A U.S. Senate panel begins confirmation hearings Tuesday on the nomination of federal appellate court judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, a pivotal life-time appointment President Donald Trump hopes will cement a conservative-leaning majority on the court for years to come.

Kavanaugh will face tough questioning from lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee about his views on a range of issues, including abortion, the powers of a special prosecutor to investigate Trump and Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the conflict between religious beliefs and gay rights, environmental controls and numerous other issues.

The White House is hoping the full Senate will confirm the 53-year-old Kavanaugh to the nine-member court later in September, in time for him to fill the vacancy left by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy when the court opens a new term on October 1.

Kennedy most often sided with the court’s four-member conservative bloc, but provided a fifth vote with court liberals to reject efforts to curb abortion and gay rights or limit universities in their use of affirmative action to open up admissions to more racial minorities.

Most independent Supreme Court analysts are predicting, based on hundreds of decisions that Kavanaugh has written at the appellate court level, that Kavanaugh, if confirmed, would most often side with the conservatives on the court, rather than prove to be the swing vote that Kennedy often provided on key issues favoring liberal interpretations of U.S. law.

The eventual full Senate vote on Kavanaugh is expected to be close, with Republicans holding a narrow 50-49 majority with the death of Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona. But Arizona Governor Doug Ducey is required by state law to name another Republican to replace McCain and says he expects to do so in the coming days.

If all 51 Republicans support Kavanaugh, he would become the court’s 114th justice. At the moment, no Republicans have said they will reject Kavanaugh’s nomination and no Democrats have said they will support it.

Democrats are expected to vote overwhelmingly against Kavanaugh’s nomination, although three Democratic senators who voted for Trump’s first high court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, have yet to voice opposition or support for Kavanaugh, pending the confirmation hearing.

Democratic Senators Joe Donnelly in Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota and Joe Manchin in West Virginia all face tough re-election battles in November in states Trump won easily in the 2016 election and could face pressure from voters to approve the Trump court selection.

Kavanaugh has had a long career in Washington that spans work two decades ago on the impeachment investigation of former President Bill Clinton, as a White House aide to former President George W. Bush, and most recently 12 years on the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington, a court often considered a stepping stone to a Supreme Court seat.
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President Donald Trump’s administration wants to shut down U.S. government radio stations that announce official time, a service in operation since World War II.

WWV and WWVB in the state of Colorado and WWVH on the island of Kauai in the mid-Pacific state of Hawaii, send out signals that allow millions of clocks and watches to be set either manually or automatically.

WWVB continuously broadcasts digital time codes, using very long electromagnetic waves at a frequency of 60 kilohertz, which are automatically received by timekeeping devices in North America, keeping them accurate to a fraction of a second.

“If you shut down these stations, you turn off all those clocks,” said Don Sullivan, who managed the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) stations between 1994 and 2005.

​GPS not good enough

Some argue the terrestrial time signal have been rendered obsolete by the government’s Global Positioning System, whose satellites also transmit time signals, but users disagree, noting GPS devices must have an unobstructed view of a number of satellites in space to properly function.

“Sixty kilohertz permeates in a way GPS can’t,” Sullivan told VOA, explaining that WWVB’s very low frequency signal can be received inside buildings and it is an important backup to GPS in case adversaries attempt to interfere with the satellite radio-navigation system.

WWV and WWVH broadcast on a number of shortwave frequencies, meaning their signals can be received globally.

The Trump administration proposes, in its Fiscal 2019 budget to Congress, cutting $26.6 million and 136 jobs from NIST’s fundamental measurements, quantum science and measurement dissemination activities.

The budget document acknowledges that in addition to synchronizing clocks and watches, the time signals are also used in appliances, cameras and irrigation controllers.

“It’s crazy,” Sullivan said of the proposed cut. “It’s absolutely insane.”

NIST officials say they cannot comment on budget matters. The White House referred questions about NIST’s funding to the Office of Management and Budget, which has not responded to an inquiry from VOA.

Oldest continuously operating radio station

WWV, the oldest continuously operating radio station in the United States, first went on the air from Washington in 1919, conducting propagation experiments and playing music. In the early years, it also transmitted — via Morse code — news reports prepared by the Agriculture Department.

The station subsequently was moved to Maryland and then to Colorado in 1966. WWV has been a frequency standard since 1922 and has disseminated official U.S. time since 1944.

All of the NIST stations rely on extremely precise atomic clocks for the accuracy of their time signals.

WWV, at two minutes past every hour, also transmits a 440 hertz note (A above middle C), something it has done since 1936, allowing musicians to tune their pianos and other instruments.

All three stations retain a huge following worldwide, according to Sullivan.

WWV and WWVH broadcasts can also be heard by telephone and about 2,000 calls are received daily, according to NIST. (To listen to the broadcasts by phone, dial +1-303-499-7111 for WWV and +1-808-335-4363 for WWVH.)

The telephone time-of-day service also is used to synchronize clocks and watches, and for the calibration of stopwatches and timers (although slightly less accurate than radio reception). 

Tom Kelly, an amateur radio operator in the state of Oregon, has launched a petition to try to save the stations. His goal is to collect 100,000 online signatures from U.S. residents by September 15 that would compel a response from the White House.

Kelly’s petition calls the stations “an instrumental part in the telecommunications field, ranging from broadcasting to scientific research and education,” noting their transmissions of marine storm warnings, GPS satellite health reports and specific information about solar activity and radio propagation conditions.

Britain, China, Germany, Japan and Russia also have very low frequency time transmissions, but their stations are too distant to automatically set clocks in the United States.

Among other proposed cuts for NIST are its environmental measurement projects measuring the impact of aerosols on pollution and climate change and gas reference materials used by industry to reduce costs of complying with regulations and the Urban Dome research grants for determining how to measure greenhouse gas emissions for cities and across regions.
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Education Secretary Betsy DeVos says she has “no intention of taking any action” regarding any possible use of federal funds to arm teachers or provide them with firearms training.

DeVos’ comments came Friday after a top official in her department, asked about arming teachers, said states and local jurisdictions always “had the flexibility” to decide how to use federal education funds.

Frank Brogan, assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education, said arming educators “is a good example of a profoundly personal decision on the part of a school or a school district or even a state.” President Donald Trump and DeVos have said that schools may benefit from having armed teachers and should have that option.

DeVos not authorized

DeVos said Friday that “Congress did not authorize me or the Department to make those decisions” about arming teachers or training them on the use of firearms.

Her comments were in a letter to Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott, the top Democrat on the House committee overseeing education, and were posted by the department on Twitter.

“I will not take any action that would expand or restrict the responsibilities and flexibilities granted to state and local education agencies by Congress,” DeVos wrote.

Democrats and education groups have argued, however, that the funds are intended for academics, not guns.

DeVos heads a federal commission on school safety that was formed after the deadly Valentine’s Day shooting at a Florida high school.

An early draft of the commission’s report recommends that states and communities determine “based on the unique circumstances of each school” whether to arm its security personnel and teachers to be able to respond to violence. The draft’s section on training school personnel was reviewed by AP.

Official cites Texas program

In an interview with The Associated Press Thursday, Brogan cited the “school marshal” program in Texas where school employees can volunteer to carry weapons on campuses after undergoing training. Educators from some remote rural schools also told the panel that they rely on armed school personnel because the police may take too long to arrive. Others, however, argued that arming teachers is dangerous and could make schools feel like prisons.

Brogan said the Every Student Succeeds Act, a bipartisan law that shifts education authority to states, provides about $1 billion in annual funding for various school needs, including 20 percent specifically set aside for school safety.

“The people at the local level who’ve been there for years could make the decisions about what services to purchase, what equipment to buy to fulfill the general broad obligations laid out in that law,” he said.

The debate arose earlier this month after a small rural school district in Oklahoma and the state of Texas asked the department to clarify what the funds can be used for.

“The position is: You have the language … the language was written specifically to and always interpreted to mean ‘this is your money,”’ Brogan said.

Democratic lawmakers and teachers blasted the idea, accusing the Trump administration of acting in the interests of the National Rifle Association, and several congressmen called for legislation that would prohibit the use of those funds for guns.
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The Trump administration is under increasing pressure to speed up the reunification of immigrant families it separated at the Mexican border, following allegations three youngsters were sexually abused while in U.S. custody.

The government of El Salvador said the three, ages 12 to 17, were victimized at shelters in Arizona, and it asked the U.S. to make their return a priority.

“May they leave the shelters as soon as possible, because it is there that they are the most vulnerable,” Deputy Foreign Relations Minister Liduvina Magarin said in San Salvador on Thursday.

Deadline a month ago

The U.S. government already is facing heavy criticism over its slow pace in reuniting more than 2,600 children who were separated from their parents last spring before the Trump administration agreed to stop the practice. Most have since been reunited, but hundreds remain apart more than a month after the deadline set by a judge.

Before the Trump administration reversed course, many of the parents had been deported to their home countries while their children remained in shelters in the U.S.

Attorneys for the U.S. government and the immigrant families discussed how to accelerate the process at a hearing Friday in San Diego in front of U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, who set the deadline.

Magarin gave few details on the three cases other than to say they involved “sexual violations, sexual abuses.” She said her government is ready with lawyers and psychologists to help the families, adding: “The psychological and emotional impact is forever.”

“It’s unbelievable that children who were fleeing violence here were met in the United States with the worst violence a child could encounter,” said Cesar Rios, director of the Salvadoran Migrant Institute.

More information is needed to investigate, the U.S. Department Health and Human Services said in a statement Friday, that adding that “without additional details, we are unable to confirm or deny these allegations took place” at a facility overseen by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. It contracts with nonprofits and other third parties to run shelters for unaccompanied minors arriving at the border.

Administration asks ACLU to find the families

In trying to reunite families, the Trump administration has put the onus on the American Civil Liberties Union, asking that the organization use its “considerable resources” to find parents in their home countries, mostly Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

The governments of those countries and nonprofit organizations have been trying to locate the families. Those efforts have included posting public notices and putting hotline numbers on billboards in the hope a parent missing a child might see the signs and call.

“Every day that these children are separated and left in government facilities does more damage,” said Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney representing separated families. “Even if the facilities were palaces, the separation of young children from their parents causes potentially permanent trauma.”

The government and ACLU indicated in the hearing Friday that the process should start to speed up.

200 cases could be resolved soon

Gelernt told the judge as many as 200 cases could be resolved in the next week or two. Those include families who want to be reunited in their home countries and those who want to waive their right to reunification and keep their child in the United States to pursue asylum.

The judge also said the administration can expedite cases where families have expressed the desire for the child to be sent back and not worry about it violating a temporary halt on deportations of families seeking asylum.

Justice Department attorney Scott Stewart said the government wants to remove any roadblocks.

“There are a lot of folks that want to move forward with reunification,” he told the judge.

Parents increasingly anxious

More than 300 parents who have been deported are waiting for their sons and daughters to be returned to them in their homelands. Many are growing increasingly anxious.

Among them is Evelin Roxana Meyer, whose 11-year-old son, Eduardo Almendarez Meyer, was told this week that he won’t be leaving the U.S. until Nov. 27. He has been held at a government-contracted shelter in Brownsville, Texas, since he was separated from his father in early June.

The boy’s mother said her husband was told when he signed his deportation papers that his son would be waiting for him in Honduras.

“Now it’ll be six months before we see him? Oh my God,” Meyer said Friday, crying during a telephone interview from her hometown of La Union. “I don’t know why it’s taking so long. My son is worried. He tells me, ‘More time here, Mommy? Oh, no. Why?’ I don’t know what to tell him.”

Child psychologist Barbara Van Dahlen, founder of Give an Hour, a network of mental health professions that is offering to counsel the separated families, said the reports of abuse are likely to worsen the immigrant parents’ anxieties.

“I can’t imagine the stress, the anxiety, the terror, if I was separated from my child, and then the thought that possibly some of these kids are being abused,” Van Dahlen said. “It would be so debilitating and destructive that it would be hard for some parents to function.”
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The Trump administration has cut funding to the U.N. agency that helps Palestinian refugees, calling the organization “irredeemably flawed.”

The U.S. State Department ended decades of support to the organization Friday, saying “the administration has carefully reviewed the issue and determined that the United States will not make additional contributions to UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency).”

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the U.N. agency’s “endlessly and exponentially expanding community of entitled beneficiaries is simply unsustainable and has been in crisis mode for many years.”

UNRWA provides health care, education and social services to Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The agency says it provides services to about 5 million Palestinian refugees, most of whom are descendants of Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes during the war that led to Israel’s establishment in 1948.

The United States supplies nearly 30 percent of the total budget of UNRWA and donated $355 million to the agency in 2016. However, in January, the Trump administration withheld $65 million it had been due to provide UNRWA and released only $60 million in funds.

Last week, the Trump administration announced it would cut more than $200 million in economic aid to the Palestinians, following a review of the funding for projects in the West Bank and Gaza. A senior State Department official said the decision took into account the challenges the international community faces in providing assistance to Gaza, where “Hamas control endangers the lives of Gaza’s citizens and degrades an already dire humanitarian and economic situation.”

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that runs Gaza, seized the coastal territory in 2007 from the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority. That led to Israel and Egypt placing severe economic restrictions on the region.

Under the Trump administration, Washington has taken a number of actions that have angered the Palestinians, including recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December and moving the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv in May. The Palestinian leadership has been boycotting Washington’s peace efforts since the Jerusalem announcement.
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The remains of the late Senator John McCain are lying in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda Friday as Americans continue to mourn the loss of the long-time legislator and war hero.

McCain’s remains were flown Thursday to Washington from Arizona, the southwestern U.S. state he represented in Congress since he was first elected in 1982.

Hundreds of members of Congress are expected to attend a ceremony in the rotunda, an honor that has been bestowed upon just 30 Americans throughout the country’s history. McCain’s coffin will rest on a wooden platform known as a catafalque, which was first used in 1865 to support the casket of assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.

President Donald Trump was not invited to Friday’s ceremony or McCain’s funeral on Saturday, a decision viewed by many as a rebuke of Trump. A bitter feud between Trump and the two- time presidential hopeful took root during Trump’s 2016 campaign, when he mocked McCain for getting captured during the Vietnam War and said McCain was not a war hero.

Vice President Mike Pence will, instead, speak at the ceremony and other administration officials will be present, as will McCain’s widow, Cindy, his seven children and his 106-year-old mother, Roberta McCain.

After Friday’s ceremony, McCain will lie in state for the rest of the day for public viewing in the rotunda, where his flag-draped coffin will be presided over by a Capitol Hill Guard of Honor.

Two former presidents, Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama, will deliver remarks at Saturday’s memorial service at the National Cathedral in Washington.

McCain lost the Republican presidential nomination to Bush in 2000 and the presidential election to Obama in 2008.

The former aviator who was a prisoner of war for more than five years will be buried Sunday at his college alma mater, the U.S. Naval Academy in nearby Annapolis, Maryland.

McCain died last Saturday at age 81 after a year-long battle with brain cancer.

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday described his old friend as a man who lived by an ageless code of honor, courage and duty for his country.

Three former NATO secretaries general have called for the alliance’s new $1.4 billion Brussels-based headquarters to be named McCain.

“Despite his being a U.S. Senator, across Europe we all felt that John McCain III was one of our own,” they said in a letter to the British paper The Times.

In a letter, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who served in the top post from 2009-2014, George Robertson (1999-2003) and Javier Solana (1995-1999) have supported the tribute to the Arizona Republican’s work in “promoting transatlantic unity.”

The letter, published Thursday, reads: “As three former secretary-generals of NATO, we believe that the transatlantic alliance is the cornerstone of a stable, peaceful and free world. Few things symbolize this alliance, and the enduring benefits of American global leadership, more vividly than the life and work of John McCain.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg confirmed he received the request to name the new NATO headquarters after Senator John McCain.

“This proposal will be studied carefully,” said NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescuin in a statement.

McCain lost the Republican presidential nomination to Bush in 2000 and the presidential election to Obama in 2008.

The former aviator who was a prisoner of war for more than five years will be buried Sunday at his college alma mater, the U.S. Naval Academy in nearby Annapolis, Maryland.

McCain died last Saturday at age 81 after a year-long battle with brain cancer.

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday described his old friend as a man who lived by an ageless code of honor, courage and duty for his country.

“Character is destiny, John had character,” Biden said at a funeral service for the 81-year-old McCain in the Arizona capital of Phoenix.

 
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Thousands of mourners have come to pay their respects to music legend Aretha Franklin, who will be laid to rest Friday in Detroit, Michigan. A star-studded roster of performers and speakers are scheduled to attend. From Washington, VOA’s Jill Craig has more.
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Notably absent from the final tribute ceremonies for U.S. Senator John McCain, who died last Saturday, is President Donald Trump. McCain and Trump disagreed on a number of issues, including U.S. relations with Russia. Some analysts view the feud as emblematic of the clash of values within the Republican Party. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
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U.S. President Donald Trump, at political rally in the Midwestern state of Indiana, again directed his ire at the country’s top national law enforcement officials.

“Our Justice Department and our FBI have to start doing their job, doing it right and doing it well,” Trump said Thursday evening. “People are angry.”

“What’s happening is a disgrace,” declared the president.

“I wanted to stay out, but at some point if it doesn’t straighten out properly … I will get involved and I’ll get in there if I have to,” Trump added.

Sessions’ job

Earlier in the day at the White House, the president referred to the special counsel’s probe into whether his 2016 campaign colluded with Russians as an “illegal investigation.”

Speaking to the Bloomberg news agency, Trump said the job of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has recused himself from oversight of the investigation, is safe until, at least, the November midterm election.

“I just would love to have him do a great job,” Trump said during the Oval Office interview, adding that he would “love to have him look at the other side,” reiterating calls for the Justice Department to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the origins of the Russia probe.

“I do question what is Jeff doing,” he added.

The president has repeatedly ridiculed Sessions, the top U.S. law enforcement officer, as “weak” for not pursuing what the president and many other Republicans perceive as anti-Trump bias in the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

​FBI refuted Trump claim

The FBI, on Wednesday, refuted the claim Trump made without citing evidence that the e-mails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom he defeated in the 2016 election, had her e-mails hacked by China.

Trump, earlier Wednesday had said federal law enforcement risked losing credibility if it did not further investigate the matter.

“Look at what she’s getting away with?” Trump said about Clinton at the Indiana rally, prompting the crowd in the 11,000-seat Ford Center to briefly chant “lock her up.”

Trump has repeatedly called the investigation, headed by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is a former FBI director, a politically motivated witch hunt.

The president repeatedly asserts there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia.

Six convictions, 12 indictments

Mueller’s investigation has so far resulted in six people being convicted of crimes. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, on August 21 was the first person to be convicted in a jury trial from the probe, which also returned indictments in July against 12 Russian intelligence officers in the computer hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.

On Twitter earlier in the day Trump denied referenced reports he has tried to have Sessions and Mueller removed from their positions.

Discussing his soon-to-depart White House Counsel, Donald McGahn, the president tweeted: “I liked Don, but he was NOT responsible for me not firing Bob Mueller or Jeff Sessions. So much Fake Reporting and Fake News!”

During the evening’s rally in Evansville, Trump again targeted journalists for harsh criticism, accusing them of being in alliance with those who oppose him politically, including “deep state radicals.”
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Environmentalists are alarmed that President Donald Trump is following through on his campaign pledges to roll back Obama-era rules that tightened restrictions on greenhouse gases, promising the moves would lead to more American jobs and economic growth.

At a recent rally in Charleston, West Virginia, under a “Trump Digs Coal” banner, the president announced plans to roll back the Clean Power Plan.

“We are putting our great coal miners back to work.” Trump said, claiming that coal is necessary for the nation’s energy security. “You can do a lot of things to those solar panels, but you know what you can’t hurt? Coal. You can do whatever you want to coal.”

Trump’s plan abandons the previous administration’s goal of scaling back U.S. reliance on coal and reducing the nation’s carbon emissions by a third by the year 2030. Instead, Trump wants to allow coal-producing states like West Virginia to set their own limits on greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration proposed a repeal of the American Clean Cars Standards, the Obama-era regulation that set stringent limits on vehicle fuel-efficiency and emissions. The proposal include revoking the rights of states to set their own strict vehicle emission targets, setting up a legal battle with California and 18 other states with ambitious clean cars programs.

Xavier Becerra, California’s attorney general, said the state will fight what it believes to be “an egregious proposal that violates the law and is damaging to the interests of the people of this country when it comes to improving air quality.”

Environmental activists also have denounced the proposals. Tomas Carbonell of the Environmental Defense Fund said cars and power plants are responsible for the majority of carbon pollution in the U.S. He added that the administration’s rollback of these climate protections “sends a real signal to the world that America is not going to do its part to reduce pollution.”

Even the administration’s Environmental Protection Agency’s own analysis acknowledges that increased pollution from the rollback of the Clean Power Plan could lead to 1,400 more premature deaths each year by 2030. Carbonell said this would mean health and economic costs with potentially “billions of dollars in net harm to Americans resulting from this proposal even after you take into account the compliance cost.”

The plan is supported by the industry lobby that says Trump’s coal-friendly policies create jobs. Jason Bostic from the West Virginia Coal Association said that since Trump took office, the state has added about 3,000 direct mining jobs. He dismissed criticism that coal is a dying industry that hurts the environment.

“I think what you have are critics outside of this industry that are a little bit unrealistic in their goals about a renewable economy built on wind power, wishes and unicorns.” he said.

If approved, Trump’s proposal, called the “Affordable Clean Energy Rule,” could keep coal plants operating longer, by allowing them to invest in facilities without having to upgrade pollution control technologies to meet existing standards.

Yet, experts are skeptical the proposal would actually would save coal jobs in the long term given that there are cheaper and cleaner energy sources like natural gas, and that the cost of renewable energy like solar and wind continue to drop.

Blair Beasley of the Bipartisan Policy Center said, “The coal industry is still facing some pretty significant headwinds,” despite Trump’s rollbacks.

Most analysts believe Trump’s proposal is driven more by political rather than economic considerations. In West Virginia, Trump’s approval ratings are almost always above the national average. Beasley noted, however, that as the power sector transitions away from coal, there are communities that potentially could be left behind, and this is an important consideration in policymaking.

The Clean Power Plan was blocked by the Supreme Court in early 2016 and never implemented. Yet, West Virginians blamed President Barack Obama for the decline of the coal industry.

In his last year in office, Obama’s approval rating in the state was 24 percent, the lowest in the nation. Jake Zuckerman, political reporter at the Charleston Gazette-Mail said that a fair criticism for the Obama administration is they did not hold public hearings in West Virginia on the Clean Power Plan.

“I think that people got this feeling that they weren’t being heard, which I think carries a lot of weight here,” he said.

Now these coal miners feel Trump is listening. At the Trump rally in Charleston, Kevin Abbot from Gilbert, West Virginia, said he lost his job under Obama, but now he’s back to work.

“I’m tickled to death,” he said. “The pay went up. The mining industry went up. So, everything’s looking real good as far as mining goes.”

Abbott, who has been mining for 32 years, said he likes everything Trump has done. “He’s sticking with his campaign promises.”

The administration’s proposals to roll back antipollution standards are in line with Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement. Every country in the world except the U.S. and Syria, are now signatories of the agreement, which aims to mitigate the effects of global warming.
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President Donald Trump has followed through on pledges to roll-back Obama-era rules that tightened restrictions on greenhouse gases, promising the moves would lead to more American jobs and economic growth. Trump’s proposal includes loosening restrictions to the American Clean Cars Standards and the Clean Power Plan. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has more.
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The National Enquirer has long explained its support for Donald Trump as a business decision based on the president’s popularity among its readers. But private financial documents and circulation figures obtained by The Associated Press show that the tabloid’s business was declining even as it published stories attacking Trump’s political foes and, prosecutors claim, helped suppress stories about his alleged sexual affairs.

The Enquirer’s privately held parent company, American Media Inc., lost $72 million for the year ending in March, the records obtained by the AP show. And despite AMI chairman David Pecker’s claims that the Enquirer’s heavy focus on Trump sells papers, the documents show that the Enquirer’s average weekly circulation fell by 18 percent to 265,000 in its 2018 fiscal year from the same period the year before, the greatest percentage loss of any AMI-owned publication. The slide follows the Enquirer’s 15 percent circulation loss for the previous 12 months, a span that included the presidential election.

More broadly, the documents obtained by the AP show that American Media isn’t making enough money to cover the interest accruing on its $882 million in long-term debt and that the company expects “continued declines in circulation and advertising revenues” in the current year. That leaves AMI reliant on debt to keep its operations afloat and finance a string of recent acquisitions that are transforming the tabloid news industry.

New Jersey creditors

That creditor backstopping AMI is a New Jersey investment fund called Chatham Asset Management. Its top executive dined with Pecker and Trump at the White House last year, and the fund has both a history of Republican political donations and ties to the administration of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, which awarded it hundreds of millions of dollars in state retirement funds to manage.

AMI’s current debts stem from the declining fortunes of the magazine industry and a series of acquisitions. Chatham has kept this number from ballooning further by converting some of the debt it is owed into shares in the company.

Hush money allegations

The publisher’s precarious financials and reliance on Chatham are a backdrop to the publisher’s growing entanglement in a federal investigation of allegations of hush money payments and violations of campaign finance laws.

Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty last week to criminal violations of campaign laws, accepting prosecutors’ claim that he, Trump and the National Enquirer were involved in buying the silence of an adult-film actress and a former Playboy model who claim to have had affairs with Trump. Pecker and his top editorial deputy, Dylan Howard, have received immunity in exchange for their cooperation. Along with Cohen, they are among the latest longtime Trump loyalists to be swept up in the federal investigations engulfing the president and his inner circle.

Neither AMI nor company officials have been charged in the case.

AMI did not provide an on-the-record response to detailed questions from the AP sent to Howard, Pecker and its outside spokesman. But a confidential financial document obtained by the AP argues that investors should focus on its current cash flows and not its profitability. Over the last two years, it has generated a combined $12 million cash flow from operations even as it has posted $160 million in overall losses.

AMI also recently announced efforts to refinance as much as $450 million in debt. Despite the company’s recent purchases of US Weekly and rival gossip publisher Bauer Media, revenue from AMI’s existing publications continues to drop, the financial report obtained by the AP shows.

Trump’s ‘a personal friend of mine’

Pecker has long maintained an aura of absolute control over the Enquirer and its sister publications, boasting of his willingness to spend AMI’s money to benefit Trump.

“The guy’s a personal friend of mine,” he told The New Yorker magazine last summer, explaining why AMI paid former Playmate Karen McDougal $150,000 in a deal that prevented her from going public with her claim that she’d had an affair with Trump.

Owned by management firm

But Pecker owns only a small fraction of AMI, around 8 percent, according to the company. More than 80 percent of AMI, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars of its debt, belongs to Chatham Asset Management, with billionaire investor Leon Cooperman owning an additional 7 percent.

Chatham declined to address questions about the Enquirer’s relationship with Trump or the future of its investment in AMI. But the firm released a statement saying Chatham “has no involvement in the editorial process or the day-to-day business decisions of the company.”

Among Chatham’s largest investors, according to public records, is New Jersey’s public pension fund. Chatham manages investment decisions for more than $300 million in pension holdings for the state.

Asked about AMI’s alleged involvement with campaign finance law violations and hush money payments, state Treasury spokeswoman Jennifer Sciortino told the AP that “we expect our investment partners to invest in good businesses with strong management teams that follow all applicable laws.” She declined to say whether New Jersey had discussed AMI with Chatham, but said, “We are in regular contact with our investment partners regarding underlying portfolio companies and we provide feedback when appropriate.”

The confidential financial document obtained by the AP states that AMI’s $882 million in long-term debt owed to creditors as of March is a competitive disadvantage that may compromise its ability to launch new projects, borrow additional money or even pay for “general corporate requirements.”

​Trump concern

While the details of AMI’s financial difficulties described in the confidential document haven’t been previously reported, the prospect that Pecker and AMI might not protect Trump’s secrets forever has long been a concern. Trump and Cohen even discussed the possibility that the ties between Trump and the National Enquirer might someday unravel.

In July, Cohen released an audio recording in which the men discussed plans to buy McDougal’s story of an affair with Trump from the National Enquirer. Such a purchase was necessary, they suggested, to prevent Trump from having to permanently rely on a tight relationship with the tabloid.

“You never know where that company — you never know what he’s gonna be,” Cohen says.

“David gets hit by a truck,” Trump says.

“Correct,” Cohen replies. “So, I’m all over that.”

According to the documents accompanying Cohen’s guilty plea last week, Trump’s purchase of McDougal’s story never occurred.
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White House counsel Don McGahn, criticized by allies of President Donald Trump for extensively cooperating with the special counsel, will soon leave his job after months of speculation that he was on his way out.

Trump announced the development on Twitter.

Trump said McGahn will oversee the inside Washington campaign to win Senate confirmation next month of federal appellate court judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court.

McGahn has been shepherding Kavanaugh to senators’ offices in recent weeks for lengthy introductory meetings with the lawmakers ahead of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings that start next Tuesday. The White House is hopeful the Senate will confirm Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination in time for him to join the court when its new term starts October 1.

Wednesday’s announcement comes amid reported tension between Trump and McGahn, who is said to have been interviewed several times by investigators working for special counsel Robert Mueller. Mueller is seeking to determine whether the president obstructed justice in the probe of ties between Trump’s election campaign and Russia.

Reports said McGahn answered questions about many of the inside-the-White House events related to actions that Trump has taken, although McGahn’s lawyer said he did not implicate the president in wrongdoing.

Exasperation with Trump’s temper prompted McGahn to nickname the president “King Kong,” according to a recent article in The New York Times.

“McGahn’s relationship with the president has been strained for quite a while due to the ongoing Russia probe,” Bradley Moss, a national security lawyer, told VOA.

“His likely successor, Emmet Flood, is far better suited experience-wise to lead the legal response” to the special counsel’s requests, said Moss, the deputy executive director of the James Madison Project.

McGahn has been viewed inside the White House and among conservatives as a critical member of Trump’s team, leading the successful effort to put like-minded judges on federal benches and cutting government regulation.

McGahn “has been very effective at implementing the president’s priority of appointing highly qualified judges who have a traditional, modest understanding of their role in our system of government,” according to Thomas Jipping, deputy director for legal and judicial studies at the Heritage Foundation.

“That process has a lot of moving parts and political volatility, but Don has stayed on target and kept it moving,” Jipping told VOA.

The White House counsel was asked by the president in June of 2017 to fire Mueller. According to media reports McGahn, who had been the Trump campaign and transition team top lawyer, refused and threatened to resign.

The 50-year-old former chair of the Federal Election Commission would become the latest in a long line of officials who have left Trump’s 19-month presidency, either officials who have been fired, pushed out or voluntarily departed.

His departure will come as the White House prepares for a likely onslaught of congressional investigations if the Democrats retake the House of Representatives in the November midterm election.

VOA’s Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report.
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A Florida congressman with strong backing from U.S. President Donald Trump and an African-American mayor who thinks Trump ought to be impeached are set to square off in the November election for the Florida governorship in the key political battleground state.

The coming political contest between Republican Congressman Ron DeSantis, who has Trump’s staunch support, and Democrat Andrew Gillum, now mayor of the state capital of Tallahassee, was set Tuesday when both won their parties’ primary elections.

DeSantis had been expected to win the Republican gubernatorial nomination, but Gillum pulled an upset, marshaling the support of minority voters to surge past better-financed Democratic opponents after trailing them in pre-election political surveys of voters. Bernie Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist who unsuccessfully sought the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, had endorsed Gillum’s candidacy.

The DeSantis-Gillum race is likely to be one of the most closely watched elections in the Nov. 6 voting for what it might portend about the 2020 presidential election when Trump seeks another term in the White House.

Trump won the southeastern state of Florida in 2016, but it is a politically divided state that both Republican and Democratic contenders have won in recent elections. The outcome of the governor’s race could give a hint whether Trump’s political fortunes have changed.

Trump wasted no time assailing Gillum, saying Wednesday on Twitter that he has “allowed crime & many other problems to flourish in his city.”

Even before the voting ended the night before, Trump said, “Such a fantastic win for Ron DeSantis and the people of the Great State of Florida. Ron will be a fantastic Governor. On to November!”

DeSantis paid tribute to Trump at his victory party, saying, “I’m not always the most popular guy in D.C., but I did have support from someone in Washington. If you walk down Pennsylvania, he lives in the white house with the pillars in front of it. I was able to talk to the president, and I want to thank him for his support.”

Gillum, who would become Florida’s first black governor, has criticized Trump as far back as last December.

“This president is wrong for Florida on almost every issue, and as governor, I will fight against each and every one of his wrong-headed, racist and sexist policies,” Gillum said in a video. “The Donald Trump presidency shouldn’t even make it through 2018. He should be impeached now.”

Arizona race

Trump also weighed in with strong support for Congresswoman Martha McSally, who won a three-way Republican primary for a Senate nomination in the southwestern state of Arizona. McSally aligned herself with Trump as she defeated two other conservatives who also voiced support for the president.

McSally now will face Democratic Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema, who has been running a centrist campaign, to replace incumbent Republican Senator Jeff Flake. Flake declined to seek re-election after losing support, largely because many Arizona Republicans disapproved of his attacks on Trump.

Sinema has taken a small, early lead in voter surveys over McSally, but University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato told CNN that the Arizona contest will be “very, very competitive. It’ll go right down to the wire.”
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President Donald Trump has been accused of dishonesty, spreading falsehoods, misrepresenting facts, distorting news, passing on inaccuracies and being loose with the truth. But does he lie?

It’s a loaded word, and some Trump critics believe major news organizations are too timid to use it. The Washington Post, which has documented more than 4,000 false or misleading claims by the president, declared for the first time last week that a Trump misstatement was a “lie.”

Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s plea deal provided “indisputable evidence that Trump and his allies have been deliberately dishonest” about hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler wrote. The Post put Kessler’s assessment on its front page, and it was the newspaper’s most-read story online.

Not only was it the first time the Post said Trump had lied, it was the first time the newspaper used the word for any politician since Kessler began his fact-checking operation in 2011.

Many news organizations resist using the word because of the question of intent. Editors feel it’s important to establish whether someone is spreading false information knowingly, intending to deceive, and it’s hard to get inside a person’s head.

While Kessler’s team has found 98 instances where Trump falsely claimed responsibility for the largest tax cut in U.S. history, the president may sincerely believe it, Kessler said.

At The Associated Press, “we feel it’s better to say what the facts are, say what the person said and let the audience make the decision whether or not it’s an intentional lie,” said John Daniszewski, the news cooperative’s standards editor.

Several readers told Kessler, in effect, that it’s about time. One critic, Paul Blest of the website Splinter, wrote, “Can you imagine any other politician being held to this comically low standard?” The Post’s milestone represents an abject failure, he wrote.

“It’s sort of a cover-up for those in power when you don’t call it a lie,” said Jeff Cohen, a just-retired journalism professor and a producer of the documentary “All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception and the Spirit of I.F. Stone,” about the late journalist. He said journalists need to cut through the fog, and the word “lie” is an effective tool.

Yet one prominent editor wonders whether the whole discussion misses the point.

“I hate the fact that the debate and discussion over the word lie' has obscured a larger truth, if you will," Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times, told CNN earlier this month. "Does it matter if The New York Times or The Washington Post uses the wordlie’ three times, seven times, 10 times, 20 times? Or does it matter more that the fact-checker has found 4,229 misleading statements?”

Trump’s birther movement questioning former President Barack Obama’s citizenship led both the Times and AP to use the word “lie.” In January 2017, the Times headlined a story “Trump repeats lie about popular vote in meeting with lawmakers,” to refer to his claim that immigrants illegally voting prevented him from receiving more of the popular vote than Hillary Clinton. While “lie” was in the headline, it wasn’t in the body of the story.

CNN’s “New Day” anchor John Berman said on the air that Trump had lied about his policy of separating families at the U.S. border. Stories surrounding the pre-election meeting between the president’s son and Russians about information damaging to the Clinton campaign were “a writhing hydra of dishonesty. You chop off one lie, and two emerge in its place,” Berman said.

Cohen said the Post’s decision to use the word last week could influence others in the media to do so more often. The night the story appeared, CNN’s Chris Cuomo pressed Trump aide Kellyanne Conway to admit the administration lied and that’s why people didn’t trust Trump. Not surprisingly, Conway demurred.

Kessler urged caution.

“It just seems like a moment,” he said. “It’s not something we plan to do on a regular basis. You can’t speak too soon, but I’d be surprised if it was more than a once-in-a-presidency case.”

Using “lie” casually or imprecisely could strike readers more as opinion than fact, said the AP’s Daniszewski.

That’s a major consideration when Trump rails against the “fake news” media. He has called fact-checkers “dishonest scum” and “crooked as hell” and this month referred to the Post’s “Pinocchio” scale measuring the egregiousness of misstatements. “If I’m right, or if I’m 97.3 percent right, they will say, He's got a Pinocchio' orHe’s lying,”‘ Trump said. “They are bad people.”

The result is fact-checkers are as concerned about an erosion of public trust in fact-checking as the media in general are about their coverage. The independent Politifact has tried to build trust among Trump voters by fact-checking politicians in West Virginia, Alabama and Oklahoma, said Aaron Sharockman, the organization’s executive editor.

Politifact avoids the use of “lie,” though it does proclaim a “lie of the year.” Trump “won” in 2015 and 2017. Its rating for the worse misstatements — “pants on fire” — certainly implies the word. Trump has been awarded a total of 85 “pants on fire” designations.

“It doesn’t benefit Politifact to call someone a liar,” Sharockman said, “because it’s not our aim to play `gotcha.”‘
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Conservative U.S. Representative Ron DeSantis easily won the Republican primary for governor in Florida on Tuesday after a campaign in which he highlighted his enthusiastic loyalty to President Donald Trump.

DeSantis, who was endorsed by Trump, beat state Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam for the Republican nomination for governor, the Associated Press projected. He led by nearly 20 percentage points with about 85 percent of votes counted.

Trump, who captured the battleground state of Florida by just more than 1 percentage point in the 2016 White House race, tweeted his congratulations to DeSantis after the victory and said he would be “a fantastic governor.”

DeSantis made his allegiance to Trump the central theme of his race, airing a campaign ad in which he urged his toddler daughter to “build that wall” with toy blocks.

In the Democratic primary for Florida governor, progressive favorite Andrew Gillum narrowly led moderate former U.S. Representative Gwen Graham by nearly 2 percentage points with 85 percent of the vote counted.

Graham, the daughter of Bob Graham, a former Florida governor and U.S. senator, had led in polls heading into primary day, but Gillum surged in the late stages of the race.

Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee, had been endorsed by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. He would be the first African-American governor of Florida.

Florida also will host one of the country’s top U.S. Senate races between term-limited Republican Governor Rick Scott, who won the Senate nomination against token opposition, and incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson. Nelson ran unopposed for the nomination.

Voters in Arizona also picked candidates for the November elections, when Democrats will try to pick up 23 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and two seats in the Senate to gain majorities and slam the brakes on Trump’s legislative agenda.

Republican establishment favorite U.S. Representative Martha McSally has led consistently in opinion polls over former state Senator Kelli Ward and former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in a three-way battle to prove which candidate is most loyal to Trump, who won Arizona by 4 percentage points in 2016.

The contest could be critical to the balance of power in the Senate in November. The Arizona seat of retiring Republican Jeff Flake, a Trump critic, is considered one of the two top takeover targets for Democrats, along with Nevada.

McSally is seen as a stronger general election candidate than either Ward or Arpaio, both hard-line conservatives.

McSally has already launched advertising aimed at her likely Democratic opponent in November, U.S. Representative Kyrsten Sinema.

The primaries in Arizona and Florida on Tuesday are the last big day of state primaries before November’s elections. After Tuesday’s primaries, only five states remain to pick candidates before full attention turns to the November election, when all 435 House seats and 35 of the 100 Senate seats will be at stake.
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President Donald Trump’s administration backed off on Tuesday on plans to bypass Congress and roll back billions of dollars from the U.S. foreign aid budget after lawmakers pushed back, senators, congressional aides and U.S. officials said.

Reuters reported on Aug. 16 that the White House Office of Management and Budget had asked the State Department and Agency for International Development to submit information for a “rescission” package that would have led to sharp cuts in foreign assistance.

Rescissions cut money appropriated by Congress but not spent. The unusual plan from Mick Mulvaney, the former Republican congressman who heads the OMB, would have defied Congress by eliminating foreign assistance it had already approved.

Trump’s focus on his “America First” agenda has meant fewer funds for foreign aid. His administration has pushed repeatedly to cut the amount of money sent abroad since he took office in January 2017.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged the administration at a meeting on Tuesday to abandon the plan in the face of congressional opposition, several sources with knowledge of the situation said. It was a rare pushback against a Trump policy by fellow Republicans, who control Congress.

An OMB spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Republican Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said cutting a relatively small amount of foreign aid funding made no sense from an administration planning huge spending increases.

He speculated that the White House hoped the suggestion would “rev up” its base before November’s congressional elections but realized pushing the scheme would make it hard to work with angry lawmakers.

“I think they just kind of sat down and realized maybe that wasn’t so smart, and … they were right,” Corker told Reuters.

Loophole in law

Several administration officials had said the OMB was targeting some $3.5 billion in funds no longer needed for their original purpose, taking advantage of a loophole in the law to make cuts at the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

The cuts could have included more than $200 million Trump froze in March for recovery efforts in Syria.

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, vice chairman of the Appropriations Committee, welcomed the decision.

“Rescinding funds that had been agreed to by Congress and signed into law by the President, in the waning days of the fiscal year, would have set a terrible precedent and harmed programs that further United States interests around the world,” Leahy said in a statement.

Trump sought to slash foreign aid in this year’s budget, but he ended up signing a budget without those cuts after Congress objected.

The administration then tried to use the rescission process to slash $15 billion in domestic spending, including $7 billion for  children’s health insurance. That plan did not pass Congress.
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The United States is ready for talks with North Korea when it’s clear it will follow through on its commitment to denuclearize, the State Department said Tuesday after a planned visit to Pyongyang by top diplomat Mike Pompeo was shelved.

On Friday, President Donald Trump directed Pompeo to delay his trip, which had been slated for early this week, citing insufficient progress on getting the authoritarian regime to abandon its nuclear weapons, as agreed upon with leader Kim Jong Un in June.

Pompeo’s spokeswoman Heather Nauert declined to comment on reports that a tough-worded letter from an aide to Kim had derailed what would have been Pompeo’s fourth visit to North Korea this year.

Nauert said the president and his national security team, including Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton, had judged that “now is not the right time to travel.” However, she said diplomatic efforts are “ongoing” though she could not say whether there had been communications between the State Department and North Korea since Friday.

She cited a statement from Pompeo that despite the decision to delay the trip, “America stands ready to engage when it is clear that Chairman Kim stands ready to deliver on the commitments that he made at the Singapore summit with President Trump to completely denuclearize North Korea.”

“The world is united behind the need for Chairman Kim to fulfill that commitment,” Nauert said.

Trump, who views the reduction in tensions with North Korea this year as a major foreign policy achievement, still voiced respect for Kim on Friday and said he looked forward to seeing him “soon.” He laid unspecified blame on China, North Korea’s leading trade partner, for the lack of progress. China is currently embroiled in a trade dispute with the U.S.

But Trump’s tweet marked a shift in his relentlessly upbeat messaging since the Singapore summit, the first ever held between leaders of the U.S. and North Korea. There is growing skepticism in Washington and beyond that Kim intends to denuclearize without first winning concessions such as sanctions relief or a declaration on formally ending the 1950-53 Korean War.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters Tuesday that the U.S. might carry out military exercises with South Korea next spring after having canceled a major exercise this year as a gesture toward advancing diplomacy aimed at eliminating North Korea’s nuclear weapons. Mattis said no decision has been made on when to resume military exercises, but his statements suggested the recent cancellation might not be repeated.
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A group of current and former U.S. officials from across the political spectrum is set to take part in Saturday’s memorial service for Senator John McCain, one of the last in a string of services honoring the longtime lawmaker who died Saturday at the age of 81.

The service at the National Cathedral in Washington will feature eulogies by former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Former Senator Joseph Lieberman will also speak.

Serving as pallbearers will be former Vice President Joe Biden, former Defense Secretary William Cohen, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and former Senators Gary Hart, Russ Feingold and Phil Gramm.

McCain will be buried Sunday at his college alma mater, the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

The tributes will start however in Arizona, the state he represented first in the House of Representatives for two terms beginning in 1983 before moving to the Senate in 1987. McCain will lie in state in the Arizona State Capitol on Wednesday.

Since his death, world leaders and McCain’s former colleagues in Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, have shared their favorite memories of McCain, and extolled his status as a senior statesman on the world stage. They have remembered his military service as a naval aviator, especially his valor in enduring beatings and torture during 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war at the hands of North Vietnamese captors at the height of the Vietnam War in the 1960s.

But U.S. President Donald Trump, who frequently engaged in political taunts with McCain and three years ago said McCain was only deemed a hero because he was captured as a POW, was criticized after his initial reactions to McCain’s death only expressed condolences to his family and didn’t mention his military service or political career.

The White House, according to a Washington Post report Monday, prepared a statement extolling McCain’s life and calling him a hero, but Trump rejected issuing it. 

Flags at the White House were lowered to half-staff over the weekend in McCain’s honor, but back at full-staff on Monday. Trump ignored reporters’ repeated questions about McCain at White House gatherings on Monday, but late Monday afternoon the flags were lowered again to half-staff.

At the same time, the White House released a statement from the president in which Trump said that, despite differences on policy and politics, he respects McCain’s service to the U.S. and ordered flags be flown at half-staff until his internment. 

The statement also said Trump asked Vice President Mike Pence to offer an address at a ceremony honoring McCain on Friday, and that three cabinet members represent the Trump administration at services for McCain later this week.

At a dinner Monday night, Trump included a brief mention of McCain in his remarks, saying “we very much appreciate everything that Senator McCain has done for our country.”

As he prepared for the end of his life, McCain said he did not want Trump at his funeral, instead favoring attendance by Pence, with whom he served in Congress.

McCain, even as he neared death, disparaged Trump’s presidency, rebuking the U.S. leader for his seeming embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s position at last month’s Helsinki summit that Russia had not meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Trump, when he returned to Washington, altered his stance, but almost daily assails the investigation into the election interference.

“The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate,” McCain said at the time. “But it is clear that the summit in Helsinki was a tragic mistake.” 

Previously, the White House posted tributes from numerous Trump officials praising McCain, who as the Republican nominee, lost the 2008 presidential election to Obama. The tributes singled out McCain’s military service and heroism as a POW and his independence as a political leader. 

All five living former U.S. presidents issued statements praising McCain.

Outside the United States, world leaders lauded McCain’s role and presence abroad.

“John McCain was a true American hero,” said French President Emmanuel Macron. “He devoted his entire life to his country. His voice will be missed. Our respectful thoughts go to his beloved ones.”

British Prime Minister Theresa May said McCain “embodied the idea of service over self.”

McCain for years has promoted closer ties between Vietnam, which imprisoned him, and the United States.

On Monday, Vietnam Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh wrote in a condolence book at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, “It was he who took the lead in significantly healing the wounds of war, and normalizing and promoting the comprehensive Vietnam-U.S. partnership.”

A monument to McCain on the shores of the Hanoi lake where was he was captured after his plane was shot down in 1967 has turned into a de facto shrine to him as news of his death reached Vietnam. Flowers, incense, flags and other tributes to McCain have been laid there.
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A federal court ruled on Monday that North Carolina Republicans illegally drew up U.S. congressional districts in the state to benefit their party, suggesting that new lines be crafted before November’s election.

The three-judge panel for the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina said in a 321-page opinion that Republican legislators responsible for the map conducted unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering to dilute the impact of Democratic votes.

“That is precisely what the Republican-controlled North Carolina General Assembly sought to do here,” the opinion said.

The panel gave parties until Thursday to file their recommendations to fix the problem.

The decision could have national implications in this November’s battle for control of Congress. Democrats need to pick up 23 seats to gain a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives that could thwart Republican President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda.

Among the suggestions from the judges were holding state nominating primaries in November with new district lines that remove illegal partisan bias and then holding a general election before the new U.S. Congress is seated in January 2019.

The North Carolina dispute centered on a congressional redistricting plan adopted by the Republican-led legislature in 2016 after a court found that Republican lawmakers improperly used race as a factor when redrawing certain U.S. House districts after the 2010 census.

The Republican lawmaker in charge of the plan said it was crafted to maintain Republican dominance because “electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats.”

Party officials were not immediately available for comment on the court’s decision.

Republicans in 2016 won 10 of the 13 House districts – 77 percent of them – despite getting just 53 percent of the statewide vote, nearly the same result as in 2014.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out a lower court ruling that Republicans drew the boundaries to ensure electoral victories for their party.

But the justices sent the case back to the federal three-judge panel to reconsider whether the plaintiffs, including a group of Democratic voters, had the necessary legal standing to sue in the case.

“If this opinion stands … the court may well order new districts be drawn in time for the 2018 elections,” Rick Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, wrote on his election law blog.

“North Carolina’s gerrymandering was one of the most brazen in the nation, where state legislative leaders proudly pronounced it a partisan gerrymander,” he wrote.
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The United States and Mexico agreed on Monday to a sweeping trade deal that pressures Canada to accept new terms on autos trade, dispute settlement and agriculture to keep the trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the White House was ready to notify the U.S. Congress by Friday of President Donald Trump’s intent to sign the bilateral document, but that it was open to Canada joining the pact.

The 24-year-old NAFTA is a trilateral deal between the United States, Canada and Mexico that underpins $1.2 trillion in North American Trade.

Here are some of the main issues at the heart of the negotiations:

Autos Dominate

The new deal requires 75 percent of the value of a vehicle to be produced in the United States or Mexico, up from the NAFTA threshold of 62.5 percent.

The higher threshold is aimed at keeping more parts from Asia out, boosting North American automotive manufacturing and jobs. Even if more plants are built in Mexico, jobs will grow in the United States due to high levels of integration, with studies showing that U.S. parts make up 40 percent of the value of every Mexican-built car exported to the United States.

The pact also requires greater use of U.S. and Mexican steel, aluminum, glass and plastics.

The provision started out as a U.S. demand for 85 percent regional content, with 50 percent coming from U.S. factories.

That plan was vehemently opposed by Mexico, Canada and the auto industry. It later morphed into the U.S.-Mexico deal’s requirement of 40 to 45 percent of a vehicle’s value to be made in high wage areas paying at least $16 an hour, requiring significant automotive production in the United States.

Although full automotive details have not yet been released, auto industry officials say it will allow Trump the ability to impose higher national security tariffs on vehicles that do not comply with the new thresholds.

Most Mexican auto exports are in a position to comply with the new limits, the country’s economy minister said.

No Sunset

Trump backed off from an initial U.S. demand for a “sunset” clause that would kill the pact unless it was renegotiated every five years and which businesses said would stymie long term investment in the region.

Canada and Mexico were strictly opposed to the clause.

Instead, the United States and Mexico agreed to a 16-year lifespan for NAFTA, with a review every six years that can extend the pact for 16 years more, providing more business certainty.

Dispute Settlement

Mexico agreed to eliminate a settlement system for anti-dumping disputes, NAFTA’s Chapter 19.

The move, sought by the United States, puts Canada in a difficult position because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had insisted on maintaining Chapter 19 as a way to fight U.S. duties on softwood lumber, paper and other products that it views as unfair. Ottawa now has less than a week to decide to accept a deal without that provision.

A settlement system for disputes between investors and states was scaled back, now only for expropriation, favoritism for local firms and state-dominated sectors such as oil, power and infrastructure.

Agriculture, Labor

The new deal will keep tariffs on agricultural products traded between the United States and Mexico at zero and seeks to support biotech and other innovations in agriculture. It lacks a previous U.S. demand to erect trade barriers to protect seasonal U.S. fruit and vegetable growers from Mexican competition.

It contains enforceable labor provisions that require Mexico to adhere to International Labor Organization labor rights standards in an effort to drive Mexican wages higher.

Now Canada

The U.S.-Mexico NAFTA deal opens the door for Canada to immediately rejoin the talks and is a major step forward in updating the accord.

Canada, which sat out the last leg of discussions while the United States and Mexico ironed out their bilateral differences, is now pressured to agree to the new terms on auto trade and other issues to remain part of the three-nation pact.

Trump has presented this as a bilateral deal and threatened Canada with car tariffs. Some lawmakers have said that a bilateral deal would face a higher vote threshold in Congress because the NAFTA fast-track negotiating authority law calls for a trilateral agreement.
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Makeshift memorials are building in Arizona, Washington D.C. and Vietnam, in honor of Arizona Senator John McCain, who lost his battle with brain cancer on Saturday, August 25. He was 81.
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People in Vietnam are paying their respects to U.S. Sen. John McCain who was held as prisoner of war in Vietnam and later was instrumental in bringing the wartime foes together.

McCain died of brain cancer Saturday in his home state of Arizona, which he had served over six terms in the U.S. Senate. 

People paid tribute to McCain at the U.S Embassy in Hanoi on Monday and also at the monument built where he parachuted from his Navy Skyhawk dive bomber in October 1967 and was taken prisoner of war. He was held more than five years at the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” prison.

McCain and former Sen. John Kerry played an important role in the bilateral normalization of relations in 1995.
…

Senator John McCain, who died Saturday after a yearlong battle with brain cancer, will be honored at ceremonies in Arizona and Washington.

McCain will first lie in state at the Arizona State Capitol, where a private ceremony will be held on Wednesday, which would have been McCain’s 82nd birthday. Members of the public will be able to pay their respects at the State Capitol. 

On Thursday, a private memorial service will take place at the North Phoenix Baptist Church. 

In Washington, D.C., McCain will lie in state at the United States Capitol on Friday. The public will be invited to pay their respects. 

McCain will become the 13th senator to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda, an honor reserved for the nation’s “most eminent citizens,” according to the Architect of the Capitol.

A memorial service in Washington will be held at the Washington National Cathedral on Saturday. Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush are expected to speak at the service.

McCain’s office said a livestream will be available for the services at the National Phoenix Baptist Church and the National Cathedral.

McCain will be buried at the U.S. Naval Academy Cemetery in Annapolis, Maryland. His grave site will overlook the Severn River, and will be next his best friend from his Naval Academy days, Admiral Chuck Larson.

Remembrances, condolences pour in

The Vietnam War hero, Senator, and 2008 Republican presidential candidate was remembered for his courage, patriotism and service by fellow Americans and foreign dignitaries.

President Donald Trump tweeted Saturday, “My deepest sympathies and respect go out to the family of Senator John McCain. Our hearts and prayers are with you!”

His campaign later issued a statement offering condolences and “urging all Americans to take the opportunity to remember Senator McCain and his family in their prayers on this sad occasion.” The White House lowered the flag to half-staff in honor of McCain.

Former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama issued a statement sending their “heartfelt condolences” to McCain’s wife, Cindy and their family.

Obama, who ran against the Republican senator from the western state of Arizona in the 2008 presidential election and defeated him, noted how despite their different generations, backgrounds and politics, “we saw this country as a place where anything is possible.”

Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who served with McCain in the U.S. Senate, said in a statement that he “frequently put partisanship aside to do what he thought was best for the country and was never afraid to break the mold if it was the right thing to do.”

Former President George W. Bush called McCain a friend, he will “deeply miss.”

“Some lives are so vivid, it’s difficult to imagine them ended,” Bush said in a statement. “Some voices are so vibrant, it’s hard to think of them stilled.”

Bush’s father, former President George H.W. Bush, called McCain “a patriot of the highest order, a public servant of rarest courage.”

“Few sacrificed more for, or contributed more to, the welfare of his fellow citizens – and indeed freedom-loving peoples around the world,” the elder Bush said in a statement.

Former President Jimmy Carter called McCain “a man of honor, a true patriot in the best sense of the word.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Vietnam POW “showed us that boundless patriotism and self-sacrifice are not outdated concepts or clichés, but the building blocks of an extraordinary life.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan said the McCain’s death marks a “sad day for the United States,” which has lost a “decorated war hero and statesman.”

“John put principle before politics. He put country before self,” Ryan said.  “He was one of the most courageous men of the century.”

Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said the “nation is in tears” and noted McCain’s “deep patriotism, outstanding bravery and undaunted spirit.”

“He never forgot the great duty he felt to care for our nation’s heroes, dedicating his spirit and energy to ensuring that no man or woman in uniform was left behind on the battlefield or once they returned home,” Pelosi said in a statement.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called McCain “a tireless fighter for a strong trans-Atlantic alliance; his significance went well beyond his own country.” French President Emmanuel Macron called McCain “a true American hero.”

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani called the U.S. lawmaker a great friend of the South Asian country.

“We will remember his dedication and support towards rebuilding AFG,” Ghani tweeted.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also offered condolences.

“People of India join me in sincerely condoling the loss of a steadfast friend,” Modi tweeted. “His statesmanship, courage, conviction and understanding of global affairs will be missed.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called McCain “an American patriot and hero whose sacrifices for his country, and lifetime of public service, were an inspiration to millions.”

 
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