U.S. congressional lawmakers are pressing Rwanda’s government against incarcerating dissident politician Diane Rwigara, who faces up to 22 years in prison after being convicted of inciting insurrection and forgery.

Diane Rwigara, a former presidential candidate, is scheduled to be sentenced December 6, along with her mother, Adeline Rwigara. Both women were tried November 7, with the elder Rwigara convicted of insurrection and promoting ethnic hatred. They had been detained by police in October 2017 and jailed for a year but released on bail last month, prior to trial. They remain at home in Kigali, the capital city, under travel restrictions.

“Peaceful political expression is not a crime. Running for office is not a crime,” the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission — a bipartisan congressional caucus named for its co-founder — said in a tweet posted earlier Monday.

The commission, which defends and promotes human rights internationally, has scheduled a December 4 briefing on Rwanda’s treatment of human rights and political prisoners, including the Rwigaras.

Diane Rwigara ran for president in 2017, challenging incumbent Paul Kagame, but was disqualified after election officials alleged that some signatures needed for her candidacy had been falsified.

In July 2017, the activist started the People Salvation Movement to “encourage Rwandans to hold their government accountable,” as she told CNN. She later was arrested on charges of incitement and fraud. Her mother also was arrested for criticizing the government in a WhatsApp exchange with another relative living outside Rwanda. 

Diane Rwigara denied the charges, saying Kagame was trying to prevent her from speaking out against injustice. In an interview with VOA after her October release, she called for the release of political prisoners and others unjustly detained.     

Kagame oversaw the central African country’s reconciliation after the 1994 genocide, but rights groups have accused him and the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front of increasingly clamping down on dissent.

This report originated in VOA’s Central Africa Service.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday that a pardon for his onetime 2016 campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, who is facing years in prison for financial fraud, was “not off the table.” 

Trump told the New York Post in a White House interview that he had never discussed pardoning the 69-year-old longtime lobbyist. 

“But I wouldn’t take it off the table,” Trump said. “Why would I take it off the table?” 

In August, a jury in northern Virginia, just outside Washington, found Manafort guilty of eight counts of tax and bank fraud stemming from his work as a political consultant in Ukraine that predated six months of work, including three as chairman, on Trump’s successful 2016 run for the White House. 

Manafort later pleaded guilty in Washington to two new counts — conspiracy against the U.S., which involved financial crimes, and conspiracy to obstruct justice — and agreed to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of possible Trump campaign links to Russia and whether Trump, as president, obstructed justice to try to thwart the probe. 

As part of his plea deal with Mueller, Manafort agreed to “fully, truthfully, completely and forthrightly” questions about “any and all matters” of interest to the government. 

But in an abrupt twist this week, Mueller accused Manafort of breaching the plea agreement by repeatedly lying to federal investigators, an allegation Manafort’s lawyers rejected. Prosecutors did not describe what Manafort lied about but said they would spell it out in a court filing. 

Trump has for months derided Mueller’s 18-month investigation as an unending “witch hunt,” one that he suggested in the interview “can go on for the rest of [Mueller’s] life.” 

Trump claimed in the interview with the New York tabloid that Mueller had asked Manafort, former Trump political adviser Roger Stone and Stone’s associate, Jerome Corsi, to lie about their roles in the 2016 political campaign in order to implicate others in the Trump orbit. 

“If you told the truth, you go to jail,” Trump said of the prosecutors’ pressure on witnesses. 

“You know, this flipping stuff is terrible,” Trump said of witnesses asked to implicate higher-ups. “You flip and you lie and you get — the prosecutors will tell you 99 percent of the time they can get people to flip. It’s rare that they can’t. 

“But I had three people: Manafort, Corsi — I don’t know Corsi, but he refuses to say what they demanded — Manafort, Corsi and Roger Stone,” Trump said. 

Corsi this week broke off negotiations on a plea deal with Mueller’s investigators. Corsi and Stone have both suggested Mueller might indict them for criminal offenses related to the 2016 campaign. 

“It’s actually very brave,” Trump said of Manafort, Stone and Corsi. “But this is where we are. And it’s a terrible thing.” 

Trump last week provided written answers to about two dozen questions posed by Mueller about his own actions and recollections of the campaign as he shifted from his life as a New York real estate mogul to that of a first-time candidate for public office. But it is not known whether Mueller will seek to follow up with more questions for Trump, now nearly halfway through his first term in the White House. 
…

The breakdown of a plea deal with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and an explosive British news report about alleged contacts he may have had with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange threw a new element of uncertainty into the Trump-Russia investigation on Tuesday.

A day after prosecutors accused Manafort of repeatedly lying to them, trashing his agreement to tell all in return for a lighter sentence, he adamantly denied a report in the Guardian that he had met secretly with Assange in March 2016. That’s the same month he joined the Trump campaign and that Russian hackers began an effort to penetrate the email accounts of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

The developments thrust Manafort back into the investigation spotlight, raising new questions about what he knows and what prosecutors say he might be attempting to conceal as they probe Russian election interference and any possible coordination with Trump associates in the campaign that sent the celebrity businessman to the White House.

At the same time, other figures entangled in the investigation, including Trump himself, have been scrambling to escalate attacks and allegations against prosecutors who have spent weeks working quietly behind the scenes.

Besides denying he’d ever met Assange, Manafort, who is currently in jail, said he’d told special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors the truth in weeks of questioning. And WikiLeaks said Manafort had never met with Assange, offering to bet London’s Guardian newspaper “a million dollars and its editor’s head.”

Assange, whose organization published thousands of emails stolen from Clinton’s campaign in 2016, is in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London under a claim of asylum.

It is unclear what prosecutors contend Manafort lied about, though they’re expected to make a public filing ahead of sentencing that could offer answers.

Dissolution of the plea deal could be a devastating outcome for a defendant who suddenly admitted guilt last September after months of maintaining his innocence and who bet on his cooperation getting him a shorter sentence. But it’s also a potentially major setback for investigators given that Manafort steered the campaign during a vital stretch of 2016, including a time when prosecutors say Russian intelligence was working to sway the election in Trump’s favor.

The prosecutors’ terse three-page filing underscored their exasperation not only at Manafort’s alleged deception but also at the loss of an important witness present for key moments under investigation, including a Trump Tower meeting at which Trump’s oldest son expected to receive “dirt” about Democrat Hillary Clinton from a Kremlin-connected lawyer.

“The fact is, they wanted his cooperation. They wanted him to truthfully reveal what he knew, so they’re not getting what they wanted,”said Washington defense lawyer Peter Zeidenberg. “This isn’t like a good development where they’re clapping their hands and saying, ‘Now we get to crush this guy.'”

Manafort’s motivation, if indeed he lied to Mueller’s team, also was unclear.

Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani said in a telephone interview that Trump and his lawyers agree a presidential pardon should not be considered “now.”

However, he added, “The president could consider it at an appropriate time as Manafort has the same rights as any American.”

The Monday night revelation of the Mueller filing on Manafort came at a delicate time for investigators, who have gone months without any new charges and continue to probe possible links between Trump associates and WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy website that released tens of thousands of Democratic emails stolen by Russian spies during the 2016 campaign.

As Trump continues raging against the investigation — he tweeted Tuesday that Mueller was doing “TREMENDOUS damage to our Criminal Justice system” — others in the crosshairs have filled the vacuum of Mueller’s recent silence by publicly declaring their innocence, accusing prosecutors of coercing testimony or tempting fate by turning aside negotiations.

An associate of Trump confidant Roger Stone is contesting a grand jury subpoena in court. Jerome Corsi said Monday he was rejecting a plea offer and told CNN that being questioned was like being “interrogated as a POW in the Korean War.”

Stone, under investigation himself for connections to WikiLeaks, has repeatedly disparaged Mueller’s investigation and said Monday his friend Corsi was at risk for prosecution “not for lying but for refusing to lie.”

That statement called to mind a Trump tweet from earlier this month in which he stated without evidence that Mueller’s investigators were “screaming and shouting at people, horribly threatening them to come up with the answers they want.”

Manafort, for his part, had been quiet in public since pleading guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice and conspiracy against the United States. He has met repeatedly since then with investigators.

He remained in the spotlight Tuesday when the Guardian newspaper published a report saying he had secretly met Assange within days or weeks of being brought aboard the Trump campaign. The report suggested a direct connection between WikiLeaks and the Trump campaign.

The Guardian, which did not identify the sources for its reporting, said Manafort met with Assange “around March 2016” — the same month that Russian hackers began their all-out effort to steal emails from the Clinton campaign.

Manafort called the story “totally false and deliberately libelous,” saying in a statement that he had never met Assange or anyone close to him.

The Guardian cited unidentified sources as saying Manafort first met Assange at the embassy in 2013, a year after Assange took refuge there to avoid being extradited to Sweden over sex crime allegations.

The newspaper said Manafort returned in 2015 and 2016 and that its sources had “tentatively dated” the final visit to March.

There was no detail on what might have been discussed.

The Trump campaign announced Manafort’s hiring on March 29, 2016, and he served as the convention manager tasked with lining up delegates for the Republican National Convention. He was promoted to chairman that May.

An AP investigation into Russian hacking showed that government-aligned cyberspies began an aggressive effort to penetrate the Clinton campaign’s email accounts on March 10, 2016.

Justice Department prosecutors in Virginia recently inadvertently disclosed the existence of sealed criminal charges against Assange, though it’s unclear what the case involves. Prosecutors were in court Tuesday arguing against unsealing any charge.

Meanwhile, a judge may soon set a sentencing date for Manafort whose hopes for leniency now appear dashed.

“The cooperating defendant usually is very aware of what’s at stake,” said Shanlon Wu, who represented Manafort’s onetime co-defendant Rick Gates. “What I always say to any client of mine who’s contemplating that — there is no going back.”

“It’s like being a little bit pregnant,” he added. “There’s no such thing.”
…

Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith won a divisive Mississippi runoff Tuesday, surviving a video-recorded remark decried as racist and defeating a former federal official who hoped to become the state’s first African-American senator since Reconstruction.

The runoff was rocked by the video, in which Hyde-Smith said of a supporter, “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.” A separate video showed her talking about “liberal folks” and making it “just a little more difficult” for them to vote.

The comments by Hyde-Smith, who is white, made Mississippi’s history of racist lynchings a theme of the runoff and spurred many black voters to return to the polls Tuesday.

In the aftermath of the video, Republicans worried they could face a repeat of last year’s special election in Alabama, in which a flawed Republican candidate handed Democrats a reliable GOP Senate seat in the Deep South. The GOP pumped resources into Mississippi, and President Donald Trump made a strong effort on behalf of Hyde-Smith, holding last-minute rallies in Mississippi on Monday.

The contest caps a campaign season that exposed persistent racial divisions in America — and the willingness of some political candidates to exploit them to win elections. With Hyde-Smith’s victory, Republicans control 53 of the Senate’s 100 seats. The GOP lost control of the House, where Democrats will assume the majority in January.

In the final weeks of the runoff, Hyde-Smith’s campaign said the remark about making voting difficult was a joke. She said the “public hanging” comment was “an exaggerated expression of regard” for a fellow cattle rancher. During a televised debate nine days after the video was publicized, she apologized to “anyone that was offended by my comments,” but also said the remark was used as a “weapon” against her.

Democratic opponent Mike Espy, 64, a former U.S. agriculture secretary, replied: “I don’t know what’s in your heart, but I know what came out of your mouth.”

Addressing his supporters Tuesday night, Espy said: “While this is not the result we were hoping for, I am proud of the historic campaign we ran and grateful for the support we received across Mississippi. We built the largest grassroots organization our state has seen in a generation.”

The “public hanging” comment also resonated with his supporters.

Some corporate donors, including Walmart, requested refunds on their campaign contributions to Hyde-Smith after the videos surfaced.

Hyde-Smith was in her second term as Mississippi agriculture commissioner when Republican Gov. Phil Bryant appointed her to temporarily succeed GOP Sen. Thad Cochran. The longtime lawmaker retired in April amid health concerns.

The win makes Hyde-Smith, 59, the first woman elected to Congress from Mississippi.

Hyde-Smith and Espy emerged from a field of four candidates Nov. 6 to advance to Tuesday’s runoff. Her win allows her to complete the final two years of Cochran’s six-year term.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday kept up his criticism of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, saying rising interest rates and other Fed policies were damaging the U.S. economy, the Washington Post said.

“So far, I’m not even a little bit happy with my selection of Jay,” the Post quoted Trump as saying in an interview, referring to the man he picked last year to lead the Fed.

“Not even a little bit. And I’m not blaming anybody, but I’m just telling you I think that the Fed is way off-base with what they’re doing.”

In recent months, the Republican president has repeatedly criticized Powell and the Fed’s interest rate increases that he said was making it more expensive for his administration to finance its escalating deficits. Trump has called the Fed “crazy” and “ridiculous.”

“I’m doing deals, and I’m not being accommodated by the Fed,” Trump told the Post on Tuesday. “They’re making a mistake because I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.”
…

By 2090, days when it is too hot or too smoggy to work will cost the U.S. economy up to $155 billion each year in lost productivity.

That’s one economic impact cited in the National Climate Assessment released Friday by 13 U.S. federal agencies.

“Without substantial and sustained global mitigation and regional adaptation efforts, climate change is expected to cause growing losses to American infrastructure and property and impede the rate of economic growth over this century,” the report said.

“I don’t believe it,” President Donald Trump responded when asked about the report Monday. 

Trump has for many years rejected the scientific consensus that human activities are the main drivers of climate change. Since his first day in office, he has worked to undo regulations that aim to cut the greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet. The focus has been on boosting the economy.

According to the government’s new report, failing to cut those emissions ultimately will take a significant toll on economic output. 

Since the last congressionally mandated report was issued four years ago, scientists have developed a more granular understanding of how climate change will affect particular regions of the United States, and they better understand “how some of the damage caused by climate-related events is uniquely attributable to climate change, as opposed to what would happen normally,” said Andrew Light, distinguished senior fellow at the World Resources Institute and co-author of the chapter on mitigation.

The report tallied up $118 billion per year in damage to coastal property by the end of the century, along with a $20 billion hit to roads and $1 billion to bridges.

It also says deaths from extreme temperatures will cause $141 billion in losses per year. Increases in rates of one disease — West Nile Virus — will cost $3 billion per year. 

The Trump administration dismissed the report as alarmist.

“The report is largely based on the most extreme scenario, which contradicts long-established trends” said White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters. It assumes that, “despite strong economic growth that would increase greenhouse gas emissions, there would be limited technology and innovation.” 

In announcing his intention to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, Trump cited a study funded in part by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that said the United States would lose 2.7 million jobs and nearly $3 trillion of gross domestic product by 2040. 

Critics questioned those figures, especially since, as the report itself notes, it does not take into account benefits of reduced emissions. 

Others see significant opportunities in cutting greenhouse gases.

Nearly 500 companies have pledged to reduce their emissions to meet their portion of the Paris climate agreement.

“These guys are not doing it for the good of the planet,” said Wesleyan University economist Gary Yohe. “It’s because the bottom line says this is a good idea.”
…

Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort lied to the FBI and special counsel investigators after pleading guilty to federal charges, breaching his plea agreement, according to a court filing on Monday.

Manafort said in the same filing he disagreed with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s assertion that he lied to investigators.

Both the special counsel and Manafort’s attorneys agreed there was no reason to delay his sentencing and asked the court to set a date for that.

Mueller, who is probing Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign, said in the filing that after signing a plea agreement: “Manafort committed federal crimes by lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Special Counsel’s Office on a variety of subject matters.”

Mueller said in the filing that those lies breached Manafort’s plea agreement.

Manafort’s attorneys said in the same filing that Manafort had met with the government on several occasions and provided information “in an effort to live up to his cooperation obligations.”

They said Manafort disagreed with the characterization that he had breached the agreement.

Manafort, a longtime Republican political consultant who made tens of millions of dollars working for pro-Kremlin politicians in Ukraine, ran the Trump campaign as it took off in mid-2016.

He attended a meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 with a group of Russians offering damaging information on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, who lost in an upset to Trump in the presidential vote that November.

Since September this year when he took a plea deal in return for reduced charges, Manafort has been cooperating with Mueller’s inquiry.

Russia denies U.S. allegations it hacked Democratic Party emails and ran a disinformation campaign, largely on social media. Trump denies any campaign collusion and calls the investigation a political witch hunt.
…

U.S. Representative Mia Love, the only black Republican woman in Congress, lashed out on Monday at President Donald Trump and her party, saying in her concession speech that they had failed to fully embrace minority voters.

Love, a conservative from Utah, narrowly lost her bid for a third term to Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams, a Democrat, according to the final vote tally from the Nov. 6 elections.

Weeks before the race was called, Trump criticized Love at a news conference for not supporting him enough.

“The president’s behavior toward me made me wonder, what did he have to gain by saying such a thing about a fellow Republican?” Love told supporters in Utah on Monday. “This gave me a vision of his world as it is. No real relationships, just convenient transactions.”

Democrats gained at least 37 seats in the House of Representatives in congressional elections, more than enough to wrest control from the Republican majority. The results of some close races are still being calculated.

Republicans retained a slim hold on the Senate.

On Monday, Love, whose parents immigrated to the United States from Haiti in the 1970s, accused the Republican Party of keeping minority voters at a distance and driving people who might otherwise support conservative policies into the arms of Democrats.

“Because Republicans never take minority communities into their homes, as citizens into their homes and into their hearts, they stay with Democrats,” she said, noting that Democrats had just elected new black and female representatives to Congress.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Christiana Purves, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, said: “Candidates who lost in safe Republican districts lost because they couldn’t connect with voters.”

Trump won Love’s district by nearly 7 percentage points in 2016.

The day after his party lost its lock on Congress, Trump used a White House news conference to call out several Republicans who failed to hold on to their House seats.

“Mia Love gave me no love,” he said. “And she lost. Too bad.”

Love, 42, reaffirmed her commitment to conservative principles and did not rule out another run for office.

“I’m not going away,” she said. “But now I am unleashed. I am untethered and I am unshackled and I can say exactly what is on my mind.”
…

…

…

Several U.S. lawmakers broke with President Donald Trump on Sunday, disagreeing with his assessment that it was uncertain whether Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was involved in the killing of a Saudi dissident journalist inside Riyadh’s consulate in Istanbul.

Congressman Adam Schiff, set to become the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee when Democrats take control of the House in January, told CNN, “I have been briefed by the CIA and, while I cannot discuss the contents of the briefing in any way, I can say that I think the president is being dishonest with the American people.”

Schiff said, “It causes our standing in the world to plummet, it telegraphs to despots around the world that they can murder people with impunity, and that this president will have their back as long as they praise him.”

Trump last week said the U.S. would stand by Saudi Arabia and that he did not know whether the crown prince had knowledge in advance of the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. While living in the U.S., Khashoggi wrote opinion columns for The Washington Post that were critical of Mohammed bin Salman and Riyadh’s involvement in the long-running Yemen conflict.

“It could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event – maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!” Trump said.

Trump concluded, “In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They have been a great ally in our very important fight against Iran. The United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia to ensure the interests of our country, Israel and all other partners in the region.”

Saudi Arabia has indicted 11 of its agents in connection with the Khashoggi killing, with five of them facing the death penalty if convicted.

Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, also disputed Trump’s equivocation on whether the crown prince had knowledgeable of the Khashoggi killing.

“I disagree with the president’s assessment,” Lee told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “It’s inconsistent with the intelligence I’ve seen,” which implicates the crown prince.

Human rights factor

Another Republican, Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, said on CNN, “I do think we need to look into this further.” She said that while Saudi Arabia is a strategic partner of the U.S., “We also are a very strong nation when it comes to human rights, when it comes to the rule of law. And if there are indicators that the [crown] prince was involved in this murder, then we need to absolutely consider further action.”

Ernst said she did not think Trump was exonerating Saudi Arabia, but added, “I think at such a time when it becomes necessary, the president also needs to speak directly to the Saudis and say enough is enough.”

Republican Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, a frequent Trump critic, said on Fox News, “Making the realist case (about the need for a U.S.-Saudi alliance) is a different thing than being so weak that we failed to tell the truth.” He said Mohammed bin Salman “contributed to murdering somebody abroad and it is not strength to sort of mumble past that. Strength is telling the truth even when it’s hard.”

Numerous U.S. lawmakers have said they intend to push for U.S. sanctions against Saudi Arabia because of Khashoggi’s killing. Trump, in his statement last week, said, “I will consider whatever ideas are presented to me, but only if they are consistent with the absolute security and safety of America.”

He said, “After the United States, Saudi Arabia is the largest oil producing nation in the world. They have worked closely with us and have been very responsive to my requests to keeping oil prices at reasonable levels – so important for the world. As president of the United States I intend to ensure that, in a very dangerous world, America is pursuing its national interests and vigorously contesting countries that wish to do us harm. Very simply it is called America First!”

 
…

Washington is digesting the U.S. government’s starkest-ever warnings and most dire predictions to date on climate change. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, the White House is issuing no calls for action in response to the National Climate Assessment, and President Donald Trump continues to mock the very concept of global warming.
…

A one-time foreign affairs adviser to President Donald Trump has been ordered to start serving a 14-day jail term on Monday for lying to investigators about his role in Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

George Papadopoulos had sought to delay his brief sentence while awaiting for an appellate court ruling in a separate case challenging the constitutionality of the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, whose ongoing investigation of Trump campaign aides’ links to Russia ensnared Papadopoulos.

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss on Sunday rejected the bid by Papadopoulos to remain free and delay his jail term, noting that when he pleaded guilty to lying to investigators he had waived his right to appeal his plea agreement. Moss had also fined Papadopoulos $9,500 and ordered him to perform 200 hours of community service.

Moss also noted that two other judges had already upheld the constitutionality of Mueller’s appointment and said there was only a “remote” chance that the new challenge would end with a “contrary conclusion.”

The 31-year-old Papadopoulos is a relatively minor figure in the 18-month Mueller investigation. He pled guilty to lying to investigators in January 2017 about the extent of his contacts with people who had connections with Russia and the timing of the contacts.

In discussing the names of his advisers during the 2016 campaign, Trump once described Papadopoulos as “an excellent guy.” In March 2016, Trump posted a picture on Instagram of his foreign affairs advisory council, with Papadopoulos sitting at the then-candidate’s table for the meeting.

But when news of Papadopoulos’s guilty plea surfaced, Trump said on Twitter, “Few people knew the young, low-level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar.”

Another Trump campaign aide disparaged Papadopoulos as a volunteer “coffee boy.”

But that assessment drew a rebuke from Papadopoulos’s then fiancee and now wife who said he was “constantly in touch with high-level officials in the campaign.”

Moreover, she said, he did not know how to make coffee.

Trump, who often has dismissed Mueller’s probe as a “witch hunt,” last week submitted written answers to the prosecutor’s questions about the 2016 campaign, but it is not clear whether Mueller will seek to further question the president.

Besides Papadopoulos, several Trump aides have been convicted or pleaded guilty to various offenses linked to the campaign or lobbying work before joining Trump’s 2016 campaign.

 
…

In one government facility for immigrant youths, a 20-year-old woman who had lied that she was 17 sneaked a needle out of a sewing class and used it to cut herself.

In another, cameras captured a boy repeatedly kicking a child in the head after they got into an argument on the soccer field.

One 6-year-old tried to run away from the same facility after another boy threw his shoes into the toilet. Three employees had to pull the boy off a fence and carry him back into a building.

​14,000 children detained

Records obtained by The Associated Press highlight some of the problems that plague government facilities for immigrant youths at a time when President Donald Trump’s administration has been making moves in recent weeks that could send even more migrant children into detention.

About 14,000 immigrant children are detained in more than 100 facilities nationally, with about 5,900 in Texas. Many crossed the border without their parents and are having to wait longer in detention to be placed with relatives or sponsors, who are being dissuaded to come forward out of fear they’ll be arrested and deported.

Hundreds of children who were separated from their parents earlier this year were also detained in these facilities, but most of them have since been released to their parents.

Overtaxed system

Amid the global uproar over family separation, the Trump administration presented the facilities as caring, safe places for immigrant children.

But as records obtained by the AP show, the child detention system is overtaxed. Children are acting out, sometimes hitting each other and trying to escape, and staff members struggle to deal with escalating problems.

Doctors have warned for months about the consequences of detaining children for long periods of time, particularly after most of them had fled violence and poverty in Central America and undertaken the dangerous journey to the U.S.

“Being in detention can be a form of trauma,” said Dr. Alan Shapiro, a pediatrician who works directly with immigrant children. “We can’t treat children for trauma while we’re traumatizing them at the same time.”

Sexual abuse in Arizona

Southwest Key Programs, a Texas-based nonprofit, operates the facilities where the three incidents occurred. In Arizona, the organization agreed in October to close two facilities and stop accepting more children at others as part of a settlement with the state, which was investigating whether the organization conducted adequate background checks of staff. One former employee was convicted this year of sexually abusing multiple boys.

Meanwhile, in Texas, Southwest Key is pushing to expand. It has sued Houston after local officials tried to stop the opening of a facility.

In a statement, Southwest Key said it reported all three incidents on its own and that it was committed to correcting any problems.

“As long as immigrant children are forced to leave their homes due to violence and poverty, we want to provide them with compassionate care and help reunify them with family safely and quickly,” the group said.

Southwest Key’s facilities are licensed by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, which inspects child detention centers and released inspection records to the AP.

The U.S. government has also set up a temporary facility in Tornillo, Texas, that isn’t licensed by the state because it’s located on federal property. There, roughly 1,800 children are housed in large tents at much higher costs than the licensed facilities. That’s up from 320 in June, at the height of the family separation crisis.

Repeated investigations

One facility that was repeatedly flagged was Casa El Presidente in Brownsville, Texas, operated by Southwest Key.

As parents were being arrested and separated from their infants and young children, Casa El Presidente became one of three Texas “tender age” facilities that took in their kids. A group of congressmen who visited in June said the facility had an infant room with high chairs and toys, where staff members were caring for babies.

Casa El Presidente multiplied in size during the family separation crisis. According to the state’s monthly head counts, the facility went from 56 children in June to 367 in the most recent count taken Nov. 15.

A shift supervisor told a state inspector June 26 that more staff were quitting and that workers “struggle with implementing healthy boundaries for children of this age.”

“He admitted staff are afraid to touch the children,” the inspector wrote in a report.

The supervisor said Casa El Presidente had to change its policy on restraining young children who were misbehaving, because holding them for too short a time was “escalating instead of de-escalating.” Southwest Key said an example of a typical restraint would be holding a child’s arm or shoulder, and that it doesn’t use mechanical restraints.

The facility was cited for improperly restraining a 6-year-old boy who tried in July to climb a playground fence and run away.

The boy was identified in an inspection report by his first name, Osman. Staff members told an inspector that two days before Osman ran to the fence, two other boys had placed his shoes in a toilet. Osman “also expressed frustration about being in the shelter away from his family,” the report said.

Three staff members eventually carried Osman away from the fence and back into the building.

The same month, two boys named Luis and Franklin got into a fight after Luis apparently kicked a soccer ball that Franklin said belonged to him. An inspector who viewed the facility’s video wrote that Franklin chased Luis and punched him, causing Luis to fall.

“Franklin starts to kick him, once again making contact and kicking Luis in the face,” the inspector wrote. Employees “never make efforts to move Franklin away from Luis; the staff just hold him.”

The inspector cited the facility for not properly intervening to stop the kicks.

At Casa Rio Grande in San Benito, Texas, one of the people living there was a 20-year-old who told the staff she was 17. An investigation report identified her as Julia.

Julia told an inspector that she took a needle from a sewing class and used it to cut herself because “she felt alone.” She hid her wrist for around two weeks under a sweater, but when she forgot to wear her sweater one day, a staff member spotted the marks.

In each case, inspectors interviewed other minors detained at the facility. According to the reports, the other youths said they were treated well, had enough food, and felt respected by the staff.

Jeff Eller, a spokesman for Southwest Key, acknowledged that staff morale has suffered this year because of the unprecedented demands.

“We are against family separations at the border,” Eller said. “Keeping families together is better for the children, parents, and communities.”
…

Mark Robbins gets to work at 8:15 each morning and unlocks the door to his office suite. He switches on the lights and the TV news, brews a pot of coffee and pulls out the first files of the day to review.

For the next eight hours or so, he reads through federal workplace disputes, analyzes the cases, marks them with notes and logs his legal opinions. When he’s finished, he slips the files into a cardboard box and carries them into an empty room where they will sit and wait. For nobody.

He’s at 1,520 files and counting.

Such is the lot of the last man standing in this forgotten corner of Donald Trump’s Washington. For nearly two years, while Congress has argued and the White House has delayed, Robbins has waited to be sent some colleagues to read his work and rule on the cases. No one has arrived. So he toils in vain, writing memos into the void.

Robbins is a one-man microcosm of a current strand of government dysfunction. His office isn’t a high-profile political target. No politician has publicly pledged to slash his budget. But his agency’s work has effectively been neutered through neglect. Promising to shrink the size of government, the president has been slow to fill posts and the Republican-led Congress has struggled to win approval for nominees. The combined effect isn’t always dramatic, but it’s strikingly clear when examined up close.

“It’s a series of unfortunate events,” says Robbins, who has had plenty of time to contemplate the absurdity of his situation. Still, he doesn’t blame Trump or the government for his predicament. “There’s no one thing that created this problem that could have been fixed. It was a series of things randomly thrown together to create where we are.”

Robbins is a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board, a quasi-judicial federal body designed to determine whether civil servants have been mistreated by their employers. The three members are presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed for staggered seven-year terms. After one member termed out in 2015 and a second did so in January 2017, both without replacements lined up, Robbins became the sole member and acting chairman. The board needs at least two members to decide cases.

That’s a problem for the federal workers and whistleblowers whose 1,000-plus grievances hang in the balance, stalled by the board’s inability to settle them. When Robbins’ term ends on March 1, the board probably will sit empty for the first time in its 40-year history.

It’s also a problem for Robbins. A new board, whenever it’s appointed and approved, will start from scratch. That means while new members can read Robbins’ notes, his thousand-plus decisions will simply vanish.

“There is zero chance, zero chance my votes will count,” the 59-year-old lawyer says, running his fingers over the spines leather-bound volumes lined up neatly on a shelf. Inside are the board’s published rulings. None of the opinions he’s working on will make it into one of them.

“Imagine having the last year and half of your work just … disappear,” he said.

Despite the choke of files piled up everywhere else, Robbins’ office is remarkably orderly. Three paperweights rest on stacks of papers on his desk: a stone from Babel province, a memento from his time working for the State Department in Iraq; a model of the White House, to commemorate his tenure under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush; and a medallion bearing the merit board’s seal. This job, which pays about $155,000 a year, “has been the honor of my life,” he says.

In the corner, a potted plant he rescued from a trash can outside his condo six years ago is now so tall that it’s bumping up against the ceiling, growing in circles.

He swears it’s not a metaphor.

Robbins, a Republican, was excited when Trump won the election. The president chooses two board members of his or her own party, and the Senate minority leader picks a third. Robbins assumed he’d finally be in the majority after years of serving alongside Democrats, soon able to write opinions rather than just logging dissent.

No such luck.

Trump was in office a year before he nominated two board members, a pair of Republicans, including Robbins’ replacement. A third nominee, a Democrat, was named three months later, in June.

Assuming they’d be swiftly confirmed, Robbins quickly began preparing for their arrival, leaving customized notes with comments and suggestions for the nominees based on their distinct personalities and experience on each case.

He’d at least impart a little wisdom, he thought.

But months went by and still no vote. Robbins said he was told the Democrats were refusing to confirm the two Republicans by unanimous consent, insisting instead on a full debate for each. In late September, the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs subcommittee that screens nominees told Robbins it probably would not be able to confirm the appointees before the end of the current Congress. That meant that the entire process, which typically takes several months when there are no complications, will begin again come January, with no guarantee the nominees will be the same.

Now his pile of personalized sticky notes is bound for the trash, too.

Tall, slim and bald, Robbins is an eternal optimist. He sees the futility of the piles of paper and empty offices. But he’s determined to keep the trains running, even if he’s the only one on the ride.

“It’s not like I’m sitting around on the sofa watching soap operas and eating bonbons. I’m still doing my job,” he said. “It’s only when the agency stops working that people realize what we do and the value we bring.”

“Maybe someday they’ll say, `Good old Robbins, he just kept plugging along.”’

Frustrating? Yes. But at least it makes for a good story at parties.

“When I say to people, And then my votes just disappear,' the crowd usually goesOh, no!”’ he said. “And there’s empathy, there’s real empathy.”

The board, established in 1978, is responsible for protecting 2.1 million federal employees from bias and unfair treatment in the workplace. The board handles appeals from whistleblowers and other civil servants who say they were mistreated or wrongly fired, and want to challenge an initial ruling by an administrative judge. The board also conducts independent research and writes policy papers destined for the president’s desk.

Or it used to.

Robbins is quick to point out the staffing crisis began under President Barack Obama, back when Robbins’ first colleague termed out without a replacement.

Others say it’s the Trump administration’s fault.

Trump has lagged slightly behind his predecessors in nominating political appointees. As of Nov. 19, he had nominated people for 929 positions, compared with Obama’s 984 and Bush’s 1,128 at the same point in their presidencies. Congress has acted on just 69 percent of those nominations, according to data provided by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan organization promoting government efficiency.

Max Stier, the partnership’s CEO, blames the administration, the Senate and a dysfunctional system of appointing and confirming political nominees.

“There are many different flavors of the same problem,” he said. He cited several other vacancies, including assistant secretary for South Asian affairs at the State Department, deputy secretary and undersecretary for health at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the deputy secretary at the Homeland Security Department, among others. “There is so much going on, but the underlying reality is that our basic government is suffering.”

John Palguta, former director of policy and evaluation for the merit board, called the delay “outrageous.”

“We’re setting a new standard, and it’s particularly severe and unfortunate at MSPB because of the structure of the agency. It just can’t operate. And to let it go for this long, that’s really unconscionable,” Palguta said. “The administration simply hasn’t done its job.”

Sen. James Lankford, who chairs the Senate Home Security and Government Affairs’ Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management said in a statement he understands the urgency in filling these positions.

“There are over 1,500 individuals waiting for their cases to be heard, but there are not board members in place which means the backlog cannot be addressed,” said Lankford, R-Okla.

Robbins keeps plugging away and the cases keep piling up.

“We are running out of space,” he said, shimmying between towers of boxes in a storage closet close to 6 feet tall. More boxes are stacked against the hallway wall and piled up in the clerk’s office.

“Any additional cases I work from now on are just, grains of sand on a beach.”
…

The Trump administration is downplaying the significance of a report issued Friday that included dire predictions about the impact of climate change in the U.S. The White House said the study was largely based on “the most extreme scenario” and doesn’t account for new technology and other innovations that could diminish carbon emissions and the effects of climate change.

The National Climate Assessment, the fourth edition of a congressionally mandated report on climate change, noted that disasters caused by weather are becoming more common.  The report, prepared by more than 300 researchers in 13 U.S. government departments and agencies, predicts that those events will become more common and more severe if steps aren’t taken “to avoid substantial damages to the U.S. economy, environment, and human health and well-being over the coming decades.”

White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters noted that work on the assessment began under the administration of former U.S. president Barack Obama and uses multiple modeling scenarios to assess the effects of climate change.  But the report issued Friday, according to Walters, relies too heavily on the worst-case-scenario.

“The report is largely based on the most extreme scenario, which contradicts long-established trends by assuming that, despite strong economic growth that would increase greenhouse gas emissions, there would be limited technology and innovation, and a rapidly expanding population,” Walters said in a statement.

She said the next climate assessment, which will be prepared over the next four years, will “provide for a more transparent and data-driven process that includes fuller information on the range of potential scenarios and outcomes.”

Walters also pointed out that, since 2005, carbon dioxide emissions related to energy production in the U.S. have declined 14 percent, while global emissions continue to rise.  

While that’s true, the U.S. remains the second largest emitter of carbon dioxide, behind only China.

The Trump administration has rolled back several environmental regulations put in place during the Obama administration and has promoted the production of fossil fuels.

Last year, President Trump announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris Agreement, which had been signed by nearly 200 nations to combat climate change. He argued the agreement would hurt the U.S. economy and said there is little evidence in its environmental benefit.

Trump, as well as several members of his Cabinet, have also cast doubt on the science of climate change, saying the causes of global warming are not yet settled.

White House Bureau Chief Steve Herman contributed to this report.
…

The Trump administration is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to issue an unusually quick ruling into the military’s policy of restricting military service by transgender people.

The administration Friday asked the Supreme Court to review lower court rulings blocking the military’s policy, seeking to bypass a federal appeals court currently considering the issue.

Except in rare cases, the Supreme Court usually waits to get involved in cases until both a trial and appeals court have ruled on the matter.

The Trump administration argued Friday that the Supreme Court should get involved in this case early because it “involves an issue of imperative public importance: the authority of the U.S. military to determine who may serve in the nation’s armed forces.”

Administration officials say they want to ensure that the Supreme Court would be able to review the dispute before its term ends in June 2019.

Pentagon policy

The Pentagon changed its policy regarding transgender people in 2016, under then-President Barack Obama, allowing them serve openly in the military. But when President Donald Trump was elected, his administration reversed the policy and reinstated a ban on transgender troops.

Several courts ruled against that ban, leading the Trump administration to modify its policy, which now states that most transgender troops are banned from serving in the military except under limited circumstances.

Ruled unconstitutional twice

Lower courts have since ruled that the new administration policy is essentially the same as the original ban and is unconstitutional.

One of the lawsuits against the Pentagon policy has made its way to an appeals court, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court is a frequent target of criticism by Trump who tweeted just this week “the 9th Circuit is a complete & total disaster. It is out of control, has a horrible reputation, is overturned more than any Circuit in the Country, 79%, & is used to get an almost guaranteed result.”
…

A conservative writer and conspiracy theorist who is an associate of U.S. President Donald Trump and Trump confidant Roger Stone said Friday that he was in plea negotiations with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative team.  

Jerome Corsi declined to comment further on his talks with Mueller’s team, which is investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. But Corsi said on a YouTube program last week that expected to be charged with lying to federal investigators. 

Mueller’s team questioned Corsi about Stone’s links to WikiLeaks. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia provided to WikiLeaks hacked material aimed at hindering Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. 

The talks with Corsi could help Mueller’s office determine whether Stone and other associates of Trump were aware of WikiLeaks’ plans to release the material. 

Corsi is a former Washington bureau chief of the conspiracy theory website InfoWars. He reportedly cooperated with investigators for about two months, giving them computers and a cellphone. He also gave the FBI access to his email and Twitter accounts. 

Stone has denied acting as a conduit for WikiLeaks, which was founded by Julian Assange and published thousands of emails allegedly stolen from the computer of Clinton’s campaign chairman weeks before the election. Stone has also said he expects to be indicted. 

Corsi’s attorney, David Gray, declined to comment, as did a spokesman for Mueller and an attorney for the president. 
…

Emboldened by a referendum voters approved this month, North Carolina’s soon-dwindling Republican majorities at the legislature will scramble to approve their preferred voter identification law before Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper can stop it.

The GOP-dominated General Assembly returns to work Tuesday to decide how a new amendment to the state constitution requiring photo ID to vote in person will be carried out. The amendment passed with more than 55 percent of the vote, giving Republicans confidence to move ahead despite years of controversy in the state over such a mandate.

Meeting now is strategic. Democrats won enough legislative seats Election Day to end the Republicans’ veto-proof control come January. So Cooper, a longtime opponent of voter photo ID laws, won’t be able to stop any lame-duck session bills as long as Republicans remain united.

New restrictions, on which courts probably will weigh in, would affect over 7 million voters in the anticipated 2020 presidential battleground state, which will also feature races for governor and U.S. Senate that year.

“We will pass a law that improves the real and perceived integrity of the election system,” said Rep. David Lewis, a Harnett County Republican expected to shepherd a bill through the legislature.

Republicans have passed voter ID legislation twice, but they’ve been derailed both times. Federal judges struck down a wide-ranging 2013 elections law, which contained several voting restrictions, writing it was passed with “racially discriminatory intent” by targeting black residents with “almost surgical precision.”

Undeterred and rejecting the ruling as political hyperbole, GOP lawmakers decided to submit the voter ID question directly to voters. More than 30 other states require some form of identification to vote. Along with a successful November referendum in Arkansas, four states now have constitutional provisions addressing photo ID.

The state chapter of the NAACP, which sued over the 2013 law, tried unsuccessfully to get judges to keep the referendum off the ballot and is still asking them to cancel the referendum results.

The state NAACP “has led the fight against the anti-democracy, racist photo voter ID even before it was improperly placed on the ballot this time, and we will continue to fight it and any effort to suppress the sacred right to vote,” said the Rev. T. Anthony Spearman, the state chapter president.

Voter ID backers say it bolsters the public’s confidence in elections — even as statistics show voter impersonation charges are extremely rare. Republicans cite stories from constituents who say they have seen fraud as credible proof.

The 2013 requirement was used for the state’s two 2016 primaries before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the law. The U.S. Supreme Court let that decision stand.

The upcoming proposal is likely to expand on the 2013 ID provisions. Draft legislation released by Republicans this week envisions additional methods to qualify.

In addition to eight forms of approved IDs in 2013 — driver’s licenses, military and tribal IDs among them — there would, for the first time, be free voter photo identification cards issued by county election boards, the draft says. Student IDs at University of North Carolina system schools — left out of the 2013 law — would work as well. And more qualifying IDs are possible.

People with hardships to obtain IDs could get them for free or still vote without one if they signed a “reasonable impediment” form. The constitutional amendment allows for exceptions.

More than 80 percent of the 1,050 people who filled out the form during the March 2016 primary had their ballot count, according to the state elections board. But Democracy North Carolina, a voting rights group, calculated more than 1,400 people who lacked acceptable photo ID didn’t have their ballots counted, with black residents disproportionately affected. More than 2.3 million people voted in that election.

Democracy North Carolina Executive Director Tomas Lopez, whose group opposed the amendment, said the draft wouldn’t resolve all concerns that it would create voting barriers for otherwise eligible voters. He said lawmakers shouldn’t rush through a law this year.

Activists also hope exceptions will be broadened by telling legislators the stories of people like Janice Franklin of Charlotte, a disabled woman who says her vote didn’t count in the 2016 primary despite showing a Social Security card at the polls and filling out forms.

“We need other options and at the same time we need these options to matter. They need to be in the law because people … will know ‘you bring this and it’s going to count,’” Franklin, 60, said in a phone interview this week. The former preschool teacher now has a state ID card that qualified under the 2013 law.

Lewis said he wants input from critics to improve any measure.

Sen. Floyd McKissick, a Durham County Democrat who voted against the 2013 law, is skeptical Republicans will incorporate Democrats’ suggestions. GOP leaders haven’t wanted to include Democrats in hammering out other key legislation, he said.

Despite strong opposition to the voter ID amendment in urban counties, a majority of the state’s voters were in favor of requiring photo ID.

“It has to be done,” McKissick said. “We’re beyond the point of saying whether it is something that can be enacted.”

 
…

U.S. President Donald Trump addressed members of all military branches deployed overseas to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving and thank them for their service. But when asked when he will visit any of them in person, he did not have a clear answer. The president paid a holiday visit to the Coast Guard near his home in Palm Beach, Florida, Thursday. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
…

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee has issued subpoenas for former FBI Director James Comey and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch to testify about investigations into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia and Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Comey and Lynch have been ordered to appear before the House Judiciary, and Oversight and Government Reform committees on December 3 and 4. They have been ordered to participate in closed-door interviews about how federal law enforcement officials handled the two investigations.

The subpoenas, issued Wednesday but made public Thursday, made good on threats by Republican Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte earlier in the week.

Both Comey and Lynch have previously testified before congressional panels investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election campaign and have expressed willingness to appear before the two committees.

Comey, though, has raised objections to the format of the interview and suggested in a Thanksgiving Day tweet he may not appear if the interview is not conducted in a public setting.

“I’m still happy to sit in the light and answer all questions. But I will resist a ‘closed door’ thing because I’ve seen enough of their selective leaking and distortion.” Comey added: “Let’s have a hearing and invite everyone to see.”

Republican lawmakers have been investigating the decision-making by the FBI and the Justice Department in 2016 and 2017. They maintain that anti-Trump bias among senior officials resulted in the FBI focusing more on its probe into the Trump campaign’s links to Russia and less on its investigation into Democratic candidate Clinton’s private email server.

Trump has repeatedly called the Russia probe a “witch hunt” and has accused Comey and his close colleagues of being corrupt.

Democrats complain Republicans are simply trying to fuel a conspiracy theory to protect Trump from the ongoing Russia probe led by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Democrats say they will scrutinize Trump’s attacks on the FBI and the Justice Department when they assume control of the House in January. They have also urged their Republican counterparts to shield Mueller from any attempts by Trump or his newly-appointed acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, to impede the investigation.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump started his Thanksgiving holiday by renewed his public debate over the independence of the country’s judicial system.

In a teleconference Thursday with American troops overseas, Trump said a federal appeals court in California has become “a big thorn in our side.”

The president’s remarks came one day after he and U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts engaged in an extraordinary exchange over the independence of the federal judiciary, with Roberts berating Trump for criticizing a judge who ruled against his administration as an “Obama judge.”

Roberts responded with a rare public rebuke of the president, saying Trump’s comments reflect his misunderstanding of the judiciary’s role.

“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said in a bluntly worded statement.  “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.  That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”

Although it is very unusual for a president to personally criticize judges, Trump quickly responded by questioning the independence of federal judges appointed by his predecessor and confirmed by the Senate.

“Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have ‘Obama judges,’ and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country.  It would be great if the 9th Circuit was indeed an ‘independent judiciary,’ Trump said via Twitter from his Mar-a-lago resort in Florida. 

While Trump cited the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the ruling that drew his ire came from a district judge in California.

Trump has been particularly critical of judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers California and much of the U.S. west coast.  Trump tweeted Wednesday the court, considered by many as the country’s most liberal, has become a “terrible, costly and dangerous disgrace.”

The president has maintained the Supreme Court has overruled the 9th Circuit more than other courts, but studies conducted during the past five years show three others have a higher percentage of their rulings overturned.

The controversy began Tuesday when Trump attacked U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar in San Francisco, who ruled against his migrant asylum order.  The ruling prompted Trump to claim again Thursday, as he has in the past, that the 9th Circuit was biased against him.

“It’s a terrible thing when judges take over your protective services, when they tell you how to protect your border.  It’s a disgrace” he said.

Roberts had refrained from commenting on Trump’s previous attacks on judges.  But after a query Wednesday from Associated Press, Roberts defended the independence of the federal judiciary and dismissed the notion that judges are beholden to presidents who appoint them.

Roberts, who has often expressed concern about attacks on the judiciary’s impartiality, has previously been the target of criticism from Trump.  Trump often belittled Roberts during the 2016 presidential campaign, at one point calling Roberts an “absolute disaster” after Roberts voted along with liberals in 2012 to uphold President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

Roberts was appointed by Republican President George W. Bush and has compiled a firmly conservative voting record during his 13 years on the Supreme Court.

The chief justice’s statement came as he adjusts to changes on the Supreme Court.  The arrival last month of Trump’s second appointee, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, pushed Roberts to the court’s ideological center, a position that was held by Justice Anthony Kennedy until he retired in July.

Former special assistant to President George W. Bush, Scott Jennings, told CNN Thursday the ideological shift on the court may have compelled Roberts to defend the courts.

“I think what Chief Justice Roberts feels like his job is now is to look out for the integrity of and the reputation of the entire judiciary.  I mean in a world where a lot of people view most of government as being polarized, as being partisan for you or partisan against you, I think he believes it’s his job to make sure that folks view the judiciary as independent.”

Inside Elections publisher Nathan Gonzales said on CNN that Trump’s criticism of Roberts could further endear him to his conservative base, “There are some Republicans and conservatives who have already turned their back on Chief Justice Roberts because of his involvement in the decision with the Affordable Care Act.”

Gonzales added, “We have to remember that the Republican Party has become all about President Trump and whatever he does or the enemies he chooses are going to be with him and I think that remains the case in this situation.”
…

Senate Republicans are working to soon fill the nation’s longest judicial vacancy with a North Carolina lawyer whose nomination has raised objections from black lawmakers and civil rights groups concerned about his work defending state laws found to have discriminated against African-Americans.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has helped push 84 of President Donald Trump’s nominees over the finish line and is itching for more. With just a few more weeks to go before Congress adjourns for the year, he has teed up a vote on the nomination of Thomas Farr, 64, to serve as a district court judge in North Carolina.

The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced Farr’s confirmation with a party-line vote back in January, meaning McConnell has waited about 10 months and until after the midterm elections to hold a vote on the floor.

Senators tend to save their biggest fights in the judicial arena for Supreme Court and appeals court nominees, but Farr’s nomination has proved an exception.

“It’s hard to believe President Trump nominated him, and it’s even harder to believe the Senate Republicans are considering it again,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York in one of about 20 tweets he has sent out in recent days concerning Farr.

Farr has the backing of home-state Sens. Richard Burr and Thom Tillis, both Republicans. They have noted that Farr was also nominated to the same position by former President George W. Bush and has a “well qualified” rating from the American Bar Association. They have protested the implication that Farr is racially insensitive or biased.

“I think absolutely destroying a good man’s reputation is inappropriate,” Tillis said before the committee advanced Farr’s nomination.

In introducing Farr last year, Burr said the judiciary needs good people and he “fills every piece of the word good.”

But Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., described Farr as “probably the worst of the litter” when it comes to Trump’s judicial nominees.

“Could this administration have picked an individual who is more hostile to the rights of minorities than this man? It is hard to imagine,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said in the same committee hearing.

GOP leaders in charge of the North Carolina Legislature hired Farr and others at his firm to defend congressional and legislative boundaries that the Legislature approved in 2011. A federal court eventually struck some boundaries down as racial gerrymanders and the Supreme Court affirmed that decision.

Farr also helped defend a 2013 law that required photo identification to vote, reduced the number of early voting days and eliminated same-day registration during that period.

North Carolina Republicans said that requiring voter ID would increase the integrity of elections. But the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the state provided no evidence of the kind of in-person voter fraud the ID mandate would address. The Richmond, Virginia-based court said the law targeted black voters “with almost surgical precision.”

Farr told lawmakers that, as an advocate, he vehemently disagreed with the argument that the North Carolina Legislature sought to curtail the voting rights of people of color or any other voter. But, said, “I am obligated to follow the decision by the 4th Circuit and pledge that I will do so.”

The history of the particular judicial opening Farr would fill has also contributed to the acrimony.

President Barack Obama nominated two African-American women to serve on the court, but neither was granted a hearing and their nominations stalled. If confirmed, they would have been the first blacks to serve in that particular district, which is about 27 percent black.

Farr also served as a lawyer for the re-election campaign of Republican Sen. Jesse Helms in 1990. The Justice Department alleged that about 120,000 postcards sent overwhelmingly to black voters before that election was intended to intimidate them from voting.

Farr said he was not consulted about the postcards and did not have any role in drafting or sending them. He said that after he had been asked to review the card, “I was appalled to read the incorrect language printed on the card and to then discover it had been sent to African Americans.”

The explanation has failed to win over the NAACP.

“The courts are supposed to be where we can find and seek justice. But Farr’s lifetime crusade is to disenfranchise African Americans and deprive them of their rights,” said Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington bureau. “He belongs nowhere near a bench of justice.”

Democratic lawmakers called on the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, to schedule Farr for another round of testimony about his role in the Helms’ campaign, but Grassley declined.

With a 51-49 majority, Republicans will have little margin for error in confirming Farr.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., has already pledged to oppose all judicial nominees until he gets a vote on legislation to protect special counsel Robert Mueller.
…

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has warned Central American migrants seeking political asylum at the U.S. border with Mexico that the Trump administration will not tolerate “frivolous asylum claims” or illegal entry. Her warning came Tuesday as a U.S. federal judge temporarily prevented the administration from blocking asylum status for people who do not enter at a designated port of entry. VOA’s Celia Mendoza is in Tijuana, Mexico, where she spoke to some of the migrants.
…