The United States would be “putting people intentionally in harm’s way” if it sent diplomats back to Cuba, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says in an Associated Press interview , even as a new FBI report casts doubt on the initial theory that Americans there have been hit by “sonic attacks.”

Following months of investigation and four FBI trips to Havana, an interim report from the bureau’s Operational Technology Division says the probe has uncovered no evidence that sound waves could have damaged the Americans’ health, the AP has learned. The report, dated Jan. 4, doesn’t address other theories and says the FBI will keep investigating until it can show there’s been no intentional harm.

Tillerson said he’s not convinced that what he calls the “deliberate attacks” are over. He defended his September decision to order most U.S. personnel and their relatives to leave Cuba and said he won’t reverse course until Cuba’s government assures they’ll be safe.

“I’d be intentionally putting them back in harm’s way. Why in the world would I do that when I have no means whatsoever to protect them?” Tillerson told the AP on Jan. 5. “I will push back on anybody who wants to force me to do that.”

“I still believe that the Cuban government, someone within the Cuban government can bring this to an end,” Tillerson added. Washington has never claimed Cuba perpetrated the attacks but has insisted the island’s communist-run government must know who did. Cuba adamantly denies both involvement and knowledge of any attacks.

Tensions over the issue are apparent in Congress, with critics of the Cuban government at odds with supporters of closer U.S. ties. And within the Trump administration, the CIA, whose spies were affected while working under diplomatic cover, has chafed at the lack of FBI progress, several officials have told the AP in recent months, while a few lawmakers briefed on the probe have questioned whether the FBI even agrees with the State Department that anyone was attacked.

The State Department has said previously the most recent “medically confirmed” case of an American being affected occurred Aug. 21. Tillerson didn’t cite any more recent incidents, but pointedly stressed he was “not sure they’ve ended.”

The AP has learned at least one additional embassy worker who reported similar symptoms since that date has been sent for medical testing. The symptoms were determined to be unrelated.

Tillerson’s comments and the FBI report illustrate how befuddled the U.S. still seems about the mystery in Havana, more than a year after embassy workers started reporting illnesses including hearing loss, vision problems and memory issues. Symptoms often followed unexplained sounds in diplomats’ homes that led investigators to suspect a futuristic sonic weapon. The U.S. has said 24 government workers were harmed. Canada has reported some of its diplomats were affected, too.

The FBI report, which hasn’t been released publicly, is the clearest sign to date of the U.S. ruling out the sonic weapon theory. The report says the FBI tested the hypothesis that air pressure waves via audible sound, infrasound or ultrasound could be used to clandestinely hurt Americans in Cuba, and found no evidence. Infrasound waves are below the range of human hearing. Ultrasound is above.

The FBI declined to comment Monday.

In October, the AP published a recording of the high-pitched chirping sound some diplomats heard. Officials cautioned then they weren’t sure whether the sound itself harmed Americans, or was perhaps the byproduct of something else that did. Last month, the AP reported doctors discovered brain abnormalities in patients who were being treated after returning from Cuba. But since the patients hadn’t been tested before working in Cuba, outside experts raised questions.

For Cuba and its U.S. supporters, frustration is growing about Washington’s aggressive response and lack of answers. In addition to pulling out all but “essential personnel,” the Trump administration last year expelled 15 Cuban diplomats and warned Americans to avoid the island. Havana sees those steps as harming U.S.-Cuba relations and damaging its critical tourism industry, all without any proof anyone was attacked.

By law, Tillerson must form an “accountability review board” after any serious injury to diplomats overseas. One highly publicized example was after four Americans were killed in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.

Tillerson has signed off on the new review board, U.S. officials said. The State Department wouldn’t comment, saying it would announce any decision after Congress is notified.

That could come as early as Tuesday, when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold a hearing about the “attacks on U.S. diplomats in Cuba.” Top officials from the State Department’s medical unit, Diplomatic Security and Western Hemisphere division will testify.

Over the weekend, Sen. Jeff Flake, a longtime proponent of closer U.S. ties to Cuba, said high-ranking Cuban officials told him that the FBI has found no evidence of attacks and that classified U.S. briefings left him with no reason to doubt Cuba’s account.

But Sen. Marco Rubio, a vocal critic of Cuba’s government, declared on Twitter it was a “documented FACT” that U.S. personnel were “victims of some sort of sophisticated attack” and U.S. officials briefed on the matter know that “full well.”

Yet other lawmakers briefed by Tillerson say they were discouraged the Trump administration couldn’t or wouldn’t answer basic questions on the investigation.

The FBI, which leads broader law enforcement cooperation with Cuba, insists it’s doing everything possible in a place where it has little or delayed access to suspected crime scenes.

Tillerson, in the AP interview, said he was satisfied with the U.S. response.

“I’ve met with the victims, I’ve met with their families,” Tillerson said. “I’m concerned about their health and wellbeing, and that trumps everything in my book.”
…

Top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi said Monday that she remains optimistic about potential agreements with Washington Republicans on the budget and immigration, though she is skeptical that an upcoming White House meeting on immigration will produce a breakthrough.

The California lawmaker told reporters in her Capitol office that “we just have to come together and we will” on a long-delayed budget pact to boost funding for both the Pentagon and domestic agencies, which face a severe budget crunch otherwise.

She also said that there’s room for compromise on immigration, including protections for young immigrants who were brought into the country illegally, border security and stricter rules sought by Republicans regarding preferential treatment for the relatives of legal immigrants who are seeking to join them in the U.S.

Pelosi spoke just 11 days before a government shutdown deadline and gave a surprisingly optimistic appraisal. Since a White House meeting last week, there has been no obvious progress, and the administration unveiled an $18 billion request for President Donald Trump’s long-promised border wall.

She was optimistic about efforts to protect younger immigrants known as “Dreamers,” who face deportation in the wake of Trump’s decision in September to cut off protections given by former President Barack Obama.

“I think we will” get an agreement on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, Pelosi said. Asked why, she said, “because we don’t want to shut down government and I don’t think they want to shut down government.”

But Pelosi was wholly dismissive of the chances of progress at a White House meeting on Tuesday, saying it was more of a show than a real negotiation.

“They’re not really inviting the people who have the most skin in the game, who know the issue. Surprising as it may seem to you, the more you know about the issue, the more you can compromise.”

“I don’t need to go to that kind of a meeting,” Pelosi said. “The Republicans in Congress will by and large vote for anything the president supports. So that’s where the negotiations are taking place.”

In the Senate, some Republicans suggested Trump would have to accept compromise on some of his demands.

“I don’t know how much the market will bear. I do want us to get to a solution,” No. 2 GOP leader John Cornyn of Texas told reporters. And Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said he favored a broad immigration measure but said, “We can’t do that by March 5. This is a narrower fix.”

Trump has given Congress until March 5 to craft a bill protecting the Dreamers, though he could extend that deadline.

Two junior House members, Reps. Will Hurd, R-Texas, and Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., said Monday they’d agreed to a plan that Hurd said could serve as a “foundation” for bipartisan bargainers seeking an immigration compromise. Congressional aides said party leaders had been kept informed of their work, but the proposals’ impact on ongoing talks was unclear.

Their measure would let certain Dreamers ultimately get permanent or conditional residence, and some could eventually qualify for citizenship. It also directs the government to deploy technology to control the border by 2020 and submit a plan to Congress detailing physical barriers and other steps that could be used.

On other topics, Pelosi sought to steer clear of any boomlet for a presidential campaign for media mogul Oprah Winfrey, who electrified a Hollywood audience at Sunday night’s Golden Globes awards, though she used the question to take a shot at Trump: “I will say this: Oprah has read books.”

Likewise, she steered away from questions raised about Trump’s mental health and fitness as president in the wake of a scathing assessment by author Michael Wolff, who claims Trump aides do not feel he is up to the job of president. Trump himself has called the book “phony” and said it was “full of lies.”

“I’m not going down that path” Pelosi said. “This is a strange situation. People have known it for a while. Now there’s a book.”
…

Connecting with rural Americans, President Donald Trump on Monday hailed his tax overhaul as a victory for family farmers and pitched his vision to expand access to broadband internet, a cornerstone of economic development in the nation’s heartland.

“Those towers are going to go up and you’re going to have great, great broadband,” Trump told the annual convention of the American Farm Bureau Federation.

“Farm country is God’s country,” he declared.

Trump became the first president in a quarter-century to address the federation’s convention, using the trip to Nashville as a backdrop for a White House report that included proposals to stimulate a segment of the national economy that has lagged behind others. His Southern swing also included a stop in Atlanta for the national college football championship game.

Joined by Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and a group of Tennessee lawmakers, Trump said most of the benefits of the tax legislation are “going to working families, small businesses, and who – the family farmer.”

The package Trump signed into law last month provides generous tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans, and more modest reductions for middle- and low-income individuals and families. 

The president vastly inflated the value of the package in his speech, citing “a total of $5.5 trillion in tax cuts, with most of those benefits going to working families, small businesses and who? The family farmer.” The estimated value of the tax cuts is actually $1.5 trillion for families and businesses because of cuts in deductions and the use of other steps to generate offsetting tax revenue.

Tax reports

The president warned against voting for Democrats in this November’s midterm elections, saying they would undo the tax bill. “If the Democrats ever had the chance, the first thing they would do is get rid of it and raise up your taxes,” Trump said.

Trump also highlighted the doubling of the threshold for the estate tax – earning a standing ovation from the audience – and the ability for companies to immediately write off the full cost of new equipment. He said that “in every decision we make, we are honoring America’s proud farming legacy.”

Central to the report is the assessment that the “provider for an equalization among rural America is connectivity; that high-speed internet should remain a high priority for the administration,” said Ray Starling, the special assistant to the president for agriculture, trade and food assistance. The report calls for expediting federal permitting to allow for broadband internet expansion in rural areas and for making it easier for providers to place cell towers on federal lands.

Trump signed an executive order following his speech on rural broadband, aimed at easing the process to put private broadband infrastructure on federal property. The White House described the move, along with a memorandum directing the Interior Department to work on a plan to increase access to their facilities for broadband deployment, as “incremental,” but the start of an effort to make progress on the issue.

White House officials said all work was in the early stages and did not offer an overall timeline. Officials noted the price tag for rural broadband expansion has been estimated at $80 billion, but said the administration had not determined a cost.

The president also took credit for working to roll back the Obama administration’s interpretation of the Clean Water Act, which had greatly expanded the list of bodies of water subject to federal regulation. The Farm Bureau ran a public relations campaign against the rule and called it “dangerous and unlawful.”

The Agriculture and Rural Prosperity Task Force report highlights the importance of addressing the opioid crisis, which has disproportionately affected rural communities.

Trump also called on Congress to renew the farm bill this year, adding he supports providing for federal crop insurance. The massive federal legislation funds federal agriculture and food policy, and it offers assistance to rural communities.

Trump visits Atlanta

From Nashville, Trump was traveling to Atlanta to watch Alabama’s Crimson Tide and Georgia’s Bulldogs face off Monday night in the College Football Playoff National Championship. The game is set for Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the new $1.5 billion home field of the Atlanta Falcons.

Before departing for the game, Trump referenced his ongoing defense of the American flag and the national anthem, saying there was enough space for people to express their views. “We love our flag and we love our anthem and we want to keep it that way,” he said.

ESPN, which is televising the game, said Sunday that it appeared unlikely Trump would be interviewed during the game. Stephanie Druley, ESPN senior vice president for events and studio programs, said the network had been in contact with the White House and she did not “get the sense” that an interview would be arranged.

Trump criticized ESPN in October in response to “SportsCenter” host Jemelle Hill tweeting that the president was a “white supremacist.”

A network often seeks an interview with the president when he attends a game it’s televising.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump and aides on Sunday heaped scorn on a new book detailing his chaotic first year in the White House and suggestions that he is not mentally fit to be the U.S. leader.

Trump, in a Twitter comment, said, “I’ve had to put up with the Fake News from the first day I announced that I would be running for President. Now I have to put up with a Fake Book, written by a totally discredited author.”

Trump’s ire was aimed at journalist Michael Wolff, who, based on 200 interviews with Trump and numerous of his aides, described a dysfunctional White House in his book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, released Friday.

Trump said that three decades ago, another Republican president, Ronald Reagan, was also faced with stories questioning his mental acuity “and handled it well. So will I!”

Stephen Miller, Trump’s top policy adviser, assailed Trump’s former chief strategist Stephen Bannon for comments in the book alleging that Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner, now a key White House adviser, and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort were “treasonous” and “unpatriotic” for meeting in the midst of the 2016 presidential campaign with Russians claming to have incriminating information about Trump’s challenger, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Miller on CNN described Bannon as an “angry, vindictive person” whose “grotesque comments are so out of touch with reality.” Miller said the “whole White House staff is deeply disappointed in his comments” in the book.

Miller said the Wolff book “is best understood as a work of poorly written fiction. The author is a garbage author of a garbage book. …The betrayal of the president in this book is so contrary to the reality of those who work with him.”

CNN anchor Jake Tapper abruptly ended the interview with Miller, calling him “obsequious” and concerned only about pleasing “one viewer,” Trump.

A short time later, Trump tweeted, “Jake Tapper of Fake News CNN just got destroyed in his interview with Stephen Miller of the Trump Administration. Watch the hatred and unfairness of this CNN flunky!”

Two other Trump administration officials, United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and Central Intelligence Agency director Mike Pompeo also expressed support for Trump’s performance on Sunday news talk shows, a day after the U.S. leader described himself as “a very stable genius.”

Haley told ABC News that based on her once-a-week visits to the White House, “No one disrespects the president.” Pompeo told Fox News, “I have watched him take the information that the intelligence community delivers and translate that into policies that are of enormous benefit to America.”

Bannon has not disputed quotes Wolff attributed to him in the book but on Sunday voiced some regret over his role.

He told the Axios news site: “Donald Trump Jr. is both a patriot and a good man. He has been relentless in his advocacy for his father and the agenda that has helped turn our country around.”

Bannon, who returned to Breitbart News, an alt-right website with nationalist views, after leaving the White House, also avowed his continuing support for Trump.

“My support is also unwavering for the president and his agenda,” Bannon said, “as I have shown daily in my national radio broadcasts, on the pages of Breitbart News and in speeches and appearances from Tokyo and Hong Kong to Arizona and Alabama.

“I regret that my delay,” he added, “in responding to the inaccurate reporting regarding Don Jr. has diverted attention from the president’s historical accomplishments in the first year of his presidency.”

Trump has claimed that he “authorized Zero Access” to Wolff at the White House to do his research for the book.

But Wolff told NBC that the president, personally, if reluctantly, allowed him to roam the corridors of the White House and conduct interviews with his aides, at one point saying, “Who cares about a book?”

But by Sunday, two days after its release, Fire and Fury was the top-selling book on the Amazon online retail site.

 
…

President Donald Trump says he’s done campaigning for insurgents challenging incumbent Republican members of Congress.

Trump told reporters after meeting GOP House and Senate leaders at Camp David on Saturday that he’s planning a robust schedule of campaigning for the 2018 midterm elections and that includes involvement in the Republican primaries. He’ll campaign for incumbents, he said, and “anybody else that has my kind of thinking.”

But after a stinging loss in Alabama, Trump said he’s done supporting challengers, declaring: “I don’t see that happening.” Trump had supported Roy Moore after he won the GOP primary. Moore’s defeat in the subsequent special election handed Democrats another seat in the Senate.

Trump spent much of Friday and Saturday morning hashing out his 2018 agenda with GOP House and Senate leaders, top White House aides and select Cabinet members at the presidential retreat at Camp David. He described the sessions as perhaps transformative in certain ways.

A long list of high-stakes topics were on the agenda, from national security and infrastructure to the budget and 2018 midterm election strategy. Though Democrats were not included in the discussions, the leaders — some dressed casually in jeans, khakis and sweaters — said they were optimistic that more Democrats would be working with Republicans.

“We hope that 2018’ll be a year of more bipartisan cooperation,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters, predicting a “significant number of Democrats” would be interested in supporting Trump’s agenda.

It’s a reflection of reality: Republicans hold a razor-thin majority in the Senate and will need Democrats’ support to push through most legislation. It’s unclear, however, the extent to which Trump is willing to work with Democrats to achieve that goal.

Trump, for instance, declared Saturday that he will not sign legislation protecting hundreds of thousands of young people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children unless Congress agrees to fund his promised border wall as well as overhaul the legal immigration system. Trump last year ended the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shielded more than 700,000 people from deportation and gave then the right to work legally in the country, and gave Congress until March to find a fix.

Trump said any deal must stop immigrants from being able to sponsor their extended family members and must end the diversity visa lottery, which draws immigrants from under-represented parts of a world. That’s in addition to funding for the southern border wall, a deeply unpopular idea among Democrats.

The administration on Friday unveiled a 10-year, $18 billion request for the wall that roiled the immigration talks and infuriated Democrats who’ve spent months in negotiations, increasing the prospect of a government shutdown.

But Trump appeared oblivious to the anger on Saturday. “We hope that we’re going to be able to work out an arrangement with the Democrats,” he said. “It’s something, certainly, that I’d like to see happen.”

Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, the House majority whip, also expressed guarded optimism when he returned to his state after the retreat. “For a few weeks now it seems like there’s the ability to get an agreement reached but none has been finalized yet,” he said of the effort to protect the young immigrants who came under Obama’s program. “I think the framework is there and the president is fully engaged.”

Trump also appeared Saturday to back away from efforts to overhaul the welfare system, which just weeks ago had been identified as one of the White House’s top two legislative priorities, along with a massive infrastructure investment plan.

McConnell had argued that welfare reform was a no-go given Democratic opposition. And Trump appeared to have come around.

“It’s a subject that’s very dear to our heart,” Trump said. “We’ll try and do something in a bipartisan way. Otherwise, we’ll be holding it for a little bit later.”

Republicans are eager to build on the victory achieved late last year with the overhaul of the nation’s tax code. But before moving on to infrastructure and other items, Trump and his GOP allies first must navigate a tricky landscape of leftover legislation from last year that promises to test party unity in the coming weeks.

The need to work with Democrats on a spending package, for instance, is sure to whip up opposition from many conservatives to a hoped-for catchall spending bill slated for next month.

The Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains provides a woodsy respite from Washington. It’s a place where presidents and lawmakers can bond over meals, hikes and movie nights.

“There’s a feeling here that you don’t have in very many places. There was a bonding,” Trump said of the visit.

Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly, told reporters Saturday that lawmakers and top White House officials had enjoyed “a couple of glasses of wine together last night” and gathered with Trump to watch the new movie “The Greatest Showman,” starring Hugh Jackman. (He described it as “very, very entertaining.”)

Politics, too, were on the agenda, with talks about the midterm elections. Republicans are at risk of losing the majority they’ve held in the House since 2011, and could also lose seats in the Senate, though many more Democratic incumbents are up for re-election this year.

Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, became a self-styled leader of an insurgency against Republican incumbents, arguing that Trump’s agenda could only be passed with an influx of outsiders. But Bannon is on the outs with Trump and the president’s comments Saturday suggested he’s washing his hands of any such uprising. Trump said he needs more Republicans in Congress.

 
…

Iran’s parliament is set to hold a special session as soon as Sunday to discuss the anti-government protests that began Dec. 28 and continued through this week.

Iran’s ISNA news agency reported that Iran’s interior minister, head of intelligence and security council chief are all expected to attend. On the agenda are discussions of the root cause of the protests, as well as legal help for protesters jailed during the demonstrations.

The session was called by a group of reformist lawmakers, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. In a letter, those lawmakers called for legal assistance for the detained and condemned any outside “interference” in the protests, calling out the United States in particular.

U.S. President Donald Trump is set to decide next week whether to continue waiving sanctions on Iran that were suspended under the 2015 international deal on Iran’s nuclear program. The waiver must be renewed every 120 days, according to U.S. law. Trump could decide not to renew, putting U.S. trade sanctions back into effect.

In Europe, supporters of the anti-government protesters in Iran have been gathering to show their support in The Hague, Berlin, Hamburg, Stockholm, London and Paris.

At least 22 people have died in the protests, and more than 1,000 have been arrested. Hard-line cleric Ahmad Khatami told worshippers in a sermon Friday that those arrested should be treated as enemies of Islam, particularly those who have burned the flag. 

“There should be no mercy for them,” he said.

Government official Mansour Gholami has told reporters that about a quarter of those arrested have been released, but he did not provide exact numbers.

UN Security Council

The United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting Friday at the urging of the United States.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley called the protests “a powerful exhibition of brave people who have become so fed up with their oppressive government that they are willing to risk their lives in protests.” She also addressed the Iranian government, saying, “the U.S. is watching what you do.”

In response, the Iranian ambassador, Gholamali Khoshroo, said it is a “discredit” to the Security Council to hold such a meeting on Iran in the face of the conflicts taking place in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East. He, along with a number of Security Council members, said the United States is meddling in Iran’s domestic affairs.

After the meeting, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted, “The UNSC rebuffed the U.S.’s naked attempt to hijack its mandate. … Another FP (foreign policy) blunder for the Trump administration.”

Still, U.S. intelligence officials warn Tehran is at a crossroads, noting the protests are the biggest outpouring of public discontent since Iranians took to the streets in 2009 following a disputed presidential election.

“The protests are symptomatic of long-standing grievances that have been left to fester,” an intelligence official told VOA on condition of anonymity. “Will it address the legitimate concerns of its people or suppress the voices of its own populace?”

“What is clear is that these concerns are not going away,” the official said.

Critics of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani say he has abandoned the poor, pointing to rising prices for key commodities like fuel, bread and eggs.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated Saturday that he would not support legislation to protect hundreds of thousands of immigrants from deportation unless it included funding for a border wall and eliminates the visa lottery program and extended-family-based immigration.

“We all want DACA to happen, but we also want great security for our country,” Trump said of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which expires in March.

Trump spoke as he met with Republican lawmakers and members of his Cabinet to establish the administration’s 2018 legislative priorities and to devise a strategy for midterm elections in November. They were gathered at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland.

“We went into DACA and how we’re going to do it, and we hope that we’re going be able to work out an arrangement with the Democrats. I think it’s something that they’d like to see happen,” Trump told reporters.

In September, Trump rescinded DACA, which was instituted by former President Barack Obama. It protected nearly 800,000 immigrants from deportation, allowing them to legally live and work in the United States.

Trump gave Congress until March 5 to agree on legislation that would allow equivalent protections to those offered under DACA, provided the measure included funding for a wall along the border with Mexico, ended the visa lottery program, and ended extended-family-based immigration, in which immigrants from a particular area follow others from that area to specific U.S. cities or neighborhoods.

Trump also said the drug crisis in America had reached unprecedented levels and vowed his administration would make a “big dent” in resolving the problem this year.

“One of the things we are discussing very powerfully is drugs pouring into this country and how to stop it, because it’s at a point over the last number of years … it’s never been like this,” he said.

Trump said the drug problem is less difficult to deal with in countries that “take it very seriously, and they’re very harsh” — an apparent signal the U.S. is preparing to take a much tougher approach. 

“We are going to be working on that very, very hard this year, and I think we’re going make a big dent into the drug problem,” he said.

Trump said the Republican leaders also discussed the nation’s infrastructure needs and a variety of military issues.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who was among those in attendance, did not elaborate on priorities for the the new year. But he told reporters 2017 would be “a tough year to top” and added, “If you are like those of us here at the podium, you’d like to see America be a right-of-center country.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan said rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure and bolstering the military would be priorities this year, as well as ensuring “that everyone enjoys the economic growth that’s to come.”

Republican legislative priorities also will include the budget, welfare reform and the midterm elections. Additionally, Republicans have been eager to cut benefit programs like welfare and food stamps.

Congress must work quickly, however, to approve a funding plan by January 19 to avoid a government shutdown.

Republican priorities could be stopped in their tracks if the Democrats are successful during the midterm elections.

Trump has been facing increasing criticism about his presidential style. He begins the new year with the release of a bombshell book, Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff, that describes the president as being like a child and in need of psychiatric help.

It remains to be seen how the book and other accounts of Trump’s mental status will affect the upcoming elections.

All 435 members of the House and one-third of the 100 members of the Senate will be up for re-election in 2018. 
…

Nearly 200,000 Salvadoran beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, anxiously wait as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security weighs a decision whether to end the designated security program. Given precedent with beneficiaries from Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan, TPS holders from El Salvador worry they may be next on Trump’s chopping block, despite a 16-year history of integration across multigeneration households. VOA spoke with one mixed-status family at their home in Virginia.
…

‘Fire and Fury,’ a new tell-all book about intrigue in the Trump White House, is the talk of political Washington. VOA White House correspondent Peter Heinlein reports that President Donald Trump is said to be furious with former adviser Steve Bannon, who is quoted as making some damning comments about the president and his family.
…

The Trump administration this week has not shied away from expressing support for the thousands of Iranians who have taken to the streets to protest government corruption and economic hardship. And while U.S. officials have threatened targeted sanctions against those who crack down on demonstrators, President Donald Trump is facing a Jan. 13 deadline on whether to reimpose economic sanctions against Iran that were suspended under the 2015 nuclear deal. VOA’s Aru Pande has more from Washington.
…

The United States says it is suspending security aid assistance to Pakistan until the country takes action against terrorist organizations, including the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network, a move that was criticized by Islamabad. VOA State Department Correspondent Nike Ching reports.
…

President Donald Trump directed his White House counsel to tell Attorney General Jeff Sessions to not recuse himself from the Justice Department’s investigation into potential ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The conversation between Don McGahn, the president’s White House counsel, and Sessions took place on the president’s orders and occurred just before the attorney general announced that he would step aside from the ongoing inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, according to a person with knowledge of the interaction. Two other people confirmed details of the conversation between McGahn and Sessions.

All three people spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press to avoid publicly discussing an ongoing investigation.

​Mueller aware of conversation

The episode is known to special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutors and is likely of interest to them as they look into whether Trump’s actions as president, including the May firing of FBI Director James Comey, amount to improper efforts to obstruct the Russia investigation. Investigators recently concluded a round of interviews with current and former White House officials, including McGahn.

The New York Times first reported that Trump had McGahn lobby Sessions against a recusal.

Sessions announced on March 2 that he would recuse himself from that probe. He said at the time that he should not oversee an investigation into a campaign for which he was an active and vocal supporter. The recusal also followed the revelation that he had had two previously undisclosed interactions during the 2016 campaign with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

​McGahn speaks with Sessions 

But soon before the announcement, McGahn spoke to Sessions by phone and urged him against recusing himself from the investigation.

During the conversation, according to people familiar with the matter, McGahn argued to Sessions that there was no reason or basis at that time for him to recuse. One person said McGahn also told him that recusal would do nothing to resolve concerns over whether Sessions had given a misleading answer at his confirmation hearing weeks earlier when he said he had not had any contacts with Russians.

Sessions ultimately declined the urging, and McGahn accepted the conclusion of officials who believed that Sessions should recuse.
…

Michael Wolff, an American author, essayist and journalist, has written Fire and Fury, a book that portrays a chaotic initial year for the presidency of Donald Trump. What’s his background?

Michael Wolff

Age: 64

Early life: Wolff was born in New Jersey to a father who worked in advertising and a mother who was a newspaper reporter. He attended Columbia University in New York and worked as a copy boy at The New York Times while in school. 

The journalist: Wolff published his first book of essays, White Kids, in 1979. He was most recently a media critic and columnist for USA Today, Hollywood Reporter, New York Magazine and, before that, Vanity Fair and Newser. 

In 2011, he briefly was at the helm of AdWeek magazine, but left after less than a year. 

The author: In 1997, he wrote the bestseller Burn Rate, about his early dotcom company Wolff New Media.

In 2004 he published Autumn of the Moguls, about the decline of mainstream media that would occur later in the decade.

He was perhaps best known for his 2009 biography of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, The Man Who Owns the News.

Accolades: Wolff has won two National Magazine Awards, which recognize excellence in the magazine industry in both print and digital mediums.

One of the awards was for a series of columns he wrote from the Middle East at the start of the Iraq War in 2003. 

Controversies: Wolff’s work has often drawn criticism from his fellow journalists as well as his subjects. Just before the publication of The Man Who Owns the News, Murdoch took issue with several parts of the book, just as U.S. President Donald Trump has over Wolff’s latest work. 

In a 2004 cover story for The New Republic, reporter Michelle Cottle characterized Wolff’s writing by saying that “even Wolff acknowledges that conventional reporting is not his bag.” Rather, she said, “he absorbs the atmosphere and gossip swirling around him at cocktail parties, on the street, and especially during those long lunches.”
…

So much for a new year, new start.

For Donald Trump, that energy-sapping 2017 cocktail of blistering presidential tweets, salacious White House infighting and jaw-dropping feuds with foreign adversaries has given way to, well, more of the same.

“We are off and running,” said Josh Holmes, a longtime adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “It’s amazing that the pace that we set in 2017 has continued with equal vigor.”

Indeed, the first three days of 2018 – yes, just three days – brought a new array of targets for the president and the return of some familiar foes. As part of a 17-tweet barrage on Tuesday, Trump picked a fight with the “deep state” within his own government that he believes is trying to undermine his presidency, and he raised the specter of war with North Korea by asserting that his “Nuclear Button” was bigger than that of Pyongyang’s leader Kim Jong Un.

By Wednesday, Trump had turned on his former top adviser Steve Bannon, accusing him of having “lost his mind.” The scathing attack, issued with the formality of an official White House statement, followed the publication of excerpts from an unflattering book in which Bannon accuses the president’s namesake son of holding a “treasonous” meeting with a Russian lawyer during the campaign.

Across Washington, holiday cheer was suddenly a distant memory.

“I feel exhausted,” said Rick Tyler, a Republican strategist who advised Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in his campaign against Trump in the 2016 GOP presidential primary. “I feel like the year has got to be over by now.”

Trump rattled Washington in his first year in office by blowing past the guardrails that have traditionally governed what a president does and doesn’t say and by frequently picking fights that seem far less consequential than the weighty issues that land on a commander in chief’s desk. He needled friendly foreign leaders like Britain’s Theresa May, accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping his New York skyscraper and spread rumors about media personalities he deemed overly critical.

To be sure, no one in Washington expected Trump to be a different man when he returned from Christmas vacation at his estate in Palm Beach, Florida. By now, Washington has largely come to grips with the reality of a president who often starts and ends his day with tweets on topics that are a mystery to even his closest aides until they pop up on their smartphones. And while some Trump advisers have grown beleaguered by the president’s seemingly insatiable appetite for a feud, few expect that to change or put much effort into trying to hold him back.

Yet there was still a hope, both in the White House and on Capitol Hill, that the president might return to Washington eager to build on the passage of a sweeping Republican overhaul of the tax code in the waning days of December. The bill passed with only Republican votes, and polling shows the complicated legislation is deeply unpopular with Americans, leaving the president and his party with a tall task if they hope to ride the tax overhaul to electoral victories in the midterm elections.

Trump has tweeted a handful of messages in 2018 about the tax bill. But he generated far more attention with his missives taking aim at the media and his unfounded claim of credit for the fact that no commercial airlines crashed in 2017.

Some Republicans cringed. Tyler said that in the early days of 2018, the White House had already “lost the communications war over what tax policy is designed to do.” And he put the blame squarely on Trump, saying the president “cannot be trusted with his own message.”

On Capitol Hill, where the Senate returned to work, most GOP lawmakers girded themselves for another year of what has become their familiar ritual: carefully critiquing Trump’s most sensational comments without criticizing the president himself. Asked about Trump’s North Korea button bluster, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said simply: “It’s probably better not to tweet about such things.”

Just 361 days to go until the calendar flips again.
…

Immigration is the focus for President Donald Trump’s meeting with some Republican senators as he pushes his overhaul plan.

Trump wants to shift from a family-based immigration system to one based on merit, as part of any deal to extend legal status for young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

Trump ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program last year. He set a March deadline for Congress to act.

A White House spokesman, Hogan Gidley, says an updated approach to immigration should “serve the needs of American workers, families and taxpayers.”

The senators expected at Thursday’s meeting are John Cornyn of Texas, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, James Lankford of Oklahoma and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

 
…

The United States and South Korea have decided to delay joint military exercises until after the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics next month, according to officials from both countries.

South Korea’s Blue House (executive office) said the decision came during a phone call between U.S. President Donald Trump and President Moon Jae-in earlier on Thursday.

A White House statement said both leaders “agreed to de-conflict the Olympics and our military exercises so that [the] United States and Republic of Korea forces can focus on ensuring the security of the games.”

Earlier on Thursday, Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Robert Manning said, “The Department of Defense supports the president’s decision and what is in the best interest of the ROK (Republic of Korea) — U.S. Alliance.”

The annual joint military exercises known as Foal Eagle are usually held between February and April and are one of the world’s largest such drills.

The exercises combine ground, air, naval and special operations to increase readiness to defend South Korea and the region. North Korea routinely objects to the exercises.

During Thursday’s phone call, the White House said President Trump and President Moon “agreed to continue the campaign of maximum pressure against North Korea and to not repeat mistakes of the past.”

Earlier, Trump tweeted his “firm” and “strong” leadership was the impetus for a scheduled resumption of talks between North and South Korea.

On Wednesday, North and South Korea reopened a cross-border hotline that had been shut down since 2016 after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un offered to send a team to the Winter Olympic Games hosted by the South next month. After the reopening, South Korea confirmed that officials from both countries talked for 20 minutes, according to the Associated Press.

Seoul also responded to Kim’s overture by proposing high-level talks next Tuesday to discuss matters of mutual interest, including the North’s possible participation in the Winter Olympic Games the South is hosting in February.

North Korea has drawn increased scrutiny from the international community in recent months because of a number of missile launches and its sixth and most powerful nuclear test.

Pyongyang has dismissed new sanctions and tough talk from the Trump administration as it continues to develop its weapons program, which North Korea has said is being developed to defend against U.S. aggression.
…

President Donald Trump has dissolved a government commission tasked with investigating what he says was massive voter fraud.

A Trump spokesperson said Wednesday that “despite substantial evidence” of fraud, states have not cooperated with the commission’s demands for voter lists.

“Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, today I signed an executive order to dissolve the commission,” Trump said through his spokesperson.

Trump said he would have the Department of Homeland Security “review these issues and determine the next course of action.”

Trump won the White House in 2016 by winning the Electoral College, but he got 3 million fewer popular votes than Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Trump reacted by forming the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. He insisted Clinton won the popular vote because she got the support of millions of people who were either unregistered to vote or who voted multiple times.

Trump has yet to present any evidence to back up his charges of voter fraud.

Only a handful of states turned over voter rolls to the commission to use in its investigation.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump’s tweet warning North Korea’s leader that he has a “Nuclear Button” that is “much bigger & more powerful” than Kim Jong Un’s set off a series of sharp reactions Wednesday on Capitol Hill as the Senate gaveled in for its first day of business in 2018.

“It’s embarrassing, it’s counterproductive and it’s dangerous,” said Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, the Foreign Relations Committee’s top Democrat.

“It puts the president of the United States in the position of being a fool or deadly serious [about ordering a nuclear strike],” Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island told VOA. “We don’t need that.”

But Republican Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming had a different view about the wisdom of the provocative presidential tweet, saying: “We finally have a president who is actually dealing with the problem at hand, instead of what we’ve seen previously, which was ignoring the problem.”

Vice President Mike Pence echoed that view in an exclusive interview with VOA on Wednesday.

“President Trump has provided a kind of clear leadership on the world stage that has made immeasurable progress particularly with regard to North Korea,” Pence said. “President Trump made it clear [that] America will not be bullied, America will not be threatened.”

On Tuesday, Trump tweeted: “North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.’ Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”

No such button

Nuclear experts have pointed out that, in fact, no such physical button exists. Rather, U.S. presidents have access at all times to communications equipment for ordering a nuclear launch.

The system allows America to respond promptly to a nuclear attack from abroad. A growing number of Democrats have insisted that a preemptive U.S. nuclear strike against North Korea or any other adversary would require authorization from Congress as an act of war.

“He [Trump] doesn’t have a [nuclear] button he can use without us. No wars without Congress, period,” Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia told VOA. “We [lawmakers] better make sure we hold him accountable for that and give him a little Constitutional education.”

Late last year, Democrats introduced a bill that would prohibit a U.S. president “from using the Armed Forces to conduct a first-use nuclear strike unless such strike is conducted pursuant to a congressional declaration of war expressly authorizing such strike.”

At a recent Senate hearing examining presidential nuclear authority, Republicans cautioned against creating any doubts on the world stage about America’s nuclear deterrent and its determination to respond to threats.

“Every single word that’s been uttered here this morning in this hearing is going to be analyzed in Pyongyang, and they are going to look very carefully at how we, the American people, view this,” declared Senator James Risch of Idaho.

“One of the things that voters think about when they elect someone to the office of president of the United States is whether or not they want to entrust them with this [nuclear] capability,” said Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.

Odd timing

Trump’s tweet came amid tentative steps to reestablish and broaden communications between North Korea and South Korea.

North Korea reopened a cross-border communications channel with South Korea on Wednesday, the first significant sign the bitter rivals are seeking to improve relations after years of rising tensions.

The sudden thaw in frosty ties between North and South Korea began Monday, when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un used his annual New Year’s Day address to call for direct talks with Seoul and to announce his willingness to send a negotiating team to South Korea to discuss his country’s possible participation next month in the upcoming Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

Seoul responded Tuesday by offering to hold talks with North Korean diplomats next week, January 9, in Panmunjom. The meeting would be the first high-level inter-Korean talks since December 2015.

Democrats accused Trump of sabotaging diplomacy at a critical moment.

“The president always undercuts diplomacy,” Kaine said. “If you undermine diplomacy, you raise the risk of unnecessary war.”

Pence, by contrast, argued that, under Trump’s leadership, an unprecedented amount of non-military pressure is being brought to bear on North Korea.

“After decades of North Korea stalling and ignoring the world community and continuing to develop nuclear and ballistic missiles, we’re now literally beginning to see movement among nations in the region. China is doing more than ever before,” the vice president said.

While some Republican lawmakers simply ignore Trump’s most provocative tweets, Democrats continue to blast the president’s social media messaging.

“I don’t let my 11-year-old have a Twitter account, and I would suggest that somebody in the White House might want to do a better job of controlling the president’s Twitter account,” New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich told VOA.
…

Firefighters near New York City rushed to the home of Bill and Hillary Clinton on Wednesday after a fire broke out on their property.

A Clinton family spokesman said the blaze occurred in a building used by the Secret Service at the Chappaqua property, and not in the house where the former president and former secretary of state live.

The Clintons were not home at the time. The spokesman said, “All is OK.”

Chappaqua is about 64 kilometers (40 miles) northeast of New York City.
…

The top American commander for the Middle East wants a more aggressive Afghan military pressuring Taliban and other insurgents over the normally quieter months of Afghanistan’s winter, and then quickly going on the offensive in the spring. It’s all part of a plan the United States hopes will change the course of a war now entering its 17th year.

Gen. Joseph Votel of U.S. Central Command said an influx of new American trainers can help escalate the fight. They’ll be operating with Afghan units, closer to the front lines and at greater risk, but Votel said U.S. commanders will ensure American and allied forces have adequate protection.

The goal is to get the Afghan military moving on its military campaign sooner, rather than later.

The United States wants the “focus on offensive operations and we’ll look for a major effort to gain the initiative very quickly as we enter into the fighting season,” Votel said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

Afghan forces must “keep the pressure on all the time and work to gain the upper hand as quickly as we can. So that as we get into this next fighting season we can build on the initiative,” he said.

The Trump administration’s Afghanistan strategy gives the U.S. military greater authority to launch offensive attacks against a resilient Taliban and an emerging Islamic State affiliate. The plan, announced in August, was designed to reverse a stalemate in America’s longest war. It specifically eliminates the Obama administration’s scheduled plan to withdraw U.S. forces, but includes no dramatic changes in an approach that has failed to stabilize the country or snuff out extremist groups operating from Afghan territory.

As 2018 begins, Afghanistan appears to be high on President Donald Trump’s agenda. On New Year’s Day, he slammed Afghanistan’s neighbor Pakistan in a tweet for “lies & deceit,” accusing the country of playing U.S. leaders for “fools” by not crushing militants in its territory. A major focus of Trump’s Afghanistan strategy is to persuade Pakistan to eliminate havens for the Taliban and other fighters.

‘Double game’

Pakistan summoned the U.S. ambassador and Islamic groups held rallies in major Pakistani cities in response.

“Pakistan has played a double game for years,” Nikki Haley, Trump’s U.N. envoy, said Tuesday, explaining that Washington was withholding $255 million in aid to Islamabad. “They work with us at times and they also harbor the terrorists that attack our troops in Afghanistan. That game is not acceptable.”

Pakistan’s Ambassador to the U.N. Maleeha Lodhi responded, “We have contributed and sacrificed the most in fighting international terrorism and carried out the largest counterterrorism operation anywhere in the world.”

Lodhi said the U.S. “should not shift the blame for their own mistakes and failures onto others. We can review our cooperation if it is not appreciated.”

Afghan forces

On the Afghan side of the border, Washington is trying to build a tougher national military.

Votel said as the coalition builds up the Afghan Air Force and trains more security forces, the Afghans will become better fighters. “By the time they get to the next fight,” he said, “they will be able to really present a significant offensive capability.”

But it’s hardly the first time the American military has vowed to shape up the U.S.-backed army into a force that can defeat the Taliban, al-Qaida, IS and others. Nor does Trump’s approach represent the first time a frustrated president has pumped troops into the country to turn the situation around. There are now as many as 16,000 U.S. forces in the country — roughly double what Trump inherited — and a special training unit is scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan early this year.

When then-President Barack Obama took office in 2009, he authorized a surge of U.S. forces to Afghanistan that took the total there to about 100,000. The goal was to tamp down a resurgent Taliban and train and expand Afghan security forces. The plan centered on forcing the Taliban to the peace table and ending the war by the time Obama left office.

The plan never worked, despite the mission meeting several celebrated benchmarks: Obama ended combat operations in 2014, curtailed offensive strikes and set deadlines for a full U.S. troop withdrawal. And as the U.S. and NATO forces pulled back, the Taliban stepped up attacks and regained ground, while an IS faction carved out its own foothold. Obama ended his presidency leaving more than 8,000 U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Beyond boosting troop numbers, Trump has granted his generals’ wishes for fewer combat restrictions, greater authority for commanders and no withdrawal deadline.

Peace efforts

Next year will be the first test of the policy. The Taliban currently controls as much as half of the country.

James Stavridis, a retired Navy admiral who served as the top U.S. commander for NATO from 2009 until 2013, said the ultimate goal in Afghanistan remains the same: Pushing the Taliban into seeking peace negotiations.

“There is a slightly better than even chance that there are some new factors which move us toward the possibility of a successful outcome,” said Stavridis, now dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Those changes, he said, include the elimination of troop withdrawal timelines and Taliban fatigue.

“I think they’re tired, too. This is also a 17-year war for them,” Stavridis said, but suggested any settlement will require compromise. “Is this going to be a sweeping victory? No. But I think the odds are much higher of getting them to the negotiating table.”

Votel, too, said he believes efforts are trending in the right direction, as Afghanistan’s military replaces older commanders with younger officers. Recruitment is being maintained at a rapid pace.

But as winter arrives, Votel said the Afghan army must stay on the offense and prepare for greater fighting when the weather improves.

“We frequently talk about these fighting seasons, but as you know the fighting never actually ends,” Votel said.
…

One of the top U.S. government officials working on refugee issues announced her impending retirement on Tuesday, and refugee advocates expressed concern about the fate of the country’s resettlement program which faces mounting pressure from the Trump administration.

Barbara Strack, a career official and chief of the Refugee Affairs Division at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, did not specify when she will leave her post, but USCIS spokesman R. Carter Langston said it would be in January.

“It’s something I’ve been planning towards for a long time, and it’s not driven by policy considerations,” Strack said. “I will deeply miss the colleagues and friendships that I’m leaving behind, and the important mission of refugee resettlement. It’s been a privilege to be part of this community for the last 12 years, working to make the U.S. refugee resettlement program robust and secure.”

Advocates expressed concern at the timing of Strack’s retirement, saying it could further hamper U.S. refugee admissions. It was unclear immediately who would replace her.

“USCIS is grateful to Barbara Strack for her 26 years of distinguished federal service,” Langston said.

The Refugee Affairs Division, which Strack oversees, includes dozens of officers charged with interviewing refugees abroad for resettlement in the United States.

The Trump administration has slashed the number of refugees allowed into the country and put in place new vetting and security requirements that have created an additional barrier.Last year, the administration said it planned to divert some refugee officers to instead interview asylum applicants already in the United States, in an effort to cut down on a burgeoning backlog of asylum cases.

Administration officials cited the asylum backlog as one reason it was necessary to cut this year’s refugee admissions cap to 45,000, the lowest level since the modern U.S. refugee program was established in 1980.

Advocates for resettlement and some U.S. officials have expressed alarm at what they see as a slowdown in trips abroad known as circuit rides, in which USCIS officers interview refugees.

“The number of circuit rides has gone down drastically with currently only a few planned,” said Hans Van de Weerd, chair of Refugee Council USA, a coalition of non-governmental groups working on refugee issues. “Many more will need to be scheduled soon to resettle 45,000 refugees and we don’t have any information about whether they will.”

Langston did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the concerns over circuit rides, or how many had been scheduled so far in the fiscal year. A U.S. official said on condition of anonymity in November that trips had been planned for Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Tanzania and Burundi for the first quarter of the fiscal year.

Opponents of refugee resettlement say it raises national security risks to the United States and is expensive. Advocates say refugees are vetted thoroughly and end up being a boon to their new communities.
…

Inside a classroom on the campus of a community college in Dallas, a group of about two dozen women took turns sharing their names, hometowns and what they hoped would be their future titles.

Congresswoman. County judge. State representative.

It was part of a training held by EMILY’s List, an organization dedicated to electing women at all levels of government who support abortion rights. One of the presentation’s PowerPoint slides flashed a mock advertisement on the projector screen: “Help Wanted: Progressive Women Candidates.”

A record number of women appear to be answering that call, fueled largely by frustration on the Democratic side over the election of President Donald Trump and energized by Democratic women winning races in Virginia in November. Experts say 2018 is on track to be a historic year, with more women saying they are running at this point than ever before.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Stephanie Schriock, president of EMILY’s List. “Every day, dozens more women come to our website, come to our Facebook page and say, ‘I am mad as hell. I want to do something about it. What should I do now?’ ”

In the four weeks after the 2016 election, 1,000 women came to the group’s website to learn about running for office. That number has now surpassed 26,000. By comparison, the group was in contact with 960 women for the previous election cycle.

Whether all that enthusiasm will result in full-fledged campaigns and translate to gains in the number of women elected to office remains to be seen.

One-fifth of federal lawmakers

Although women are more than half the American population, they account for just a fifth of all U.S. representatives and senators, and one in four state lawmakers. They serve as governors of only six states and mayors in roughly 20 percent of the nation’s most populous cities.

For Sarah Riggs Amico, the executive chairwoman of a major auto hauling company, last year’s Women’s March in Atlanta ignited her interest in running for office.

“It was something that really lifted me up and made me want to demand better from my government,” said Amico, who recently announced plans to run for lieutenant governor in Georgia.

Sol Flores has been walking in marches with her mother in Chicago since she was a little girl, but never thought she would run for office. Now 44, Flores said she was enraged by policies put forward by the Trump administration and decided to jump into a crowded Democratic primary for Illinois’ 4th Congressional District.

Flores said her network of friends has been crucial to helping her navigate the realities of being a first-time candidate and the challenges of gathering signatures for qualifying and fundraising.

“Women are really good at this, saying, ‘Let’s sit down and figure this out. You raised your hand, and let’s win. Let’s go to Washington, D.C.,’ ” said Flores, the executive director of a nonprofit helping homeless families and at-risk youth.

The last time the U.S. saw a surge in women running for office was 1992, in the wake of Anita Hill’s testimony before an all-male U.S. Senate committee weighing the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. It was called the “Year of the Woman” because women were elected to the U.S. House and Senate in record numbers.

The number of women in office has held steady in recent years, but experts say conditions are ripe for an increase in 2018 — especially if more politicians are forced to step down or retire amid the growing #MeToo movement that began with accusations of sexual misconduct against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

Open seats

One U.S. senator and four congressmen have so far announced plans to retire or not seek re-election following allegations against them, presenting a prime opportunity for women to compete for their open seats. For example, seven women have expressed interest in an April special election for an Arizona congressional seat.

The increase in women candidates is largely being seen in U.S. House and governor’s races next year and driven primarily by Democrats, said Debbie Walsh, who leads the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. In addition to the 50 Democratic and 10 Republican congresswomen expected to run for re-election, there are 183 Democratic women and 14 Republican women running in primaries to challenge their current U.S. representatives.

These can be uphill races, but many of the women running say they were encouraged by what happened in Virginia in November, when 30 percent of the women who challenged their state representatives won.

Katie Hill is among those seeking to oust her local congressman, Republican Representative Steve Knight, in California’s 25th Congressional District, a key Democratic target this year.

As an advocate for the homeless, Hill recalled the joy she felt on the night of the 2016 election when voters in Los Angeles passed a $1.2 billion bond measure for housing and services for homeless people and those at risk of becoming homeless. But she said that was quickly tempered by the outcome of the presidential election.

“November made us all realize that our country is not where we need to be,” Hill said. “And that’s the point when people start to stand up and say, ‘If no one else is going to fix, I’m going to.’ ”

It’s not just Democrats. First-time Republican and Libertarian women candidates are also jumping into the mix.

Republicans launched an effort in 2012 that is focused on electing women. Under the “Right Women, Right Now” program, 390 new GOP women have been elected since then.

“Twenty-five percent of state legislators are women, and that’s clearly insufficient,” said Matt Walter, head of the Republican State Leadership Committee. “That’s a Democratic and Republican number, and something we really felt strongly was something we needed to change.”

‘Exactly what we need’

Tiffany Shedd, a lawyer for small businesses who lives on a farm in Eloy, Arizona, said she was talking with her husband one evening this year about the importance of having someone representing them in Congress who will fight for rural communities. She said he challenged her to run.

“I said, ‘I can’t run. What’s a person from a little town in Arizona doing running for Congress?’ ” Shedd said. “And then I thought, ‘Wow — that is exactly what we need.’ ”

She will be running in the Republican primary in the hopes of challenging Democratic Representative Tom O’Halleran in November.

On the state level, 36 governor’s races will be contested in 2018. The Center for American Women and Politics says 49 Democratic women, including two incumbents, and 28 Republican women have indicated they will run for those seats. There have never been more than nine women serving as governors at the same time.

Even if all the women who have reached out to groups such as EMILY’s List do not end up running next year, they are expected to play key roles in supporting those who do.

“This is the next decade of candidates,” Schriock said.
…

California lawmakers will grapple for the first time as a group with a growing sexual misconduct scandal when they return to Sacramento on Wednesday. 

The 2018 legislative year will bring debates over legislation to boost protections for victims and people who report sexual misconduct, as well as both chambers’ continued efforts to improve their own policies for handling misconduct. 

On the very first day back, the Senate must confront how to handle one of its members, Sen. Tony Mendoza, who has refused calls to step aside amid an investigation into his alleged inappropriate behavior toward young women who worked for him.

“This is certainly not something we thought we’d be working on,” Democratic Sen. Connie Leyva of Chino said. “We’re finally going to be able to get it right and make sure any injustices in the past we can correct and that moving forward, everyone who works in the Capitol can feel like they can come forward.”

That’s not all that’s on lawmakers’ plates. Within a week of their return, Gov. Jerry Brown will submit his final budget proposal, kicking off six months of negotiating on how California should raise and spend money. Proposals that stalled last year on bail reform, single-payer health care and expanding renewable energy also will be back for debate. 

​Still, sexual misconduct will be a dominant theme. A letter circulated in mid-October by lobbyists, lawmakers, legislative staffers and other political consultants cited a pervasive culture of harassment in California’s Capitol. Women eventually came forward with specific allegations that prompted Democratic Assemblymen Raul Bocanegra and Matt Dababneh, both of Los Angeles, to resign.

Mendoza, meanwhile, denies allegations against him and says an investigation will clear his name. But Republican Sen. Andy Vidak said he’ll move to expel Mendoza when the Senate reconvenes, setting up a potentially fraught showdown on the Senate floor. 

Legislatively, Republican Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez will bring forward for the fifth time a bill that would give whistleblower protections to legislative employees who report ethical violations, including sexual misconduct. The Senate has killed her bill four times. 

Dozens of women have said they do not report misbehavior by lawmakers or legislative staff because they are afraid of losing their jobs or facing other professional repercussions. Several former Mendoza staffers have accused the Senate of firing them because they reported his overtures to a young woman who worked for him, something the Senate and Mendoza deny. 

Melendez, of Lake Elsinore, has been tweeting the names of every lawmaker who has agreed to co-sponsor the measure as a means of ramping up pressure on the Senate. The bill has historically passed the Assembly with bipartisan support. 

Leyva, meanwhile, will introduce a bill that would ban nondisclosure agreements in sexual harassment settlements, both in the public and private sectors, which can stop the parties from speaking publicly about what led to the settlement. 

“Eliminating these secret settlements, the no-disclosure agreements, then the accused, the person who is doing the harassing, they have nowhere to hide,” Leyva said. “They have to stop their behavior.”

Two other planned Assembly bills would extend the period in which people can report sexual harassment claims at the state’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing and impose stricter rules for employers – including the Legislature – to track sexual harassment complaints. Democratic Assemblywoman Eloise Reyes of San Bernardino is backing both pieces of legislation. 

Reyes sits on the Assembly subcommittee tasked with rewriting the Legislature’s sexual harassment policies. She was sharply critical during a hearing last month on the Assembly’s policy of not tracking sexual harassment complaints, only investigations. She wants to mandate better tracking by the Legislature and other employers. 

“The only way that were going to know if there’s a pattern is if we keep track of this,” Reyes said.

Regarding the state budget, another top concern for lawmakers, the governor must submit his blueprint by Jan. 10. Lawmakers must send a final spending proposal to Brown, who is term-limited out of office, by mid-June. 

The Assembly has already staked out budget priorities, including providing health care for people living in the state illegally and expanding a tax credit for the working poor. The Senate hasn’t outlined its ideas. 
…

U.S. President Donald Trump is again accusing Pakistan of sheltering terrorists whom American forces are fighting in neighboring Afghanistan.

In his first Twitter message of 2018, Trump wrote, “The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help.  No more!”

Washington has long accused Islamabad, particularly its security institutions, of turning a blind eye or covertly helping the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network to stage cross-border attacks against Afghan and U.S.-led forces.

It is not immediately clear whether Trump is threatening to cut financial assistance to Pakistan.   

The United States suggested in August it would hold up $255 million in military assistance until Pakistan cracks down on extremists.

The U.S. Congress has authorized up to $700 million in a Coalition Support Fund to reimburse Pakistan for activities carried out in support of U.S. operations in Afghanistan.  

Pakistani Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif told the local Geo News television station, “We have already told the U.S. that we will not do more, so Trump’s “no more” does not hold any importance.”

The government late Monday summoned U.S. ambassador David Hale to the foreign ministry to protest and seek an explanation for Trump’s remarks, reported local media.

“I can confirm the Ambassador was asked to come to the Foreign Office tonight. He did and met with officials there. I don’t have any comment on the substance of the meeting, ” a U.S. embassy spokesman told VOA.

Meanwhile, an emergency meeting of the National Security Committee has also been convened for Wednesday where the country’s top civilian and military leadership will discuss the situation in the aftermath Trump’s statement.

Islamabad denies allegations it is harboring Afghan insurgents and instead complains anti-state militants are using the neighboring country for terrorist attacks against Pakistan.

Trump unveiled his new South Asia policy last August, in which Pakistan was blamed for providing “safe haven” to terrorists.

American officials have also warned that if Islamabad does not take actions against terrorist havens on Pakistan soil, Washington will do so unilaterally.

The Pakistan military last week warned Washington against any unilateral military action on its soil, saying U.S. allegations of terrorist sanctuaries in the country are “unfounded” and “no more valid” because “indiscriminate” security operations have targeted all terrorist groups.

“We have paid a huge price both in blood and treasure.  We have done enough and we cannot do anymore for anyone,” said the chief military spokesman, Major-General Asif Ghafoor.
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