No one is getting fired right now. That is what the White House is telling reporters and its own jittery staff.

Chief of Staff John Kelly gathered some personnel Friday and told them “people shouldn’t be concerned,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. “We should do exactly what we do every day, and that’s come to work and do the very best job that we can.”

Sanders took to Twitter on Thursday night to rebut breaking news stories that President Donald Trump had decided to remove national security adviser H.R. McMaster.

“I spoke directly to the president last night,” Sanders told reporters Friday. “He asked me to pass that message along to General McMaster. I know the two of them have been in meetings today. Whether or not that came up, I don’t know.”

A little while later, McMaster was seen escorting guests out of the West Wing entrance.

“Sarah set it straight yesterday. Everybody has got to leave the White House at some point,” he said.

Asked by a reporter whether he was leaving sooner rather than later, McMaster replied, “I’m doing my job.”

​Media reports on dismissal

The Washington Post and several other news organizations have reported the three-star general’s removal from the key post had already been decided by Trump, but it is not yet being announced to spare McMaster embarrassment.

There is also speculation the president will award the general a fourth star and send him back into the field to command troops, perhaps on the Korean Peninsula.

Trump has made little effort to hide his frustration with the active-duty career officer who is regarded as an iconoclastic battle veteran.

McMaster, according to White House insiders, also seems eager to leave, fed up with an unconventional administration and flummoxed by a commander-in-chief with whom he has failed to bond.

The president chastised McMaster last month after the national security adviser said Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election was “incontrovertible.”

“General McMaster forgot to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the Russians and that the only Collusion was between Russia and Crooked H, the DNC and the Dems,” Trump tweeted.

Reports of McMaster’s impending removal followed the firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson this week.

‘There will always be change’

There is also intense speculation that several members of the president’s Cabinet could be short-timers, primarily because of bad publicity about costly and dubious travel, as well as questionable cosmetic but expensive office modifications.

“There will always be change,” Trump told reporters Thursday. “And I think you want to see change. I want to also see different ideas.”

If the president follows through in replacing him, McMaster will become the second national security adviser to leave the job since Trump took office. 

The first one, retired Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, was fired weeks into his tenure in 2017 after misleading White House officials about contacts with Russians.

Flynn has made a plea deal with federal prosecutors for lying about conversations with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and is bound to fully cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian government efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

Mueller’s team appears to be examining a wide range of transactions involving Trump’s businesses, as well as those of his associates, and now has reportedly issued a subpoena for records from the Trump Organization. 
…

Last month, San Diego police knocked on Brandon Snyder’s door and took away his rifle. They did it using a new tool: an emergency protective order issued by a court, just like orders that for years have been used to prevent spousal abuse or stalking.

California is one of only two states that allow family members to seek a gun restraining order when they see warning signs that a gun owner might pose a danger to himself or others. Five other states allow only police officers to seek gun proactive orders. Nearly 20 other states are considering such measures.

In the wake of last month’s mass shooting at a Florida high school, many on both sides of the gun debate — from firearms control advocates to gun lobbyists — see so-called “red flag” laws like California’s as a politically viable solution to gun violence. And they’re pushing more states to adopt them.

Co-workers of Snyder, 31, a mechanic at a car dealership, became alarmed after he praised Las Vegas mass shooter Stephen Paddock for not “committing suicide until he’d gunned down enough people to set a modern record,” said Mara Elliott, San Diego’s top prosecutor.

That wasn’t all.

“What he told his co-workers is, if it was up to him, he’d have shot up a mosque and then shot it out with the cops,” recalled Elliott, whose office investigated the case.

Snyder, facing the prospect of dismissal, told his Ford dealership colleagues that if he was let go, he’d return with a gun. A co-worker called police.

Semiautomatic rifle surrendered

Unable to charge Snyder with a crime, prosecutors obtained an emergency firearms protective order. On February 27, he surrendered his semiautomatic rifle and “significant killing capability,” Elliott said.

“We take no chances,” she told VOA.

Snyder could not be immediately reached for comment. Tom Nicholl, the general manager of the dealership where Snyder worked, did not respond to requests for comment.

In the United States, where many citizens take their constitutional right to own firearms very seriously, removing a gun from a lawful owner is no easy task. But San Diego has done it 19 times in the past three months under California’s three-year-old law.

And Elliott said it’s working.

The law “gives people the opportunity to speak up and get a response before waiting for a crime or tragedy to happen,” the prosecutor said.

Last week, Florida passed a gun law that allows police officers, though not family members, to obtain gun restraining orders.

The state’s two senators, one a Republican and one a Democrat, recently introduced a bill in Congress that incentivizes states to adopt gun restraining order laws. The White House has spoken out for the measure.

In an about-face, the National Rifle Association (NRA), the nation’s main gun lobby, has thrown its support behind it.

“We need to stop dangerous people before they act, so Congress should provide funding for states to adopt risk protection orders,” Chris Cox, the NRA’s chief lobbyist, said in a video message last week.

Does it work?

However, hard evidence that gun restraining orders are effective remains thin. In recent years, there has been only one major study on the topic, and it focused on the law’s effectiveness in preventing suicide in Connecticut.

The 2016 study, widely cited by gun control advocates, showed that for every 10 to 20 gun restraining orders issued in the state from 1999 to 2013, a life was saved.

Though the NRA has come on board, other gun rights advocates say treatment, not gun seizure, is the answer to dealing with gun owners who show signs of trouble.

“If you really believe somebody is a danger to themselves or others, then you ought to think about involuntarily committing them to some type of mental health facility,” said John Lott, an economist and founder of the right-leaning Crime Prevention Research Center.

Others worry that gun protection order laws may infringe on free speech, due process and other constitutional rights.

“I don’t want a police officer simply judging somebody’s talk to be sufficient to seize their arms,” said Peter Langrock, a Vermont lawyer who says he’s not a supporter of the NRA.

Right balance

But supporters of gun restraining orders say the law strikes the right balance between public safety and civil liberties.

“The due process goes into balancing public safety,” said John Hemmerling, a prosecutor in the San Diego city attorney’s office.”The due process plays itself out within 21 days.”

On March 20 — 21 days after giving up his rifle — Snyder will have his day in court, where a judge will hear his side of the story and decide whether to allow Snyder to retrieve his gun or extend the restraining order for up to a year.

Researcher Lynn Davis contributed to this report.
…

Pennsylvania’s tight congressional special election underscores the need for states to replace aging voting machines and use paper ballots as backups to ensure the integrity of vote counts ahead of pivotal November U.S. midterm elections, election security advocates said on Wednesday.

Democrat Conor Lamb led Republican Rick Saccone by only a few hundred votes out of nearly 230,000 cast in the closely watched U.S. House of Representatives election on Tuesday in western Pennsylvania.

With many states using antiquated voting machines and with concerns about potential interference in U.S. elections by Russia or other actors, there is rising concern among experts about the need to safeguard American balloting.

“At the end of the day, the winners need be assured that they won and the losers need to know that they lost,” said former Pennsylvania election official Marian Schneider, president of Verified Voting, a group that advocates for

auditable elections.

While there have been no issues raised about the integrity of the Pennsylvania race, election security experts said the razor-thin margin highlighted the importance of protecting voting machines from tampering, failure or human error.

“Whenever you are talking about computers, there are risks” of tampering or programming error, Schneider said.

In the face of federal inaction on election security, nearly every state has taken steps since the 2016 election to purchase more secure equipment, expand the use of paper ballots, improve cyber training or seek federal assistance, according to groups that track election security.

Voting systems that do not produce a paper backup of a ballot, which election officials can use to check electronic tabulations, are more difficult to audit for signs of tampering or error, according to experts.

The four counties where voters cast ballots on Tuesday are among the 50 Pennsylvania counties, out of a total of 67, that use voting machines without an auditable paper trail, according to Verified Voting.

“With paper, you can recount or audit that paper and carefully check the performance of the voting system, ensuring that the electronic result would match what a full hand count would show,” said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, an election security expert with the Center for Democracy & Technology.

“Without a paper audit trail, any recount is just like hitting enter on the keyboard over and over again: You get the same answer and you have no clue if that answer is correct,” Hall added.

Probing by Russia

The Department of Homeland Security said last year that 21 of the 50 states had experienced initial probing of their election systems from Russian hackers and that a small number of networks were compromised, but that there remains no evidence any votes were actually altered.

U.S. intelligence agencies previously concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election through a campaign of propaganda and hacking to help Trump win. Russia has denied this.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat, last month issued a directive requiring new voting machines in the state to have paper records of votes cast. Pennsylvania has not provided funding for counties to buy new equipment, making it unclear whether existing systems will be replaced before the November elections.

President Donald Trump, who in the past has raised questions about the integrity of American elections, endorsed the paper backups in elections as useful to protect against Russian meddling. Trump said at a news conference last Thursday that “it’s old-fashioned, but it’s always good to have a paper

back-up system of voting.”

But Congress, controlled by his fellow Republicans, has not provided funding to states to upgrade voting machines.

Democrats have introduced election security legislation and called for congressional hearings. Congressional Republicans have not acted on warnings from senior U.S. intelligence officials who said Russia is likely to target November’s midterm races in which Democrats are trying to seize control of the House of Representatives and Senate.

Some experts have warned that voter confidence could be undermined if states do not install newer machines that can be audited with a paper trail.

New Jersey, Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina have no verifiable paper ballot backup across their states, though some are looking to purchase systems that provide such audits. Eight other states, including Pennsylvania, have some electoral districts without paper backups.

Reporting by Dustin Volz.
…

What comes next in the U.S. Congress to address gun violence, after thousands of students walked out of their classrooms to demand action in the wake of the Florida school massacre? As VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, it appears there is still no clear path forward as lawmakers consider gun laws and how to deal with school safety.
…

A difference in how the United States and North Korea define denuclearization could potentially derail the summit scheduled for May between President Donald Trump and Kim Jon Un, according to experts.

Last week, Trump accepted North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s summit invitation, which was conveyed by South Korean envoys who had met with Kim in Pyongyang.

If the U.S. military threat to North Korea is removed and the safety of the Kim regime is guaranteed, the “North side clearly affirmed its commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” said South Korean National Security Chief Chung Eui-yong after meeting with Kim. Days later, Chung delivered Kim’s proposal to Trump.

WATCH: US Moving Forward with Proposed US- North Korea Talks

What is denuclearization

But the fate of the summit scheduled could hinge on the definition of denuclearize, which the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines as “to remove nuclear arms from or prohibit the use of nuclear arms in” — in this case, North Korea.

In the past, Pyongyang has interpreted denuclearization as the removal of what it perceives as threats, including the U.S. nuclear umbrella over the Korean Peninsula, the U.S.-South Korea security alliance, and the presence of the U.S. troops in the South, according to experts, while Washington interprets denuclearization as the complete dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

“A rift in views of denuclearization could make Trump-Kim summit difficult and possibly even be canceled,” said Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Evans Revere, a former State Department official who was involved in previous talks with North Korea, warned that Trump should not expect denuclearization to be the topic that Kim wants to discuss at the summit.

“A very complicated situation has just gotten a lot more complicated primarily because the invitation seems to have been accepted on the premise or with the assumption that the North Korean leader is interested in denuclearization, even though I see no evidence whatsoever that he’s actually interested in discussing denuclearization,” Revere said.

North Korea’s focus

North Korea will most likely attempt to shift the focus from dismantling its nuclear program to demanding the U.S. remove what North Korea perceives as threats posed against its regime as a condition for giving up its nuclear program, according to experts.

Withdrawing its military from the South, “will be unacceptable to the U.S.,” Manning said.

Ken Gause, director of the International Affairs Group at the Center for Naval Analyses, thinks divergent demands resulting from the differing views of denuclearization will prevent the U.S. from finding “a common ground to begin negotiations.”

Former State Department official Revere believes diplomatic progress will be severely impeded if Trump and Kim have different outcomes in mind.

“There is a rule in diplomacy that you never agree to a summit unless you understand the outcome that you are seeking in the summit, and your adversary also understands and agrees with the outcome that both parties are seeking. That doesn’t seem to be the case here,” Revere said.

​North Korea’s commitment

North Korea’s commitment to denuclearize is highly deceptive, according to Revere. 

“What Ambassador Chung, whom I have a lot of respect for, … heard from the North Koreans is not a commitment to denuclearization,” Revere said. “It’s a commitment to North Korea’s vision of the end of the U.S.-South Korean alliance and the end of the U.S. military presence. And that’s not an acceptable condition.”

North Korea has not made an official public pledge to give up its nuclear weapons program. The message that Pyongyang is willing to denuclearize was conveyed by the South Korean envoys who met with Kim. Without a direct statement from Kim, there is room to misinterpret North Korea’s definition of, and willingness to denuclearize, according to experts.

Manning warned that possible clashes over denuclearization at the summit could potentially lead to a diplomatic breakdown and raise the possibility of U.S. military action.

“There is a danger that if there is a Trump-Kim summit and President Trump feels played or betrayed, military action might be more likely,” Manning said.

“If diplomacy fails, the voices in the U.S. calling for military strikes will gain momentum,” Gause said. “The voices for diplomacy will be drowned out.”

Trilateral diplomacy

The trilateral diplomatic move began when South Korean envoys traveled to Pyongyang early in March at Kim’s invitation. Their trip was followed by the announcement of the inter-Korean summit to be held in April. The delegation then visited Washington to deliver Kim’s invitation for the U.S-North Korean summit that Trump agreed to have by May.

Youngnam Kim from VOA Korean Service contributed to this story.

 
…

A major shakeup in U.S. President Donald Trump’s Cabinet has not derailed plans for an unprecedented meeting between the president and the leader of North Korea, according to the State Department. But foreign policy experts warn caution may be necessary. VOA’s Korean service spoke with a former CIA analyst on Korean issues about the high stakes summit. VOA’s Jesusemen Oni has more.
…

The private school that Barron Trump attends has joined other schools in calling for gun control.

St. Andrew’s Episcopal School and more than 100 schools in Maryland and the Washington area on Wednesday signed an open letter calling on Barron Trump’s father, Republican President Donald Trump, and Congress to support gun control measures and to reject arming teachers. The White House has proposed arming educators.

The schools support a “robust system of registration and background checks” with an emphasis on assault weapons. They also back stronger mental health services.

The letter was published as tens of thousands of students walked out of their classrooms Wednesday to demand action on gun violence and school safety. The walkout was triggered by the Feb. 14 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

 
…

President Donald Trump freestyled with the facts when talking trade with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The Republican described the discussion during a fundraising speech in St. Louis on Wednesday.

According to audio obtained by The Washington Post, Trump insisted that the United States runs a trade deficit with Canada.

Trump said Trudeau told him there was no trade deficit. Trump said he replied, “‘Wrong, Justin, you do.’ I didn’t even know. … I had no idea. I just said, ‘You’re wrong.'”

Trump claimed the figures don’t include timber and energy.

However, the Office of the United States Trade Representative says the United States has a trade surplus with Canada.
…

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu’s planned visit to Washington Monday has been postponed, his spokesman said Thursday, following the U.S. decision to replace Rex Tillerson as secretary of state.

A planned visit Monday to Washington by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has been postponed. No reason was given but Cavusoglu had earlier described the meeting as key to resolving ongoing differences between the countries over Washington’s support of the Syrian Kurdish militia, the YPG, in its war against the Islamic State.

Ankara considers the militia terrorists linked to a Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey.

Turkey has been angered by Washington’s support for the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia in the fight against Islamic State. Turkey sees the YPG as a terrorist group and an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

There had been signs of an easing in strains between the NATO allies after a recent visit to Turkey by Tillerson, whom U.S. President Donald Trump sacked Tuesday as secretary of state.

But Turkish media has seized on a tweet purportedly made by Pompeo after a failed coup in July 2016, and before he became CIA director, which referred to Turkey as a “totalitarian Islamist dictatorship.” The tweet was later removed.

Turkey has been angered by the U.S. failure to extradite the Pennsylvania-based cleric whom Ankara blames for orchestrating that attempted putsch and by the conviction of a Turkish banker in an Iran sanctions-busting case.
…

 As students staged a coordinated school walkout in districts across America, U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday grilled federal officials on the failure to act on repeated warnings about Nikolas Cruz, the alleged gunman who killed 17 people at a Florida high school last month.

“It appears that the FBI did not communicate with local law enforcement,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said.

“There was a catastrophic failure at every single level (of law enforcement) that occurred here which made this shooting possible, and we have to find a way to plug those holes,” Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas said.

The Senate panel met as throngs of students and activists converged outside the Capitol and in other locations nationwide to demand restrictions on firearms.

Democrats backed their call. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California noted that the United States has suffered more than 200 school shootings in the last five years.

“This averages out to five school shootings per month. This is outrageous,” Feinstein said. “This Congress cannot continue to do nothing, because (doing) nothing means more lives are lost, including the youngest and the most vulnerable among us.”

Most Democrats favor establishing universal background checks for all gun purchases as well as reestablishing a ban on the sale of  semi-automatic rifles.

“It’s common sense to get the assault rifles and banana (high capacity) clips off the streets,” Florida Senator Bill Nelson said. “Universal background checks are common sense.”

By contrast, most Republicans back measures to boost law enforcement’s capability to detect dangerous individuals and prevent gun sales to those deemed a security risk, rather than banning entire classifications of firearms or subjecting every gun sale to a background check.

In addition, President Donald Trump has directed the Justice Department to craft regulations banning the sale of so-called “bump stocks” that dramatically increase the number of rounds a semi-automatic rifle can fire in a given time period. He has also voiced support for allowing trained teachers to carry firearms in schools.

Weeks ago, Trump appeared to endorse universal background checks as well as raising the minimum purchase age for assault weapons, but reversed himself days later.

“There are things we (Republicans and Democrats) agree on. We should pass those things,” Florida Senator Marco Rubio said.

“We must rally around consensus,” Grassley said. 

Democrats countered that limiting congressional action to the lowest common denominator of measures palatable to majorities of members in both parties will not prevent future mass shooting incidents.

“Guns and assault weapons continue to flood our streets by the millions,” Feinstein said, adding that gun deaths in America rose sharply after a previous assault weapons ban expired in 2004. “We have seen more and more children, families, communities victimized by mass shootings from military-style assault weapons.”

On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, announced his support for a bipartisan proposal to provide federal funding to train school districts and local and state police forces to identify security threats, form crisis intervention teams, and boost security infrastructure at schools nationwide.

“We use a variety of security measures to protect workplaces and government buildings across America. We ought to be able to do the same to protect our children,” McConnell said in a statement.

Democrat Sherrod Brown of Ohio called the proposal an initial step to boost school safety, adding that further steps “must also include gun safety measures.”
…

U.S. President Donald Trump is naming Larry Kudlow, a longtime conservative economic analyst and television business show commentator, as his new top White House economic adviser.

The 70-year-old Kudlow told news media he accepted Trump’s offer Wednesday to become director of the White House’s National Economic Council. Reports say a formal announcement could come Thursday.

He will replace former Wall Street financier Gary Cohn, who resigned last week after breaking with President Trump on trade policy. Cohn had lost an internal debate, among Trump advisers, aimed at convincing the president not to impose steep new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

Kudlow, who was an informal economic adviser to Trump during the first year of his presidency, also opposed Trump’s imposition of the 25 percent levy on steel and 10 percent tax on aluminum. Kudlow, however, was also an adviser to Trump during his successful 2016 White House run and worked with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in designing the tax cut plan Trump pushed through Congress in December.

Kudlow worked decades ago in the White House of President Ronald Reagan, but has spent much of the time since then as a television show host, much like Trump, who served as executive producer of The Apprentice reality television show before turning to politics.

One of Kudlow’s first White House efforts is likely to involve the ongoing renegotiation of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, the U.S. pact with Canada and Mexico.

Kudlow has said that it would be a “calamitously bad decision” to end the accord, but Trump has said NAFTA has left the United States at a disadvantage in trade deals with the two countries. The president has said he wants better terms for American farmers in their exports to Canada and wants Mexico to step up its border security at the U.S. line to keep undocumented immigrants from crossing into the United States.

 
…

Republican U.S. Senator Rand Paul said on Wednesday he would oppose President Donald Trump’s nomination of CIA Director Mike Pompeo to be secretary of state and CIA Deputy Director Gina Haspel to become the new director of the CIA.

Paul also said he would “do everything I can” to block them.

Haspel has faced strong criticism for overseeing a secret Central Intelligence Agency prison where detainees were tortured in the years following the Sept. 11 attacks.

“I find it just amazing that anyone would consider having this woman at the head of the CIA. My opposition to her is over her direct participation in interrogation and her gleeful enjoyment at the suffering of someone who was being tortured,” Paul told a news conference.

Pompeo, a former Republican member of the House of Representatives, was confirmed as CIA director with the support of two-thirds of the Senate last year. Many legislators have said they are happy with his workat the agency, and expect he will be confirmed as the United States’ top diplomat.

Paul is the first Republican to come out against the nominations, which Trump announced on Tuesday. He was the only Republican who voted last year against Pompeo’s nomination to be CIA director.

Another Republican senator, John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, also had questions about Haspel, but did not say he would oppose her. McCain has not been in Washington to vote this year as he undergoes cancer treatment at home in Arizona.

Haspel is respected for her work in the clandestine service and held in high regard at the CIA. Early indications are that, if her hearing goes well, she would be supported by at least enough moderate Democrats to be confirmed.

An intelligence officer who worked with Haspel denied she was anything like a “gleeful participant,” saying, “That makes it sound like she was holding the bucket and laughing, when all she was was a bureaucrat following orders.”

A CIA spokesman said the agency was aware of Paul’s statement and had no immediate comment.

Trump’s fellow Republicans have a 51-49 majority in the Senate, so it would take little Republican dissent to block a nomination, but only if all Democrats vote no.

Paul could make the process difficult particularly for Pompeo. He is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which will hold Pompeo’s confirmation hearing and vote on whether to report his nomination favorably to the full Senate.

His opposition could keep the committee from doing so, if every Democrat also opposed the nominee, although the Senate’s Republican leaders could hold a vote anyway.

Committee Democrats said it was too early to say how they would vote.

Senate Republicans said they expect both confirmation hearings to be held soon. Pompeo’s is expected in April.

Every Democrat on the Foreign Relations panel voted against Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, in January 2017, but the panel advanced his nomination by an 11-10 vote because every Republican, including Paul, backed him.

 
…