kim (Jong Un), and will continue to raise this issue going forward,” the official said in an email sent to VOA Korean Service on Monday.

The official added, “(North Korea) is among the most repressive authoritarian states in the world. The United States continues to work with the international community to raise awareness, highlight abuses and violations, promote access to independent information, and keep pressure on (North Korea) to respect human rights.”

​Denuclearization talks

North Korea’s warning comes after denuclearization talks between Washington and Pyongyang stalled in early November when North Korea suddenly called off a planned meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

It remains unclear if the human rights issue will derail denuclearization talks.

Ken Gause, director of the International Affairs Group at the Center for Naval Analyses, believes the U.S., by raising North Korea’s human rights record, could disrupt denuclearization talks because Pyongyang sees the issue as undercutting agreements it made with Washington at the Singapore summit in June.

“I think it would be because North Korea sees the agreement at the Singapore summit as one of the agreements — that the objectives, goals that they had — was to improve the U.S.-North Korean relationships, and North Korea sees these actions by the United States undermining that agreement,” Gause said.

John Feffer, director of Foreign Policy in Focus, disagrees. He said the U.S. campaign against North Korea’s human rights violations will not derail denuclearization talks but might “undermine” Trump’s “negotiating position” on the process of denuclearization.

“I don’t think that human rights issues will ultimately derail the talks,” Feffer said. “Ultimately, North Korea is more interested in seeking whether Trump will agree to some kind of mutual process of give and take. That is the major hurdle at this point — the process. The talks will continue to limp along if the process remains murky.”

Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, thinks the Trump administration should delink North Korea’s human rights issues from denuclearization talks in the beginning of the negotiation process, because speaking out against North Korea’s human rights violations might divert diplomatic efforts.

“I think it is appropriate for the administration to speak out on the issue,” Manning said. “But not to link it to denuclearization. If the diplomacy advances, and we begin discussions on U.S.-(North Korea) normalizations, human rights has to be discussed as part of that process.”

​Improving relations

Despite its sharp retort against U.S. actions toward its alleged human rights abuses, Pyongyang credited Trump’s willingness to improve relations with North Korea, suggesting it is open to talks with him.

A State Department official said the Singapore agreements Trump and Kim made on denuclearization will be fulfilled.

“At the summit in Singapore, President Trump and Chairman Kim made the first leader-level U.S.-(North Korea) commitment on denuclearization in history,” said the official in an email message sent to VOA Korean Service on Sunday.

“We remain confident that the commitments made by President Trump and Chairman Kim at their summit Singapore will be fulfilled.”

Baik Sung-won of VOA’s Korean Service contributed to this report.
…

A Honduran migrant who had recently been deported from the United States was shot and killed a few blocks from his home, his family said Wednesday, in another sign of the dangers faced by migrants fleeing Central 

American gangs. 

Nelson Espinal, 28, was shot 15 times on Tuesday night shortly after leaving his home in the capital Tegucigalpa, said his sister, Patricia Espinal. The neighborhood is dominated by the Barrio 18 gang, one of the country’s most dangerous. 

Espinal was deported from the United States in late November and barred from returning for five years, according to documents from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Nevertheless, Espinal, who worked in construction, planned to make another attempt to enter the country in January, his sister said.

“He said that if he did not leave, they were going to kill him,” Patricia Espinal said as her mother, Sara Matamoros, wept. “That’s why he left following the caravan.” 

​Crossed illegally

Espinal was detained after crossing the border illegally in Arizona, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. He did not appear to be part of the migrant caravans trekking from Central America to the United States and did not seek asylum, the agency said.

On Wednesday, a U.S. federal judge struck down Trump administration policies aimed at restricting asylum claims by people citing gang or domestic violence in their home countries. 

In Mexico, authorities are investigating the deaths of two migrant teenagers from Honduras who were killed in the border city of Tijuana last weekend.

The youths, believed to be about 16 or 17, showed signs of having been stabbed and strangled. It could not be determined whether the victims had planned to apply for asylum. 

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters on Wednesday that his government would seek “fair treatment” for migrants.

More than 2,000 mainly Honduran immigrants who traveled with the caravan remain in a shelter in Tijuana, Lopez Obrador said. 

U.S. President Donald Trump has insisted that they will not be allowed into the United States, but a few asylum seekers have already crossed the border. 

The killings could fuel criticism of a policy proposal that Mexico and the United States discussed earlier this year to have Central American migrants wait in Mexico while their asylum claims are processed. 
…