American lawmakers differed sharply in their reaction to the U.S.-North Korean summit in Singapore. But as VOA Senate Correspondent Michael Bowman reports, most Republicans were decidedly more upbeat than their Democratic colleagues.
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A U.S. Supreme Court ruling has cleared the way for states to take a tougher approach to maintaining their voter rolls, but will they?

Ohio plans to resume its process for removing inactive voters after it was affirmed in Monday’s 5-4 ruling. It takes a particularly aggressive approach that appears to be an outlier among states.

Few appear eager to follow.

“Our law has been on the books. It hasn’t changed, and it isn’t changing,” said Oklahoma Election Board spokesman Bryan Dean.

At issue is when a state begins the process to notify and ultimately remove people from the rolls after a period of non-voting. In most states with similar laws, like Oklahoma, that process begins after voters miss two or more federal elections.

In Ohio, it starts if voters sit out a two-year period that includes just one federal election. They are removed from the rolls if they fail to vote over the following four years or do not return an address-confirmation card.

Opponents of the laws say their intent is to purge people from the rolls, particularly minorities and the poor who tend to vote Democratic. Supporters say voters are given plenty of chances to keep their active status and that the rules adhere to federal law requiring states to maintain accurate voter rolls.

Democrats and voting rights groups have expressed concern that other states will be emboldened by the ruling and adopt more aggressive tactics to kick voters off the rolls. In addition to Oklahoma, Georgia, Montana, Oregon, Pennsylvania and West Virginia have laws similar to Ohio’s.

But even Republican-led states where officials are concerned about voter fraud may be wary when it comes to following the Ohio model.

One hurdle is likely to come from local governments, where election administrators would have to deal with disgruntled voters and manage an increase in the number of people placed on inactive voter lists, said Myrna Perez, who has studied voter list practices in her role as deputy director of the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program.

“Using one election as an indicator is going to lead to a whole lot of false positives,” she said. “There are plenty of states that clean their voter rolls successfully without being as aggressive as Ohio.”

West Virginia is more lenient in targeting inactive voters than Ohio. Among other things, it requires counties in the year following a presidential election to mail an address confirmation to people who have not voted in any election during the previous four years.

Julie Archer of the watchdog West Virginia Citizen Action Group said the process appears to be working as it should.

“There is not a need to do something more aggressive,” she said.

‘Massive statewide purge’

The controversy over Ohio’s approach arose from apparently conflicting mandates in the National Voter Registration Act, which became law in 1993. It requires states to maintain accurate voter registration lists but also says they should protect against inadvertently removing properly registered voters.

Since 1994, Ohio has used voters’ inactivity after two years — encompassing one federal election cycle — to trigger a process that could lead to removal from the voter rolls. That process has been used under both Democratic and Republican secretaries of state, but groups representing voters did not sue until 2016, under current Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted.

The legal action followed what the lawsuit called “a massive statewide purge” of voters in the summer of 2015.

In Pennsylvania, the process isn’t triggered unless people have failed to vote for five years, or two general election cycles. The state has no plans to change that, Department of State spokeswoman Wanda Murren said.

The existing system hasn’t been drawing complaints, said Ray Murphy, a spokesman for Keystone Votes, a liberal coalition that advocates for changes to Pennsylvania election law. But he said the group will watch the Legislature closely for any signs that lawmakers will want to follow Ohio’s more stringent method.

Ballot access is a frequent battleground for Democrats and Republicans, but it’s not always a neatly partisan issue.

In Oregon, for example, Republican Secretary of State Dennis Richardson last year expanded the period for removing people from the rolls from five years of non-voting to 10 years.

“A registered voter should not lose their voting rights solely because they haven’t participated recently,” he said in a written statement following Monday’s Supreme Court ruling.
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House Republicans labored to strike an immigration accord Tuesday, the day restive moderates have said they’d move to force future votes on the divisive issue if no compromise is reached. Aides said any deal would likely include provisions changing how immigrant children are separated from their families at the border.

Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, planned to meet with centrist and conservative GOP leaders in hopes of defusing an election-year civil war that leaders worry will alienate right-leaning voters. For weeks, the two factions have hunted ways to provide a route to citizenship for immigrants brought illegally as children to the U.S. and bolster border security, but have failed to find middle ground.

Moderates led by Representatives Carlos Curbelo of Florida and California’s Jeff Denham have said that without an agreement, they would on Tuesday get the 218 signatures — a House majority — needed on a petition that would trigger votes later this month on four immigration bills. They are three names short, but have said they have enough supporters to succeed.

House GOP leaders have tried to derail that rarely used process, asserting those votes would probably produce a liberal-leaning bill backed by Democrats and just a smattering of Republicans. They’ve been trying to craft a right-leaning measure, but the party has long failed to find compromise between centrists with Hispanic and moderate-minded constituents and conservatives whose voters back President Donald Trump’s hardline views.

Any deal is likely to include much if not all of the $25 billion Trump wants to build his proposed wall with Mexico and other security steps. But there have been disagreements over details, such as conservative plans to make it easier to deport some immigrants here legally.

Trump’s recent clampdown on people entering the U.S. illegally has resulted in hundreds of children being separated from their families and a public relations black eye for the administration.

No law requires those children to be taken from their parents. A two-decade-old court settlement requires those who are separated to be released quickly to relatives or qualified programs. Republicans are seeking language to make it easier to keep the families together longer, said several Republicans.

Besides trying to cut a deal on a bill, Ryan and other GOP leaders have been trying to persuade moderate Republicans to not sign the petition. Two Republican aides said that as part of that, party leaders have promised votes later this year on a bill dealing with migrant agriculture workers and requirements that employers use a government online system to verify workers’ citizenship.

The Republicans spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private talks.

Under House procedures, if the moderates’ petition reaches 218 signatures on Tuesday, the immigration votes could occur as soon as June 25. Otherwise, the votes would have to wait until July.

Trump last year terminated the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, though federal court orders have kept the program functioning for now. Hundreds of thousands of young immigrants have benefited from DACA or could qualify for it, and moderates want legislation that would give these so-called Dreamers a way to become legal residents and ultimately citizenship.

Conservatives have derided that step as amnesty for lawbreakers and have resisted providing a special pathway to protect them.

In recent days, talks have focused on proposals that give the Dreamers a way to gain legal status, perhaps making them eligible for visas now distributed under existing programs. Trump has proposed limiting the relatives that immigrants can bring to the U.S. and ending a lottery that provides visas to people from countries with low immigration rates, which could free up some visas.
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The U.S. government agency that oversees immigration applications is launching an office that will focus on identifying Americans who are suspected of cheating to get their citizenship and seek to strip them of it.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director L. Francis Cissna told The Associated Press in an interview that his agency is hiring several dozen lawyers and immigration officers to review cases of immigrants who were ordered deported and are suspected of using fake identities to later get green cards and citizenship through naturalization.

Cissna said the cases would be referred to the Department of Justice, whose attorneys could then seek to remove the immigrants’ citizenship in civil court proceedings. In some cases, government attorneys could bring criminal charges related to fraud.

Coordinated effort

Until now, the agency has pursued cases as they arose but not through a coordinated effort, Cissna said. He said he hopes the agency’s new office in Los Angeles will be running by next year but added that investigating and referring cases for prosecution will likely take longer.

“We finally have a process in place to get to the bottom of all these bad cases and start denaturalizing people who should not have been naturalized in the first place,” Cissna said. “What we’re looking at, when you boil it all down, is potentially a few thousand cases.”

He declined to say how much the effort would cost but said it would be covered by the agency’s existing budget, which is funded by immigration application fees.

The push comes as the Trump administration has been cracking down on illegal immigration and taking steps to reduce legal immigration to the U.S.

Immigrants who become U.S. citizens can vote, serve on juries and obtain security clearance. Denaturalization, the process of removing that citizenship, is very rare.

Citizenship revoked

The U.S. government began looking at potentially fraudulent naturalization cases a decade ago when a border officer detected about 200 people had used different identities to get green cards and citizenship after they were previously issued deportation orders.

In September 2016, an internal watchdog reported that 315,000 old fingerprint records for immigrants who had been deported or had criminal convictions had not been uploaded to a Department of Homeland Security database that is used to check immigrants’ identities. The same report found more than 800 immigrants had been ordered deported under one identity but became U.S. citizens under another.

Since then, the government has been uploading these older fingerprint records dating back to the 1990s and investigators have been evaluating cases for denaturalization.

Earlier this year, a judge revoked the citizenship of an Indian-born New Jersey man named Baljinder Singh after federal authorities accused him of using an alias to avoid deportation.

Authorities said Singh used a different name when he arrived in the United States in 1991. He was ordered deported the next year and a month later applied for asylum using the name Baljinder Singh before marrying an American, getting a green card and naturalizing.

Authorities said Singh did not mention his earlier deportation order when he applied for citizenship.

Entered a new chapter

For many years, most U.S. efforts to strip immigrants of their citizenship focused largely on suspected war criminals who lied on their immigration paperwork, most notably former Nazis.

Toward the end of the Obama administration, officials began reviewing cases stemming from the fingerprints probe but prioritized those of naturalized citizens who had obtained security clearances, for example, to work at the Transportation Security Administration, said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute’s office at New York University law school.

The Trump administration has made these investigations a bigger priority, he said. He said he expects cases will focus on deliberate fraud but some naturalized Americans may feel uneasy with the change.

“It is clearly true that we have entered a new chapter when a much larger number of people could feel vulnerable that their naturalization could be reopened,” Chishti said.

Since 1990, the Department of Justice has filed 305 civil denaturalization cases, according to statistics obtained by an immigration attorney in Kansas who has defended immigrants in these cases.

The attorney, Matthew Hoppock, agrees that deportees who lied to get citizenship should face consequences but worries other immigrants who might have made mistakes on their paperwork could be targeted and might not have the money to fight back in court.

Cissna said there are valid reasons why immigrants might be listed under multiple names, noting many Latin American immigrants have more than one surname. He said the U.S. government is not interested in that kind of minor discrepancy but wants to target people who deliberately changed their identities to dupe officials into granting immigration benefits.

“The people who are going to be targeted by this, they know full well who they are because they were ordered removed under a different identity and they intentionally lied about it when they applied for citizenship later on,” Cissna said. “It may be some time before we get to their case, but we’ll get to them.”
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Financial disclosure forms released late Monday show that White House special adviser — and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law — Jared Kushner’s wealth and debt both appear to have risen over the year, an indication of the complex state of his finances and the potential conflicts that confront some of his investments.

Disclosures issued by the White House for Kushner and his wife, Trump’s daughter Ivanka, showed that Kushner held assets totaling at least $181 million. His previous 2017 disclosure had showed assets in at least the $140 million range. Kushner and Ivanka Trump, jointly held at least $240 million in assets last year.

The financial disclosures released by the White House and filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics routinely show both assets and debts compiled in broad ranges between low and high estimates, making it difficult to precisely chart the rise and fall of the financial portfolios of federal government officials.

The White House released the disclosures for Kushner and Ivanka Trump on a heavy news day, while the world’s media lavished attention on President Trump’s preparations to meet with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un for talks over nuclear weapons. The White House had released the president’s own financial report last month.

A spokesman for the couple said Monday that the couple’s disclosure portrayed both assets and debts that have not changed much over the past year — and stressed that Kushner and Ivanka Trump have both complied with all federal ethics rules.

“Since joining the administration, Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump have complied with the rules and restrictions as set out by the Office of Government Ethics,” said Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for the couple’s ethics lawyer, Abbe Lowell. “As to the current filing which OGE also reviews, their net worth remains largely the same, with changes reflecting more the way the form requires disclosure than any substantial difference in assets or liabilities.”

One of Kushner’s biggest holdings, a real estate tech startup called Cadre that he co-founded with his brother, Joshua, rose sharply in value. The latest disclosure shows it was worth at least $25 million at the end of last year, up from a minimum value of $5 million in his previous disclosure.

The bulk of Ivanka Trump’s assets — more than $50 million worth — was contained in a trust that holds her business and corporations. That trust generated over $5 million in revenue last year.

She reported a stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., worth between $5 million and $25 million. The hotel has been a focus of lawsuits against the president and ethics watchdogs who say Trump is violating the Constitution by profiting from his office as diplomats spend big money there.

The disclosure also showed that Kushner has assumed growing debt over the past year, both expanding his use of revolving lines of credit and taking on additional debt of between $5 million and $25 million as part of his family company’s purchase last year of a New Jersey apartment complex.

A series of interim financial reports last year showed that Kushner had increased lines of credit with Bank of America, New York Community Bank and Signature Bank, each from at least $1 million to $5 million. Such moves do not mean that Kushner has yet accumulated that debt, but has the ability to do so.

The new disclosure shows that Kushner did take on a new debt last year with Bank of America worth between $5 million and $25 million — but jointly with other investors in Quail Ridge LLC, a company used for his family firm’s purchase of Quail Ridge, a 1,032-unit apartment community in Plainsboro, N.J., near Princeton. The disclosures also showed that Ivanka Trump owns an interest in that purchase through a family trust.

The disclosure showed that Kushner reported making at least $5 million in income from the development since Kushner Companies bought the complex in September. The family business has made a splash with high-profile deals for buildings in New York City in the past decade, but lately has been returning to its roots by buying garden apartments in the suburbs.

Under an ethics agreement he signed when he joined the administration in early 2017, Kushner withdrew from his position as CEO of Kushner Companies. But even as a passive investor, he retains many lucrative investments — which ethics critics have warned could raise conflicts of interest.
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United States Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Monday called for global governments to “work together” on law enforcement, at a time when an escalating trade rift is pitting the United States against Canada and a number of Washington’s other close trade partners.

Rosenstein said during a speech in Montreal the United States is “enhancing its commitment to international law enforcement coordination,” through personal relationships, policy changes and additional resources, citing examples of recent collaboration between Canadian and U.S. law enforcement. 

“Working together is not always easy. There may be legal and practical barriers to cooperation,” he said during the International Economic Forum of the Americas, Conference of Montreal. “But strong leadership is not about avoiding problems. It is about embracing challenges and overcoming obstacles.”

Rosenstein’s speech comes after U.S. President Donald Trump fired off a volley of tweets venting anger on NATO allies, the European Union and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the wake of a divisive G-7 meeting over the weekend.
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President Donald Trump said that his top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, suffered a heart attack and was being treated Monday at a military hospital.

Kudlow’s condition wasn’t immediately released by Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

“Our Great Larry Kudlow, who has been working so hard on trade and the economy, has just suffered a heart attack,”Trump wrote from Singapore.

Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council, had joined Trump last week in Canada for what became a contentious meeting of the Group of Seven world leaders. The meeting was shadowed by the Trump administration’s escalation of rhetoric on trade and tariffs and splintered shortly after the president left Quebec and tweeted he was pulling back his approval of a joint statement by the group.

Kudlow appeared Sunday on CNN to back up Trump’s complaint that he had been blindsided by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s criticism of his tariff threats at a summit-ending news conference.

Trump’s choice of Kudlow to be his top economic aide elevated the influence of a longtime fixture on the business news network CNBC. He previously served in the Reagan administration and emerged as a leading evangelist for tax cuts and smaller government.

The famously pinstripe-suited Kudlow succeeded Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs executive who left the post in a dispute over Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum.

With Trump’s tax cuts already being implemented, Kudlow has been advising a president who pushed to tax foreign imports — a policy Kudlow personally opposes. Kudlow said he is “in accord” with Trump’s agenda and his team at the White House would help implement the policies set by the president.

After working in President Ronald Reagan’s administration, Kudlow moved to Wall Street and, though he never completed a master’s program in economics and policy at Princeton University, served as chief economist at Bear Stearns. He left that position in the early 1990s to treat an addiction to alcohol and drugs.

Kudlow soon settled comfortably into the world of political and economic commentary, working at the conservative magazine National Review and becoming a host of CNBC shows beginning in 2001. He was a CNBC contributor before returning to the White House this year.
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U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shook hands Tuesday morning, minutes before retreating inside a Singapore hotel to begin discussions about the possible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

To the sound of dozens of cameras, the two leaders met in front of a background of U.S. and North Korean flags in an unprecedented event — the first meeting of a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader.

Trump’s motorcade arrived first at the Capella Hotel on Singapore’s resort island of Sentosa. Kim’s motorcade arrived a few minutes later.

The two men sat side-by-side before beginning their solo talks with Trump predicting a “great discussion.”

“We’re going to be tremendously successful and it’s my honor, and we will have a terrific relationship, I have no doubt,” Trump said.

Kim said through an interpreter that it was “not easy to get here” and that “old prejudices and practices worked as obstacles on our way forward, but we overcame all of them and we are here today.”

The White House announced Monday that Trump would leave Singapore Tuesday night after meeting with Kim, adding that talks between U.S. and North Korean officials “are ongoing and have moved more quickly than expected.”

A White House statement said Trump would hold a one-on-one meeting with Kim Tuesday morning, with only translators present, followed by a working lunch and an expanded bilateral meeting that will include Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Chief of Staff John Kelly and National Security Adviser John Bolton.

The U.S. president will then address the media before flying out late Tuesday Singapore time. Previous reports had suggested Trump would leave  Wednesday.

On the eve of the first encounter between a sitting U.S. president and a leader of North Korea, American officials are maintaining that any resulting agreement must lead to an end of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile threats.

There will not be a repeat of “flimsy agreements” made between previous U.S. administrations and North Korea, Secretary Pompeo told reporters in Singapore on Monday.

“The ultimate objective we seek from diplomacy with North Korea has not changed — the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korea Peninsula is only outcome that the United States will accept,” Pompeo said.

Sanctions will remain until North Korea completely and verifiably eliminates its weapons of mass destruction programs, Pompeo added.

“If diplomacy does not move in the right direction, those measures will increase,” he said.

Pompeo said he was “very optimistic” the meeting Tuesday between Trump and Kim would “have a successful outcome.”

He declined, however, to reveal any details of the preliminary discussions held Monday between U.S. and North Korean officials.

Pompeo did say the United States is “prepared to take what will be security assurances that are different, unique that America has been willing to provide previously. That’s necessary and appropriate.”

But when pressed by reporters, the secretary of state would not say whether that could include reduction of the number of or removal of U.S. troops in South Korea.

It is also unclear whether U.S. officials will raise human rights issues in meetings with the North Koreans. Ahead of his trip, President Trump said “every issue will be raised.” But he did not address human rights issues when he met with Kim’s top aide, Kim Yong-cho. Critics say ignoring the issue risks squandering leverage and abandoning the North’s victims.

Trump attended a working lunch Monday hosted by Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, at the Istana, which is the official residence of the city state’s president.

“We have a very interesting meeting in particular tomorrow, and I think things can work out very nicely,” Trump told Lee. “We appreciate your hospitality and professionalism and your friendship.”

Trump was presented with a birthday cake by his Singaporean host.  The U.S. president turns 72 on June 14.

Trump also spoke by telephone Monday with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, according to officials in Seoul who predicted that if Tuesday’s Singapore summit is a success it would be a “gift” to the entire world.

“President Moon and President Trump agreed Trump and Kim will be able to make a great achievement if the two leaders come together to find a common denominator through frank discussions,” Blue House spokesman Kim Eu-kyeom told reporters.

The spokesman said Trump told Moon he would send Pompeo to Seoul immediately after the summit to explain its outcome.

About 5,000 journalists are in Singapore for the occasion, but only a handful of American and North Korean reporters and photographers were permitted at the venue when the two leaders greeted each other.

Bill Gallo contributed to this report .
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U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said he does not believe a reduction of U.S. troop numbers on the Korean Peninsula will be up for discussion when President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un meet Tuesday in Singapore.

“The U.S. and South Korea are not engaged … in any reduction of U.S. forces talks,” Mattis told reporters, adding that U.S. troop levels in South Korea “is not something that other countries would have, I would just say, initial domain over a discussion with us.”

Pushed about whether U.S. troop numbers would be on the agenda in Singapore, Mattis replied, “I don’t believe it is.”

Mattis added that discussions about U.S. troop numbers on the peninsula would be “premature” ahead of the outcome of negotiations between the two leaders Tuesday.

Trump will meet Tuesday morning with Kim, with only translators present. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Chief of Staff John Kelly and National Security Adviser John Bolton will also be involved in bilateral meetings.

Mattis is not attending the summit but has one of his assistant secretaries “embedded” there as a military policy adviser.

“My job is to find space, to find solutions to support the diplomats,” Mattis said. “We’re going to have to see what comes out.”
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