Porn actress Stormy Daniels was scheduled to meet with federal prosecutors in New York on Monday as part of their investigation into President Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney, but the meeting was abruptly cancelled late Sunday after it was reported by news organizations, her attorney said. 

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was supposed to meet with prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan in preparation for a possible grand jury appearance as they work to assemble a case against Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. 

But after several news organizations, including The Associated Press, reported on the meeting, two prosecutors called Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, and told him that they were concerned about media attention in the case, he said. 

“I was shocked at that response,” Avenatti said.

Avenatti offered to move the meeting to another location and reiterated that Daniels – who he says has been cooperating with prosecutors for months – was ready to go forward with the meeting, but they called back to cancel it, he said. The meeting has not been rescheduled and prosecutors offered no other explanation for the cancellation, he said. 

Daniels has said she had sex with Trump in 2006 when he was married, which Trump has denied. As part of their investigation into Cohen, prosecutors have been examining the $130,000 payment that was made to Daniels as part of a confidentiality agreement days before the 2016 presidential election.

​”We believe canceling the meeting because the press has now caught wind of it is ridiculous,” Avenatti wrote in an email to Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos. “We do not think it was any secret that at some point you were going to meet with my client.” 

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan had declined to comment on the meeting earlier Sunday night and did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment on the cancellation. 

Daniels is suing to invalidate the confidentiality agreement that prevents her from discussing the alleged relationship with Trump. She argues the nondisclosure agreement should be invalidated because Cohen, signed it, but the president did not. 

Daniels and Avenatti have also turned over documents in response to a subpoena from federal prosecutors about the $130,000 that Daniels was paid, a person familiar with the matter said. They weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. 

Daniels’ interview had been in preparation for a possible grand jury appearance in the federal investigation into Cohen’s business dealings, the person familiar with the matter said. If prosecutors bring a case to a grand jury, they could call witnesses to testify under oath and the grand jury would decide whether to bring criminal charges with a written indictment.

In April, FBI agents raided Cohen’s home, office and hotel room as part of a probe into his business dealings and investigators were seeking records about the nondisclosure agreement that Daniels had signed, among other things. 

Cohen had said he paid Daniels himself, through a limited liability company known as Essential Consultants, LLC, and that “neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly.” 

In May, Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s attorneys, said the president had repaid Cohen for the $130,000 payment to Daniels, contradicting Trump’s prior claims that he didn’t know the source of the money. 

Earlier this month, Trump said he hadn’t spoken with Cohen – his longtime fixer and a key power player in the Trump Organization – in “a long time” and that Cohen is “not my lawyer anymore.”
…

The U.S. Supreme Court, winding down its nine-month term, will issue rulings this week in its few remaining cases including a major one on the legality of President Donald Trump’s ban on people from five Muslim-majority nations entering the country.

The nine justices are due to decide other politically sensitive cases on whether non-union workers have to pay fees to unions representing certain public-sector workers such as police and teachers, and the legality of California regulations on clinics that steer women with unplanned pregnancies away from abortion.

The justices began their term in October and, as is their usual practice, aim to make all their rulings by the end of June, with more due on Monday. Six cases remain to be decided.

The travel ban case was argued on April 25, with the court’s conservative majority signaling support for Trump’s policy in a significant test of presidential powers.

Trump has said the ban is needed to protect the United States from attacks by Islamic militants. Conservative justices indicated an unwillingness to second-guess Trump on his national security rationale.

Lower courts had blocked the travel ban, the third version of a policy Trump first pursued a week after taking office last year. But the high court on Dec. 4 allowed it to go fully into effect while the legal challenge continued.

The challengers, led by the state of Hawaii, have argued the policy was motivated by Trump’s enmity toward Muslims. Lower courts have decided the ban violated federal immigration law and the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on the government favoring one religion over another.

The current ban, announced in September, prohibits entry into the United States by most people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

In a significant case for organized labor, the court’s conservatives indicated opposition during arguments on Feb. 26 to so-called agency fees that some states require non-members to pay to public-sector unions.

Workers who decide not to join unions representing certain state and local employees must pay the fees in two dozen states in lieu of union dues to help cover the cost of non-political activities such as collective bargaining. The fees provide millions of dollars annually to these unions.

The justices seemed skeptical during March 20 arguments toward California’s law requiring Christian-based anti-abortion centers, known as crisis pregnancy centers, to post notices about the availability of state-subsidized abortions and birth control. The justices indicated that they would strike down at least part of the regulations.
…

Protests continue over the treatment of migrants detained in Texas for entering the United States illegally, although the Trump administration on Wednesday reversed its controversial practice of separating detained children and parents at the border.

Still, thousands of migrants remain in detention awaiting their court cases, and many are still apart from their children. As the dramatic story unfolds, Americans are hearing conflicting narratives.

At an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Otay Mesa, California, near the U.S.-Mexico border, protesters Friday chanted “immigrants are welcome” and demanded the release of the families detained in Texas.

WATCH: Protests Continue Over Migrant Detentions, Despite Policy Change

“They’ve got a big mess right now, families that are separated that can’t even talk to each other, connect with each other, make sure that everybody in the family is still OK,” said protester Jan Denny. “We’re not even sure yet how they’re going to get all these people reunited,” she added of the confusion surrounding the shifting policy.

At the White House on Friday, President Donald Trump highlighted other families whose loved ones had been killed by illegal immigrants. 

“These are the families the media ignores,” he said, as he introduced people holding photos of their loved ones.

“Respect this country. Respect the laws of this country, and then you can come in, like my family did,” said Agnes Gibboney, the mother of a son killed by an illegal immigrant.

The Trump administration says 500 of the more than 2,000 separated children have been reunited with their families.

Protesters in California say Trump is following a pattern of blaming migrants for the nation’s problems. 

“Whether these are Chinese immigrants, whether these are Mexicano immigrants, and now Central American immigrants,” said a protester named Myron of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, “there has always been an excuse to blame others.”

Among those raising their voices at the rally was a Democratic senator and frequent Trump critic, Kamala Harris (D-California). She toured this adult detention center, where she met with mothers separated from their family members and children. 

“This is a fight,” she said, “born out of knowing who we are and fighting for the ideals of our country.”

Trump has demanded better border security and a merit-based system of immigration. Protesters say he wants to bar immigrants from the developing world, who already face a hard path to entry and huge backlog of cases.

“We have a broken immigration system,” said Angelica Salas of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. “This is not news to anybody,” she added.

The immigration issue is divisive, but Andrew Pappas of Cincinnati, Ohio, told the Associated Press that he believes Trump’s goal “was not to tear families apart” but “to make Congress act on immigration reform.”

One California border protester, Ellen Montanari, said the issue is close to her heart because her adopted daughter is Latina, like most families in detention. 

“We do need sane members of Congress to sit down and talk about what a reasonable immigration policy looks like,” she said, although Montanari worries that in this year of congressional elections, there will instead be more posturing.
…

Protests continue over the treatment of migrants detained for entering the United States illegally, although the Trump administration last week reversed its controversial policy of separating children and parents at the border. Still, thousands of migrants are in detention awaiting their court cases, and many remain separated from their children. Mike O’Sullivan reports from the California-Mexico border that Americans are hearing two conflicting narratives.
…

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Saturday that she was booted from a Virginia restaurant because she works for President Donald Trump, becoming the latest administration official to experience a brusque reception in a public setting.

Sanders tweeted that she was told by the owner of the Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, that she had to “leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left.”

She said the event Friday evening said far more about the owner of the restaurant than it did about her.

“I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so,” Sanders said in the tweet from her official account, which generated 22,000 replies in about an hour.

The restaurant’s co-owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, told The Washington Post that her staff had called her to report Sanders was at the restaurant. She said several restaurant employees were gay and knew Sanders had defended Trump’s desire to bar transgender people from the military.

“Tell me what you want me to do. I can ask her to leave,” Wilkinson told her staff, she said. “They said yes.”

Wilkinson said that she talked to Sanders privately and Sanders’ response was immediate: “That’s fine. I’ll go.”

No one answered the phone at the restaurant, which was not scheduled to open until the evening. Lexington is about a three-hour drive from the nation’s capital and is in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.

Sanders’ treatment at the restaurant created a social media commotion, with people on both sides weighing in with their critique, including her father, Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate.

“Bigotry. On the menu at Red Hen Restaurant in Lexington VA. Or you can ask for the ‘Hate Plate,’ ” Huckabee said in a tweet, quickly generating 2,000 replies in about 30 minutes. “And appetizers are ‘small plates for small minds.’ ”

On Yelp, a responder from Los Angeles wrote: “Don’t eat here if you’re a Republican, wearing a MAGA hat or a patriot.”

But many were also supportive of the restaurant owner’s actions.

“12/10 would recommend. Bonus: this place is run by management who stuck up for their beliefs and who are true Americans. THANK YOU!!!!” said a comment from Commerce City, Colorado.

Politically, the town is a spot of blue in a sea of red. It sided with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, 61.8 percent to 31.3 percent. It’s the county seat of Rockbridge County, which went with Trump by a similar margin. And it is home to Virginia Military Institute and Washington and Lee University.

Tom Lomax, a local business owner, brought flowers to the restaurant Saturday afternoon as a show of support. He called Wilkinson a “force of nature” and “one of the biggest drivers of the downtown.”

“We support our own here, great little community we have,” he said.

The separation of families trying to enter the U.S. at the southern border has intensified political differences and passions that were already at elevated levels during the Trump presidency.

Earlier in the week, Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, cut short a working dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Washington after protesters shouted, “Shame!” until she left.

Ari Fleischer, the press secretary for former President George W. Bush, tweeted: “I guess we’re heading into an America with Democrat-only restaurants, which will lead to Republican-only restaurants. Do the fools who threw Sarah out, and the people who cheer them on, really want us to be that kind of country?”

Brian Tayback, of Shrewsbury, Pa., and Brandon Hintze, of Alexandria, Va., walked by the restaurant during a visit to Lexington on Saturday. Tayback said he believes the owner made the right decision. 

“They’re taking a stand against hate,” Tayback said. 
…

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representative plan to hold a vote next week on an immigration bill despite Trump urging them Friday to abandon efforts to pass legislation until after the mid-term elections.

Even if the Republicans — who have a majority in both the House and Senate — approve a bill, it faces almost certain defeat in the upper chamber where Democrats hold enough seats to prevent Republicans, even if they all vote together, from reaching the 60 votes needed for passage.

Earlier in the week, the president had called for Congress to quickly approve sweeping immigration legislation. But in a Friday tweet the president said, “Republicans should stop wasting their time on Immigration until after we elect more Senators and Congressmen/women in November. Dems are just playing games, have no intention of doing anything to solves this decades old problem. We can pass great legislation after the Red Wave!”

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican representing a majority Hispanic district in the state of Florida, who is not running for re-election, termed the president’s tweets “schizoid policy making.”

Another retiring lawmaker, Republican Congressman Mark Sanford of South Carolina, a frequent Trump critic who recently lost his primary election, said Trump’s reversal sends “a horrifically chilling signal” that “makes immigration reform that much more unlikely.”

On Saturday, California Democratic Senator Kamala Harris spoke in Otay Mesa, a community in San Diego, at a rally for revised immigration policies. “This is a fight born out of knowing who we are and fighting for the ideals of our country,” she said. Harris spoke after touring a detention facility and speaking with several mothers.​

Trump’s call for Congress to postpone action came as House Republican leaders failed to garner enough support for two bills that would overhaul U.S. immigration laws and bolster border security.

A hard-line measure authored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte failed to pass on Thursday. The measure would have not guaranteed young undocumented immigrants a way to achieve permanent legal residency and included controversial enforcement measures such as a required worker validation program.

House Republican leaders suddenly delayed a vote Thursday on a compromise measure that has the support of key moderate Republican after concluding they lacked enough support to gain passage despite the growing controversy over separating children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border. Next week the House will vote on the compromise bill, which would provide $25 billion for Trump’s border wall, provide a pathway to “dreamers” and keep migrant families intact.

In his weekly radio address Saturday, Trump said the path to immigration reform starts on Capitol Hill.

“Congress and Congress alone can solve the problem. And the only solution that will work is being able to detain, prosecute and promptly remove anyone who illegally cross the border,” the president said.

Aboard Air Force One on Saturday en route to Las Vegas, Nevada, Trump lashed out at House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York, accusing them on Twitter of favoring illegal immigrants over American citizens. ​

All 435 seats in the House and a third of the 100-member Senate will be contested in the November election.

What is unclear, however, is whether Trump realizes the moderate Republicans he is alienating are among the most vulnerable in the mid-term elections.

“No one has more to lose in November than the president does when it comes to the majority in the House, because if this majority flips over to be a Democrat, there will be a big push for impeachment,” said Republican Congressman Bradley Byrne of Alabama, an opponent of the immigration measure.

Trump demonstrated Friday after his tactical retreat on immigration policy that there is no strategic shift to his overall tough approach to those attempting to illegally enter the country — vowing to “end the immigration crisis, once and for all.”

U.S. immigration laws, Trump declared, are “the weakest in the history of the world.”

Trump made the remarks on Friday in an auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House, where he presided over an event with “Angel Families” — those who have had relatives killed by people who have entered the country illegally.

“Your loss will not have been in vain,” the president told the families who held large photos of their slain relatives. “We will secure our borders … the word will get out. Got to have a safe country. We’re going to have a safe country.”

Family members were called by Trump to the presidential lectern to recount how their loved ones were killed by those who were in the United States illegally. Several of those speaking condemned the media for ignoring the stories of the victims and praised Trump and Vice President Mike Pence for their attention to border security.

Trump, in his remarks, also suggested those illegally in the United States commit more crimes on a statistical basis than citizens or resident aliens.

However, studies have shown that undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit a crime in the U.S. than native-born citizens, including one published by the libertarian CATO Institute this year. 

Despite Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric, 75 percent of Americans believe immigration in general is beneficial to the U.S., according to a poll released Thursday by the polling organization Gallup.

“Americans’ strong belief that immigration is a good thing for the country and that immigration levels shouldn’t be decreased present the president and Congress with some tough decisions as to midterm elections loom,” Gallup said in a press release.
…

The Justice Department says it has given House Republicans new classified information related to the Russia investigation after they had threatened to hold officials in contempt of Congress or even impeach them.

A spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan says the department has partially complied with multiple requests from the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees. House Republicans had given the department a Friday deadline for all documents, but Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said the department asked for more time.

“Our efforts have resulted in the committees finally getting access to information that was sought months ago, but some important requests remain to be completed,” Strong said in a statement Saturday. “Additional time has been requested for the outstanding items, and based on our understanding of the process we believe that request is reasonable. We expect the department to meet its full obligations to the two committees.”

In a letter sent to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes late Friday, the Justice Department said it had that day provided a classified letter to his panel regarding whether the FBI used “confidential human sources” before it officially began its Russia investigation in 2016. Nunes has been pressing the department on an informant who spoke to members of President Donald Trump’s campaign as the FBI began to explore the campaign’s ties to Russia.

The department has already given top lawmakers in the House and Senate three classified briefings on the informant. But Nunes has said he wanted the entire committee to receive the information.

In the letter, the Justice Department’s acting assistant director of congressional affairs, Jill Tyson, said the department had also given Nunes materials related to oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Republicans have for months questioned whether the department abused that act when prosecutors and agents in 2016 applied for and received a secret warrant to monitor the communications of a Trump campaign associate.

Democrats have criticized the multiple document requests, charging that they are intended to discredit the department and discredit or even undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s Russia ties and whether there was obstruction of justice.

House Speaker Paul Ryan has backed the document requests, and he led a meeting last week with committee chairmen and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to try to resolve the issue. In a television interview two days after that meeting, on June 17, Nunes said if they don’t get the documents by this week, “there’s going to be hell to pay” and indicated the House could act on contempt or even impeachment. A spokesman for Nunes did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.

Tyson also wrote House Judiciary Committee Chairman Robert Goodlatte, who had subpoenaed the department for documents related to the Russia investigation and also the department’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016. She detailed progress on those requests and said the department is “expeditiously completing them.”

In the letters, Tyson said the department had built “new tools” to search top secret documents and had diverted resources from other congressional requests.
…

President Donald Trump got some crime and immigration statistics right Friday but was off the mark on others in an appearance with those he calls “angel families,” people who lost loved ones at the hands of those living in the country illegally.

A look at how his statements compare with the facts:

TRUMP: “So here are just a few statistics on the human toll of illegal immigration. According to a 2011 government report, the arrests attached to the criminal alien population included an estimated 25,000 people for homicide, 42,000 for robbery, nearly 70,000 for sex offenses, and nearly 15,000 for kidnapping. In Texas alone, within the last seven years, more than a quarter million criminal aliens have been arrested and charged with over 600,000 criminal offenses. You don’t hear that.”

THE FACTS: Trump is likely working from a 2011 U.S. Government Accountability Office report that looked at arrests, costs and incarcerations of immigrants who were in the U.S. illegally. The statistics he cites are accurate. He doesn’t note that about half of all of the 3 million arrests of the “criminal alien population” in the study were for immigration (529,859), drugs (504,043) or traffic (404,488). And some of the immigration arrests were related to civil violations, not criminal charges. The report didn’t distinguish between the two.

TRUMP: “I always hear that, ‘Oh, no, the population’s safer than the people that live in the country.’ You’ve heard that, fellas, right? You’ve heard that. I hear it so much, and I say, ‘Is that possible?’ The answer is it’s not true. You hear it’s like they’re better people than what we have, than our citizens. It’s not true.”

THE FACTS: Trump is questioning reports that those living in the country illegally commit fewer crimes than people in the population overall. He shouldn’t.

Several studies from social scientists and the libertarian think tank Cato Institute have shown that people here illegally are less likely to commit crime than U.S. citizens, and legal immigrants are even less likely to do so.

A March study by the journal Criminology found “undocumented immigration does not increase violence.”

The study, which looked at the years 1990 through 2014, argues that states with bigger shares of such people have lower crime rates.

A study last year by Robert Adelman, a sociology professor at University of Buffalo, analyzed 40 years of crime data in 200 metropolitan areas and found that immigrants helped lower crime. New York City, for example, has the nation’s largest population of immigrants living in the country illegally — about 500,000 — and last year had only 292 murders among a total population of 8.5 million people. A city murder rate is often used as a bench mark for overall crime because it’s difficult to fudge murder statistics.

And Ruben Rumbaut, a University of California, Irvine sociology professor, co-authored a recent study that noted crime rates fell sharply from 1990 to 2015 at a time when illegal immigration spiked.
…

The Guatemalan father last saw his 12-year-old daughter on June 5 and knows nothing about her whereabouts.

The Guatemalan mother of three sons — ages 2, 6 and 13 — is being held in Pearsall, Texas,

The Honduran mother is in detention in El Paso, Texas, and believes her son is in New York.

Two days after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered an end to separating immigrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border, the three parents, like thousands of others, are “desperate” for information about the whereabouts and well-being of their children, their lawyer says.

No access to information

“Our clients are being held in detention facilities with no access to information about their children,” said Jerome Wesevich, an attorney with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, Inc. in Brownsville, Texas. “The government has some procedures in place for supplying information. So far those have been entirely inadequate.”

The legal aid organization is suing the Trump administration over family separations on behalf of the three parents, one of two major legal challenges to the government’s now-rescinded policy.

Wesevich said Trump’s executive order, issued Wednesday, has done little to inspire hope among the separated families.

“I’d say there is not a lot of optimism,” Wesevich said. “The president’s announcement is not very understandable about what it’s going to mean in practical terms.”

​More than 2,300 children

According to the Department of Homeland Security, more than 2,300 children were separated from their parents between early May when the government started a “zero-tolerance policy” on immigration enforcement and last week.

The Department of Homeland Security says it has a plan to reunite the families in the wake of Trump’s order, but it hasn’t spelled out how it intends to carry out the program.

The Pentagon said Thursday that it had accepted a request from the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency tasked with finding shelter for asylum seekers, to house as many as 20,000 unaccompanied migrant children.

With uncertainty surrounding the government’s reunification plan, legal assistance organizations are working to locate and connect separated families.

The Texas Civil Rights Project said Friday that it was seeking to reunite as many as 381 immigrants who have been separated from their children.

Texas RioGrande Legal Aid said it would continue its efforts on behalf of the three Central American parents while hoping for a resolution to the plight of the more than 2,300 separated children.

“The point of our lawsuit that they do it as compassionately and quickly as possible,” Wesevich said. “By compassionate, I mean the parents are provided with information on where their children are, how they’re being cared for.”

The legal aid on Friday asked a federal court in Washington to order government agencies to provide the three parents with “immediate access to basic information about their children’s whereabouts and well-being, and frequent, meaningful opportunity to see and hear their children.”

Among other things, the three want government agencies to provide them with the exact address of where their children are being held; a description of the place they’re being held; information about whether the children have suffered any illness; and finally, the government’s best estimate on when they’ll be reunited.

The government has not responded to the lawsuit.

A spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection, one of the agencies named in the lawsuit, declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.

Short phone calls

The three parents were detained and separated from their children as they crossed the border into the United States in recent weeks.

Wesevich said the father from Guatemala “does not know where (his daughter) is at all.”

The Honduran mother of a 9-year-old son has told the legal aid that she believes her son has been moved to New York.

Since their separation, the mother has been allowed to speak with her son three times for about five minutes each time, according to court filings.

“He only asks when we will see each other again and begs to be with me,” the mother is quoted in court documents as saying. “He is scared and lonely and desperate to be with me. I try to tell him everything will be OK and that I’ll see him soon but, the truth is, I don’t know what will happen with us.”

The Guatemalan mother of three sons has been allowed to speak with them for 10 minutes two times each week. 

“Of course her 2-year-old is unable to provide reliable information about his circumstances, and staff provide only general information to M.G.U., nothing specific about her children’s well-being, which causes her anguish,” according to court papers.
…

Mexican airline Volaris said Friday it was offering free flights to reunite families separated by the “zero tolerance” immigration policy of U.S. President Donald Trump.

“It hurts us to see these children without their parents and it is our vocation to reunite them,” Volaris said in a statement.

The airline said it would work with authorities in the United States, Mexico and Central America to offer free flights on its pre-existing routes to reunite children with their parents. According to its website, Volaris flies to more than 65 locations across Mexico, the United States, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

After facing an uproar at home and abroad, Trump bowed to intense pressure Wednesday and signed an order ending the separation of children from their families while parents were prosecuted for crossing the border illegally.

This week, four major U.S. airlines asked the federal government not to use their flights to transport migrant children away from their parents.

Some of the more than 2,300 children separated from their parents since mid-April have been flown to states far from the border area between Mexico and the United States, where their parents are being charged in immigration courts, according to media reports.

There have been some cases of immigrants being deported without their children. On Thursday, El Salvador demanded a 7-year-old boy be returned to his father who was deported back to the Central American country this week.
…

President Donald Trump is trumpeting results of his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that get ahead of reality.

He is declaring that North Korea has begun ridding itself fully of nuclear weapons following an agreement with Kim in Singapore earlier this month, even though his Defense Department says otherwise.

Trump also prematurely claimed the return of remains of U.S. servicemen missing from the 1950-53 Korean War.

A look at how his statements compare with the facts:

TRUMP: “The big thing is, it will be a total denuclearization, which has already started taking place.” — remarks Thursday at Cabinet meeting.

THE FACTS: That’s not what his Pentagon chief, Jim Mattis, says. When asked by a reporter Wednesday whether he had seen any sign that North Korea had begun steps toward denuclearization, Mattis replied, “I’m not aware of any. Obviously, we’re at the very front end of the process. Detailed negotiations have not begun.”

At the summit, Kim committed to “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” but no details were worked out.

In May, before the summit, North Korea demolished tunnels at its sole underground nuclear test site, although outsiders have not inspected the result. Its nuclear program has many other elements, including nuclear materials production facilities, nuclear warheads, ballistic missiles and missile launchers.

Soldiers’ remains

TRUMP: “We got back our great fallen heroes, the remains sent back today, already 200 have been sent back.” — remarks Wednesday at rally in Duluth, Minnesota.

THE FACTS: No remains have been returned, although Pentagon officials say they are prepared to receive them. Although the Singapore declaration said this would happen immediately, U.S. officials have given no indication that North Korea has committed to any specific timetable for the return.

On Thursday, in remarks at a Cabinet meeting, Trump modified his claim, saying, “They’ve already sent back or are in the process of sending back the remains of our great heroes who died in North Korea during the war.”

Aside from uncertainty over when North Korea will return the remains it has collected over the years, it’s unclear whether all will be in a condition to permit their positive identification, or whether they all are even Americans. A number of allied soldiers who fought alongside the U.S. during the war also are missing.

Nearly 7,700 American service members are listed as unaccounted for from the Korean War, of which an estimated 5,300 were lost in North Korea.
…

This week could turn out to be pivotal for the Trump White House as both major parties get ready for midterm congressional elections in November.

President Donald Trump’s decision to reverse a policy of separating families coming across the U.S. southern border came in the wake of a political firestorm that fired up opposition Democrats and alarmed even some Republicans. At the very least, it likely set the stage for immigration to be a key issue in November.

WATCH: Trump’s Immigration Actions Could Shape Midterm Election

​Defiant tone

Trump was in combat mode Wednesday during a political rally in Duluth, Minnesota, where he vowed to make immigration a central focus in the upcoming congressional campaign.

“If you want to create a humane, lawful system of immigration then you need to retire the Democrats and elect Republicans to finally secure our borders,” Trump said to an enthusiastic crowd, some chanting, “Build the wall!”

Just hours earlier, the president reversed his controversial policy of separating children from their parents by signing an executive order in the White House. 

“We are going to have strong, very strong, borders. But we are going to keep the families together,” he said.

​Outcry over separation

Trump decided to back away from the controversial policy of separating families after an outcry from around the country that included protests in several states, including Arizona, Texas, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

Also driving the outrage was a recording of children crying out for their parents released by the investigative journalist group ProPublica.

The separation policy drew condemnation from Republicans including former first lady Laura Bush and a host of Democrats.

“We should be able to agree that we will not keep kids in child internment camps indefinitely and hidden away from public view,” said Maryland Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings. “What country is that? This is the United States of America!”

Divisive issue

Advocates for a tough border policy sided with the president including Art Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies. He cited a recent upsurge in attempted border crossings.

“That large influx of individuals would suggest that we are starting to creep back up the numbers we saw during the Obama administration,” Arthur told VOA via Skype. “And the Trump administration needed to take action to respond, and this is an appropriate response.”

But many religious leaders were critical, including Monsignor Kevin Sullivan, executive director of Catholic Charities for Archdiocese of New York, who also spoke via Skype.

“To use the means of separating a child from his or her mother just is completely unacceptable for us as Americans,” he said.

​Political fallout

The immediate political fallout could be damaging for the president, especially with the midterms coming up later this year.

“It is a public relations disaster area for the Trump administration, and just about everybody but Donald Trump and his very strongly anti-immigration aides seem to realize that,” said University of Virginia analyst Larry Sabato.

Sabato also told VOA via Skype that Trump’s tough stance is also aimed at shoring up his political base for the midterms.

“Of course, they are focusing on their base. They are trying to make sure that they are going to show up and vote and it could make some difference in close midterm elections.”

Polls pro and con

Trump’s poll numbers have improved of late, but that was before the firestorm over separating families at the border.

Recent polls by Quinnipiac University and the Associated Press showed a majority of Americans approved of his outreach to North Korea to defuse the nuclear threat.

But surveys by Quinnipiac and CNN also found Americans opposed his child separation policy by margins of 2 to 1.

There is also fresh evidence that Trump is firing up both political parties in the run-up to the midterm voting. The Pew Research Center found that 55 percent of voters who intend to vote for Democrats in November are more enthusiastic than usual.

But the survey also found that 50 percent of those who intend to support Republicans are also more enthusiastic, setting the stage for what could be a monumental get out the vote struggle for both parties come November.
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President Donald Trump’s decision to reverse a policy of separating immigrant families coming across the U.S. southern border came in the wake of a political firestorm this week. It also sets the stage for immigration to be a key issue in this year’s congressional midterm elections. VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more on the political fallout from Washington.
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