In rural Pennsylvania, the small city of Hazleton has come out of a “transformative decade,” the former police chief says. In the early 2000s, a wave of immigrants and first generation Americans moved to the area, seeking jobs and a better way of life. In the 2016 election, Donald Trump narrowly edged out Hilary Clinton. Now, a native son is Trump’s hand-picked candidate to challenge Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey. VOA’s immigration reporter Aline Barros has more.
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The prognosis for President Donald Trump and his party was grim.

In a post-Labor Day briefing at the White House, a top Republican pollster told senior staff that the determining factor in the election wouldn’t be the improving economy or the steady increase in job creation. It would be how voters feel about Trump. And the majority of the electorate, including a sizeable percentage of Republican-leaning voters, doesn’t feel good about the president, according to a presentation from pollster Neil Newhouse that spanned dozens of pages.

Newhouse’s briefing came amid a darkening mood among Republican officials as the November election nears. Party leaders were already worried that a surge in enthusiasm among Democrats and disdain for Trump by moderate Republicans would put the House out of reach. But some Republicans now fear their Senate majority is also in peril — a scenario that was unthinkable a few months ago given the favorable Senate map for the GOP.

“For Republican candidates to win in swing states, they need all of the voters who support President Trump, plus a chunk of those who do not,” said Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster. “That is threading a very narrow strategic needle.”

Operatives in both parties say Republicans still have the edge in the fight for control of the Senate. But GOP officials are increasingly worried that nominees in conservative-leaning states like Missouri and Indiana are underperforming, while races in Tennessee and Texas that should be slam-dunks for Republicans are close.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell raised an alarm last week, warning that each of the competitive Senate races would be “like a knife fight in an alley.”

Some of the public fretting among Republicans appears to be strategic, as party officials try to motivate both voters and donors. Many moderate Republican voters “don’t believe there is anything at stake in this election,” according to the documents Newhouse presented to White House officials. He attributed that belief in part to a disregard for public polling, given that most surveys showed Democrat Hillary Clinton defeating Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

Newhouse and the White House would not comment on the early September meeting. The Associated Press obtained a copy of Newhouse’s presentation, and two Republicans with knowledge of the briefing discussed the details on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the matter publicly.

At the White House, anxiety over the midterms has been on the rise for months as polls increasingly show a challenging environment for the GOP and heightened Democratic enthusiasm. The sheer number of competitive races in both the House and Senate is stretching cash reserves and forcing tough calculations about where to deploy resources and surrogates. And there are growing fears that the coalition of voters that delivered Trump to the White House will not come out for midterms.

Even if those voters do show up in large numbers, Republicans could still come up short. The polling presented to White House officials, which was commissioned by the Republican National Committee, showed that Trump’s loyal supporters make up about one-quarter of the electorate. Another quarter is comprised of Republicans who like Trump’s policies but not the president himself and do not appear motivated to back GOP candidates. And roughly half of expected midterm voters are Democrats who are energized by their opposition to the president.

White House aides say Trump is getting regular briefings on the political landscape and is aware of the increasingly grim polling, even though he’s predicted a “red wave” for Republicans on Twitter and at campaign rallies. Aides say Trump’s sober briefings from GOP officials are sometimes offset by the frequent conversations he has with a cadre of outside advisers who paint a sunnier picture of the electoral landscape and remind the president of his upset victory in 2016.

The paradox for Republicans is that most Americans are largely satisfied with the economy, according to numerous surveys. But the party has struggled to keep the economy centered at the center of the election debate. Trump keeps thrusting other issues to the forefront, including his frustration with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and his intense anger with unflattering portrayals of his presidency in a book by journalist Bob Woodward and an anonymous editorial from a senior administration official that was published in the New York Times. He stunned some backers Thursday when he disputed the death toll in Puerto Rico from last year’s Hurricane Maria, just as another storm was barreling toward the East Coast.

Newhouse told White House officials that Trump could appeal to moderates and independents by emphasizing that a Democratic majority would be outside the mainstream on issues like abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and government-funded health care. Other Republican strategists have offered candidates similar advice.

Karl Rove, who served as chief political strategist to President George W. Bush, said that if Republicans cast their Democratic rivals as soft on immigration or in favor of high-dollar government spending on health care, “that’s a toxic mix to the soft Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.”

In his most recent campaign appearances, Trump soft-peddled his predictions for a Republican wave and warned supporters that a Democratic congressional majority would have consequences. But he focused less on the policy implications of Democrats regaining control of Congress and more on the impact on his presidency, including the prospect of impeachment.

“If it does happen, it’s your fault, because you didn’t go out to vote,” Trump said of the prospect of getting impeached. “You didn’t go out to vote — that’s the only way it could happen.”
…

U.S. President Donald Trump claimed Sunday, without evidence, that the ongoing criminal investigation into his 2016 campaign’s links to Russia is “not allowed under the law.”

In a Twitter comment, the U.S. leader called the probe by special counsel Robert Mueller “illegal” and said it “continues in search of a crime.” But Mueller was appointed by the Department of Justice and judges have ruled that his investigation is being conducted legally.

As he often does, Trump denied there was collusion with Russia, except by his opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He described Mueller’s legal team as “17 angry Democrats … looking at anything they can find. Very unfair and BAD for the country.”

But Trump did not comment on the latest development in Mueller’s 16-month investigation, Friday’s guilty plea by former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort to corruption charges and a declaration by prosecutors that Manafort is already cooperating with them about what he knows about the Trump campaign.

The 69-year-old Manafort, a longtime Washington lobbyist, has now been convicted in an August trial of eight tax and bank fraud charges in a Virginia court and pleaded guilty to two conspiracy charges in nearby Washington.

In the most recent case, prosecutors agreed to drop other charges stemming from his lobbying efforts for one-time Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych that predated his five-month tenure working for Trump’s campaign in mid-2016 in exchange for him answering “fully, truthfully, completely and forthrightly” questions about “any and all matters” Mueller’s team is investigating.

But what Manafort might have to offer Mueller about the Trump campaign is not publicly unknown, although prosecutors only dropped some charges against Manafort after hearing in advance what he had to say.

Manafort played a role in one key event Mueller is investigating, a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York, the then-candidate’s campaign headquarters. Manafort attended a meeting set up by Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., with a lawyer said to be a Russian government attorney willing to provide incriminating information about Clinton. The younger Trump said no such information was provided and President Trump has said he was unaware of the meeting at the time it was scheduled.

After Manafort’s guilty plea, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said in a first statement, “Once again an investigation has concluded with a plea having nothing to do with President Trump or the Trump campaign. The reason: The president did nothing wrong and Paul Manafort will tell the truth.”

But minutes later, Giuliani issued a revised statement omitting the assessment that “Paul Manafort will tell the truth.”

After Manafort was convicted in the August case, Trump said he had “such respect for a brave man: because “he refused to ‘break’ — make up stories in order to get a ‘deal.'”

“I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family,” Trump said.

 
…

Twenty-five years after Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo Peace Accords that raise hopes for a comprehensive settlement, experts say peace in the Middle East is as elusive as ever. And as VOA Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports, some of those experts caution that the Trump administration has lost the trust of Palestinians to be an honest broker in the conflict through several recent actions.
…

President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges Friday in connection with his past lobbying efforts on behalf of Ukraine. As part of the plea deal, Manafort has also agreed to cooperate in the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election led by special counsel Robert Mueller. VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.
…

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh on Friday denied a sexual misconduct allegation from when he was in high school.

In a statement released by the White House, Kavanaugh said: “I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time.”

Kavanaugh’s statement comes after Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said she has notified federal investigators about information she received about the nominee but won’t disclose publicly.

The New Yorker reported the alleged incident took place at a party when Kavanaugh, now 53, was attending Georgetown Preparatory School. The woman making the allegation attended a nearby school.

The magazine says the woman sent a letter about the allegation to Democrats. A Democratic aide and another person familiar with the letter confirmed Friday to The Associated Press that the allegation is sexual in nature. Two other people familiar with the matter confirmed to the AP that the alleged incident happened in high school. They were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The AP has not confirmed the details of the alleged incident in The New Yorker’s account.

Other women back Kavanaugh

Rallying to Kavanaugh’s defense, 65 women who knew him in high school issued a letter, released by Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, saying he has “always treated women with decency and respect.”

“We are women who have known Brett Kavanaugh for more than 35 years and knew him while he attended high school between 1979 and 1983,” wrote the women, who said most of them had attended all-girl high schools in the area. “For the entire time we have known Brett Kavanaugh, he has behaved honorably and treated women with respect.”

The Judiciary Committee, which has finished confirmation hearings for Kavanagh, is scheduled to vote next Thursday on whether to recommend that he be confirmed by the full Senate.

The White House called Feinstein’s move an “11th hour attempt to delay his confirmation.”

The California Democrat said in a statement Thursday that she “received information from an individual concerning the nomination.” She said the person “strongly requested confidentiality, declined to come forward or press the matter further, and I have honored that decision.”

The FBI confirmed that it received the information Wednesday evening and included it in Kavanaugh’s background file, which is maintained as part of his nomination. The agency said that is its standard process.

Feinstein’s statement that she has “referred the matter to federal investigative authorities” jolted Capitol Hill and threatened to disrupt what has been a steady path toward confirmation for Kavanaugh by Republicans eager to see the conservative judge on the court.

Lawmakers react

Feinstein has held the letter close. Democratic senators on the panel met privately Wednesday evening and discussed the information, according to Senate aides who were not authorized to discuss the situation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Some senators, including the No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, learned about the information for the first time at the meeting, according to one of the aides.

A spokeswoman for Representative Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat, declined to confirm reports that the congresswoman had forwarded a letter containing the allegations to Feinstein. She said her office has a confidentiality policy regarding casework for constituents.

A White House spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, said the FBI has vetted Kavanaugh “thoroughly and repeatedly” during his career in government and the judiciary.

She said Kavanaugh has had 65 meetings with senators — including with Feinstein — sat through over 30 hours of testimony and publicly addressed more than 2,000 questions. “Not until the eve of his confirmation has Senator Feinstein or anyone raised the specter of new ‘information’ about him,” she said.

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the second-ranking Republican and a member of the committee, was also skeptical.

“Let me get this straight: this is (sic) statement about secret letter regarding a secret matter and an unidentified person. Right,” he tweeted.

Chairman Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, was unaware of the information until it was made public, according to a GOP committee aide. Kavanaugh has undergone six federal background checks over time in government, including one most recently for the nomination, the aide said.

The new information on Kavanaugh was included Thursday in his confidential background file at the committee and is now available for senators to review, the aide said.

Democrats don’t have the votes to block Kavanaugh’s nomination if Republicans are unified in favor of it.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort is nearing a plea deal with U.S. prosecutors to avoid a second criminal trial, sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

It remains unclear if the deal will include Manafort cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.

A move by Manafort to cooperate could be a blow to Trump, while an outright guilty plea with no cooperation would resolve a cloud over the president ahead of congressional elections in less than two months.

“It’s close but not there yet,” one of the sources said about negotiations over a deal.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin in Washington, D.C., on Monday in Manafort’s second trial in federal court on charges including conspiring to launder money and defraud the United States, and failing to register as a foreign agent for the tens of millions of dollars he earned lobbying for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine.

Manafort was convicted in Virginia on eight counts of bank and tax fraud and failing to disclose foreign bank accounts in the first trial that ended last month. Prosecutors said he evaded taxes on $16 million laundered through shell companies overseas.

The talks over a deal come ahead of a planned hearing in Washington on Friday where the judge, among other things, is scheduled to rule on evidence to be allowed at trial. Manafort could plead guilty at the hearing, one of the sources said.

Three members of Manafort’s defense team — Kevin Downing,Thomas Zehnle and Richard Westling — declined to comment as they entered their office on Thursday evening. Mueller’s spokesman Peter Carr declined to comment on the possible deal, which was first reported by ABC News.

Manafort’s wife Kathleen also did not answer questions when she stopped by the lawyers’ office to drop off a navy men’s suit.

‘Bloodied up’

Joshua Dressler, a law professor at Ohio State University, said it made sense that Manafort, 69, was considering cutting his losses and avoiding the time and money needed to defend himself against a second trial.

Manafort is already facing 8 to 10 years in prison from the eight guilty counts in Virginia, terms that may not change significantly no matter the outcome of the second trial.

“With eight convictions already in place, and more possible convictions awaiting him, it seems that he has been bloodied up enough to see the light,” Dressler said.

Manafort worked for five months on Trump’s 2016 campaign, including three as chairman. He resigned in August 2016 following a news report linking him to covert payments from a pro-Kremlin political party in Ukraine.

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who is representing Trump in the Russia probe, previously told the Politico news outlet that taking a plea deal to avoid a second trial would not crush Manafort’s chances of receiving an

eventual presidential pardon. Trump has not said whether he would pardon Manafort but he has not publicly ruled it out.

Manafort was at a controversial meeting at Trump Tower in 2016 where Russians were offering “dirt” on election opponent Hillary Clinton. Trump’s critics have pointed to the meeting as evidence of the collusion with Russia that Trump denies.

“I don’t think he has any information that would hurt the president,” Giuliani told Reuters.

Trump praised Manafort last month for not entering into a plea agreement, as the president’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen had.”Unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to ‘break’ — make up stories in order to get a ‘deal. Such respect for a brave man!,” Trump wrote on Twitter on August 22.

Rick Gates, Manafort’s former business partner and the campaign’s deputy chairman, pleaded guilty to lesser charges in exchange for his cooperation, later testifying against Manafort in Virginia.

Gates could be called as a prosecution witness in his Washington trial as well, as could veteran political operative Samuel Patten, who pleaded guilty to unregistered lobbying for Ukrainian politicians two weeks ago.

A second trial could delve deeper into Manafort’s Russian connections including to Konstantin Kilimnik, a Ukrainian-Russian political consultant who was indicted along with Manafort and who Mueller’s team has linked to Russian intelligence.

Prosecutors have said Manafort and Kilimnik conspired to tamper with witnesses, which prompted U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson to revoke his bail and order him jailed pending trial.
…

The U.S. sanctioned a China-based firm Thursday and its Russian subsidiary connected to North Korea, the latest in the Trump administration’s attempts to end Pyongyang’s nuclear program. Lawmakers applauded the move as they received an update from administration officials on U.S. sanctions countering Russian aggression and Chinese human rights violations. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from Capitol Hill.
…

Gov. Andrew Cuomo overcame a primary challenge from activist and actress Cynthia Nixon on Thursday, thwarting her attempt to become the latest insurgent liberal to knock off an establishment Democrat.

Cuomo, who always led in the polls and outspent his rival more than 8 to 1, seldom mentioned Nixon by name during an often-nasty campaign, instead touting his experience, achievements in two terms as governor and his work to push back against President Donald Trump.

“You cannot be a progressive if you cannot deliver progress. And a New York progressive is not just a dreamer, but we are doers,” Cuomo said at a campaign rally the night before the vote. “We make things happen.”

With registered Democrats outnumbering Republicans more than 2 to 1 in New York, Cuomo becomes the automatic front-runner in November’s matchup against Republican Marc Molinaro and independent Mayor Stephanie Miner.

Nixon thanks supporters

Nixon, a longtime education activist and actress best known for her Emmy-winning role as lawyer Miranda Hobbes on HBO’s “Sex and the City,” was counting on a boost from liberals looking to oust establishment politicians. She called herself a democratic socialist and pointed to recent congressional primary victories by New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts’ Ayanna Pressley as evidence that underdog challengers can defy the odds.

Nixon thanked supporters Thursday in Brooklyn, saying that together they helped push Cuomo to the left and show that liberals have a shot at making big changes.

“Before we take our country back we have to take our party back,” she said. “This is an incredible moment for progressives but it’s not just a moment. It’s a movement.”

Attorney general

Elsewhere on the ballot, New York City Public Advocate Letitia James won a four-way Democratic primary for attorney general in a race that was a competition over who could best use the office to antagonize President Donald Trump.

James, 59, would become the first black woman to hold a statewide elected office in New York if she prevails in the general election, where she will be heavily favored. She defeated a deep field of fellow Democrats: U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, Fordham law professor Zephyr Teachout and former Hillary Clinton adviser Leecia Eve.

The winner in November will inherit several pending lawsuits filed by the state that challenge Trump’s policies and accuse his charitable foundation of breaking the law.

James faces little-known Republican attorney Keith Wofford in the general election in November.

If she wins in November, James would also become the first woman elected attorney general, though not the first to hold the job. New York’s current attorney general, Democrat Barbara Underwood, was appointed to replace Schneiderman. She declined to run for election.
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The fate of a Missouri nail manufacturer suffering under President Donald Trump’s steel tariffs has put Republican Senate candidate Josh Hawley in a bind between his support for the president’s trade strategy and a local plant that says it could be forced to close.

Mid Continent Nail Corporation says it could shutter its Poplar Bluff plant, which employs about 335 workers, as early as this month without an exemption to tariffs, the site’s Operations General Manager Chris Pratt told reporters in early September. The company previously had said that it might not survive through Labor Day but stayed open.

After Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on imported steel, the company in June cut 60 of 500 positions at the plant in rural Butler County, where the unemployment rate is above the national average and the company is the area’s second-largest employer. Pratt said many employees also have left because of the uncertainty, and the company is not replacing those workers.

“Right now we’re counting on Josh Hawley, who says he has a good relationship with President Trump, to save the 500 jobs in Poplar Bluff, Missouri,” Pratt said after Labor Day.

Trump imposed tariffs in March, saying a reliance on imported metals threatened national security. He initially exempted Canada, Mexico and the European Union to buy time for trade negotiations, but tariffs for those countries took effect in May after talks stalled.

Mid Continent is owned by Deacero, a private Mexican company, which supplies steel for the nails made in Missouri. Company spokeswoman Elizabeth Heaton said nails are sold throughout the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean and used for industrial pallets, crating for transportation and residential construction.

Hawley, the state attorney general, and Democratic incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill are sparring in one of the most closely-watched Senate races in the nation, with Republicans’ 51-49 majority at stake on November 6. Both candidates visited the plant after tariffs began and both say they’re fighting for Mid Continent, but the issue is more delicate for Hawley.

Missouri is one of several Senate races including North Dakota, Indiana and Montana, where Republican candidates are on the defensive as trading partners retaliate against agricultural and manufacturing products from the U.S. in response to Trump’s tariffs.

In Missouri, Hawley says he supports Trump’s goal of getting tough with trading partners to get better deals for the U.S. and urges patience to see results from the negotiations. The Trump administration recently said it reached a deal with Mexico to update the North American Free Trade Agreement and is now negotiating with Canada to finalize it.

In an August letter to Deacero, Hawley says the company makes a strong case for an exemption and urges the Department of Commerce to grant it quickly.

But an exemption is unlikely to be granted quickly. The federal government has been deluged with requests for exemptions, the process is slow and some U.S. steel producers have objected to Mid Continent getting favorable treatment, saying the company could switch to U.S. suppliers.

Pratt said the plant also buys American steel, but he said there’s not enough to meet the company’s needs and noted that domestic prices rose steeply with the tariffs.

Hawley has also put pressure on the plant’s Mexican parent company to keep it open.

“As a company with a global presence and many locations, Deacero is clearly not struggling to make ends meet,” Hawley wrote in the letter. “The reality is that Deacero can afford to keep the factory open, and in turn, help keep men and women employed who simply want to do right by their families and earn a living.”

Democrat McCaskill has gone on the attack over the company’s plight, highlighting Mid Continent Nail during a June U.S. Senate hearing, pushing for the exemption and holding an August hearing in St. Louis to listen to concerns from Missouri businesses.

Instead of tariffs, McCaskill has advocated joining U.S. allies to take a stand against China’s unfair trade practices and spending more money to enforce current trade laws through the United States International Trade Commission.

In a recent Facebook post, she used the tariffs as an example to paint Hawley as a rubber stamp to Trump.

“All across the state, farmers and manufacturers are telling me how they’re being hurt by this trade war. That’s why I’m calling for it to end,” McCaskill wrote. “Hawley is supporting it because he doesn’t want an inch of daylight between him and President Trump.”
…

The Latest on New York’s Democratic primary (all times local):

12:45 p.m.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and activist actress Cynthia Nixon have cast their votes in New York’s Democratic primary election.

Nixon posed for photos with supporters in Manhattan’s Union Square before she voted Thursday at a community center. Cuomo appeared at a polling station in suburban Mount Kisco with his girlfriend, Sandra Lee.

Democrats across New York are also choosing their candidates for attorney general and the state Legislature in the nation’s last primary election of 2018.

The most-watched race is the fiercely fought contest between Cuomo and Nixon.

She’s a high-profile example of an insurgent left-wing trying to oust establishment incumbents.

11 a.m.

Democrats across New York are choosing their candidates for governor, attorney general and the state Legislature in the nation’s last primary election of 2018.

The most-watched race is a fiercely fought contest between Gov. Andrew Cuomo and activist actress Cynthia Nixon.

She’s a high-profile example of an insurgent left-wing trying to oust establishment incumbents.

President Donald Trump might want to keep an eye on the attorney general primary.

Fordham law professor Zephyr Teachout, New York City Public Advocate Letitia James, U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney and former Hillary Clinton adviser Leecia Eve have all vowed to be a legal thorn in the Republican president’s side.

Polls show that race very close going into election day.

Voting began in some cities early Thursday and starts in other places at noon.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump is facing fresh, harsh criticism for disputing the official death toll in Puerto Rico from last year’s hurricanes and alleging, without evidence, that opposition Democratic Party members inflated the numbers to make him look bad.

Trump said on Twitter Thursday morning, “3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico,” referring to hurricanes Maria and Irma.

An independent study concluded the death toll from Hurricane Maria was nearly 3,000.

The reaction to Trump’s tweets on the matter has been fast and fierce.

“With 3,000 people dead, for the president to say that Puerto Rico was a success, a triumph of his presidency, is simply delusional,” Congressman Luis Gutierrez said on the floor of the House of Representatives Thursday morning. “And now, he denies that they are even dead.”

Gutierrez, who is of Puerto Rican heritage and represents the state of Illinois, was involved in the island’s recovery effort. He also accused Trump of “making a tremendous and deadly mistake in caring for the American people.”

Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican from a state where many of those who fled the island have relocated, said he disagreed with the president.

“An independent study said thousands were lost,” Scott said on Twitter, adding that he has been to the island seven times and had seen the devastation firsthand.

Congressman Steny Hoyer, who as the Democratic whip holds the opposition party’s second highest position in the chamber, called the president’s comment “beyond comprehension and deeply offensive to the thousands of American families who lost loved ones.”

Paul Ryan, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (the top representative of the president’s party in the chamber), had a conditional defense of Trump’s comments when questioned by a reporter.

“There is no reason to dispute these numbers,” Ryan replied, adding, however, “it was no one’s fault” that so many had died from a devastating storm hitting an isolated island.

Power was out for several months for much of the island, and damage from the storm still hampers the recovery of the Caribbean territory that is located about 1,600 kilometers southeast of the state of Florida and is home to 3.3 million people, who are U.S. citizens. About a quarter of a million residents were displaced.

A report by the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, issued on Aug. 29, said vast numbers of Puerto Ricans died as a direct result of Hurricane Maria last September, far beyond the initial estimate of 64 deaths.

The report said many of the deaths occurred weeks later because of devastating damage to the Caribbean island’s electrical grid that curbed treatment for those with life-threatening injuries or medical conditions.

The death toll issue is making fresh headlines, as Hurricane Florence targets the southeastern U.S. coastal state. As the new storm approached, Trump, for days, revisited the U.S. government’s performance in handling the aftermath of Maria’s stunning blow to Puerto Rico and other hurricanes that hit the U.S. mainland last year.

Trump went to Puerto Rico after Maria hit, saying, “When I left the Island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by it did not go up by much. Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3000.”

The president added: “This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico. If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!”

Some prominent Republicans are hesitating to criticize the president about the tweets. Sen. Orrin Hatch, who is the finance committee chairman, laughed when a reporter read excerpts to him on Thursday, responding: “I can’t really comment because I don’t know anything about it.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, told reporters: “The death toll in Puerto Rico is abominable and abhorrent, and it’s a lesson in our need to do better for our fellow Americans, adding that “Puerto Rico is still a humanitarian crisis.”

The president views it differently.

“We got A Pluses for our recent hurricane work in Texas and Florida (and did an unappreciated great job in Puerto Rico, even though an inaccessible island with very poor electricity and a totally incompetent Mayor of San Juan),” Trump tweeted Wednesday.

San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz told CNN that the president’s words added “insult to injury,” saying he had no idea what is going on there. She said Trump has “no empathy” for anything that doesn’t make him look good.

Puerto Rico’s Gov. Ricardo Rossello said, “Now is not the time to pass judgment. It is time to channel every effort to improve the lives of over 3 million Americans in Puerto Rico.”

Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report. Michael Bowman and Katherine Gypson contributed from Capitol Hill.

 
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The cyclist who flashed her middle finger at President Donald Trump’s motorcade says she’ll file paperwork to run for office in northern Virginia. 

Juli Briskman tells The Washington Post this week that she’ll file paperwork to challenge Suzanne M. Volpe, a Republican who represents the Algonkian District on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors in 2019. Briskman says she will run on increasing transparency in local government, among other things. 

The 51-year-old marketing executive was on a bike ride in October 2017 and was photographed making the offensive gesture as Trump’s motorcade drove by.

Briskman told her bosses what happened after the photo went viral and was asked to leave her government contracting job or face termination. She sued and won her severance claim, but her wrongful-termination lawsuit was dismissed.   
…

Two major Democratic political groups on Wednesday announced a combined $21 million digital ad buy targeting Senate races in November, a sign the party is trying to learn from 2016, when Donald Trump’s Republican presidential campaign was far more aggressive online.

Priorities USA and Senate Majority PAC announced $18 million in joint spending in Arizona, Indiana, Florida, Missouri and North Dakota. Senate Majority PAC also tacked on an additional $3 million in ads targeting Montana, Nevada, Tennessee and West Virginia.

“For the last, really, six years, the Democrats have had their hats handed to them when it comes to digital,” Guy Cecil, the chairman of Priorities USA, which is exclusively funding digital ads and outreach this election cycle, said in an interview. “We needed to close the gap.”

The move comes as Democrats and Republicans are fighting furiously over control of the Senate, where the GOP has a 51-49 edge. Although almost all competitive seats are in states Trump won in 2016, Republicans are increasingly alarmed about the strength of Democratic candidates in states including Tennessee, Texas and Arizona.

GOP edge on Google

The size of the campaign is significant. According to Priorities USA, $7 million has been spent on advertising for Senate races on Google since May 31, with Republicans outspending Democrats 60-40. Facebook did not have comparable data. And through the end of August, Senate Majority PAC, one of the biggest Democratic financial organizations in the battle over control of the upper chamber, spent $37 million in ads on television and radio, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

J.B. Poersch, president of Senate Majority PAC, said it’s important to maintain a mix of traditional television and radio ads along with digital. But for years, he said, “I don’t think we had digital at the adults’ table.”

The conventional wisdom in politics is that Democrats dominated in digital during much of the Obama years because they were more advanced in gathering online data and using it to target voters. But that changed in 2016, when the Trump campaign outspent Hillary Clinton’s Democratic campaign nearly 2-to-1 online, according to a Priorities USA presentation to donors obtained by The Associated Press. The outspending also stretched to various House races. Right-leaning groups, meanwhile, registered vastly more online domains through the beginning of 2017.

Since 2016, Democrats have increasingly focused on digital as a way to strike back against the GOP, with liberal Silicon Valley entrepreneurs holding trainings for Democratic campaigns and some liberal insurgent candidates, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York City and Ayanna Pressley in Boston, winning recent primaries with minimal television ads and instead relying mostly on digital ones.

In-house agency

The GOP continues to invest in both digital and traditional advertising, but no Republican organization of comparable prominence to Priorities has announced an all-digital strategy. Priorities has even formed its own in-house digital ad agency to build spots for its campaigns, including a previously announced $12 million buy targeting House races.

Damon McCoy, a New York University professor who analyzed Facebook political ad spending data earlier this summer, said Democratic and Republican groups spend at comparable rates on the platform with one significant exception: Trump. The president’s own re-election campaign was the biggest political ad spender in the analysis that McCoy and other academics conducted.

Minus the president’s campaign, “spending is fairly split between liberal and conservative candidates and political organizations,” McCoy said. 
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The United States is hoping to use the threat of calibrated sanctions to deter individuals, companies or countries from attempting to interfere with the midterm elections in November.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday authorizing automatic sanctions against actors or entities assessed to have meddled with elections, whether by attacking America’s election infrastructure or through the use of propaganda and disinformation campaigns.

“It’s a further effort, among several that the administration has made, to protect the United States against foreign interference in our elections and really our political process more broadly,” National Security Adviser John Bolton said Wednesday while briefing reporters.

“We felt it was important to demonstrate the president has taken command of this issue, that it’s something he cares deeply about,” Bolton added. “This order, I think, is a further demonstration of that.”

Russian meddling attempts

There have been ongoing concerns about possible attempts by Russia to meddle with the upcoming November vote as a follow-up to what intelligence officials have assessed to be a fairly successful effort to meddle with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

But Bolton and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said the new executive order is not country specific, citing evidence that China, Iran and North Korea may also be working to influence the midterm election in November.

“We see attempts,” Coats told reporters Wednesday, repeating previous assertions that the U.S. intelligence community has yet to see “the intensity of what happened back in 2016.”

“In terms of what the influence is and will be, we continue to analyze all that,” Coats added. “This is an ongoing effort here, and it has been for a significant amount of time, and will continue on a, literally, 24-hour-a-day basis until the election.”

The new executive order gives U.S. intelligence agencies 45 days after an election to report any efforts to meddle with the outcome.

The U.S. attorney general and the Department of Homeland Security will then have 45 days to review those findings. If they agree with the assessment, it would trigger automatic sanctions.

Those sanctions could include blocking access to property and interests, restricting access to the U.S. financial system, prohibiting investment in companies found to be involved, and even prohibiting individuals from entering the U.S.

Additionally, the order authorizes the State Department and the Treasury Department to impose further sanctions, if deemed necessary.

Bolton denied that recent criticism of Trump, and his interactions with President Vladimir Putin during their summit in Helsinki, played any role in issuing the executive order. In Helsinki, Trump told reporters he accepted Putin’s denial of Russian meddling in the 2016 election over the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment and later tried to clarify his statement in a tweet affirming support for the intelligence community.

“The president has said repeatedly that he is determined that there not be foreign interference in our political process,” Bolton said. “Today he signed this executive order, so I think his actions speak for themselves.”

Additional measures possible

Still, Bolton left open the possibility that the White House could work with U.S. lawmakers on additional measures.

Already, members of Congress have introduced various pieces of legislation aimed at setting out stiff penalties for Russia and other countries who seek to meddle with the U.S. electoral process.

And some lawmakers said Wednesday the Trump administration’s latest effort does not go far enough.

“An executive order that inevitably leaves the president broad discretion to decide whether to impose tough sanctions against those who attack our democracy is insufficient,” Mark Warner, the Democratic ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.

“If we are going to actually deter Russia and others from interfering in our elections in the future, we need to spell out strong, clear consequences, without ambiguity,” Warner added.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio said that while the order is a step in the right direction, it is not enough.

“The @WhiteHouse & @POTUS deserve credit for taking this action. They did as much as they could do with an executive order but are limited from going further without legislation,” he tweeted.

Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have been critical of Trump for failing to fully enact a sanctions law that they passed over a year ago, even though the U.S. Treasury Department did impose major sanctions against 24 Russians as a result.

But Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Republican Richard Burr expressed hope late Wednesday the new executive order will “send a clear message” to Russia, Iran and others.

“[The executive order] strengthens our ability to quickly and appropriately hold responsible anyone who interferes in our elections,” Burr said in a statement.
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