Former Democratic Gov. Philip Hoff, who’s credited with starting Vermont’s transition from one of the most Republican-entrenched states in the country to one of the most liberal, has died. He was 93.

Hoff, who became the first Democrat elected governor of Vermont in more than 100 years in 1962, died on Thursday, according to The Residence at Shelburne Bay, where he had been living.

“Phil Hoff forever changed the state of Vermont,” said Steve Terry, a former journalist who helped write a biography titled “Philip Hoff: How Red Turned Blue in the Green Mountain State.” ”His influence in the 1960s has molded and created the Vermont many of us know today.”

During his six years in office, Hoff helped start a process that evolved into the state’s environmental movement. He focused on reducing pollution and cleaning up the state’s rivers and streams.

He also emphasized education reform and helped revamp the state’s judicial system.

Hoff’s policies helped refocus state government on meeting the needs of residents, a philosophy embraced by his Republican successor, Deane C. Davis.

The office has alternated between Democratic and Republican governors since Hoff was elected.

At the mid-point of the 20th century, Vermont remained one of the most Republican states in the country. The state was dominated by a couple of political families, but Hoff shook up the staid Vermont political structure.

He became governor when the state was under a federal court mandate to reapportion the state House, where each of the state’s 241 cities and towns were represented by a single person, no matter the community’s population.

“The people of Vermont have clearly said that they don’t want to continue with the old ways, and if we fail to respond to forces at work in our society, we face a bleak future,” Hoff said at his 1963 inaugural address.

“I loved it any time he came into the office because there was a sense of vibrancy and life,” said U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, who joined Hoff’s Burlington law firm after graduating from law school in 1964. Two years later, Hoff appointed Leahy as Chittenden County state’s attorney, a post he held for eight years, until his 1974 election to the U.S. Senate.

“I’d see the governor all the time,” Leahy said. “I was the star-struck young lawyer in his office. I’d see people staying in the halls, just waiting to say hi to him. We’d have meetings with him. It was exciting.”

Philip Henderson Hoff was born on June 29, 1924, in Turners Falls, Massachusetts. He took time off from Williams College to serve in the Navy during World War II and returned to Williams after the war. He graduated and went on to law school at Cornell University before moving to Burlington in 1951.

Hoff first ran for office in 1958 for a seat on the Burlington Board of Aldermen. He was defeated.

Two years later, he was elected to the Vermont House after running what Terry called “a minimalist campaign.” He had no campaign literature of his own and instead handed out brochures promoting the presidential candidacy of U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

After one term in the Legislature, Hoff won the race for governor in 1962 after he campaigned on the need for change and to end 100 years of one-party rule.

Hoff was briefly considered as a vice presidential candidate in 1968 but withdrew his name when it became clear his friend, Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine, was being considered. Hoff ran for the U.S. Senate in 1970, but lost to the incumbent GOP Sen. Winston Prouty.

Hoff returned to the Legislature in 1982 after being elected to the state Senate. He served three, two-year terms.
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Newly sworn in Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is already on his first trip as the chief U.S. diplomat, headed first to a NATO foreign ministers in Brussels, and then to the Middle East. He boarded a plane just a couple of hours after his confirmation vote in the Senate. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more from Washington.
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The Department of Health and Human Services lost track of nearly 1,500 migrant children it placed with sponsors in the United States, an agency official told a Senate subcommittee Thursday.

The children were taken into government care after they showed up alone at the Southwest border. Most of the children are from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, and were fleeing drug cartels, gang violence and domestic abuse.

The agency learned the 1,475 children could not be found after making follow-up calls to check on their safety, the committee was told. 

The news has raised concern that the children could fall into the hands of human traffickers or be used as laborers by people posing as relatives. 

“You are the worst foster parents in the world. You don’t even know where they are,” said Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. “We are failing. I don’t think there is any doubt about it. And when we fail kids, that makes me angry.”

Since the dramatic surge of border crossings in 2013, the federal government has placed more than 180,000 unaccompanied minors with parents or other adult sponsors who are expected to care for the children and help them attend school while they seek legal status in immigration court. 

An AP investigation in 2016 found that more than two dozen of those children had been sent to homes where they were sexually assaulted, starved or forced to work for little or no pay. Since then, the Department Health and Human Services has boosted outreach to at-risk children deemed to need extra protection, and last year offered post-placement services to about one-third of unaccompanied minors. 

But advocates say it is hard to know how many minors may be in dangerous conditions, in part because some disappear before social workers can follow up with them, and they never show up in court. 

Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio gave HHS and the Department of Homeland Security until Monday to deliver a time frame for improving monitoring.

“These kids, regardless of their immigration status, deserve to be treated properly, not abused or trafficked,” said Portman, who chairs the subcommittee. “This is all about accountability.”
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A long-anticipated visit by U.S. President Donald Trump to the United Kingdom has been set for July 13. It will be a “working visit,” however, and not a more formal state occasion during which the president would have met Queen Elizabeth.

The announcement was made Thursday, separately by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and 10 Downing Street, the office of British Prime Minister Theresa May.

“It’s been a tortuous and very difficult process” to arrange a Trump trip to Britain, according to Andrew Marshall, the Atlantic Council’s vice president of communications. “This visit was born under a bad sign,” amid unhappiness over comments made by the president on social media, including criticism of London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

A planned visit to Britain by Trump was canceled earlier this year, during which he was to open the new U.S. embassy in London, a $1 billion cube-shaped building surrounded by sunken trenches and raised terraces that the president criticized as too expensive.

U.K. conservative groups, which support Trump, previously urged the president to avoid going to London because of a risk of “major protests, crime and disorder.” The organizations, in a letter, suggested instead that Trump visit his “ancestral home” of Scotland and if there were to be an official state visit, he should meet the queen at her castle in Balmoral.

The president’s mother was born in the Outer Hebrides archipelago on the Isle of Lewis. Trump, as a private businessman, visited Scotland frequently.

No location for the visit has yet been announced and speculation is widespread that it will occur outside London, perhaps at the prime minister’s country estate at Chequers, 65 kilometers from the capital.

Trade will be a major topic on the working visit’s agenda, with the British prime minister eager to move toward a new economic pact with the United States, one of its main trading partners.

It’s politically and economically important for May “in terms of what she’s staked her future on, which is a good, safe and prosperous future for the U.K. outside the European Union,” Marshall told VOA.

The U.S.-U.K. alliance is usually among the closest between any two nations, and U.S. leaders traditionally make visits to England early in their presidencies.

Officials on both sides of the Atlantic will be looking to resolidify that relationship with the Trump visit.

“At the moment, the U.K. is maybe standing a little aside from that role. We’ve just seen President [Emmanuel] Macron of France come here and absolutely wow Washington. Many noses will be out of joint in Downing Street and elsewhere about that. There’s a friendly rivalry with the French,” Marshall, a former foreign editor of The Independent newspaper in London, told VOA.

So far, though, with Trump and May “that chemistry is not there,” according to Marshall, who contrasts the president’s “forthright, direct and outspoken” personality with the prime minister — “a contained figure who looks sometimes like she’s walked out of a Jane Austen novel.”
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The White House physician, Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, dropped his bid Thursday to head the country’s Veterans Affairs agency as lawmakers probed allegations of professional misconduct and excessive drinking.

As he withdrew, Jackson described the attacks on him as “false allegations,” but said they had “become a distraction” to President Donald Trump’s effort to improve health care for U.S. veterans.

Trump, in an interview on his favorite news talk show, “Fox & Friends,” continued to defend Jackson, his personal physician, saying, “He runs a fantastic operation.”

Trump blamed Senator Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat, for the demise of Jackson’s nomination to the Cabinet position to oversee a department that serves 13  million U.S. veterans and has 377,000 employees. Tester said Wednesday that 20 current and former members of the military familiar with Jackson’s office had told lawmakers that he drank on the job, oversaw a toxic work environment and handed out drug prescriptions with little consideration of a patient’s medical background.

“They’re trying to destroy a man,” Trump said. “There’s no proof of this.” He said Tester “has to have a high price to pay” politically for his comments on Jackson.

The U.S. leader said he now has “somebody with a political background” in mind to name as a replacement for Jackson to head the Veterans Affairs agency.

Jackson said if the allegations “had any merit, I would not have been selected, promoted and entrusted to serve in such a sensitive and important role as physician to three presidents over the past 12 years. Going into this process, I expected tough questions about how to best care for our veterans, but I did not expect to have to dignify baseless and anonymous attacks on my character and integrity.”

He concluded, “While I will forever be grateful for the trust and confidence President Trump has placed in me by giving me this opportunity, I am regretfully withdrawing my nomination to be Secretary for the Department of Veterans Affairs.”

Trump said in the Fox interview he had told Jackson “a day or two ago I saw where this was going,” with him dropping his effort to win Senate confirmation, but had left it up to Jackson to decide whether to do so.

Jackson was fast losing support in Congress.

Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers indefinitely postponed Jackson’s scheduled Wednesday confirmation hearing as they investigated the allegations.

Several news outlets reported that Jackson was known as the “candy man” for over-prescribing drug prescriptions, while CNN said that in one 2015 incident Jackson drunkenly banged on the hotel room door of a female employee in the middle of the night on an overseas trip. The U.S. Secret Service intervened to stop Jackson, according to the report, so then-President Barack Obama, sleeping in another hotel room, would not be awakened.

Jackson gained a degree of fame unusual for White House physicians earlier this year when he took questions from the White House press corps on national television, gushing at length about Trump’s health after conducting the president’s physical exam.

Trump, the oldest first-term president in American history, was plagued at the time by questions about his physical health, weight and mental stability. But Jackson gave the president a top rating. “The president’s overall health is excellent,” Jackson declared at the time.

Trump unexpectedly picked Jackson to replace a holdover from the administration of former President Obama, David Shulkin, whom Trump fired. Several lawmakers have complained that the White House did not properly vet Jackson’s background before Trump announced Jackson’s appointment.

 
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President Donald Trump often likes to boast about how different he is from his predecessors in terms of style and substance.  But it is unlikely any past president would envy the legal challenges facing Trump, from the Russia investigation to Stormy Daniels to the scrutiny law enforcement is giving his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.  VOA national correspondent Jim Malone has more on the array of legal difficulties confronting the president from Washington.
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The White House physician, Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, has decided to continue his fight to win Senate confirmation to take over the country’s huge Veterans Affairs agency, even as lawmakers investigate allegations of professional misconduct and excessive drinking.

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he was leaving it up to Jackson to decide whether to walk away from his nomination to the Cabinet position, while appearing to nudge him toward withdrawing. But Jackson later met with Trump and told him he was not ending his bid to head the department that oversees health care for 13 million U.S. veterans and has 377,000 employees.

The White House pushed for his confirmation Wednesday, with Trump spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders calling Jackson a “very highly qualified, highly respected person in the military and the medical community.” She said Jackson had discussed the allegations with Trump.

Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers indefinitely postponed Jackson’s scheduled Wednesday confirmation hearing as they investigate so-far unsubstantiated charges he has overseen a toxic work environment at his White House office and drank on the job.

Several news outlets reported that Jackson was known as the “candy man” for over-prescribing drug prescriptions, while CNN said in one 2015 incident, during President Barack Obama’s presidency, Jackson drunkenly banged on the hotel room door of a female employee in the middle of the night on an overseas trip. The U.S. Secret Service intervened to stop Jackson, according to the report, so then-President Obama would not be awakened.

Senator Jon Tester, the lead Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee considering Jackson’s nomination, told National Public Radio the lawmakers have heard complaints about Jackson from more than 20 current and former military members.

“We were told stories where he was repeatedly drunk while on duty, where his main job was to take care of the most powerful man in the world,” Tester said. “That’s not acceptable.”

Jackson has declined to publicly comment on the accusations, but has rejected some of the claims to senior aides and says he is being unfairly attacked.

Trump said at a Tuesday news conference he continues to support Jackson’s nomination, but he had asked Jackson, “What do you need it for?”

“The fact is I wouldn’t do it,” Trump said. “What does he need it for? To be abused by a bunch of politicians that aren’t thinking nicely about our country, I really don’t think personally he should do it, but it’s totally his decision.”

“I don’t want to put a man through — who’s not a political person — I don’t want to put a man through a process that’s too ugly and too disgusting,” Trump said.

Jackson, who currently serves as Trump’s physician, already was facing scrutiny over his lack of experience managing an agency as large as the VA, the government’s second biggest.

Trump scoffed at that concern, saying, “You could run the biggest hospital system in the world and it’s small time compared to the Veterans Administration. So nobody has the experience.”

Jackson gained a degree of fame unusual for White House physicians earlier this year when he took questions from the White House press corps on national television, gushing at length about Trump’s health after conducting the president’s physical exam.

Trump, the oldest first-term president in American history, was plagued at the time by questions about his physical health, weight and mental stability. But Jackson gave the president a top rating. “The president’s overall health is excellent,” Jackson declared at the time.

Trump unexpectedly picked Jackson to replace a holdover from the administration of former President Obama, David Shulkin, whom Trump fired. Several lawmakers have complained that the White House did not properly vet Jackson’s background before Trump announced Jackson’s appointment.
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Republican Debbie Lesko has won the special election in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District, keeping the U.S. House seat in GOP control. 

The former state senator on Tuesday defeated Hiral Tipirneni, a former emergency room physician. Tipernini had hoped to replicate surprising Democratic wins in Pennsylvania, Alabama and other states in a year where opposition to President Donald Trump’s policies have boosted the party’s chances in Republican strongholds. 

Lesko replaces former Rep. Trent Franks, a Republican who resigned in December amid sexual misconduct allegations. 

The district sprawls across western Phoenix suburbs, covering some of the most conservative areas of the red state, including the retirement community of Sun City. 

National Republican groups spent big to back Lesko, pouring in more than $500,000 in the suburban Phoenix district for television and mail ads and phone calls to voters. National Democratic groups hadn’t committed money to the race, a sign they didn’t believe the seat was in play. Still, the influential Cook Political Report moved the race from solid Republican to likely Republican the week before the election. 

In the Feb. 27 primary, two out of every three ballots were cast for a Republican. 

The seat became open when Franks stepped down after acknowledging that he had discussed surrogacy with two female staffers. A former aide told The Associated Press that he pressed her to carry his child as a surrogate and offered her $5 million. 

Tipirneni was seen as a fresh Democratic face with relatively moderate views that could get support in the district. Making a push for older voters, she had said Lesko would vote to go after entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicaid to pay for tax cuts that mainly benefit the wealthy. She’s pushed a plan to allow some people to buy into Medicare. 

Lesko slammed Tipirneni as being out of touch with voters who oppose government-run health care. She called the Democrat too liberal for the area, and pointed to Tipirneni’s opposition to a wall on the Mexican border. 

Several Republican voters who spoke with AP said they backed Lesko primarily because she supported President Donald Trump’s border security plans. 

David Hunt, a 64-year-old retired construction and warehouse worker from Glendale, said he cast his vote Tuesday for Lesko because he believed that immigrants in the country illegally are creating unfair competition for jobs for recent high school students in Arizona. 

“She’s the best candidate to deal with the porous border,” Hunt said. 

His views were echoed by Larry Bettis, a retiree from Glendale. 

“Immigration – the fence,” Bettis said. “That’s all I really care about.” 

Democrats said they wanted to send a message to Trump and supported Democratic health care plans. 

“I don’t like the president and felt it was time to take a stand,” said Nikole Allen, a 45-year-old medical assistant from New York now living in Glendale. “It’s time for us to vote the Republicans out.” 

Lance Ostrander, a registered Democrat who works for Maricopa County and lives in Peoria, said he’d be happy if Tipirneni wins. 

“We’d really like a change,” he said. “Trump had a lot of good ideas at first but a lot of people feel like they were hoodwinked.”
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A U.S. federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to keep in place deportation protection for 700,000 young undocumented immigrants known as “dreamers.”

In a sharp rebuke to President Donald Trump’s efforts to end the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, District Judge John Bates also ordered the Department of Homeland Security to accept new applicants to the program.

The 2012 policy enacted under former President Barack Obama allowed undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as minors, were enrolled in or completed high school and did not have a serious criminal record to live and work in the country for two-year renewable periods without the fear of deportation.

DHS rescinded the program in 2017, arguing the prior administration lacked the legal authority to create it. 

Trump gave lawmakers a March deadline for coming up with a permanent fix for DACA recipients, but the Republican-led Congress has not acted. Several federal courts have also ruled existing DACA protections must remain in place while the overall legal challenges continue.

Judge Bates wrote in the Tuesday decision that the DHS decision to rescind DACA was “arbitrary and capricious because the department failed to adequately explain its conclusion that the program is unlawful.”

He put his ruling on hold for 90 days to give the department a chance to “better explain its rescission decision.”

There was no immediate response from the Trump administration.
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President Donald Trump likes to tell a story about the U.S. paying out billions of dollars to Iran as part of the multinational deal freezing its nuclear program and easing sanctions against it. What he doesn’t say is that most of that money was Iran’s to begin with. The rest relates to an old debt the U.S. had with Iran.

The numbers and some details change in his retelling — dating back to the 2016 campaign — but his bottom line is always the same: The Obama administration was hoodwinked into giving Iran all that money, some of it in a huge and hidden bundle of cash.

The latest iteration of his claim Tuesday and the reality behind it:

TRUMP: “The Iran deal is a terrible deal. We paid $150 billion. We gave $1.8 billion in cash. That’s actual cash, barrels of cash. It’s insane. It’s ridiculous. It should have never been made. But we will be talking about it.” — remarks before a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron. At a news conference Tuesday, he spoke about “giving them, Iran, $150 billion at one point.”

THE FACTS: There was no $150 billion payout from the U.S. treasury. The money he refers to represents Iranian assets held abroad that were frozen until the deal was reached and Tehran was allowed to access its funds.

The payout of about $1.8 billion is a separate matter. That dates to the 1970s, when Iran paid the U.S. $400 million for military equipment that was never delivered because the government was overthrown and diplomatic relations ruptured.

That left people, businesses and governments in each country indebted to partners in the other, and these complex claims took decades to sort out in tribunals and arbitration. For its part, Iran paid settlements of more than $2.5 billion to U.S. citizens and businesses.

The day after the nuclear deal was implemented, the U.S. and Iran announced they had settled the claim over the 1970s military equipment order, with the U.S. agreeing to pay the $400 million principal along with about $1.3 billion in interest. The $400 million was paid in cash and flown to Tehran on a cargo plane, which gave rise to Trump’s dramatic accounts of money stuffed in barrels or boxes and delivered in the dead of night. The arrangement provided for the interest to be paid later, not crammed into containers.

Read more AP Fact Checks.
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The Environmental Protection Agency announced a new rule Tuesday that would stop it from relying on scientific research underpinned by confidential data in its making of regulations.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt billed the measure as a way to boost transparency for the benefit of the industries his agency regulates. But scientists and former EPA officials worry it will hamstring the agency’s ability to protect public health by putting key medical and industry data off limits.

“The science that we use is going to be transparent, it’s going to be reproducible,” Pruitt told a gathering at the EPA.

“It’s going to be able to be analyzed by those in the marketplace, and those that watch what we do can make informed decisions about whether we’ve drawn the proper conclusions or not,” said Pruitt, who has been pursuing President Donald Trump’s mission to ease the regulatory burden on business.

The EPA has for decades relied on scientific research that is rooted in confidential medical and industry data as a basis for its air, water and chemicals rules. While it publishes enormous amounts of research and data to the public, the confidential material is held back.

Business interests have argued the practice is tantamount to writing laws behind closed doors and unfairly prevents them from vetting the research underpinning the EPA’s often costly regulatory requirements. They argue that if the data cannot be published, the rules should not be adopted.

But ex-EPA officials say the practice is vital.

“Other government agencies also use studies like these to develop policy and regulations, and to buttress and defend rules against legal challenges. They are, in fact, essential to making sound public policy,” former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and Janet McCabe, former assistant administrator for air and water, wrote in an op-ed in The New York Times last month.

The new policy would be based on proposed legislation spearheaded by the chairman of the House Science Committee, Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who denies mainstream climate change science.

Emails obtained through a public records request last week showed that Smith or his staff met with Pruitt’s staff in recent months to craft the policy. Those emails also showed that Pruitt’s staff grappled with the possibility the policy would complicate things for the chemicals industry, which submits reams of confidential data to EPA regulatory programs.
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Fighting back tears before a Senate panel, American physician Chris Brann on Tuesday recounted the abduction of his son, Nicholas, who was taken to Brazil in 2012.

“This is best described as a living death,” Brann said in a halting, emotion-laden voice. “He [Nicholas] was 3 years old when he was unilaterally ripped out of my life, moved to a country he had never lived in, to a language he didn’t speak, to a culture he didn’t understand.”

Brann added, “I’ve never been allowed to be there for his birthday, to be there for Christmas. You can’t know what that feels like until you’ve been in that situation. As a father, there are times I feel like a failure because I wasn’t able to protect my boy.”

Hundreds of cases yearly

Nicholas was taken by his Brazilian-born mother, Brann’s ex-wife. The case is not unique. Hundreds of international child abductions by parents are reported in the United States each year.

According to State Department officials, the return rate hovers at about 45 percent. U.S. lawmakers of both parties say America can and must do a better job recovering its youngest citizens and preventing such abductions in the first place.

“There’s more Congress and the executive branch can do to end the kidnapping of these children,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said.

Hague Convention

The United States is one of 82 signatories to the 1980 Hague Convention to combat international child abduction, which commits nations to expeditiously return minors illegally taken abroad by a parent.

U.S. law also speaks to the issue. The 1993 International Parental Kidnapping Crime Act established federal penalties for a parent who removes a child from the United States in violation of another parent’s custodial rights.

The 2014 International Child Abduction Prevention and Return Act gives the State Department wide latitude to punish nations that fail to cooperate in resolving overseas abduction cases involving American children, from public condemnations to suspending U.S. developmental and security assistance to canceling state visits.

Testifying before the Judiciary Committee, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Carl Risch admitted the department has used the 2014 law’s provisions sparingly, issuing diplomatic protests rather than imposing stronger measures on nations that do not assist in the return of abducted U.S. children.

“Continued diplomatic engagement is our best tool to promote long-term institutional changes in foreign governments,” Risch said.

‘We’re so sorry’

Brann disagreed, noting that nothing the State Department has done so far has convinced Brazil’s judiciary to reunite him with his son. Brann compared the State Department’s reluctance to sternly punish uncooperative countries to a doctor who refuses to use the strongest medical tools to treat an illness.

“When the State Department says we are going to continue to engage diplomatically, what they are saying is that they are just going to pat me on the shoulder and say, ‘We’re so sorry that has happened,’ ” he said.

Another witness testified to the power of heightened pressure on foreign countries. In 2011, Kentucky resident Noelle Hunter’s ex-husband took their 5-year-old daughter, Muna, to Mali. The Senate’s Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, spearheaded a sustained effort by Kentucky’s congressional delegation to compel Malian officials to return Muna. The campaign succeeded and Hunter brought her daughter back to America in 2014.

“If every member of Congress with kidnapped constituents would begin to regularly inquire of federal agencies and the [foreign] nations in which they are held, these children are going to come home,” Hunter said.

A numbers problem

The committee’s top Democrat, Dianne Feinstein, applauded the concept of increased activism by lawmakers, but noted that her state, California, has hundreds of parents with a child missing abroad and only two senators representing all of them.

“How do you do 300 cases [in California] like your state was able to do for you?” Feinstein asked, adding that an intervention by members of Congress is “possible to do, but it’s not possible to do it every day of the year.”

Rather, Feinstein said, the solution is to “increase the clout of the State Department and others to move more personally on this [issue].”

Federal officials stressed that preventing abduction is the best outcome, adding that a program is in place to mobilize U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents when a child at risk of international abduction is identified.

“We can enter lookouts in our system if there are any attempts to travel [depart the United States],” said Don Conroy, who directs the agency’s National Targeting Center. “Returning the child is sometimes very complex. Prevention is a key piece of this.”

Lawmakers of both parties stressed they want to see more done.

“I’ve seen the extremes we go to to recover people who have been held hostage and the like, but we’re not doing that for children,” New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker said.
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Confirmation of U.S. President Donald Trump’s pick to lead Veterans Affairs agency may be in jeopardy. 

The Washington Post reported late Monday that Senate lawmakers have postponed the confirmation hearing for Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson after top Republicans and Democrats raised concerns about his qualifications. 

Jackson was scheduled to testify before the Senate Committee for Veterans Affairs on Wednesday. 

Two sources told CNN that committee members have been informed of allegations of improper conduct at more than one stage in Jackson’s career. 

Jackson, who currently serves as Trump’s physician, is already facing scrutiny over his lack of experience managing an agency as large as the VA — the U.S. government’s second-largest agency.

Jackson gained a degree of fame unusual for White House physicians in 2017 when he took questions from the White House press corps on national television, discussing at length the president’s physical exam.

Trump, the oldest first-term president in American history, was plagued at the time by questions about his physical health, weight and mental stability. But Jackson gave the president top rating. “The president’s overall health is excellent,” Jackson declared at the time. 

Trump picked Jackson to replace David Shulkin, a holdover from the Obama era.
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NASA’s new boss is already getting cheers from space.

Immediately after being sworn into office Monday by Vice President Mike Pence, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine took a call from the three U.S. astronauts at the International Space Station who offered “hearty congratulations.” The Oklahoma congressman became the 13th administrator of NASA, filling a position that had been vacant for more than a year.

“America loves what you guys are doing,” Bridenstine, a former naval aviator, told the astronauts. He promised to do his best “as we reach for new heights and reveal the unknown for the benefit of humankind.”

This is the 60th anniversary year for NASA .

Bridenstine is the first elected official to lead NASA, something that had bogged down his nomination last year by President Donald Trump. The Senate approved his nomination last week by a narrow vote of 50-49. Monday’s swearing-in ceremony took place at NASA headquarters in Washington.

Pence noted that the space agency, under Bridenstine’s direction, will work to get astronauts back to the moon and then, with help from commercial space and international partners, on to Mars.

“NASA will lead the way,” said Pence, who heads the newly resurrected National Space Council.

Charles Bolden Jr., a former space shuttle commander and major general in the Marines, was NASA’s last official administrator. The space agency was led by Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot in the interim. Lightfoot retires from NASA at the end of this month.
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Vice President Mike Pence has chosen retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, a top official with the National Security Council, to serve as his national security adviser.

Pence selected Kellogg, a national security aide to President Donald Trump, to fill the role after his top choice, Jon Lerner, withdrew his name from consideration.

Lerner, an adviser to U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, pulled out of a proposed dual role after Trump learned of his planned hiring. Lerner is a longtime Republican strategist and pollster who previously worked with the Club for Growth, which aired ads critical of Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Pence said in a statement that Kellogg “brings a wealth of experience in national security and foreign policy matters to this role and has already been an integral part of the President’s national security team.”

Kellogg has served as chief of staff at the National Security Council and is the latest NSC official to depart after the arrival of Trump national security adviser John Bolton. Also gone are spokesman Michael Anton, homeland security adviser Tom Bossert, and deputy national security advisers Ricky Waddell and Nadia Schadlow.

Kellogg served as acting national security adviser after Michael Flynn resigned in February 2017 as Trump’s first national security adviser. Flynn’s successor, H.R. McMaster, was recently replaced by Bolton.

Kellogg, who served in the U.S. Army for more than three decades, previously served as commander of the 82nd Airborne Division and as a top aide to Paul Bremer, who led the Coalition Provisional Authority during the reconstruction of Iraq.
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Mitt Romney was forced into a Republican primary in his bid for U.S. Senate in Utah after losing a nomination battle Saturday at the state’s far-right-leaning GOP convention.

Romney remains the heavy favorite overall to replace long-serving Sen. Orrin Hatch in November and said he was ready to keep campaigning hard.

If he had won the party delegate vote at the convention, he would have bypassed a primary altogether. Instead, he was edged out by state lawmaker Mike Kennedy, who got 51 percent of the vote to Romney’s 49 percent.

GOP voters will decide between the two in a June 26 primary.

Romney secured his spot on the primary ballot by gathering 28,000 voter signatures but said Saturday that choice was partly to blame for his loss.

Romney, 71, went up against 11 other candidates at the convention, including one dressed as Abraham Lincoln, complete with vest and bow tie. Some candidates questioned Romney’s past criticism of President Donald Trump.

Romney pushed back against critics who said he’s an interloper in Utah politics by referring to his role in staging the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah.

“Some people I’ve spoken with have said this is a David vs. Goliath race, but they’re wrong,” Romney said in his speech. “I’m not Goliath. Washington, D.C., is Goliath.”

Kennedy, a doctor and lawyer, framed himself as an underdog taking on the “Romney machine.” At one point, he pitched in to sweep up tiny paper American flags that had been shot from a confetti cannon hours before.

Delegate Matt Murdoch, 28, said he voted for Kennedy because he’s a family doctor serving many of his neighbors in Alpine, south of Salt Lake City.

Stay-at-home mother Michelle Cluff said she liked Romney’s experience and believes he is ready to get to work as a senator.

Romney was governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007. While in office he signed legislation that greatly expanded access to health care through state-level subsidies and individual mandates to purchase insurance, much like Obamacare.

Romney asked for delegates’ votes after spending two months on the campaign trail visiting dairy farms, taking selfies with college students and making stump speeches in small towns.

After his failed 2012 presidential campaign, he moved to Utah, where he gained popularity after running as the first Mormon presidential nominee of a major political party.

He’s worked to keep the focus on state issues rather than his history of well-documented feuds with Trump.

The two men have shown signs of making peace, and Romney has accepted Trump’s endorsement for Senate. But Romney said Saturday he hasn’t decided whether he’ll endorse the president’s 2020 re-election bid.
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President Donald Trump said Saturday that he didn’t expect Michael Cohen, his longtime personal lawyer and fixer, to “flip” as the government investigates Cohen’s business dealings.

Trump, in a series of tweets fired off from Florida on the morning of former first lady Barbara Bush’s funeral, accused The New York Times and one of its reporters of “going out of their way to destroy Michael Cohen and his relationship with me in the hope that he will ‘flip’ ” — a term that can mean cooperating with the government in exchange for leniency.

“Most people will flip if the Government lets them out of trouble,” even if “it means lying or making up stories,” Trump said, before adding: “Sorry, I don’t see Michael doing that despite the horrible Witch Hunt and the dishonest media!”

The FBI raided Cohen’s home, office and hotel room this month, looking for evidence of fraud amid a criminal investigation. That included records related to payments Cohen made in 2016 to adult film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, both of whom allege having had sexual encounters with Trump, people familiar with the raid have told The Associated Press.

Prosecutors have said they’re investigating Cohen’s personal business dealings but haven’t said what crime they believe he may have committed. Cohen’s lawyers have called the raid an assault on attorney-client privilege, and Trump has said it was “an attack on our country.”

In the tweets, sent shortly after he arrived at one of his Florida golf courses, Trump accused the newspaper of using “non-existent ‘sources’ ” in a Friday story about the relationship between Trump and Cohen, who has said he would “take a bullet” for his boss. The story quoted several people on the record.

Trump also lashed out personally at one of the story’s writers, calling reporter Maggie Haberman “third rate” and claiming he has “nothing to do with” her. Trump later deleted and reposted the tweets, correcting the spelling of Haberman’s name.

Haberman is widely seen as one of the most diligent reporters covering the president and is known to speak with him often. The Times responded on Twitter, saying it stood by the story and praising Haberman, who was part of the team that just won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on Trump.

The tweets came as the rest of the country was preparing for the funeral of Mrs. Bush. The president chose not to go to the Houston service, but first lady Melania Trump attended. Trump tweeted that he would watch from Florida.
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A nonprofit citizens group “United We Dream,” launched a new smartphone app that gives undocumented immigrants a virtual “panic button” if they are ever swept up in a raid or detained. The app provides legal advice and allows undocumented immigrants to notify their relatives quickly, when and if they fear that an interaction with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), or local police, might lead to their arrest. Veronica Balderas Iglesias has more.
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Students across the United States marked the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting by walking out of their classrooms. This protest against gun violence comes on the heels of a previous national school walkout and the March for Our Lives rallies. From Washington, VOA’s Jill Craig has more.
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A internal CIA review in 2011 cleared U.S. President Donald Trump’s choice to head the agency, Gina Haspel, of wrongdoing in the destruction of videotapes depicting the harsh interrogation of an al Qaeda suspect, according to a memorandum that the CIA declassified and released on Friday.

The spy agency released the memo in response to demands by U.S. lawmakers for more details on Haspel’s career and as part of its effort to bolster her nomination. Haspel’s bid to be the first woman CIA director faces scrutiny on Capitol Hill due to her involvement in a discontinued interrogation program that many regarded as using torture.

“I have found no fault with the performance of Ms. Haspel,” Michael Morell, then the CIA’s deputy director, wrote in the December 2011 memo

“I have concluded that she acted appropriately in her role” as chief of staff to Jose Rodriguez, the head of CIA spy operations, Morell wrote.

At issue was a decision Rodriguez has said he made in November 2005 to destroy videotapes showing the waterboarding of CIA detainee Abu Zubaydeh who U.S. officials believed at the time — incorrectly — was a top-level al Qaeda operative.

Waterboarding is a form of simulated drowning. Zubaydeh’s role in al Qaeda was later found to have been overstated.

CIA officials have long said that Haspel drafted a cable from Rodriguez ordering agency officers in the field to destroy the tapes, and that she believed Rodriguez was going to clear it first with the agency’s director at the time, Porter Goss.

At the time the cable was sent, Haspel worked in CIA headquarters outside Washington, D.C. Published accounts have said she was chief in 2002 of a base in Thailand where detainees were interrogated but arrived there after Zubaydah’s waterboarding.

The memo appears to support the CIA version of events.

Haspel “drafted the cable on the direct orders of Mr. Rodriguez; she did not release that cable. It was not her decision to destroy the tapes; it was Mr. Rodriguez’s,” Morell wrote.

Rodriguez has said he ordered the tapes destroyed out of fear that, if leaked, they could put CIA officers at risk.

Haspel, who is now the agency’s No. 2 official, is due to appear at a May 9 hearing on her confirmation before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Haspel has the backing of the committee’s Republican chairman, Senator Richard Burr. At least two committee Democrats have expressed concern about her nomination.

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden said in a statement on Friday that he remained troubled by Haspel’s nomination and called on the Trump administration to release “much more information about this episode.”
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Students across the United States will march Friday to honor the memory of the victims of 1999’s Columbine shooting. Energized by the momentum for stricter gun control since February’s mass shooting at a Florida high school, young people have led the charge for change. Friday will mark the latest salvo in their nationwide calls for change. Arash Arabasadi and Jill Craig contributed to this report.
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South Korean President Moon Jae-in says he has encouraging news from Pyongyang about planned summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. U.S. lawmakers and experts are also weighing in on the flurry of diplomatic initiatives, as VOA Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from the State Department.
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It may seem like just another week at the Trump White House. Word of a potentially historic breakthrough on North Korea is forced to compete with a scathing assessment of the president by his former FBI director and court appearances by his personal lawyer and an adult film actress who claims she had an affair with the president. Is this the new normal? Or is it the political phenomenon of Donald Trump breaking the mold again? VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.
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To some, it may seem like just another week at the Trump White House.

Word of a potentially historic breakthrough on North Korea is forced to compete with a scathing assessment of the president by his former FBI director. Add into the mix, court appearances earlier in the week by his personal lawyer and an adult film actress who claims she had an affair with the president. Who can blame those in Washington who ask: Is this the new normal? Or is it simply the political phenomenon of Donald Trump breaking the mold once again?

For most presidential administrations, the movement toward a summit with North Korea would be enough for a week of headlines.

“It will be a great day for them. It will be a great day for the world,” President Trump told reporters Wednesday on the possibility of a successful meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Trump spoke at a joint news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the president’s Florida resort.

Bad for the country

Just minutes later, Trump made a quick pivot away from the North Korea situation to blasting the Russia probe that continues to cast a shadow over his administration.

“It is a bad thing for our country,” he said. “A very, very bad thing for our country. But there has been no collusion. They won’t find any collusion. It doesn’t exist.”

Throughout the week, the president has also been engaged in a war of words with James Comey, the man whose dismissal from the job of FBI director set in motion the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to lead the Russia investigation.

Comey has held a series of interviews for his new book, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership.” Comey told the ABC News network he believes Trump is “morally unfit” to be president.

Mueller’s fate

And speaking to the USA Today newspaper, Comey mused about the possibility that the president could move to fire Mueller and the man he reports to, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

“That is a fundamental attack on the rule of law, so that is the most important thing. All of us should care about that,” Comey said. “Again, this is above politics, above party affiliation because it is all we are as a country.”

During his news conference on Wednesday, Trump was asked about the fate of Mueller and Rosenstein.

“They have been saying I’m going to be getting rid of them for the last three months, four months, five months, and they are still here,” said Trump. “So we want to get the investigation over with, done with, put it behind us.”

Others with the president’s ear are urging him to take action, according to Associated Press White House correspondent Jonathan Lemire.

“There is, though, a team of outside advisers, sort of Trump’s informal kitchen cabinet,” he said. “A number of those people have suggested to him, ‘Hey, you need to be tougher, Mueller is imperiling your presidency and you should fire him.'”

Some Democrats and a few Republicans are pushing congressional leaders to pass legislation that would protect Mueller and Rosenstein. But House Speaker Paul Ryan sees no need for it at present.

“We do not believe that he should be fired. We do not believe that he will be fired and we therefore don’t think that that is necessary,” Ryan told reporters this week.

Stormy weather

Adding to the turmoil this week was the Monday media circus outside a federal court in Manhattan where Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, made an appearance along with adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Cohen was the target of FBI raids recently on his office, home and hotel and is under scrutiny for a payment to Daniels.

Daniels claims she had a brief affair with Trump back in 2006, which he has denied, and that Cohen facilitated a payment intended to silence her about the affair.

The ongoing Russia probe combined with Cohen’s legal troubles suggests more uncertainty ahead for the Trump White House.

“We are coming to some sort of a head,” said American University political expert Chris Edelson. “I mean, certainly this Cohen news is a really big deal and maybe we will find out more about that in the not too distant future. But it is hard to say with certainty what does that mean? Does that mean weeks or months? I don’t know for sure.”

Recent polls suggest Trump has bolstered his support among Republicans, now in the 80 percent approval or better range in several recent surveys. The president’s overall average approval rating has inched up in recent weeks from about 39 percent to 41 percent.

But some recent polls, including Gallup and NBC News/Wall Street Journal, show his approval slipping back to under 40 percent, still historically low for a first-term president.
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