The Republican in the nation’s last undecided congressional race is asking a North Carolina court to require that he be declared the winner because the now-defunct state elections board didn’t act.

A lawsuit Mark Harris filed Thursday claims the disbanded elections board had been declared unconstitutional, so its investigation into alleged ballot fraud by an operative hired by the Harris campaign was invalid.

The elections board was dissolved on Friday by state judges who in October declared its form unconstitutional but allowed investigations to continue. A revamped board takes effect Jan. 31.

Harris asks a trial-court judge to order the state elections director to certify the Republican as the winner.

 

Harris was being interviewed by state investigators Thursday, as all other U.S. House winners are sworn into office in Washington.
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The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee said on Wednesday it would hold confirmation hearings on Jan. 15 and 16 for Attorney General nominee William Barr, who has come under fire from Democrats for his criticism of the special counsel’s Russia probe.

If confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate, Barr would take over from Matthew Whitaker, who has been serving as acting attorney general since President Donald Trump forced out Jeff Sessions in November.

The committee’s statement did not give details on the planned hearings.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said last month that a memo Barr wrote criticizing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible Russian interference in U.S. elections should disqualify him from serving as attorney general.

Barr wrote in the June 2018 memo to senior Justice Department officials that Mueller “should not be able to demand that the President submit to an interrogation about alleged obstruction,” CNN has reported.

As attorney general, Barr would oversee the Russia investigation.

Trump has called the probe, which is examining any possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, a witch hunt.

Barr previously served as attorney general from 1991 to 1993 under late President George H.W. Bush.

 
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Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan’s first full day at the Pentagon’s helm was overshadowed Wednesday when President Donald Trump attacked his predecessor Jim Mattis.

Shanahan, who took the Pentagon’s top spot January 1 after serving as deputy defense secretary, was thrust onto the world stage when Mattis quit last month amid long-running disagreements with President Donald Trump.

During televised remarks ahead of his first cabinet meeting of 2019, Trump claimed he had “essentially fired” Mattis, even though the former Pentagon chief had pointedly quit his post over multiple disagreements.

“I’m not happy with what [Mattis has] done in Afghanistan and I shouldn’t be happy,” Trump said, as Shanahan sat by his side.

“I wish him well. I hope he does well. But as you know, President [Barack] Obama fired him and essentially so did I. I want results.”

Mattis, a former Marine general, was head of U.S. Central Command when Obama fired him in 2013 over his hawkish views on Iran.

While it is common for Trump to turn on former staffers and make demeaning remarks after they’ve left their post, the Mattis criticism is notable as Trump had often touted his admiration for the man he called “Mad Dog Mattis.”

The drama came after Shanahan sought to lay out his priorities for America’s massive defense department and how he intends to deal with an urgent list of geopolitical to-dos, including the U.S. withdrawal from Syria.

Soon after arriving at the Pentagon, Shanahan told colleagues to focus on the National Defense Strategy, a Mattis-era review that highlights “Great Power competition” with Russia and China.

“In 2019, the National Defense Strategy remains our guide. America’s military strength remains our focus,” Shanahan said in a New Year’s message on Twitter.

China as focus

A defense official added that Shanahan had told colleagues a major concern would be China.

“While we are focused on ongoing operations, Acting Secretary Shanahan told the team to remember: China, China, China,” the official said.

The U.S. accuses Beijing of an ongoing pattern of military and economic espionage, and has criticized China’s ambitious “Belt and Road” trade and infrastructure initiative as being a form of economic coercion.

Shanahan must oversee the pace at which the U.S. pulls some 2,200 troops out of Syria, following the president’s decision to exit the war-torn country.

Last month, Trump declared victory over the Islamic State group in Syria and claimed the jihadists had been beaten “badly,” even though they still number in the thousands.

He has since backpedaled and suggested more of a phased timeline for the withdrawal.

“We’re withdrawing,” Trump said, adding it would happen “over a period of time.”

At another point, Trump told Shanahan he wanted him to classify various reports, presumably including those detailing the security crisis in Afghanistan.

“For these reports to be given out and essentially given out to the enemy, that’s insane,” Trump told Shanahan.

“I don’t want it to happen anymore. Mr. Secretary, you understand that.”

According to U.S. officials, Trump is also mulling a 50 percent drawdown in Afghanistan — another momentous move that has left lawmakers and international allies fearing for what comes next.

Largely unknown

Little known outside business and Washington circles, Shanahan takes the world stage at a time of tumultuous changes and unpredictable foreign policy moves under Trump.

Shanahan, 56, did not serve in the military and before serving as deputy defense secretary he spent more than 30 years at Boeing.

While Shanahan has not always had day-to-day involvement in thorny geopolitical issues like Syria, officials say he is ready to tackle them and previously filled in for Mattis when he was traveling.

Despite a lack of foreign policy or military experience, Shanahan’s executive and technical knowledge made him well suited for the Pentagon’s number two position, which focuses more on the Defense Department’s business side.

But some critics have questioned whether a man with deep industry ties should be running the Pentagon.

At his confirmation hearing to be deputy, the late senator John McCain said a lack of detail in some of Shanahan’s foreign policy answers was “almost insulting,” and he expressed concerns that putting a former defense executive in the Pentagon could be akin to putting a fox “back in to the henhouse.”

Lieutenant Colonel Joe Buccino, Shanahan’s spokesman, said he had recused himself from any matters involving Boeing.

Also Wednesday, Shanahan announced that the Pentagon’s comptroller, David Norquist, will perform the duties of deputy secretary of defense.

 

 
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A shutdown of about a quarter of the U.S. government rolled into its 12th day on Wednesday, with lawmakers and President Donald Trump divided over his demand for money for a border wall. 

 

The shutdown, which began Dec. 22, is the 19th to occur since the mid-1970s. Most have been brief. Trump’s latest is the third on the Republican president’s watch and already ranks among the longest ever. 

 

There were several very short shutdowns under Republican President Ronald Reagan. Under Democratic President Bill Clinton, there were two shutdowns, including the longest on record: 21 days in 1996. 

 

A 16-day shutdown happened under Democratic President Barack Obama in 2013 in a fight with Republicans over his health care law. 

 

The current shutdown has not affected three-quarters of the government, including the Department of Defense and the Postal Service, which have secure funding. But 800,000 employees from the departments of Homeland Security and Transportation and other agencies have been furloughed or are working without pay. 

 

Here is what is happening around the federal government: 

 

Smithsonian 

 

The Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo in Washington are closed because of the shutdown, according to the Smithsonian website. Among these is the popular National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in 2016. “The museum is closed due to the federal government shutdown. Timed entry pass holders will be emailed instructions on how to reschedule their visit,” the museum posted on Instagram.

​Homeland Security 

 

The department that oversees Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Transportation Security Administration, the Coast Guard and the Secret Service is affected. But most employees are “essential,” so they are working without pay until a funding bill is passed. 

 

Of 245,000 agency employees, nearly 213,000 have been deemed “essential,” according to the department’s contingency plan. 

 

Housing and Urban Development 

 

Most of this department’s 7,500 employees are “non-essential”; only about 340 are working. Nearly 1,000 others may be called in for specific tasks, without pay. 

 

Public housing authorities and Native American tribal housing entities are not part of the federal government and so are not required to shut down. But the federal government provides some of their funding, so they may need to reduce or change operating hours.  

HUD, which oversees some housing loan and low-income housing payment programs, warned in its contingency plan that “a protracted shutdown could see a decline in home sales, reversing the trend toward a strengthening market that we’ve been experiencing.” 

 

Commerce 

 

The Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis and Census Bureau are not publishing economic data, including key figures on gross domestic product, inflation, personal income, spending, trade and new home sales, during the shutdown. 

 

Office of Personnel Management 

 

The agency that oversees the federal workforce has given advice to workers on dealing with landlords, mortgage lenders and other creditors, including sample letters explaining lost income because of the lack of federal funding. 

Federal Communications Commission

The FCC, which regulates radio and television broadcast and cable systems, said it would suspend most operations at midday on Thursday if the shutdown was still in effect. Work for “the protection of life and property” will continue. So will operations at the agency’s Office of Inspector General, the FCC’s internal watchdog. 

 

Coast Guard 

 

Members of the Coast Guard were due to get their final 2018 paychecks on Monday, their last until the government reopens. 

 

FEMA 

 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency was to resume issuing new flood insurance policies during the shutdown, reversing an earlier decision. 

​Interior

 

The National Park Service, under the umbrella of the Interior Department, is operating with a skeleton staff. Under its contingency plan, some parks may be accessible, with others closed completely. The National Park Service is providing no visitor services such as restrooms, facility and road maintenance, and trash collection. 

 

Transportation

Of its 55,000 employees, 20,400 have been put on leave. This excludes most of the Federal Aviation Administration, where 24,200 are working, and the Federal Highway Administration, where all 2,700 employees are funded through other sources. 

 

Air traffic control, hazardous material safety inspections and accident investigations continue, but some rulemaking, inspections and audits have been paused. 

 

Executive Office of the President 

 

An estimated 1,100 of the office’s 1,800 employees are on leave. This includes most of the Office of Management and Budget, which helps implement budget and policy goals.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump has invited Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress to what the White House is calling a “border security briefing” Wednesday, while a partial government shutdown hits its 12th day.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is expected to attend the session. It is not clear if Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer or fellow Democrat and House speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi will be there, or whether the two sides will use the meeting to negotiate plans to reopen the government.

Democrats will have a majority in the House of Representatives when the new Congress opens Thursday, and Pelosi plans to hold votes on a pair of bills that would fund most of the shuttered agencies through the end of September and the Department of Homeland Security through February 8.

The proposed legislation does not include the $5 billion in funding for a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border that Trump is demanding in any spending measure he signs. Democrats have previously offered $1.3 billion in funding for other border security measures instead.

​

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement late Tuesday that the Democratic plan is a “non-starter” and “fails to secure the border and puts the needs of other countries above the needs of our own citizens.”

Pelosi and Schumer have rejected Trump’s wall plan as “expensive and ineffective” and say Trump has yet to put forth a plan that has a chance to pass in both the House and Senate. 

Ahead of their potential meeting, Trump and Pelosi traded comments Tuesday on Twitter.

“Border Security and the Wall ‘thing’ and Shutdown is not where Nancy Pelosi wanted to start her tenure as Speaker! Let’s make a deal?” Trump said.

Pelosi responded that Trump “has given Democrats a great opportunity to show how we will govern responsibly & quickly to pass our plan to end the irresponsible #TrumpShutdown.”

Before the shutdown went into effect, the Senate passed a stopgap funding bill that would have funded the now-closed government operations through February 8 without the wall funding. The House passed its own bill that did have funding for the wall.

Pelosi said in a letter to colleagues Tuesday that lawmakers in the Senate should now support the new Democratic plan after their earlier action, and that if they reject it, then they would be “fully complicit in chaos and destruction” caused by the ongoing shutdown.

About 800,000 government workers have either been told to stay home or continue working without pay until the shutdown is resolved.

Tourists in Washington are seeing new effects of the impasse Wednesday as the Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo close until a deal is reached. The National Gallery of Art will be closed starting Thursday.
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Mitt Romney, the former Republican presidential candidate and incoming U.S. senator from Utah, sharply criticized President Donald Trump and suggested the U.S. leader had caused dismay around the world.

In a Washington Post essay published on Tuesday evening, Romney criticized a number of Trump’s actions in December.

“The appointment of senior persons of lesser experience, the abandonment of allies who fight beside us, and the president’s thoughtless claim that America has long been a ‘sucker’ in world affairs all defined his presidency down,” he wrote.

He added that “Trump’s words and actions have caused dismay around the world.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Romney suggested that “on balance, (Trump’s) conduct over the past two years … is evidence that the president has not risen to the mantle of the office.”

Romney is staking out an independent position two days before he takes office on Thursday. It is unclear whether Trump will face a serious challenge in 2020 to securing the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.

Trump last February endorsed Romney’s run for a Senate seat in Utah.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Romney excoriated Trump as a “fraud” who was “playing the American public for suckers.” Trump responded that Romney had “choked like a dog” in his unsuccessful 2012 campaign against Democratic President Barack Obama.

Despite Romney’s prior criticism, after Trump won the presidency in November 2016, he briefly considered tapping Romney as secretary of state.

In his essay on Tuesday, Romney said he “will speak out against significant statements or actions that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions.”

Romney has strongly defended press freedom and challenged Trump’s repeated attacks on some news outlets as an “enemy of the people.”

“The media is essential to our Republic, to our freedom, to the cause of freedom abroad, and to our national security. It is very much our friend,” Romney wrote in an essay in November.
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The partial U.S. government shutdown is in its 11th day at the dawn of 2019, with lawmakers and President Donald Trump still at odds over his demand for money to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Democrats in the House of Representatives say that when they assume control of the chamber on Thursday, they plan to quickly approve legislation to reopen the quarter of government operations that have been closed since Dec. 22, although passage in the Senate is uncertain.

The Democrats’ spending plan includes no money for Trump’s border wall, which the U.S. leader derided in a New Year’s Day Twitter comment.

Later in the day, Trump invited top congressional leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, to the White House on Wednesday for a briefing on border security. But it was unclear whether that could lead to breaking the stalemate over his wall proposal he contends would thwart illegal immigration.

As the calendar turned to the new year, Trump said in an all-caps tweet that Americans would have a good year, if they weren’t obsessed with opposing him.

The House Democrats’ budget plan would fund most shuttered agencies through the end of September, while approving funding for the Department of Homeland Security through Feb. 8.

In Twitter comments, Trump has continued to push for wall funding, $5 billion as a down payment on the barrier that could cost more than $20 billion, while Democrats have offered to approve $1.3 billion for other border security efforts, but not the wall.

In one tweet Monday, Trump said, “Without the Wall there can be no Border Security.”

House speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer released a joint statement Monday calling for Republican support for the new funding legislation.

“It would be the height of irresponsibility and political cynicism for Senate Republicans to now reject the same legislation they have already supported,” the statement said.

Trump and Democratic lawmakers have not held any negotiations for days over the dispute.  The ongoing shutdown of a quarter of U.S. government operations means 380,000 government workers are furloughed while another 420,000 are still working, but will not be paid until the funding dispute is resolved.​
…

Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan said Tuesday the department “remains focused on safeguarding our nation,” as he officially took over the post left by the resignation of Jim Mattis.

“I now look forward to working with President Trump to carry out his vision alongside strong leaders including the service secretaries, the Joints Chiefs of Staff, the combatant commanders, and senior personnel in the Office of the Secretary of Defense,” Shanahan said in a statement.

Unlike Mattis, who came to the Pentagon as a revered former Marine general who served in Afghanistan, Shanahan does not have any military experience. Shanahan came to the Defense Department in 2017 from aviation giant Boeing, where he spent more than 30 years overseeing both civilian and military related programs.

Mattis resigned on December 20 following a White House meeting with Trump during which the two men disagreed over the president’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria, where they have been helping in the fight against the Islamic State terror group.

“Our Department’s leadership, civilian and military, remains in the best possible hands,” Mattis wrote in his official farewell message Monday, his last day on the job.

“I am confident that each of you remains undistracted from our sworn mission to support and defend the Constitution while protecting our way of life,” he continued. “So keep the faith in our country and hold fast, alongside our allies, aligned against our foes.”

While it was not the first time the two men disagreed on policy, for Mattis the Syria decision represented a breaking point.

“You have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects,” Mattis wrote at the time, adding he would stay on until the end of February 2019 to allow time for a successor to be found and so that he could represent the U.S. at a NATO Defense Ministerial meeting.

Mattis also warned the president that the United States “must be resolute and unambiguous in our approach to countries whose strategic interests are increasingly in tension with ours,” naming both China and Russia.

And he further warned that the United States could not afford to alienate allies.

“Our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnership.”

Three days later, Trump announced via Twitter that Mattis would be leaving at the end of the year.

According to Pentagon officials, Mattis’ departure, at his own request, would not be marked by any of the fanfare normally seen to pay respect to an outgoing defense secretary.

Instead, the handover of authority from Mattis to Acting Defense Secretary Shanahan was to be carried out through a phone call, alerting all relevant government agencies to the change in command.

Shortly after the Pentagon released Mattis’ farewell message, the Trump took to Twitter Monday.

“I am the only person in America who could say that, “I’m bringing our great troops back home, with victory,” and get BAD press,” he wrote.

Mattis began his last message as secretary of defense by quoting from a telegram U.S. President Abraham Lincoln sent to Gen. Ulysses Grant in 1865, a little more than two months before the end of the U.S. Civil War.

“Let nothing which is transpiring, change, hinder or delay your military movements, or plans,” it read.
…

U.S. leaders remain at an impasse as House Democrats plan to pass legislation Thursday that would fund many of the government agencies currently shut down, but without money for a border wall that President Donald Trump insists is necessary for security.

The legislative effort, which is set to take place when the new Congress goes into session with Democrats holding a majority in the House, has two pieces.  One would fund most shuttered agencies through the end of September, while the other would give the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) its funding through Feb 8.

As with previous Democratic proposals, the DHS funding would not include money for the wall.

Trump has taken to Twitter several times to express his viewpoint, including fresh posts Monday saying “without the Wall there can be no Border Security.”

“The Democrats will probably submit a Bill, being cute as always, which gives everything away but gives NOTHING to Border Security, namely the Wall,” Trump wrote.

House speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer released a joint statement Monday calling for Republican support for the legislation.

“It would be the height of irresponsibility and political cynicism for Senate Republicans to now reject the same legislation they have already supported,” the statement said.

Trump wants $5 billion as a down payment on the barrier that could cost more than $20 billion to build, while Democrats have offered to approve $1.3 billion for other border security efforts.

Trump and Democratic lawmakers have not held any negotiations for days over the dispute.  The ongoing shutdown of a quarter of U.S. government operations means 380,000 government workers are furloughed while another 420,000 are still working, but will not be paid until the funding dispute is resolved.
…

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has announced the formation of a presidential exploratory committee for a presidential bid in the 2020 election. Warren told reporters Monday that she wants to make America a land of opportunity for all its citizens and not just for the wealthy. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports the senator from Massachusetts is the first major Democrat to make a formal step toward entering the contest for the party’s presidential nomination.
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