The State Department responded swiftly to an announcement by the Kremlin that Russia will retaliate for the expulsions of Russian diplomats from the U.S., Britain and other countries. Moscow announced Thursday it is expelling 60 U.S. diplomats and closing the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert told reporters that is not justified and the U.S. reserves the right to respond. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more from the State Department.
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While meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may have revealed a glimpse of his vision of denuclearization that experts say could conflict with Washington’s expectation of a denuclearized North.

Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported that Kim confirmed his openness to discuss denuclearization during a secretive four-day excursion that began on Sunday with a train trip from Pyongyang to Beijing to meet with Xi.

“It is our consistent stand to be committed to denuclearization on the peninsula,” said Kim on his first foray outside North Korea since inheriting power from his father in 2011.

As reported by Xinhua, Kim’s commitment echoed the message that South Korea envoys conveyed to U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington on March 8, days after meeting with Kim in Pyongyang.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who has agreed to meet with Kim, welcomed this week’s meeting between Kim and Xi in a tweet saying, “Look forward to our meeting.”

What is denuclearization?

But despite Kim’s commitment to denuclearization, many experts are concerned that his vision of denuclearization could complicate the U.S. effort to denuclearize the North.

According to Xinhua, Kim also said the nuclear issue could be resolved through “progressive and synchronous measures” by his regime and the U.S.

Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said Kim’s statement contains “a lot of loaded rhetoric” to “unpack.” Manning said Kim’s statement indicates that he mostly likely will demand the U.S. “remove its hostile policy” or what he perceives as a threat posed to the Kim regime by reducing sanctions, ending U.S.-South Korean military exercises and removing U.S. troops as well as the nuclear umbrella over South Korea and Japan.

Kim expects the U.S. to take “synchronous measures” in providing these concessions as the North agrees to take action-for-action steps, Manning said.

Evans Revere, a former State Department official who has negotiated with North Korea extensively, said these demands are consistent with North Korea’s definition of denuclearization.

“What the North Koreans have done in conveying this to the Chinese is an effort to buy some time by giving a vague reference to some future denuclearization that they are actually not committed to,” Revere said.

Ken Gause, an expert on North Korea and its leadership and a director at research and analysis group CNA said, “[His statement] shows that Kim is looking for a phased process that is conditional on U.S. and [South Korea] providing incentives that meet the requirement of creating an atmosphere of peace and stability.”

Christopher Hill, who negotiated with the North as the head of the U.S. delegation under the George W. Bush administration, believes North Korea needs to demonstrate that it will agree to a verification protocol on denuclearization for diplomatic efforts to advance.

“The issue will come down to whether they are prepared to be serious about this,” Hill said. “By serious, they need to adhere to some international standards of verification.”

Gary Samore, a former White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction under the Obama administration, said, “If Trump really believes that he is going to go to this meeting and achieve nuclear disarmament overnight through some process of intimidation and promises, then I think he’s going to leave the meeting very disappointed.”

​Inter-Korea summit set

Seoul and Pyongyang held a high-level inter-Korean talks Thursday at the village of Panmunjom on their border and agreed to have the summit between the leaders of the two Koreas on April 27 at the Peace House on the southern side of the Panmunjom.

The prospects for nuclear summits with North Korea opened up when South Korean envoys traveled to Pyongyang at Kim’s invitation. South Korean envoys then traveled to Washington to deliver Kim’s invitation to a U.S.-North Korea summit that Trump has agreed to have by May. There is no official confirmation of the summit from North Korea.

Youngnam Kim contributed to this report, which originated on VOA Korean.
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Nearly a week after President Donald Trump issued an order banning some transgender people from serving in the U.S. military, the Pentagon is refusing to provide clarity, citing ongoing legal challenges.

Last Friday, the White House released a memo from Trump to Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, stating the administration concurred with a policy for transgender service members privately recommended by Mattis in late February.

The memo said Mattis and Nielsen “have concluded that the accession or retention of individuals with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria — those who may require substantial medical treatment, including through medical drugs or surgery — presents considerable risk to military effectiveness and lethality.”

“Gender dysphoria” (formerly known as gender identity disorder) is defined by strong, persistent feelings of identification with the opposite gender and discomfort with one’s own assigned sex that results in significant distress or impairment.

The memo also granted the secretaries the authority to implement policies as they saw fit.

But since then, the Department of Defense has been silent, refusing to answer questions from reporters seeking clarity on a new policy that could affect nearly 9,000 transgender service members.

The pattern continued Thursday when Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White told reporters, “We will continue to comply with four court orders assessing transgender applicants for military service and retaining current transgender service members.”

White said she is prevented from discussing any aspect of the new policy because of ongoing litigation challenging Trump’s order to ban transgender forces.

The Pentagon said there are 8,980 service members who identify as transgender, but only 937 active-duty service members were diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
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U.S. President Donald Trump has spoken with his top defense official about using military funding to build the border wall with Mexico.

“It’s been an initial conversation,” Chief Pentagon Spokesperson Dana White said Thursday when asked if Trump had broached the subject with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

“Remember, securing Americans and securing the nation is of paramount importance to the secretary,” White said.

This past Sunday, the president tweeted, “Because of the $700 & $716 Billion Dollars gotten to rebuild our Military, many jobs are created and our Military is again rich.”

He followed that with a second Tweet, saying, “Building a great Border Wall, with drugs (poison) and enemy combatants pouring into our Country, is all about National Defense. Build WALL through M!”

The Pentagon has not provided any details about how much military funding could be used to build the border wall, which has an estimated price tag of more than $20 billion, or what impact that would have on the U.S. military itself.  

But the defense appropriations act passed by Congress tells the Pentagon where to spend its money and a change in the budget would need Congressional approval.

“That’s a bridge too far because we don’t have those details,” the Defense Department’s White told reporters Thursday. “It’s been an initial conversation.”

“There’s no daylight between them (Mattis and Trump) with respect to making sure this military stays the most lethal in the world,” White added.

 
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says Moscow will expel 60 U.S. diplomats after Washington announced it was ordering the expulsion of dozens of Russian diplomats over the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain.

Lavrov said Thursday Russia will also close the U.S. consulate in the city of St. Petersburg.

The U.S., along with more than 20 other nations, ordered the expulsion of Russian diplomats after Moscow was blamed for the nerve agent attack on former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter earlier this month in the British town of Salisbury.

Russia denies it was responsible for the nerve agent attack and has alleged the it was carried out by British intelligence services in order to make Russia look bad. Britain dismisses that allegation.

In a phone call this week with U.S. President Donald Trump, British Prime Minister Theresa May praised the “very strong response” by the United States in the wake of the poisoning.

The White House said “both leaders agreed on the importance of dismantling Russia’s spy networks in the United Kingdom and the United States to curtail Russian clandestine activities and prevent future chemical weapons attacks on either country’s soil.”

Meanwhile, Skripal’s daughter Yulia is “improving rapidly” after a nerve agent attack earlier this month and is no longer in critical condition, Christine Blanshard, Salisbury District hospital medical director, said.

Sergei Skripal  remains in critical condition, Blanshard added.

British police gave an update on the investigation Wednesday, saying that after forensic examinations detectives believe the Skripals first made contact with the toxin at the front door of their home. They cautioned that those living in the neighborhood will see continued searches taking place but that the risk to the public remains low.

So far, police say they have looked through 5,000 hours of security camera footage, examined more than 1,350 other exhibits and interviewed hundreds of witnesses.

National Security correspondent Jeff Seldin and White House correspondent Steve Herman contributed to this article.
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U.S. President Donald Trump attacked online tech giant Amazon, accusing the company of paying too little taxes and being responsible for putting retailers out of business.

In a Twitter post early Thursday, Trump blasted the online retail titan, saying “I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election,” adding, “Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!”

Trump has a long history blaming Amazon for hurting traditional brick-and-mortar retailers. He tweeted last August, “Amazon is doing great damage to tax paying retailers. Towns, cities and states throughout the U.S. are being hurt – many jobs being lost!”

For years, Trump has been at odds with Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post newspaper.

In 2015, Trump tweeted, “The @washingtonpost, which loses a fortune, is owned by @JeffBezos for purposes of keeping taxes down at his no profit company, @amazon.”

In response, Bezos joked he would send Trump to space in one of the rockets owned by Blue Origin, a company he separately owns. “Finally trashed by @realDonaldTrump. Will still reserve him a seat on the Blue Origin rocket. #sendDonaldtospace,” Bezos tweeted.

Online news site Axios cited five unnamed sources in a report Wednesday that said Trump wants to “go after” Amazon, is “obsessed” with Amazon, believing Amazon “has gotten a free ride from taxpayers and cushy treatment from the U.S. Postal Service.”

According to the Axios report, the president has “wondered aloud if there may be any way to go after Amazon with antitrust or competition law.”

It quotes another source saying, “It’s been explained to him in multiple meetings that his perception is inaccurate and that the post office actually makes a ton of money from Amazon.”

After Trump’s attacks, Amazon’s stock price took a nose dive on Wednesday, dropping more than four percent, losing more than $30 billion in market value.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said “there aren’t any specific policies on the table” regarding Amazon at this time, but the president is “always looking to create a level playing field for all businesses, and this is no different.”

“As an online retailer, Amazon currently collects taxes in all states that have sales tax, regardless of whether Amazon has a physical presence or not.” It does not collect tax if items were purchased with third party sellers. Critics said this gives Amazon a competitive edge over traditional retailers that collect sales taxes on all purchases.

Amazon, founded in 1994, is the world’s largest Internet retailer measured by revenue and market capitalization. Last year, with over 40 subsidiaries, the company’s revenue exceeded $177 billion.
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Emails released Wednesday between Arizona Governor Doug Ducey’s staff and Uber executives shed new light on the relationship between the first-term Republican and the company whose autonomous vehicle recently was involved in a fatal crash. 

Accounts of the previously unseen emails released by the governor’s office were first reported by The Guardian newspaper. which had obtained them through public records requests. They indicate that Ducey’s staff worked closely with the company as it began experimenting with autonomous vehicles that the company began testing on public roads in August 2016 without informing the public. 

The governor’s staff pushed back, saying Ducey’s embrace of Uber and autonomous vehicles was one of his administration’s most visible and public initiatives and that there was no secret testing.

“Allegations that any company has secretly tested self-driving cars in Arizona is 100 percent false,” Ducey spokesman Patrick Ptak said. “From the beginning we’ve been very public about the testing and operation of self-driving vehicles, and it has been anything but secret.”

The email exchanges fill in the gaps between what Ducey was saying publicly since taking office in early 2015 and what was happening behind the scenes as his administration helped Uber set up shop in the state and then launch its driverless car testing program. 

Frequent boosts

In the earliest days of his administration, Ducey ordered a state agency to stop citing Uber drivers for violating the state’s taxicab laws. He then pushed through a law legalizing ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft, a move his Republican predecessor had vetoed the year before. He then issued an executive order in August 2015 encouraging and allowing self-driving vehicle testing with no reporting requirements.

Over the years since taking office, Ducey took frequent opportunities to boost Uber’s operations, tweeting about the company’s services and welcoming its officials after they pulled their self-driving cars from California in a dispute with that state’s regulators in December 2016 and shipped them to Arizona. 

“California may not want you, but Arizona does,” Ducey said when he took the first ride as a passenger in Uber’s self-driving cars in April 2017.

Behind the scenes, Ducey’s staff worked closely with Uber as he championed its regular service and its self-driving vehicles, allowing it to operate without permits and encouraging its testing and operation on public roads.

His staff set up meetings, helped steer Uber executives to Phoenix city officials as they tried to lift an airport ban, and got the governor’s office to tweet its suggested message about a new service called “Uber eats” when it rolled out. 

The emails show a top Ducey staffer was invited to use Uber offices for work while in San Francisco, but he didn’t take the company up on the offer.

The governor’s office said it provided the emails to the newspaper in September.

Ptak, Ducey’s spokesman, defended the tweet and other efforts to promote the company.

“We are proud to welcome innovation to Arizona,” he said. “We often promote news of the thousands of jobs and opportunities coming to Arizona. That’s nothing new.”

Democrats critical

The Arizona Democratic Party blasted Ducey after the email revelations. 

“Governor Doug Ducey violated the trust of hardworking Arizonans across the state,” the party’s executive director, Herschel Fink, said in a statement. “This bombshell report further exposes the mismanagement by Governor Ducey and his sheer priority to put business relationships ahead of Arizona.”

The governor suspended the company’s testing privileges Monday, citing safety concerns and “disturbing” dashcam footage of the March 18 crash in Tempe that killed a pedestrian as she walked her bike across a darkened road. Experts told The Associated Press that the technology on Uber’s car should have spotted the pedestrian and the failure revealed a serious flaw. 

Immediately after the crash, Uber voluntarily suspended its autonomous vehicle testing in Arizona, as well as California, Pittsburgh and Toronto. The company on Tuesday decided not to reapply for the California permit “with the understanding that our self-driving vehicles would not operate in the state in the immediate future.”
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The Trump administration is hopeful it can reach a deal on a new North American Free Trade Agreement before the July 1 presidential election in Mexico and U.S. midterm congressional elections in November.

“I’d say I’m hopeful — I think we are making progress. I think that all three parties want to move forward. We have a short window, because of elections and things beyond our control,” U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told CNBC television Wednesday.

But Canada’s chief negotiator was far less optimistic.

“We have yet to see exactly what the U.S. means by an agreement in principle,” Steve Verheul told reporters Wednesday in Ottawa. There are still “significant gaps,” Verheul said. “We can accomplish quite a bit between now and then, and we’ve made it clear to the U.S. that we will be prepared to negotiate at any time, any place, for as long as they are prepared to negotiate, but so far we haven’t really seen that process get going,” he said.

Officials from the U.S., Canada and Mexico are supposed to meet in the United States next month for the eighth round of talks, although Washington has not announced dates yet.
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President Donald Trump’s pick to be his new national security adviser, John Bolton, is known for his “hawkish” views on North Korea and Iran, but also has pushed for a tougher U.S. response to Russian aggression in the West and around the world.

Bolton has said the United States has been clear that it stands with its allies after the attack with Russian nerve gas on a former double agent and his daughter in Britain. Moscow denies responsibility for the poisoning.

“I think you saw a statement by the four leaders of Germany, France, the U.K. and the United States. I think that is a pretty good indication that the four countries see this the same way,” Bolton told a Sky News reporter last week, when asked if the U.S. and its allies should be tougher on Russia.

And during a discussion in February, before he was chosen by Trump to be one of his top advisers, Bolton outlined how he thought the U.S. should respond to Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.

“Whether [the Russians] were trying to collude with the Trump campaign or the Clinton campaign, their interference is unacceptable. It’s really an attack on the United States Constitution,” Bolton said at the Daniel Morgan Graduate School of National Security in Washington.

The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations called for an “overwhelming” response to Moscow.

“Whatever they did in the 2016 election, I think we should respond to in cyberspace and elsewhere,” Bolton said. “I don’t think the response should be proportionate. I think it should be very disproportionate. Because deterrence works when you convince your adversary that they will pay an enormous cost for imposing a cost on you.”

In an op-ed in the Daily Telegraph in July of last year, Bolton went even further, alleging that Russian President Vladimir Putin looked Trump in the eye and lied to him when he denied Russian government interference in the U.S. elections.

“It is in fact a casus belli, a true act of war, and one Washington will never tolerate. For Trump, it should be a highly salutary lesson about the character of Russia’s leadership to watch Putin lie to him,” Bolton wrote.

Putin has denied his government was behind the election attack, but has acknowledged individual Russians may have been involved.

‘Russia’s worst nightmare’

For his part, Trump repeatedly has downplayed Russian interference in the U.S. elections, noting results of the vote “were not impacted or changed by the Russians.”

Trump also has repeatedly called the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into Russian election interference and possible coordination with the Trump campaign a “hoax” and a “witch-hunt.”

“Every time he [Putin] sees me, he says, ‘I didn’t do that.’ And I believe — I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it,” Trump told reporters last November when asked about Putin’s denial that Russia was behind the cyberattacks.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Alexander Vershbow tells VOA that Putin may need to adjust his expectations of a friendly relationship with Trump now that Bolton is joining the team.

“We now have John Bolton, who is very tough on Russia, coming into the White House next month, so hopefully Russia will draw some conclusions from this and look for ways to pursue a less confrontational policy with the West,” said Vershbow, an Atlantic Council distinguished fellow.

Harry Kazianis, with The Center for National Interest, agrees, saying Moscow should brace for changes from Washington.

“I think John Bolton is Russia’s worst nightmare. He has been a Russia hawk for all of his career, he has always advocated a tough stand on Moscow,” Kazianis said. “I can see Bolton recommending to the president quite a few changes on policy, one being further arms sales to Ukraine.”

‘No reservations’

Bolton does not need to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate and is set to begin working in the White House on April 9.

At the Pentagon Tuesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters he had “no reservations” and “no concerns at all” about working with Bolton and any divergent world views.

“I hope that there’s some different world views. That’s the normal thing you want unless you want groupthink,” Mattis said.

National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin and VOA Russia Service contributed to this report.
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In the wake of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida, students launch the Never Again movement, demanding far stronger gun laws in the US. Just five weeks after the shooting, they organized the March for Our Lives, attended by an estimated one million people across the globe. As Sama Dizayee reports, the students say it’s just the beginning.
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U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Tuesday he had no reservations or concerns about President Donald Trump’s incoming national security adviser, John Bolton, a hawk who has advocated using military force against North Korea and Iran.

Amid speculation the two men will clash on a host of major national issues, Mattis said he would meet Bolton for the first time later this week at the Pentagon with the goal of forging a partnership.

“We’re going to sit down together [this week], and I look forward to working with him. No reservations. No concerns at all,” Mattis told a group of reporters at an impromptu briefing.

“Last time I checked, he’s an American and I can work with an American. OK? I’m not the least bit concerned with that sort of thing.”

Trump has shaken up his core national security team in the past two weeks, replacing National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and firing Rex Tillerson as his secretary of state.

The moves within a small group of just a handful of advisers have raised questions about whether Mattis could find himself increasingly isolated in his views and outmaneuvered by Bolton, an inveterate bureaucratic infighter whose 2007 memoir is titled: Surrender Is Not an Option.

Mattis had forged a close relationship with both McMaster and Tillerson as he successfully advocated to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan and strengthen ties with NATO, despite Trump’s skepticism about both the 16-year-old war and the trans-Atlantic alliance supporting it.

Warning about the horrors of a war on the Korean peninsula, Mattis has also promoted a diplomatically-led strategy to pressure North Korea over its efforts to build a nuclear-tipped missile capable of striking the United States.

Cautious communicator

Mattis has also been a cautious communicator.

After Trump announced plans to talk with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Mattis was so concerned he might say something to upset the process that the defense secretary opted earlier this month to stop making any substantive public remarks about North Korea at all.

“Right now, every word is going to be nuanced and parsed apart across different cultures, at different times of the day, in different contexts,” Mattis said at the time.

On the other hand, Bolton, a 69-year-old Fox News analyst and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, in the past has called for regime change in North Korea and has previously been rejected as a negotiating partner by Pyongyang.

In 2003, on the eve of six-nation talks over Pyongyang’s nuclear program, he lambasted then-North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in a speech in Seoul, calling him a “tyrannical dictator.”

North Korea responded by calling Bolton “human scum.”

More recently, Bolton described Trump’s plan to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as “diplomatic shock and awe” and said it would be an opportunity to deliver a threat of military action.

‘Solemn responsibilities’

Bolton has been downplaying his aggressive rhetoric in his initial conversations with some current and former U.S. officials, and sought guidance on how to approach Mattis, sources familiar with those conversations told Reuters.

Barry Pavel, a U.S. national security expert at the Atlantic Council think-tank, said it was too soon to predict Bolton’s style or draw conclusions about how he would run the National Security Council.

“When you’re in a position like he’s going into, it’s a very, very solemn set of responsibilities … and those have a restraining factor,” Pavel said.

Asked by Reuters about the split between his world views and Bolton’s, Mattis sought to dismiss concerns, suggesting lively debate would help ensure Trump has a wide array of options.

“Well, I hope that there’s some different world views. That’s the normal thing you want unless you want groupthink,” Mattis said. “You know, don’t worry about that. We’ll be fine.”
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U.S. President Donald Trump, who campaigned against economic agreements he considered unfair to America has his first trade deal.

The United States and South Korea have agreed to revise their sweeping six-year-old trade pact which was completed during the administration of Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.

The agreement “will significantly strengthen the economic and national security relationships between the United States and South Korea,” according to a senior administration official in Washington.

Trump had threatened to scrap the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA), calling it “horrible.” But officials of his administration on Tuesday confirmed key aspects of the agreement which officials in Seoul had announced the previous day.

“When this is finalized it will be the first successful renegotiation of a trade agreement in U.S. history,” according to a senior U.S. official.

The tentative agreement between the United States and its sixth largest trading partner and a critical security ally in Asia comes at a time of fast-moving developments on the Korean peninsula.

In exchange for terms more favorable to American automakers, South Korea — the third largest steel exporter to the United States — is being exempted for recently announced heavy tariffs on steel rolled out by Trump. South Korea will also limit to about 2.7 tons per year shipments of steel to the United States.

“This is a huge win,” a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters on a conference call Tuesday evening.

Trump last week also temporarily excluded other trade partners, including Canada, the European Union and Mexico from the announced import duties of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum, which came into effect on Friday.

Under the revisions to be made the KORUS FTA, South Korea is to allow American carmakers to double to 50,000 the number of vehicles that meet U.S. safety standards to Korea annually even though they do not comply with various local standards.

“The revisions to the KORUS FTA benefit both countries as they addressed the United States’ primary concern in autos trade, opening the South Korean market to additional exports of U.S. autos,” Troy Stangarone, the senior director of congressional affairs and trade at the Korea Economic Institute in Washington, tells VOA. “For South Korea, they addresses concerns in the dispute settlement process, while the overall revisions remained relatively narrow in scope. The agreement also takes a potentially contentious issue off of the table as the United States and South Korea prepare for critical talks with North Korea.”

Vehicle emissions standards will also be eased for U.S. vehicles imported from 2021 to 2025.

The Korea Automobile Manufacturers Association immediately called on Seoul to also ease environmental and safety standards for domestic vehicle manufacturers “to offer a level playing field.”

The balance is heavily in favor of South Korea. According to U.S. government statistics, Americans bought $16 billion  worth of passenger cars while such purchases made by South Koreans totaled just $1.5 billion.

The United States, under the revised deal, will also maintain tariffs on exports of South Korean pick-up trucks until 2041, an extension from the previously agreed 2021. However, no South Korean manufacturer is currently exporting such vehicles to the U.S. market.

U.S. officials also say that South Korea has agreed to recognize U.S. standards for auto parts.

“They will reduce some of the burdensome labeling requirements when it comes to auto parts,” a senior U.S. official told reporters.

The apparent settlement of the trade dispute comes before a planned meeting between the leaders of rival South and North Korea. Trump has also accepted an invitation relayed by the South from the North’s leader, Kim Jong Un, to meet with the U.S. president. The White House on Tuesday said planning for such a summit is still proceeding but no location or date has been decided. State Department official say they are unsure it will happen by May as previously announced.

The rival Koreas have no diplomatic relations and technically remain at war since a 1953 armistice signed by armies of China and North Korea with the United Nations Command, led by the United States.
…

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has announced the next count of every resident in the country will include a question about citizenship status.

The U.S. Census Bureau conducts the survey every 10 years, with the next set to come in 2020. The deadline for finalizing the questions is Saturday.

Ross said in a memo late Monday that he chose to add the citizenship question after a request from the Department of Justice, which said the move was necessary to get data to better enforce a law that protects minority voting rights.

The decision brought criticism from those who say the citizenship question will cause people to not participate in the census because of concerns about how the government could use the information, resulting in an undercount of the population.

The census figures determine the number of seats each state is allocated in the U.S. House of Representatives as well as how the federal government distributes hundreds of billions of dollars in funding for various programs.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced the state would file a lawsuit challenging what he called an “illegal” move.

“Innocuous at first blush, its effect would be truly insidious,” he wrote in a joint op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle with the California Secretary of State Alex Padilla.

Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who now serves as chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said his organization will also challenge the decision in court, calling it “motivated purely by politics.”

“This question will lower the response rate and undermine the accuracy of the count, leading to devastating, decade-long impacts on voting rights and the distribution of billions of dollars in federal funding,” Holder said. “By asking this question, states will not have accurate representation and individuals in impacted communities will lose out on state and federal funding for health care, education, and infrastructure.”

He also said that in his experience leading the Department of Justice, asking the citizenship question on the census “is not critical to enforcing the Voting Rights Act.”

The census has included a citizenship question in the past. Ross said in his memo the last time it was included was in 1950, but that other surveys by the Census Bureau do currently ask the question.

Ross noted the concerns about lower response rates, including from the Census Bureau itself, but said his department’s own review “found that limited empirical evidence exists about whether adding a citizenship question would decrease response rates materially.”

The Census Bureau plans to allow people to respond to the survey on a paper form, through the internet or by telephone. When people do not respond, teams attempt to follow-up with those households.

Ross said the higher cost of having to do more follow-ups in the case of a lower response rate was a factor he considered, but that “the need for accurate citizenship data” outweighs concerns about the potential for fewer responses.
…

The Trump White House was on the defensive Monday, the day after adult film star Stormy Daniels spoke about her alleged affair with President Donald Trump back in 2006. Daniels detailed her involvement with Trump in an interview with the CBS program, “60 Minutes.” VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.
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White House officials are looking into whether $500 million in loans that went to Trump administration senior adviser Jared Kushner’s family real estate company may have spurred ethics or criminal law violations, according to the head of the federal government’s ethics agency.

David J. Apol, acting director of the Office of Government Ethics, said in a letter sent late last week to Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi that the White House Counsel’s office told him that officials were probing the loans to Kushner Cos. and whether “additional procedures are necessary to avoid violations in the future.”

Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat, had asked Apol on March 1 about a New York Times report in February that Kushner Cos. accepted $184 million in loans from Apollo Global Management and $325 million from Citigroup last year over a span of several months after Kushner met with officials from the two firms. As President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and key adviser, Kushner plays an influential role in domestic and foreign policy decisions.

Both companies have insisted their officials did nothing wrong in meeting with Kushner. Both firms had financial interests overseen by the federal government at the time and both firms – either independently or through industry groups – backed elements of the tax reform legislation that passed Congress last year with support from Trump.

In one case cited by the Times, Citigroup lent $325 million to Kushner Cos. in spring 2017 shortly after Kushner met with Citi’s chief executive, Michael Corbat. Last week, Citigroup’s general counsel told several Democratic lawmakers in a letter that the loan was “completely appropriate.”

In a second case, Kushner met several times with Apollo co-founder Joshua Harris and discussed a possible White House job – followed by Apollo’s loan of $184 million to the Kushner family firm. An Apollo spokesman previously told The Associated Press that Harris “never discussed with Jared Kushner a loan, investment, or any other business arrangement or regulatory matter involving Apollo.”

In the letter to Krishnamoorthi, Apol responded to several of her questions about Kushner’s conduct during the period when his family’s real estate firm received the two loans. Apol was careful not to offer legal opinions on Kushner’s behavior, instead noting that “the White House is in a position to ascertain the relevant facts related to possible violations and is responsible for monitoring compliance with ethics requirements.”

Apol said he raised those questions with White House officials “to ensure that they have begun the process of ascertaining to determine whether any law or regulation has been violated.” During the conversations, “the White House informed me that they had already begun this process,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Kushner Cos. said Monday night that the firm had not received any correspondence or other notifications from the White House or OGE.

A spokesman for Jared Kushner at the White House was not immediately available to comment on Apol’s confirmation of the probe.
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A top fundraiser for President Donald Trump received millions of dollars from a political adviser to the United Arab Emirates last April, just weeks before he began handing out a series of large political donations to U.S. lawmakers considering legislation targeting Qatar, the UAE’s chief rival in the Persian Gulf, an Associated Press investigation has found.

George Nader, an adviser to the UAE who is now a witness in the U.S. special counsel investigation into foreign meddling in American politics, wired $2.5 million to the Trump fundraiser, Elliott Broidy, through a company in Canada, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. They said Nader paid the money to Broidy to bankroll an effort to persuade the U.S. to take a hard line against Qatar, a long-time American ally but now a bitter adversary of the UAE.

A month after he received the money, Broidy sponsored a conference on Qatar’s alleged ties to Islamic extremism. During the event, Republican Congressman Ed Royce of California, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, announced he was introducing legislation that would brand Qatar as a terrorist-supporting state.

In July 2017, two months after Royce introduced the bill, Broidy gave the California congressman $5,400 in campaign gifts — the maximum allowed by law. The donations were part of just under $600,000 that Broidy has given to GOP members of Congress and Republican political committees since he began the push for the legislation fingering Qatar, according to an AP analysis of campaign finance disclosure records.

Broidy said in a statement to AP that he has been outspoken for years about militant groups, including Hamas.

“I’ve both raised money for, and contributed my own money to, efforts by think tanks to bring the facts into the open, since Qatar is spreading millions of dollars around Washington to whitewash its image as a terror-sponsoring state,” he said. “I’ve also spoken to like-minded members of Congress, like Royce, about how to make sure Qatar’s lobbying money does not blind lawmakers to the facts about its record in supporting terrorist groups.”

While Washington is awash with political donations from all manner of interest groups and individuals, there are strict restrictions on foreign donations for political activity. Agents of foreign governments are also required to register before lobbying so that there is a public record of foreign influence.

Cory Fritz, a spokesman for Royce, said that his boss had long criticized the “destabilizing role of extremist elements in Qatar.” He pointed to comments to that effect going back to 2014. “Any attempts to influence these longstanding views would have been unsuccessful,” he said.

In October, Broidy also raised the issue of Qatar at the White House in meetings with Trump and senior aides.

The details of Broidy’s advocacy on U.S. legislation have not been previously reported. The AP found no evidence that Broidy used Nader’s funds for the campaign donations or broke any laws. At the time of the advocacy work, his company, Circinus, did not have business with the UAE, but was awarded a more than $200 million contract in January.

The sanctions bill was approved by Royce’s committee in late 2017. It remains alive in the House of Representatives, awaiting a review by the House Financial Services Committee.

Meetings probed

The backstory of the legislative push is emerging amid continuing concerns about efforts by foreign governments or their proxies to influence American politics. While reports about possible Russian links to Trump’s campaign and his presidential administration have been making headlines since 2016, questions are now arising about efforts during the Trump era to influence U.S. policy in the Middle East.

The U.S. has long been friendly with Saudi Arabia and the UAE as well as Qatar, which is home to a massive American air base that the U.S. has used in its fight against the Islamic State. But as political rifts in the Gulf have widened, the Saudis and Emiratis have sought to undercut American ties with Qatar.

Qatar and UAE have also exchanged allegations of politically motivated hacks. Scores of Broidy’s emails and documents have leaked to news organizations, drawing attention to his relationship with Nader. Broidy has alleged that the hack was done by Qatari agents and has reported the breach to the FBI.

“It’s no surprise that Qatar would see me as an obstacle and come after me in the way it has,” he said in a statement.

A spokesman for the Qatari embassy, Jassim Mansour Jabr Al Thani, denied the charges, calling them “diversionary tactics.” Representatives of the UAE did not respond to requests for comment.

The timeline of the influx of cash wired by Nader, an adviser to Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the de facto leader of the UAE, may provide grist for U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller’s legal team as it probes the activities of Trump and his associates during the 2016 campaign and beyond. However, it is not clear that Mueller has expanded his investigation in that direction.

Mueller’s investigators are looking into two meetings close to Trump’s inauguration attended by Nader and bin Zayed. The pair joined a meeting at New York’s Trump Tower in December 2016 that included presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon, who was Trump’s chief strategist at the time. A month later, Nader and bin Zayed were a world away on the Seychelles island chain in the Indian Ocean, meeting with Erik Prince, the founder of the security company Blackwater, and the Kremlin-connected head of a large Russian sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev.

Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman, agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s team after investigators stopped him at Dulles International Airport, according to a person familiar with his case.

That person and others who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity said they could not be identified because of the sensitivity of the issues surrounding the Mueller investigation.

A lawyer for Nader declined to comment for this story.

Policy push

Broidy and Nader first met at Trump’s presidential inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Both men have checkered legal histories. Nader was convicted in a Czech Republic court in 2003 of multiple counts of sexually abusing minors. Broidy, a businessmen and prolific Republican fundraiser, was sidelined for a few years after he pleaded guilty to bribery in a case stemming from an investment scheme involving New York state’s employee pension fund.

Broidy later re-emerged as a player in GOP politics. During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, he raised money for U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz. After Cruz bowed out of the race, Broidy signed on to help Trump during the 2016 election and beyond, co-hosting fundraisers across the country.

The meeting between Broidy and Nader at the dawn of Trump’s presidency soon led the two to work together in an effort to shift U.S. policies on the Middle East.

On April 2, 2017, Nader asked Broidy to invoice his Dubai-based company for $2.5 million, according to someone familiar with the transaction who spoke on condition of anonymity.

On the same day, Broidy attached an invoice for that amount from Xiemen Investments Limited, a Canadian company directed by a friend. The money was forwarded to his own account in Los Angeles from the Canadian account, the person said. It was marked for consulting, marketing and advisory services, but was actually intended to fund Broidy’s Washington advocacy regarding Qatar, two people familiar with the transaction said. The financial transaction and the White House meetings were first reported by The New York Times.

It was on May 23, 2017, when Royce, a 13-term Congressman, appeared at a conference on Qatar’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and announced that he was introducing the sanctions bill that would name Qatar a state sponsor of terrorism.

The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a think tank that hosted the conference, said Broidy had approached it about organizing the event. Broidy bankrolled that conference and contributed to the financing of a second conference hosted on a similar theme in October by another think tank, the Hudson Institute.

Both organizations said Broidy said that no money from foreign governments was involved. FDD says it does not accept money from foreign governments and Hudson only accepts money from Democratic countries allied with the U.S.

“As is our funding policy, we asked if his funding was connected to any foreign governments or if he had business contracts in the Gulf. He assured us that he did not,” FDD said in a statement.

Broidy donated millions of his own money to efforts to fight Qatar, in addition to the $2.5 million from Nader, according to someone close to him, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss Broidy’s private finances.

Broidy’s behind-the-scenes efforts unfolded as animosity was growing between the UAE and Qatar. These tensions came to a head when the UAE and Saudi Arabia launched an embargo with travel and trade restrictions against Qatar less than two weeks after Royce introduced the sanctions legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Weeks later, Trump himself waded into the fracas, accusing Qatar of funding extremism in tweets on June 6.

Royce and a staff member met with Broidy at Washington’s Capitol Hill Club to discuss the bill, according to someone who was at the meeting. An associate, who Broidy paid for some of the work, also had frequent contact with congressional staff.

Strong language

Broidy’s effort to cultivate allies in Congress extended beyond Royce.

Broidy has personally given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republicans over the past decade or more. But he gave nothing during the 2012 and 2014 election cycles and just $13,500 during the 2016 cycle. Things changed after Trump’s election as Broidy ramped up his advocacy on Middle East policy. Broidy has given nearly $600,000 to GOP candidates and causes since the beginning of last year when he began his advocacy push— more than in the previous 14 years combined.

Campaign finance records going back two decades show Broidy had not given any money to Royce — until he gave the lawmaker a pair of $2,700 donations on July 31, 2017.

By then, the sanctions bill was on a fast track.

The original draft considered by the Foreign Affairs Committee contained language singling out Qatar as a supporter of Hamas, a Palestinian organization that has been designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department.

“Hamas has received significant financial and military support from Qatar,” the draft bill states.

Soon Qatar was lobbying hard to have that language excised. Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, declared in a statement to the committee that Qatar does not fund Hamas.

According to two people familiar with the committee deliberations, both Republican and Democratic staff members reached a consensus that because of the tensions in the Gulf, the language would look like the lawmakers were taking sides. They agreed to take it out of the bill.

Qatari officials and lobbyists thought the matter had been settled, according to one lobbyist and a committee staffer. But just before the bill was to be put up for debate ahead of the committee’s vote, Royce ordered the language on Qatar not only reinstated, but strengthened, they say. The bill was approved by the committee in November with the stronger language on Qatar intact.

A Royce aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment, denied that Royce had ever considered removing the Qatar language.

In January, Royce announced that he would not seek re-election, saying that he wanted to focus on his committee in the last year of his chairmanship rather than a political campaign.

In the same month, Broidy’s company signed the hefty contract with the UAE government for gathering intelligence, according to someone familiar with the work.

 
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Washington is watching President Donald Trump’s makeover of his national security team to include more outspoken hardliners when it comes to America’s posture on the world stage. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, days after nominating CIA director Mike Pompeo to become his new secretary of state, Trump tapped John Bolton, a former Bush administration diplomat known for unflinchingly bellicose rhetoric, to serve as national security adviser.
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Adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who claims to have had an affair with Donald Trump before he was elected president, told the CBS news show 60 Minutes that she was threatened when she tried to tell her story and accepted hush money through a Trump attorney because she was scared for her family.

Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, said in the highly anticipated interview Sunday that she was on her way to a fitness class with her infant daughter when she was approached by  a stranger.

“A guy walked up on me and said to me, Leave Trump alone. Forget the story,’ ” Daniels told journalist Anderson Cooper. “And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, ‘That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.’ And then he was gone.”

The incident, in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011, occurred shortly after she first tried to sell her story to a tabloid magazine.  She said the incident made her fearful for years and that she thought she was doing the right thing when she accepted $130,000 from Trump attorney Michael Cohen to stay quiet.

After The Wall Street Journal reported on the payment, Daniels told Cooper that she lied when she signed a statement denying the affair.  When asked why, Daniels said she was bullied into it. “They made it sound like I had no choice,” she said. While there was not any threat of physical violence at the time, she said, she was worried about other repercussions. “The exact sentence used was, ‘They can make your life hell in many different ways.'”

She said she didn’t know who could make her life hell, but that she believed “it to be Michael Cohen.”  

Cohen has denied threatening Daniels, and refused a request to appear on 60 Minutes.

Daniels’ appearance represents back-to-back trouble for Trump after an interview broadcast last week on CNN with former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who described a 10-month long affair with Trump starting in 2006.

McDougal has sued to break free of a confidentiality agreement that was struck in the months before the 2016 election, for which she was paid $150,000.

Daniels sued the president on March 6, stating Trump never signed an agreement for her to keep quiet about their relationship.   

Both women say their relationships with Trump began in 2006 and ended in 2007 and that they were paid for their silence in the months before the 2016 presidential election.

Representatives of Trump have dismissed the allegations of McDougal and Daniels, saying that the affairs never happened and that Trump had no knowledge of any payments.

Ahead of the interview, the president and first lady have opted to be in different states. Trump returned to Washington from Palm Beach on Sunday, while Melania will remain in Florida on a pre-scheduled spring break, her communicators director said.
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President Donald Trump’s favorite TV network is increasingly serving as a West Wing casting call, as the president reshapes his administration with camera-ready personalities.

Trump’s new national security adviser, John Bolton, is a former U.N. ambassador, a White House veteran – and perhaps most importantly a Fox News channel talking head. Bolton’s appointment, rushed out late Thursday, follows Trump’s recent attempt to recruit Fox guest Joseph diGenova for his legal team.

Bolton went on Fox to discuss his selection and said it had happened so quickly that “I think I’m still a Fox News contributor.”

Another recent TV-land addition to the Trump White House is veteran CNBC contributor Larry Kudlow as top economic adviser. Other Fox faces on Trump’s team: rising State Department star Heather Nauert, a former Fox News anchor; communications adviser Mercedes Schlapp and Treasury Department spokesman Tony Sayegh. The latter two are both former Fox commentators.

“He’s looking for people who are ready to be part of that television White House,” said Kendall Phillips, a communication and rhetorical studies professor at Syracuse University. “This is the Fox television presidency all the way up and down.”

DiGenova, who has accused FBI officials of trying to “frame” Trump for nonexistent crimes, will not be joining the legal team because of “conflicts,” said Trump counsel Jay Sekulow on Sunday. Sekulow, however, said diGenova and his wife, attorney Victoria Toensing, also a frequent commentator on Fox, would not be prevented from helping Trump “in other legal matters.”

Trump’s affinity for Fox News is by now well-documented. He has bestowed more interviews on the network than any other news outlet and is an avid viewer. People close to the president say he thinks Fox provides the best coverage of his untraditional presidency. It also provides him a window into conservative thinking, with commentary from Republican lawmakers and right-wing thinkers – many of who are speaking directly to the audience in the Oval Office.

On-air personalities Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham are favorites of the president, who also speaks to them privately. This past week Trump promoted Hannity on Twitter, saying: “@seanhannity on @foxandfriends now! Great! 8:18 A.M.”

The president’s early-morning tweets often appear to be reaction to Fox programming. On Friday, for example, Trump tweeted he was “considering” a veto of a massive spending bill needed to keep the government open not long after it was assailed on “Fox and Friends” as a “swamp budget.”

The critic in question was contributor Pete Hegseth, a favorite of the president who has been rumored to be a possible replacement for embattled Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin.

Fox News came in for criticism this past week from CNN chief Jeff Zucker, who on Thursday attacked the rival network by saying it has become a propaganda machine that is “doing an incredible disservice to the country.”

Zucker spoke at the Financial Times Future of News conference two days after a former Fox military analyst quit, claiming he was ashamed at the way the network’s opinion hosts were backing Trump. Zucker said that analyst, Ralph Peters, voiced what a lot of people have been thinking about Fox in the post-Roger Ailes era.

Still, in Trump’s Washington, lawmakers and influence-seekers know that the best way to get in Trump’s ear is often to get on Fox. Legislators routinely seek to get airtime when they are trying to push legislation or policy ideas, said congressional aides who sought anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private thinking.

“A year ago, everyone was trying to figure out how to get into the building; now everyone is trying to figure out how to get on TV,” said Republican consultant Alex Conant.

This past week, for example, conservative lawmakers unhappy with the spending bill moving through Congress took to Fox. “This may be the worst bill I have seen in my time in Congress,” said Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, on Wednesday.

And when the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, prompted a national conversation on gun laws, Fox contributor Geraldo Rivera used his platform to urge the president to support raising the age requirement to buy assault-type weapons.

“You’ve gotta let me give my pitch,” he said on “Fox and Friends” several weeks ago, noting that he would see Trump that night. “Here in Florida and most states a kid cannot buy a beer … and yet he could buy an AR-15 legally.”

The hosts quickly pushed back. “Tell him to let the teachers carry concealed,” said one.

While the coverage varies by show, “Fox and Friends” tends to be Trump-friendly, with the chipper morning show spotlighting his achievements and bashing the “mainstream media.” On Friday, they featured a teen from the Florida high school where the shooting occurred who opposes gun control efforts, as well as a young conservative activist who interviewed Trump at a White House event the day before.

Also appearing Friday was White House counselor Kellyanne Conway – herself a constant presence on cable news – who pushed back at the idea Trump was focused on hiring TV personalities.

“The irony is not lost on me that you have a lot of quote ‘TV stars’ calling Larry Kudlow and John Bolton ‘TV stars,'” Conway said.
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U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday rebuffed the notion he is having trouble assembling a top legal team to defend him in the Russia probe, even as two lawyers announced as joining Trump’s defense won’t be after all.

A former federal prosecutor, Joseph DiGenova, and his wife, Victoria Toensing, agreed last week to help represent the U.S. leader. But within hours of Trump saying in a Twitter remark that he is “very happy” with his legal team, his personal attorney, Jay Sekulow, said that DiGenova and Toensing would not be among the lawyers defending Trump against allegations that his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia to help him win and then obstructed justice to thwart the investigation.

“The president is disappointed that conflicts prevent Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing from joining the president’s special counsel team,” Sekulow said in a statement. “However, those conflicts do not prevent them from assisting the president in other legal matters. The president looks forward to working with them.”

The latest shuffling of Trump’s legal team came days after his lead lawyer, John Dowd, quit, while another top Washington lawyer, Theodore Olson, declined to join Trump’s defense.

On Twitter, Trump said, “Many lawyers and top law firms want to represent me in the Russia case. Don’t believe the Fake News narrative that it is hard to find a lawyer who wants to take this on. Fame & fortune will NEVER be turned down by a lawyer, though some are conflicted. Problem is that a new lawyer or law firm will take months to get up to speed (if for no other reason than they can bill more), which is unfair to our great country — and I am very happy with my existing team.

“Besides, there was NO COLLUSION with Russia, except by Crooked Hillary and the Dems!” Trump added, employing his favorite epithet for the Democratic challenger he defeated, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been investigating the Trump campaign for months. He indicted 13 Russians on charges of carrying out an online campaign to sow discord in American democracy, while securing guilty pleas from two Trump aides, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and foreign affairs adviser George Papadopoulos, for lying to federal investigators about their contacts with Russian officials.

Mueller’s office and Trump’s defense attorneys have been negotiating over terms of possible testimony by Trump about his actions linked to Russia and the ensuing investigation. Trump says he wants to do the interview, but no agreement on his questioning has been reached.

Mueller is believed to particularly want to question Trump about his knowledge of a mid-2016 meeting his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., set up at Trump Tower in New York, with a Russian attorney on the premise that she was going to hand the Trump campaign incriminating information about Clinton, as well as Trump’s role while president in helping draft a misleading statement about the meeting.

In addition, Mueller’s lawyers want to question Trump about his firing of Flynn in the first month of his presidency and later his ouster of FBI chief James Comey, whom Trump fired while Comey was leading the Russia probe. Mueller, another former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was named shortly thereafter, over Trump’s objections, to take over the Russia investigation.

In other Twitter remarks, Trump defended his reluctant approval Friday of $1.3 trillion in funding for government operations through the end of September.

Trump had sought $20 billion or more to pay for construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border to thwart illegal immigration, but had to settle for $1.6 billion.

“Much can be done with the $1.6 Billion given to building and fixing the border wall,” Trump said. “It is just a down payment. Work will start immediately. The rest of the money will come.” He blamed Democrats for not agreeing to a bigger wall deal with a companion agreement to block the deportation of 1.8 million young people who years ago were brought illegally into the country by their parents.

Trump said with $700 billion in funding for defense, “many jobs are created and our Military is again rich. Building a great Border Wall, with drugs (poison) and enemy combatants pouring into our Country, is all about National Defense.

“Build WALL through M!,” with Mexico paying for it, Trump implored, revisiting one of his favorite pledges from the 2016 campaign.
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With the passage of an enormous budget bill, the GOP-controlled Congress all but wrapped up its legislating for the year. But will it be enough to persuade voters to give Republicans another term at the helm?

In two big ways, Republicans have done what they promised. They passed a long-sought tax overhaul bill that slashed tax rates. They’ve rolled back regulations, in ways they claim are boosting the economy. In the Senate, they confirmed a justice to the Supreme Court.

But there are signs Americans wanted more: immigration reforms, gun control legislation, even an infrastructure plan that President Donald Trump promised voters. Tax cuts, for now, will have to do.

“It’s very clear that tax reform was going to be the biggest legislative crown jewel of this Congress,” said Matt Gorman, the spokesman for the House GOP’s campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee. “That is a massive centerpiece of our campaign.”

​Mixed messages

But polls swing wildly these days, strategists said. Voters are rarely focused for too long on single issues that can make or break campaigns, as when Republicans seized control of the House in 2010 amid the economic downturn or Democrats pushed to the majority in 2006 over opposition to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and congressional ethics scandals.

Trump’s mixed messages on the GOP’s accomplishments only make the campaigning more difficult. At the White House on Friday, he toyed with a veto of the $1.3 trillion budget package, complaining it lacked his immigration deal and smacked of overspending, before ultimately signing it. Such shifting views leave Republicans without a reliable partner as they try to push through political headwinds in what’s expected to be a tough battle for majority control of the House and Senate.

Lawmakers left town for a two-week recess that marks the unofficial end of the legislating season having shelved resolution of other issues.

Leftovers: health care, DACA

Congress failed to pass legislation to curb rising health insurance premiums or protect young immigrants known as Dreamers from deportation, two issues that have stirred voters this year. And before the nationwide “March for Our Lives” protests against gun violence, lawmakers took modest steps to boost school safety funds and improve compliance with the federal gun purchase background check system.

Kris Brown, co-president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said the measures are “just not enough.”

“The American people have been screaming from the rooftops for real, bold change to fight against” tragedies such as the Florida and Las Vegas shootings, Brown said. “We have seen the consequences of Congress’s inaction.”

A modest agenda

Congress’ spring agenda is thin. It includes modest plans to finish a banking bill that rolls back some of the regulations put in place after the financial crisis and pass a big farm bill that sets agriculture and school nutrition policies. The Senate also has to begin confirmation hearings for Trump’s nominees for secretary of state and CIA director.

The one legislative lift will be another spending bill when the one Trump signed into law expires at the end of September. But it may bring more political risk than reward for Republicans, since conservatives largely sided with the president against this one, and could pose a more serious threat of voter revolt in the fall.

Strategists say it will be up to candidates to make the case that the GOP’s signature legislative accomplishment is worth their re-election.

Democrats have been hammering on the tax law as a giveaway to big business, in part because the steep reduction in corporate rates, from 35 percent to 21 percent, is permanent while the reduced rates for individuals and other provisions for families, including expanded child tax credits, expire in coming years.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has derided the lopsided benefits for households as “crumbs” — a quip Republicans eagerly throw back at Democrats. 

Millions in GOP ads

To prop up public opinion of the GOP’s top accomplishment, millions are being spent by outside groups. American Action Network, which is aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan, is unleashing more than $30 million in ads, and the network backed by the influential Koch brothers will spend more than $20 million, heaping praise on lawmakers who voted for the tax cuts and informing voters about those who didn’t.

And with passage of tax cuts so important to the GOP election effort, Republicans might take the unusual step of trying to pass them again.

“We think there’s more we can do,” Ryan said.

House GOP leaders are seriously considering legislation this summer — “Tax Cuts 2” — that would try to build on the original bill that became law in December by making the individual tax cuts permanent.

A do-over tax cuts bill is not expected to pass this Congress. But setting up another showdown accomplishes political goals for Republicans by turning attention back on the tax law, and pushing Democrats into the uncomfortable position of voting against it, again.

Americans for Prosperity, one of the groups in the Koch network, launched an ad campaign urging Congress to fortify the law by making tax cuts permanent. “More needs to be done,” the group says on a website for its advocacy.

“Even if there are things that get passed between now and the fall, the bottom line is the single most important piece of legislation is going to be the tax bill,” said veteran strategist David Winston, who advises House and Senate GOP leadership. “That defines what this Congress is about.”
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Chin high and tears streaming, Florida school shooting survivor Emma Gonzalez stood silent in front of thousands gathered for the “March for Our Lives” rally in Washington.

She continued to stand silently as a few crowd members shouted out support. She remained silent as tentative chants broke out. Her silence continued as those attending also fell quiet, many weeping.

The gripping moment stretched for 6 minutes and 20 seconds, the amount of time Gonzalez said it took a shooter to kill 17 people and wound 15 others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, last month.

6 minutes and 20 seconds

“Everyone who has been touched by the cold grip of gun violence understands,” Gonzalez told the hushed crowd, describing the long hours spent waiting for authorities to identify their slain classmates, the horror of discovering many of them had breathed their last breaths before many students even knew a “code red” alert — designed to warn staffers and students of a potential threat — had been called.

“Six minutes and 20 seconds with an AR-15 and my friend Carmen [Schentrup] would never complain to me about piano practice,” she said, her voice strong but her throat momentarily catching. “Aaron Feis would never call Kyra ‘Miss Sunshine.’ Alex Schachter would never walk into school with his brother Ryan.”

Gonzalez went on, listing name after name of those killed at the school Feb. 14.

Silence spreads

And then she stopped, her breath heaving but remaining composed, looking straight ahead and silent.

Seemingly unsure what to do, the crowed waited. Some appeared to catch her intent right away, watching with hands covering mouths, foreheads wrinkled and tears falling. Chants of “never again” broke out for a time, and later someone came out from the wings of the stage to put a hand on her shoulder and whisper in her ear.

The silence by now had spread to the thousands thronging Pennsylvania Avenue. Protesters, parents, television news crews waited to see what Gonzalez would do next.

The beeping of a digital alarm broke the silence.

“Since the time that I came out here, it has been six minutes and 20 seconds. The shooter has ceased shooting and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape and walk free for an hour before arrest,” she said, voice clear. “Fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s job.”

‘Get out there and vote’

Gonzalez is one of several teens from the school to become gun control activists in the wake of the shooting. Their efforts have galvanized youth nationwide, with hundreds of thousands attending similar rallies across the country.

As the three-hour rally wrapped up, Gonzalez assigned some homework for the demonstrators:

“One final plug,” she said. “Get out there and vote.”
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Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to attend a “March for Our Lives” demonstration in Washington Saturday, drawing attention to school violence in the U.S. and what they see as a need for stricter gun control.  Organizers are hoping to draw half a million people.

Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were killed on February 14 in the latest mass U.S. school shooting, are the organizers of Saturday’s event.

They are demanding that children’s lives be prioritized in a country where mass school shooting have become an epidemic.

More than 800 sister marches have been planned in each of the 50 U.S. states and other countries.

Americans have been reluctant to give up their guns and there have been few changes in gun laws in response to mass shootings.

Americans have been reluctant to give up their guns and there have been few changes in gun laws in response to mass shootings. Among the questions facing march organizers and participants will be how to translate a one-day event, regardless of turnout, into meaningful legislative change.

​A new poll conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, however, indicates that sentiment may be changing.  The poll found that 69 percent of Americans surveyed now think gun laws should be tightened, up from 61 percent in October, 2016, and 55 percent in October 2013.

Overall the survey indicated 90 percent of Democrats, 50 percent of Republicans and 54 percent of gun owners now favor stricter gun control laws.

But nearly half of Americans, the poll revealed, do not expect their politicians to take action towards changing gun laws.

Student activists, however, have begun concentrating on voter registration with mid-term congressional elections coming up in November.

The March for Our Lives website reports that it has almost reached its goal of raising $3.8 million.

Actor George Clooney and wife, Amal Clooney, a lawyer, gave March For Our Lives a $500,000 donation, which was matched by actress and TV host Oprah Winfrey, director Steven Spielberg and producer Jeffrey Katzenberg. Comedian Ellen DeGeneres and photo publishing service Shutterfly announced a joint donation of $50,000. Model Chrissy Teigen and husband John Legend, a musician, pledged $25,000.

The Clooneys, late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, singers Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato, and actors Jennifer Hudson, Sofia Vergara and Julie Bowen have all expressed intentions of attending Saturday’s march in Washington.

 
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Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gathered in Washington and other U.S. cities Saturday to rally for tougher gun laws following a recent mass shooting that sparked outrage and political activism among young people across the country.

Many students from Parkland, Florida, where a shooter killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last month, came to Washington to encourage other young people to stand up for gun control, and to urge people 18 and older to vote for lawmakers who do.

One of the most outspoken Parkland students, Emma Gonzales, spoke to the crowd of thousands in Washington Saturday about the loss of a good friend and her determination to make a difference.

And then, she stopped speaking. She stayed silent, tears streaming down her face, while those listening to her chanted, waited uncertainly, or began to cry themselves.

At the end of her long silence, Gonzales said: “It has been 6 minutes and 20 seconds. The shooter has ceased shooting, and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape, and walk free for an hour before arrest. Fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s job.”

David Hogg: Politicians who oppose gun laws, get your resumes ready

Protest in Atlanta

In Atlanta, Georgia, tens of thousands of people, including more students from Parkland, marched carrying signs saying “Protect Kids, Not Guns,” and “Vote Them Out.”

Civil rights leader and U.S. Representative John Lewis marched, too, wearing a large red letter “F” pinned to his clothes. He said it was the grade, on a scale of A to F, that the National Rifle Association gave him for supporting gun control.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and several members of the state Legislature also attended the Atlanta rally.

In New York City, former Beatles member Paul McCartney attended the rally, telling CNN, “One of my best friends was killed in gun violence right around here, so it’s important to me.” McCartney was referring to his former bandmate John Lennon, who was shot to death in 1980 outside his New York City apartment building.

The organizers of the march say about 800 marches took place around the country and across the world, including Tokyo, Berlin and Paris, where Americans living abroad turned out to support their countrymen at home.

Gun enthusiasts march, too

The gun control marches were met in some places with objectors.

A man who wanted to be identified only as “Joe” from upstate New York spoke to VOA in front of the Trump International Hotel, just blocks from the White House.

“This whole march … is just an emotional reaction to something that is very tragic,” he said. He added that gun control proposals are not “going to reduce gun violence, it’s just going to take away the rights of law-abiding citizens.”

Hundreds of gun enthusiasts marched in Salt Lake City Saturday, calling for better protections for schools and for arming teachers. They turned up in Phoenix, Arizona, as well, challenging the gun-control activists to debate the issue.

Rubio releases statement

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, whose district includes the Parkland, Florida, high school where last month’s shooting took place, has been criticized by the Parkland students for accepting more than $3 million in political contributions from the NRA. On Saturday, he released a statement welcoming the demonstrations, but added, “Making a change requires finding common ground with those who hold opposing views.”

President Donald Trump, who has not commented on Saturday’s demonstrations, is spending the weekend at his vacation home in Florida, less than an hour’s drive from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

In Palm Beach 

Hundreds of protesters in Palm Beach lined up along the route Trump’s motorcade usually takes from his golf club to his vacation home, Mar-a-Lago, on Saturday. But his motorcade took a detour, avoiding the demonstrators.

The Palm Beach Post reports the detour also avoided a large billboard installed along the motorcade route last week that calls for the president’s impeachment.

Meanwhile, White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said in a statement, “We applaud the many courageous young Americans exercising their First Amendment rights today. Keeping our children safe is a top priority of the president’s, which is why he urged Congress to pass the Fix NICS and STOP School Violence Acts, and signed them into law.”

Opinions shifting

A new poll conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research indicates, however, that sentiment may be changing. The poll found that 69 percent of Americans surveyed thought gun laws should be tightened, up from 61 percent in October 2016 and 55 percent in October 2013.

Overall, the survey indicated 90 percent of Democrats, 50 percent of Republicans and 54 percent of gun owners favored stricter gun control laws.

But nearly half of Americans, the poll revealed, do not expect their politicians to change gun laws.
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