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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that President Donald Trump’s administration did not give an adequate explanation for its plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, delivering a victory to New York state and others challenging the proposal.

The justices partly upheld a federal judge’s decision barring the question in a win for a group of states and immigrant rights organizations that challenged the plan. The mixed ruling does not definitively decide whether the question could be added at some point.

The Republican president’s administration had appealed to the Supreme Court after lower courts blocked the inclusion of the census question.

A group of states including New York and immigrant rights organizations sued to prevent the citizenship question from being included in the decennial population count. Opponents have said the question would instill fear in immigrant households that the information would be shared with law enforcement, deterring them from taking part.

White House Asserts Executive Privilege in Census Fight

Justice Department says Trump is asserting executive privilege over documents in fight over census question

The census, required by the U.S. Constitution, is used to allot seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and distribute some $800 billion in federal funds. The intent of the citizenship question, opponents said, is to manufacture a deliberate undercount of areas with high immigrant and Latino populations, costing Democratic-leaning regions seats in the House, benefiting Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.

The administration argued that adding a question requiring people taking part in the census to declare whether they are a citizen was needed to better enforce a voting rights law, a rationale that opponents called a pretext for a political motive.

Manhattan-based U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman ruled on Jan. 15 that the Commerce Department’s decision to add the question violated a federal law called the Administrative Procedure Act. Federal judges in Maryland and California also have issued rulings to block the question’s inclusion, saying it would violate the Constitution’s mandate to enumerate the population every 10 years.

Furman said the evidence showed that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross concealed his true motives for adding the question and that he and his aides had convinced the Justice Department to request a citizenship question.

Businesses also rely on census data to make critical strategic decisions, including where to invest capital.

Citizenship has not been asked of all households since the 1950 census, featuring since then only on questionnaires sent to a smaller subset of the population.

The Census Bureau’s own experts estimated that households corresponding to 6.5 million people would not respond to the census if the citizenship question were asked.

While only U.S. citizens can vote, non-citizens comprise an estimated 7 percent of the population.

Evidence surfaced in May that the challengers said showed that the administration’s plan to add a citizenship question was intended to discriminate against racial minorities.

Documents created by Republican strategist Thomas Hofeller, who died last year, showed that he was instrumental behind the scenes in instigating the addition of the citizenship question.

He was an expert in drawing electoral district boundaries that maximize Republican chances of winning congressional elections.

Hofeller concluded in a 2015 study that asking census respondents whether they are American citizens “would clearly be a disadvantage to the Democrats” and “advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites” in redrawing electoral districts based on census data.

Hofeller suggested the voting rights rationale in the newly disclosed documents.

The Trump administration called the newly surfaced evidence “conspiracy theory.”

A federal judge in Maryland is reviewing the Hofeller evidence.

Most people living in the United States will be asked to fill out the census, whether online or on paper, by March 2020.

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The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a request that it intervene in states’ redistricting efforts that seek to empower one party over the other.

The nation’s highest court ruled Tuesday that manipulation of the electoral map, a practice known colloquially as gerrymandering, is a problem for state governments to solve, not the Supreme Court.

The justices made their decision 5 to 4, with the majority siding with Republicans in North Carolina and Democrats in Maryland, both of whom were accused by the political opposition of manipulating voting district lines to give their own parties an advantage in elections for the state legislature.

In another case, the court blocked, for the time being, the Trump administration efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, a once-a-decade count of all the people living in the United States, legally and otherwise.

US Supreme Court Faults Trump Bid to Add Census Citizenship Question

The justices partly upheld a federal judge’s decision barring the question in a win for a group of states and immigrant rights organizations that challenged the plan. The mixed ruling does not definitively decide whether the question could be added at some point

The Supreme Court ruled the administration’s explanation, that the citizenship question was meant to better enforce the Voting Rights Act, was “more of a distraction” from the issue than an explanation.

Chief Justic John Roberts joined the court’s liberal justices in the 5-4 ruling.

Opponents of the citizenship question say it would intimidate non-citizens into not answering the census, ultimately leaving them underrepresented in Congress. The census is used to allot seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, and also to plan the distribution of federal funds.

Thursday is the final day of rulings by the Supreme Court before its summer break.

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Just a month after a state visit to Japan, U.S. President Donald Trump is heading to the East Asian country again.

In Osaka, Trump will attend the Group of 20 leaders’ summit, during which he is scheduled to meet one-on-one on the sidelines with such fellow world leaders as Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Before leaving Wednesday, Trump told reporters on the White House South Lawn that he’ll be meeting with leaders of a lot of different countries “many of whom have been taking advantage of the United States — but not anymore.”

A senior administration official told reporters Monday that Trump is “quite comfortable [with] his position going into the meeting” with China’s President Xi following the breakdown of U.S.-China trade talks and increased tariffs on Beijing by Washington.  

U.S. officials say there is no fixed agenda for Trump’s meeting with Putin although they acknowledge issues involving Iran, Ukraine, the Middle East and Venezuela are almost certain to be discussed. 

When asked Wednesday if he would ask Putin not to meddle in future U.S. elections, Trump said it was “none of your business.”

Casting a pall over the G-20 discussions will be nervousness about the deteriorating situation between Washington and Tehran. Leaders in both capitals have been reiterating they want to avoid war but have also repeatedly stated they will not hesitate to defend their interests if provoked.

Economic pressure on Iran

Trump is to stress to his fellow leaders at the G-20 that the United States intends to continue to increase economic pressure on Iran, which finds itself under escalating U.S. sanctions, and eliminate all of the country’s petroleum exports. 

“I don’t think Iran is a distraction,” according to James Jay Carafano, vice president of the Heritage Foundation’s national security and foreign policy institute. “I think that’s under control. Trump should strive for a no drama G-20.”  

The G-20 itself no longer has the significance it did after the group’s first several summits late in the previous decade when it cooperated to avert a meltdown of the global economy.

Trump prefers bilateral discussions and agreements over multinational events. Administration officials, however, are attempting to counter the notion that they no longer see these types of meetings as vital, pointing to U.S. leadership on advancing 21st century economic issues.

“We believe that G-20 economies need to work together to advance open, fair and market-based digital policies, including the free flow of data,” a senior administration official told reporters Monday on a conference call, also stressing promotion of women’s economic empowerment.

Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and a White House adviser, is to give a keynote address on the latter topic at a G-20 side event in Osaka.

G-20 host Shinzo Abe, as prime minister of Japan, and many European participants are trying to maintain the international system and its principles.

“This is where the absence of the U.S. is really harming it,” said Heather Conley, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and director of its Europe program. “We’re seeing the slow death of multilateralism in many respects. It’s a death by a thousand cuts.”

While the U.S. pulls back from such groups, the world is witnessing “the Chinese using international organizations so effectively to shape agendas,” said Conley, a former deputy assistant secretary of state.  
 
Trump-Xi meetings

Some analysts expect the Trump-Xi meeting in Osaka to be a repeat of their previous dinner last year in Buenos Aires, when the two leaders agreed to trade talks and tasked their trade ministers with reaching a deal within 90 days. 
 
“I think that that is the most likely outcome, that they’re going to reach some sort of accommodation, a truce like that and push this forward,” said Matthew Goodman, a CSIS senior vice president and senior adviser for Asian economics.  

“It’s not going to solve the immediate problems,” contended Goodman, who previously served as director for international economics on the National Security Council staff, helping then-President Barack Obama prepare for G-20 and G-8 summits. “Even if we get a deal, it’s unlikely to solve some of the deep structural differences between us in the role of the state in the economy, the governance of technology and data.”

Much attention will also be on the Trump-Putin encounter.

“Whenever President Trump and President Putin meet there is a very strong [U.S.] domestic backlash after that meeting,” noted Conley. “In part, it’s because there’s a total lack of transparency about the topics of discussion and what the agenda is, and I think the president would have a better policy approach domestically if, again, there was clarity of what the agenda would be, that there would be people participating in that meeting — secretary of state, national security adviser and others.”  
 
Trump is also scheduled to hold talks in Osaka with leaders from Australia, Germany, India, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

From Japan, Trump flies to Seoul, where he will be hosted by South Korean President Moon Jae-in to discuss how to further ease tensions with North Korea.

White House officials brush off speculation Trump could meet on the Korean peninsula with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which would be their third encounter after summits in Singapore and Hanoi. And U.S. officials are not commenting on a possible presidential visit to the Demilitarized Zone, which separates the two Koreas.

There is little pressure on Trump to make any breakthroughs during his visit to Japan and South Korea, according to Carafano. 

“I think the U.S. is in the driver’s seat with regards to both North Korea and China negotiations,” Carafano told VOA. “If they come to the table now, fine. If not, fine. Trump can wait until after the 2020 election.” 

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The U.S. Senate on Wednesday approved bipartisan legislation to address the humanitarian crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border with more than $4 billion in supplemental funds and new requirements for the care of detained migrants, especially children.

The 84-8 vote came amid renewed scrutiny of the Trump administration’s treatment of minors in its custody and amid widespread revulsion over the deaths of a father and daughter from El Salvador who perished trying to cross the Rio Grande River into the United States.

“There is no longer any question that the situation along our southern border is a full-blown humanitarian and security crisis,” Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama said, adding that there was “no excuse” for delay in addressing the situation.

“Inaction is simply not an option for those who care about alleviating the suffering of desperate children and families seeking refuge in the United States,” Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy said.

The Republican-led Senate approved the bill after voting down a House version that also boosted funds for U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other federal agencies stretched to the breaking point by border arrivals totaling more than 100,000 a month, the highest numbers recorded in more than a decade.

Although broadly similar, the Senate version is less extensive in regulating the care of detained children. Unlike the House version, it provides $145 million for the Pentagon to assist in border operations.

To reach President Donald Trump’s desk, the Senate bill would need to pass the House. Hpwever, majority-Democrats in the House have signaled they want changes to the bill. As a result, a bicameral committee is expected to be formed to try to hammer out a version that can pass both chambers. Time for swift action is growing short, as Congress will be in recess next week for America’s Independence Day holiday.

Speaking with reporters before departing the White House, Trump hailed legislative movement on border funding.

“I believe the House is going to be getting together with the Senate. Hopefully, they can get something done,” Trump said.

Earlier in the day, the president once again blamed Democrats for the border crisis, tweeting: “The Democrats should change the Loopholes and Asylum Laws so lives will be saved at our Southern Border. They said it was not a crisis at the Border, that it was all just manufactured.’ Now they admit that I was right – But they must do something about it. Fix the Laws NOW!”

On the Senate floor, Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer fired back.

“We can do something about this [crisis] if the president would stop playing the political game of blame, blame, blame,” Schumer said. “Mr. President, you are the president of the United States. You are head of the executive branch. You control what’s happening at the border.”

Schumer spoke alongside a blown-up photo, widely distributed by news organizations, of the drowned Salvadoran father and daughter, as reaction poured in across Capitol Hill and beyond.

“I don’t want to see another picture like that on the U.S. border,” Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said. “I hope that picture alone will catalyze this Congress, this Senate … to do something.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has faced renewed criticism on Capitol Hill after news reports emerged earlier this week of squalid living conditions at a CBP facility in Texas that houses detained migrant children.

A Senate panel on Wednesday pressed administration officials on the subject.

“What are you doing to actually make sure that children are getting the care and the sanitary conditions and the food that they need?” New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan asked.

The Border Patrol’s chief of law enforcement operations, Brian Hastings, responded that detention facilities are being upgraded with shower facilities and increased medical care. He added that more funds are being devoted to basic supplies, such as diapers and baby formula.

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It is more than 16 months until the next U.S. presidential election in late 2020, but 20 Democratic presidential contenders are set to debate each other Wednesday and Thursday nights to give Democratic voters a first look at whom they might want to pick as the party’s nominee to try to oust Republican President Donald Trump.

Ten of the Democratic candidates, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, one of the current front-runners for the party nomination; Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota; and former Congressman Beto O’Rourke of Texas, are set to spar tonight for two hours. They will appear before a live audience in Miami, with millions more watching on national television.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the leader for the nomination in national surveys, is joining other top-tier possible choices on the debate stage Thursday night, including Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Kamala Harris of California; Mayor Pete Buttigieg of the Midwestern city of South Bend, Indiana; along with six others.

The unwieldy field of candidates, in addition to another five that did not meet the Democratic National Committee’s minimal political standards to merit a spot in the debates, all sense they might have a chance to unseat Trump after a single term in the White House.

Political issues, electability

Democratic voters, however, so far seem uncertain of what they are looking for in their party standard-bearer in the Nov. 3, 2020, election — someone who best represents their political views on such contentious issues as health care, abortion, foreign policy, immigration, taxes and more, or possibly a candidate who has one overriding quality: the best chance of defeating Trump.

On the streets of Miami, Florida voter Dawn Schonwetter looked forward to the Democratic debates and stressed the importance of the state in the upcoming presidential election.

“We’re a big state. We have a lot of electoral votes, so I think it is a major battleground state – that makes it very exciting here for us at election time,” she said.

Another Florida voter, Republican-turned-progressive Democrat Eduardo De La Vega, said he intends to choose the candidate with the best plans for health care and education.

“This is why I’m here – to see who is the right person. It’s going to be really exciting because if a Democrat wins the state, it’s over for the Republicans,” he said.

Trump, as he left Washington for the Group of 20 economic meetings in Japan, said he would watch the Wednesday debate from Air Force One and taunted Biden — who won’t be on the stage until Thursday.

“It just seems very boring, but I’m going to watch it,” he told Fox News.

“Biden is a lost soul,” Trump claimed. “He doesn’t know where he is.”

A key unknown ahead of the debates is whether the Democratic challengers will spend more of their time attacking each other for their differences over policy issues or chiefly aim their political barbs at Trump.

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Already, some of the Democrats are trying to diminish Biden’s nomination chances, attacking him for his recent recollection that 40 years ago when he was a young U.S. senator, he had working relationships in the Senate with segregationists adamantly opposed to the equality of blacks and whites.

Although the candidates have been campaigning for months in the early states where Democrats next year will hold presidential party nominating contests — including Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina — for millions of Americans watching on television, it will be their first chance to size up the candidates and see whether they find someone they might favor over Trump.

No shoo-in

Despite a robust U.S. economy — a normal election-year barometer favoring an incumbent U.S. president’s re-election — Trump is by no means a shoo-in for a second four-year term.

Polling shows the one-time New York real estate magnate, a surprise winner in 2016, has yet to win over many voters beyond the hard core of populist and Republican voters that has supported him through his 29-month presidency. More voters than not, surveys repeatedly show, disapprove of his performance in office.

U.S. political pundits dismissed Trump’s chances of a victory three years ago, but he could win again.

At the moment, however, surveys show several Democrats leading the 73-year-old Trump. Biden, who is 76 and was President Barack Obama’s two-term vice president, holds the biggest edge of more than 10 percentage points over Trump. But polls this far ahead of the election are not necessarily predictive and may be just a snapshot of a moment in time.

In all, a dozen Democratic presidential debates are planned between now and the first months of 2020, although the number of candidates appearing in them will diminish over time as contenders drop out for lack of voter support and campaign funds. The first voting in Democratic primaries and caucuses to decide the presidential nomination starts February 3 in the Midwest farm state of Iowa.

All of the Democratic presidential candidates, to one degree or another, have staked out positions on key issues they think are important to reshape policy debates in Washington, while at the same time attacking Trump for his views about domestic issues and international relations during his unprecedented presidency.

The Democrats running for the U.S. presidency have broadly adopted a much more expansive liberal role for the federal government than either the more conservative Trump or Republicans who control the Senate. Democrats, in philosophical political agreement with many of their presidential candidates, took control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 congressional elections.

Political differences

The Democratic presidential candidates do have policy differences among themselves and often have emphasized a variety of issues they think might help them connect with voters when there is such a large field of candidates.

Warren and Sanders, neck and neck in second place behind Biden in nomination surveys, are both pushing for far-reaching changes to the country’s economic policies to help middle-class families, paid for with higher taxes on wealthy people. Warren wants new taxes on people with more than $50 million in assets, while Sanders called this week for wiping out all $1.6 trillion in student college debt.

O’Rourke, the former Texas congressman, has called for a $5 trillion plan to combat climate change, an issue that resonates with many Democrats after Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

Senators Booker and Klobuchar have advanced more moderate proposals on several issues in hopes of capturing the mass of voters not willing to go as far to the left politically as some of the other Democrats have.

Biden, to a large degree, has stayed above the fray of debate over policy issues, preferring to present himself as the voice of American stability, a correction to Trump’s unpredictable, tweet-filled presidency.

Mocking Trump’s long-standing political slogan, “Make America Great Again,” Biden recently told voters, “Let’s make America America again.”

But appearing on the same stage with other Democrats may force him to explain and account for his four decades as a Washington political figure and twice-failed presidential campaigns.

The candidates

The other candidates debating Wednesday include Washington state Governor Jay Inslee, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio, Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan and former Maryland Rep. John Delaney.

Thursday’s list of candidates also includes New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, California Rep. Eric Swalwell, entrepreneur Andrew Yang and self-help author Marianne Williamson.

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Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman for U.S. President Donald Trump, will be arraigned Thursday in a New York court in Manhattan on state criminal charges, after having been convicted last year on federal fraud charges.

Manafort, 70, is scheduled to appear before Justice Maxwell Wiley of the state Supreme Court at 2:15 p.m. EDT (1815 GMT) Thursday, court spokesman Lucian Chalfen told Reuters.

Manafort faces 16 felony charges brought by the Manhattan district attorney. The state charges include mortgage fraud, conspiracy and falsifying business records, and relate to alleged efforts by Manafort and others to obtain millions of dollars in loans on New York properties.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance made the indictment public in March, on the same day Manafort was sentenced on federal crimes.

Manafort is serving a 7 1/2-year federal sentence for tax fraud, bank fraud and other charges.

Federal prosecutors accused him of hiding $16 million from U.S. tax authorities that he earned as a consultant for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine, and then lying to banks to obtain $20 million in loans when the money dried up.

The federal charges stemmed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Manafort faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted on the top charges in the New York case.

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U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who issued a report in April on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election,  will testify in open session before the House of Representatives Judiciary and Intelligence Committees on July 17, the panels’ Democratic chairmen said on Tuesday.

Representative Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the judiciary panel, and Representative Adam Schiff, head of the intelligence panel, said in a joint statement that Mueller had agreed to testify after the two committees issued subpoenas on Tuesday.

This is a breaking story. Please check back for updates.

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A federal judge on Tuesday refused to put on hold a lawsuit by about 200 Democratic lawmakers accusing President Donald Trump of violating an anti-corruption provision of the U.S. Constitution with his private business dealings, a move that clears the way for them to seek some of his financial records.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan rejected a request by Trump administration lawyers to halt the case and let them file an expedited appeal of key preliminary rulings he issued against the president. Sullivan said an immediate appeal would not be efficient.

The lawsuit is one of two brought against Trump accusing him of violating the so-called emoluments clause of the Constitution, which bans U.S. officials from accepting gifts or payments from foreign governments without congressional consent.

The other was brought by the Democratic attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia.

The ruling allows the Democratic plaintiffs, led by Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and including members of the House of Representatives and Senate, to begin the so-called discovery phase of the case in which they will seek records from Trump’s real estate company.

The judge’s action marked the latest setback Trump has faced in court fights as he defends against lawsuits like this one and efforts by the Democratic-led House to obtain his tax records and other material as part of a series of wide-ranging investigations.

Sullivan said he expects the case to be “poised for resolution within six months,” at which point Trump’s lawyer could appeal his final judgment to a higher court.

In April, Sullivan issued a 48-page decision that rejected Trump’s argument that emoluments were limited essentially to bribes, calling that definition “unpersuasive and inconsistent.”

Sullivan said he agreed with the congressional Democrats who brought the case that the clause should be read more broadly as barring an official from taking any payment of any kind whatsoever from a foreign state without congressional approval.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump, a wealthy real estate developer who as president regularly visits his own hotels, resorts and golf clubs, maintains ownership of his businesses but has ceded day-to-day control to his sons. Critics have said that is not a sufficient safeguard.

The emoluments litigation, which could end up before the Supreme Court, represent the first time in U.S. history courts have interpreted this language in the Constitution and how it relates to a sitting president.

The case before Sullivan accuses Trump of illegally profiting from his businesses in various ways, including by collecting payments from foreign government officials who stay at his properties and accepting trademark registrations around the world for his company’s products.

The similar case brought the Maryland and the District of Columbia attorneys general was narrowed to focus specifically on Trump’s hotel in downtown Washington.

Since Trump won the 2016 presidential election, the hotel has become a favored lodging and event space for some foreign and state officials visiting the U.S. capital. He is seeking re-election in 2020.

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Stephanie Grisham, the chief spokeswomen for U.S. First Lady Melania Trump, has been named the new White House Press Secretary.

The first lady made the announcement on Twitter, saying she can think of no better person to serve the administration & our country.

I am pleased to announce @StephGrisham45 will be the next @PressSec & Comms Director! She has been with us since 2015 – @potus & I can think of no better person to serve the Administration & our country. Excited to have Stephanie working for both sides of the @WhiteHouse. #BeBest

— Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) June 25, 2019

President Donald Trump announced earlier this month that long time Press Secretary Sarah Sanders was planning to step down.

“Our wonderful Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be leaving the White House at the end of the month and going home to the Great State of Arkansas,” Trump said on his personal Twitter account. “She is a very special person with extraordinary talents, who has done an incredible job!”

Sanders called her tenure as White House press secretary “the honor of a lifetime, the opportunity of a lifetime” adding, “I’ve loved every minute – even the hard minutes.”

Sanders has been one of the president’s most trusted aides during her tenure in the West Wing from the start of the Trump presidency, rising from principal deputy press secretary when Sean Spicer was the top spokesman.

Sanders has been a fierce defender of the controversial president and frequently tangled with White House reporters during contentious news conferences, chastising them for negative coverage of Trump and attempting to correct what she considered were mistakes in their reporting.  

Commentators criticized her for straining credulity on behalf of an unconventional boss who regularly unleashes verbal attacks on political foes, foreign governments and journalists and who has repeatedly labeled the press the “enemy of the people.”

The media briefings, once a regular and popular event on afternoon cable TV news channels, increasingly became infrequent and have disappeared altogether in the past three months.

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Senior U.S. officials say they are already busy buttressing the nation’s defenses against foreign interference for the 2020 presidential election. Only they admit the public may be kept in the dark about attacks and intrusions.

Intelligence and election security officials have warned repeatedly that Russia, among other state and nonstate actors, remains intent on disrupting the upcoming elections and that the Kremlin may even have gone easy on the U.S. during the 2016 midterm elections, seeing the ability to impact the 2020 presidential race as the bigger prize.

At the same time, election and security officials have come under increased scrutiny for failing to reveal the size and scope of Russia’s efforts to hack into voter databases and other critical systems.

In April, special counsel Robert Mueller released his report into Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election as well as allegations of obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump.

Florida representatives

In May, two U.S. representatives from Florida, Republican Michael Waltz and Democrat Stephanie Murphy, wrote to the FBI and Justice Department, demanding a classified briefing on the extent of Russia’s exploits after the Mueller report indicated Moscow managed to infiltrate critical systems in at least one county during the 2016 presidential election.

“Florida voters have the right to know the extent to which foreign actors may have breached our state’s election security systems, and what the federal government is doing to prevent it from happening again,” Murphy said in a statement.

Senior Trump administration officials, however, cautioned Monday they may decide to keep information like that from the public.

“There are hard choices to be made,” one official told reporters while briefing them on efforts to protect the 2020 election from foreign interference.

“The ultimate question is going to be whether the federal or national interests in doing so — publicly disclosing it — outweigh any counter veiling consideration,” the official added.

Intelligence and law enforcement officials said the ability to disclose information can often be limited by the need to protect the sources and methods that discovered the attacks or intrusions in the first place.

Impact on victims

There are also concerns about the impact on the victims.

“Victims who work with the FBI do so because they trust that we’ll protect and handle their information appropriately,” a senior law enforcement official said. “For example, the majority of technical information that we were able to give election officials during the 2016 time frame was initiated from this type of trusted outreach.”

In cases involving foreign influence campaigns, the decision to make them public can be even more difficult.

“Disclosing a foreign influence operation might do more harm than good because it might draw more attention to an operation that would otherwise go unnoticed,” the senior administration official said.

A senior intelligence official agreed that in some cases, the less said, the better.

“It’s less about highlighting for the public that there might be a problem,” the official said. “We actually want to stop it from happening, whether we do that through cyber channels or diplomatic channels or other operations.”

2020 campaign

With the 2020 presidential campaign getting under way, intelligence agencies, along with the Department of Homeland Security and FBI, have set about briefing the candidates and making them aware of the resources available should their campaign come under attack.

There are also increased efforts to reach out to U.S. state and local officials to make sure they have the information they need to protect their voter databases and election systems from attacks.

Officials said there have even been ongoing discussions with the private sector, both those that provide voting machines and other election infrastructure, as well as with social media companies.

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Days before the first Democratic presidential debates, Sen. Bernie Sanders and House progressives came out with legislation to cancel all student debt, going farther than a signature proposal by Sen. Elizabeth Warren as the two jockey for support from the party’s liberal base .

By canceling all student loans, Sanders says the proposal would address an economic burden for 45 million Americans. The key difference is that Warren’s plan considers the income of the borrowers, canceling $50,000 in debt for those earning less than $100,000 per year and affecting an estimated 42 million people in the U.S.

Questions face both candidates about how to pay for all of that plus their proposals for free tuition at public colleges and universities. But the battling ideas highlight the rivalry between senators who have made fighting economic inequality the cornerstones of their 2020 presidential campaigns.

Sanders vowed at a Monday news conference that his plan “completely eliminates student debt in this country and the absurdity of sentencing an entire generation, the millennial generation, to a lifetime of debt for the crime of doing the right thing. And that is going out and getting a higher education.” He appeared alongside the proposal’s House sponsors, Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., with American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten also in attendance.

His bill and Warren’s plan are part of their broader appeal to liberal voters on issues such as health care, technology and education.

That appeal is likely to be fleshed out this week during the first Democratic debates . Twenty candidates are set for the showdown, with Warren part of the lineup on Wednesday and Sanders appearing a day later. The events come as Warren appears to be cutting into Sanders’ support from the left.

Sanders’ effort at one-upmanship on student loans, named the College For All Act, would cancel $1.6 trillion of debt and save the average borrower about $3,000 a year, according to materials obtained by The Associated Press. The result would be a stimulus that allows millennials in particular to invest in homes and cars that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford. It would cost $2.2 billion and be paid for — and then some — by a series of taxes on such things as stock trades, bonds and derivatives, according to the proposal.

The universal debt relief is designed partly around the idea that it would mostly benefit Americans who can’t afford college tuition without loans, according to a senior Democratic aide who spoke on condition of anonymity because the legislation wasn’t yet public.

Warren’s plan, which she has suggested in published reports will be introduced as legislation, would be paid for by imposing a 2% fee on fortunes greater than $50 million. Warren projects the levy would raise $2.75 trillion over 10 years, enough to pay for a universal child-care plan, free tuition at public colleges and universities, and student loan debt forgiveness for an estimated 42 million Americans — with revenue left over. Critics say top earners would find ways around such penalties.

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Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, unveiling his immigration policy outline ahead of the first 2020 debates , is calling for Congress to grant citizenship immediately to more than 800,000 U.S. residents who were brought to the country illegally as children.
 
The former vice president and Democratic polling leader unveiled some of his immigration priorities on Monday in a newspaper op-ed that blisters President Donald Trump for an “assault on the dignity” of the Latino community through policies and rhetoric designed to “scare voters” in 2020.
 
“Trump repeatedly invokes racist invective to describe anyone south of the Rio Grande,” Biden writes, noting “horrifying scenes … of kids being kept in cages” and other “actions that subvert our American values and our ability to lead on the global stage.”
 
Biden, who launched his 2020 campaign in April, calls for streamlining the asylum system for migrants and spending more on electronic security at U.S. borders rather than Trump’s proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall. And he blasts Trump’s latest threats of mass deportation and his decision to cut aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, three Central American nations that are sources of the increasing wave of migrants to the U.S. border.
 
Trump, a Republican, maintains that his immigration policies are necessary to keep the country safe. He also has made clear that his 2020 reelection strategy is focused squarely on his base, which since his 2015 campaign launch has embraced his hard-line nationalism and economic protectionism.
 
 Biden’s op-ed is published in the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, with Biden using the English and Spanish versions to praise the diversity of the surrounding city where 20 Democratic candidates will take the debate stage in two heats Wednesday and Thursday.
 
Biden has not yet offered detailed immigration policy proposals beyond the outline.
 
Nonetheless, the op-ed is part of a series of policy pronouncements of varying levels of detail as Biden tries to maintain his lead in national and early state polls of Democratic primary voters. Separately, he’s offered education and climate action proposals, and his campaign has said health care and criminal justice plans are upcoming.
 
In his Miami newspaper piece, Biden further pledges an overhaul of U.S. foreign policy in the Americas, echoing fellow Democrats who’ve panned Trump’s approach to Mexico, Central America and South America.
 
“The Administration’s Latin America policy is at best a Cold War-era retread, and at worst an ineffective mess,” Biden writes, citing Trump’s tariff threats in Mexico, his refusal to grant temporary legal status to political refugees from Venezuela and U.S. ambivalence to rising instability in Central America.
 
The answer, Biden argued, is U.S. engagement and aid that expands “economic opportunity … so that people feel safe to stay in their home countries,” and he argued that as President Barack Obama’s top lieutenant he “led a major, bipartisan effort to address the root causes that push people to flee” those nations.
 
Other than the so-called “Dreamers” brought to the U.S. as children, Biden’s outline does not directly address the more than 11 million immigrants in the country illegally. As vice president, Biden backed a comprehensive immigration overhaul that would have established a path to citizenship for most of those residents. That effort cleared the Senate but died in what was then a Republican-led House.
 
The immigrants brought to the U.S. as children are commonly referred to as “Dreamers” because of never-passed proposals in Congress called the DREAM Act, which would have allowed them to remain in the country if they met certain criteria. Opponents say the act would reward people for breaking the law, encourage illegal immigration and hurt American workers.
 
Immigration has not been a top priority among Democratic presidential candidates thus far, other than sweeping condemnations of Trump’s values and priorities. The two Texans in the race — former Cabinet secretary Julian Castro and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke — have placed the most emphasis on the matter.
 
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has joined them in releasing a detailed immigration plan . All three call for a citizenship pathway for immigrants in the U.S. illegally. Castro has gone the farthest, proposing that border crossings be decriminalized altogether, regardless of whether a migrant is seeking legal asylum under the existing process.

…

A group of Oregon state Republican senators have gone into hiding to stop the passage of a landmark climate change legislation. The western state’s House bill 2020 would set limits to carbon emissions with permits auctioned off to polluting industries. Republicans say the bill would hurt rural Oregonians. Democrats have a majority in both chambers of the state’s congress and the bill is likely to pass if it comes to the floor, which cannot happen unless there is a quorum of two-thirds of senators present. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports the state governor, a Democrat, has given authorization to state police to track them down.

…

Another Democrat has entered the 2020 race for the White House.

Retired Navy admiral and former Pennsylvania congressman Joe Sestak announced his candidacy Sunday on his website.

He introduced himself to voters by telling them “I wore the cloth of the nation for over 31 years in peace and war, from the Vietnam and Cold War eras to Afghanistan and Iran and the emergence of China.”

He said he postponed announcing his candidacy to care for a daughter ill with brain cancer.

Sestak was also part of former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s national security team, holds a doctorate in government from Harvard, and unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate twice.

He embraces many positions popular with liberals, including abortion rights, gun control, and backs the nuclear deal with Iran.

Sestak is the 24th Democrat to officially announce a challenge to President Donald Trump in 2020, with Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren leading the polls so far.

…

U.S. President Donald Trump won under the U.S. electoral college system but lost the popular vote. His approval ratings have consistently been below 50 percent. Yet in a recent interview with TIME Magazine, Trump said he doesn’t need to reach out to independent voters because his “base is so strong.”  Who makes up Trump’s base, what motivates them, and will their support be enough to deliver a second term for Trump? White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara traveled to Orlando, Florida for Trump’s re-election campaign launch and brings back this report.

…

The White House on Saturday outlined a $50 billion Middle East economic plan that would create a global investment fund to lift the Palestinian and neighboring Arab state economies, and fund a $5 billion transportation corridor to connect the West Bank and Gaza.

The “peace to prosperity” plan, set to be presented by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner at an international conference in Bahrain next week, includes 179 infrastructure and business projects, according to details of the plan and interviews with U.S. officials. The approach toward reviving the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process was criticized by the Palestinians Saturday.

No peace, no economic revival

The ambitious economic revival plan, the product of two years of work by Kushner and other aides, would take place only if a political solution to the region’s long-running problems is reached.

More than half of the $50 billion would be spent in the economically troubled Palestinian territories over 10 years while the rest would be split between Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan. Some of the projects would be in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, where investments could benefit Palestinians living in adjacent Gaza, a crowded and impoverished coastal enclave.

The plan also proposes nearly a billion dollars to build up the Palestinians’ tourism sector, a seemingly impractical notion for now given the frequent flare-ups between Israeli forces and militants from Hamas-ruled Gaza, and the tenuous security in the occupied West Bank. 

The Trump administration hopes that wealthy Gulf states and nations in Europe and Asia, along with private investors, would foot much of the bill, Kushner told Reuters.

“The whole notion here is that we want people to agree on the plan and then we’ll have a discussion with people to see who is interested in potentially doing what,” Kushner told Reuters Television.

Palestinians boycott unveiling 

The unveiling of the economic blueprint follows two years of deliberations and delays in rolling out a broader peace plan between Israelis and Palestinians. The Palestinians, who are boycotting the event, have refused to talk to the Trump administration since it recognized Jerusalem as the Israeli capital in late 2017.

Veteran Palestinian negotiator Hanan Ashrawi dismissed the proposals Saturday, saying: “These are all intentions, these are all abstract promises” and said only a political solution would solve the conflict.

Kushner made clear in two interviews with Reuters that he sees his detailed formula as a game-changer, despite the view of many Middle East experts that he has little chance of success where decades of U.S.-backed peace efforts have failed.

“I laugh when they attack this as the ‘Deal of the Century,’” Kushner said of Palestinian leaders who have dismissed his plan as an attempt to buy off their aspirations for statehood. “This is going to be the ‘Opportunity of the Century’ if they have the courage to pursue it.”

Kushner said some Palestinian business executives have confirmed their participation in the conference, but he declined to identify them. The overwhelming majority of the Palestinian business community will not attend, businessmen in the West Bank city of Ramallah told Reuters.

Several Gulf Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, will also participate in the June 25-26 U.S.-led gathering in Bahrain’s capital, Manama, for Kushner’s rollout of the first phase of the Trump peace plan. Their presence, some U.S. officials say privately, appears intended in part to curry favor with Trump as he takes a hard line against Iran, those countries’ regional archfoe.

The White House said it decided against inviting the Israeli government because the Palestinian Authority would not be there, making do instead with a small Israeli business delegation.

Political disputes remain

There are strong doubts whether potential donor governments would be willing to open their checkbooks anytime soon, as long as the thorny political disputes at the heart of the decades-old Palestinian conflict remain unresolved.

The 38-year-old Kushner, who like his father-in-law came to government steeped in the world of New York real estate deal-making, seems to be treating peacemaking in some ways like a business transaction, analysts and former U.S. officials say.

Palestinian officials reject the overall U.S.-led peace effort as heavily tilted in favor of Israel and likely to deny them a fully sovereign state of their own.

Kushner’s attempt to decide economic priorities first while initially sidestepping politics ignores the realities of the conflict, say many experts.

“This is completely out of sequence because the Israeli-Palestinian issue is primarily driven by historical wounds and overlapping claims to land and sacred space,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator for Republican and Democratic administrations.

Kushner acknowledges that “you can’t push the economic plan forward without resolving the political issues as well.” The administration, he said, will “address that at a later time,” referring to the second stage of the peace plan’s rollout now expected no earlier than November.

Kushner says his approach is aimed at laying out economic incentives to show the Palestinians the potential for a prosperous future if they return to the table to negotiate a peace deal.

Kushner stressed that governments would not be expected to make financial pledges on the spot.

“It is a small victory that they are all showing up to listen and partake. In the old days, the Palestinian leaders would have spoken and nobody would have disobeyed,” he said.

West Bank to Gaza travel corridor

Kushner’s proposed new investment fund for the Palestinians and neighboring states would be administered by a “multilateral development bank.” Global financial lenders including the International Monetary Fund and World Bank plan to be present at the meeting.

The fund would include “accountability, transparency, anti-corruption, and conditionality safeguards” to protect investments.

A signature project would be to construct a travel corridor for Palestinian use that would cross Israel to link the West Bank and Gaza. It could include a highway and possibly a rail line. The narrowest distance between the territories, whose populations have long been divided by Israeli travel restrictions, is about 40 km (25 miles).

Kushner said that if executed the plan would create a million jobs in the West Bank and Gaza, reduce Palestinian poverty by half and double the Palestinians’ GDP.

But most foreign investors will likely stay clear for the moment, not only because of security and corruption concerns but also because of the drag on the Palestinian economy from Israel’s West Bank occupation that obstructs the flow of people, goods and services, experts say.

Marshall Plan approach

Kushner sees his economic approach as resembling the Marshall Plan, which Washington introduced in 1948 to rebuild Western Europe from the devastation of World War II. Unlike the U.S.-funded Marshall Plan, however, the latest initiative would put much of the financial burden on other countries.

President Donald Trump would “consider making a big investment in it” if there is a good governance mechanism, Kushner said. But he was non-committal about how much the president, who has often proved himself averse to foreign aid, might contribute.

Economic programs have been tried before in the long line of U.S.-led peace efforts, only to fail for lack of political progress. Kushner’s approach, however, may be the most detailed so far, presented in two pamphlets of 40 and 96 pages each that are filled with financial tables and economic projections.

In Manama, the yet-to-released political part of the plan will not be up for discussion, Kushner said.
 

…

Amid increasingly tense China-U.S. relations, a U.S. official alluded to China but did not specifically name China regarding “risks” and “challenges” imposed by approaches to dam building and cross-border riverine practices in the Mekong region.

At a workshop in Phnom Penh by the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace (CICP), the U.S. Embassy’s chargé d’affaires, Michael Newbill, said the actions of “a single nation” in the Mekong region are “worrisome” to both the riverine countries and the U.S.

“In the last two years, shifting geopolitical dynamics have begun to pose major new challenges,” Newbill said.

“We have seen the growth of debt dependency; disproportionate control over dozens of upstream dams by a single nation; plans to blast and dredge riverbeds,” he added in remarks later posted to the U.S. Embassy website.

The notion of debt dependency, or debt-trap, emerged in 2017. It refers to China’s practice of offering funding for projects that enable Beijing’s access to local resources rather than helping a local economy. Instead, the countries become “vulnerable to China’s influence.”

A senior embassy official, who requested anonymity to discuss the matter, confirmed that Newbill was referring to China when he referenced “a single nation” last week.

The U.S. diplomat went on to say the “risks” of having one country dominate planning for the Mekong region include the erosion of existing governance, the presence of extraterritorial river patrols, trans-boundary crimes, and trafficking of drugs, wildlife and humans.

“All these trends pose risks to the autonomy, economic independence, and water, energy and food security across the Mekong region,” Newbill said.

He added that the region, which includes China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, is “strategically important” to the U.S. given that Washington treaty ally Thailand and increasingly important strategic partner Vietnam are in the region.

The same senior embassy official, who was one of the staffers involved in the preparation of Newbill’s speech, added that the chargé d’affaires also meant China is responsible for all of the risks he mentioned.

US Official Tells ASEAN Leaders to Choose Between China, US

Amid rising tensions between Beijing and Washington over trade war, Randall Schriver, assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs told southeast Asian nations the Indo-Pacific region is “our priority theater”

‘Potential area of power competition’

Separately, Sek Sophal, a researcher at Japan’s Ritsumeikan Center for Asia Pacific Studies, told VOA Khmer in an email, “Even though he [Newbill] did not name any specific country, it is obvious that China meets all of the points he raised.

“Personally, I believe he was talking about China,” Sophal continued.

The Cambodian scholar added that the Mekong region is a strategic gateway for the U.S. in confronting China, environmental sustainability and the rule of law.

The remarks by the American envoy suggest the Mekong region may become a new area for U.S.-China competition.

The world’s two biggest economies are already involved in a trade war and in security confrontations from the Taiwan Strait to the South China Sea.

The Mekong region “is certainly a potential area of power competition in Southeast Asia apart from the South China Sea,” said Pongphisoot Busbarat, a lecturer on the political science faculty at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University.

China is seeking to use this “backyard” region to project its international leadership through “foreign policy activism.” This is evidenced by investments in infrastructure and dams in the framework of the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation and its Belt and Road Initiative — drawing suspicion and skepticism from many countries, including the U.S., Busbarat wrote in an email exchange with VOA Khmer.

“Even though China has reiterated its sincerity, and we cannot deny that China’s role contributes and benefits the region in many ways, this policy activism inevitably receives criticisms and suspicion of the real intention,” he added.

The Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh did not respond to request for comments.

Development concerns

Pou Sothirak, who runs the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace (CICP), said “inappropriate” and “irresponsible” developments of dams are to blame for higher frequency of drought and floods along the Mekong River.

“These ill-conceived schemes of developments have the potential to cause destructive damages if suitable resolutions are not found satisfactorily,” Pou Sothirak said in a speech last week at the CICP workshop.

From headwaters in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, the Mekong River flows 4,300 kilometers across mainland Southeast Asia before draining into the South China Sea. In Chinese, the river is known as the Lancang.

The Mekong River Commission (MRC) was formed in 1995. All Mekong countries except for China and Myanmar are members with a common goal of better regulating what happens on and to the river.

According the MRC, the river is rich in its biodiversity, providing many of the necessities for the “natural resource-based rural livelihoods of a population of 60 million people living in the Lower Mekong Basin.”

As MRC outsiders, China and Myanmar could evade the commission’s jurisdiction requiring member states to present bids for dam building for studies and negotiation.

Since its creation, the MRC has been criticized for failing to stop dam building along the river.

According to the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research, by 2030, there will be as many as 31 hydropower dams built along the Mekong mainstream, many of them in China or funded by Chinese investments.

The Switzerland-based World Wildlife Fund has warned that damming the Mekong River would have diverse environmental implications on the fish stocks, wildlife habitats, farmlands, and natural ecosystem of the river, important to food security and traditional livelihoods of the people relying on the river.

Countries in the Mekong Region have been engaged in other international initiatives, including the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation with China and the Lower Mekong Initiative with the U.S.

Sim Vireak, an adviser with the Cambodian Foreign Ministry, said Mekong countries aim to find synergies from cooperation with external partners to benefit the river developments.

“The Mekong countries are mindful that the Mekong platform should not be politicized or become an arena for anti-China, anti-U.S., anti-Japan, anti-Korea, anti-India polarizations,” Sim Vireak said.

Turning the Mekong region into another place where China and the U.S. face off would have “geopolitical consequences reminiscent of the recent past,” he added in reference to Indochina wars of the last century.

Though the U.S. appears to be unwilling to outspend China’s multibillion-dollar injections into the region, the rivalry is here to stay, Sek Sophal said.

“The worst-case scenario is that small states are forced to take sides to survive,” he said in an online conversation with VOA Khmer. “No matter which side they will take, they have to pay the prices.”

…

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has received a personal letter from U.S. President Donald Trump and is contemplating its contents, North Korean state media reported Sunday.

The official Korean Central News Agency posted a picture of a pensive Kim holding a letter, apparently with White House letterhead. The report quoted Kim as praising its “excellent content.”

“Appreciating the political judging faculty and extraordinary courage of President Trump, Kim Jong Un said that he would seriously contemplate the interesting content,” KCNA reported.

The report did not say anything else about the content of the letter.

Exchanging letters, photos

Trump said earlier this month he received a “beautiful,” “very personal” and “very warm” letter from the North Korean leader.

Though nuclear talks between U.S. and North Korean officials are stalled, Kim and Trump have been exchanging letters and pictures for the past year, and both men say their relationship remains warm.

Working-level talks broke down after a February summit between Trump and Kim in Hanoi, Vietnam, ended in no deal. Kim was unhappy with the pace of U.S. sanctions relief, while Trump was upset Kim would not commit to completely giving up his nuclear program.

Since then, North Korea has tested several short-range ballistic missiles and other weapons. Kim has said he will give Washington until the end of the year to become more flexible in the talks.

U.S. officials have shrugged off North Korea’s weapons tests and end-of-the-year ultimatum. Trump has said he is willing to hold a third summit with Kim if the conditions are right.

G-20 and beyond

Next week, Trump will visit South Korea following his meetings in Japan at the Group of 20 summit.

There has been speculation, though no evidence, that Trump could try to hold another high-profile summit at that time.

South Korean officials have also said they are working to hold a summit between the leaders of North and South Korea before Trump’s visit.

The letter comes a day after Chinese President Xi Jinping wrapped up a state visit to North Korea, where he promised to play an active role in the nuclear talks. 

“After months of an impasse in the negotiations and little contact between the U. S. and North Korea, it appears there is some diplomatic maneuvering underway,” said Bonnie Glaser, an Asia specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“[It is] unclear yet whether Xi’s visit to Pyongyang played a role, or whether other factors are at play,” she added.

…

President Donald Trump has a silent partner behind several of the accomplishments he likes to boast about: Barack Obama. 

Despite assailing his Democratic predecessor for waging a “cruel and heartless war on American energy,” for example, Trump can brag about U.S. energy supremacy thanks to the sector’s growth in the Obama years. 

And the Obama-Trump decade is soon to yield an economic record if things stay on track a little longer — the most sustained expansion in U.S. history. Though Trump claims all the credit, the expansion started in Obama’s first year, continued through his presidency and has been maintained under Trump. 

There are no fist bumps in the offing, however. 

The past week saw the kickoff of Trump’s 2020 campaign with a rally in Florida. That and other events provided Trump a platform that he used to exaggerate what he’s done, take some factually challenged swipes at Obama and Democrats at large, and make promises that will be hard to keep. Here are samples: 

Migrants 

TRUMP, in interview with Telemundo broadcast Thursday, talking about separating children from adults at the Mexican border: “When I became president, President Obama had a separation policy. I didn’t have it. He had it. I brought the families together. I’m the one that brought `em together. Now, I said something when I did that. I’m the one that put people together. … They separated. I put `em together.” 

JOSE DIAZ-BALART, interviewer: “You did not.” 

THE FACTS: Trump is not telling the truth. The separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents resulted from his “zero tolerance” policy. Obama had no such policy. After a public uproar and under a court order, Trump ceased the separations. 

Zero tolerance meant that U.S. authorities would criminally prosecute all adults caught crossing into the U.S. illegally. Doing so meant detention for adults and the removal of their children while their parents were in custody. During the Obama administration, such family separations were the exception. They became the practice under Trump’s policy, which he suspended a year ago. 

Before Trump’s zero-tolerance policy, migrant families caught illegally entering the U.S. were usually referred for civil deportation proceedings, not requiring separation, unless they were known to have a criminal record. Then and now, immigration officials may take a child from a parent in certain cases, such as serious criminal charges against a parent, concerns about the health and welfare of a child or medical concerns. 

TRUMP, in Telemundo interview, talking about detention centers at the border: “President Obama is the one that built those prison cells.” 

THE FACTS: He has a point. Whether they are called prison cells or something else, Obama held children in temporary, ill-equipped facilities and built a large center in McAllen, Texas, that is used now. 

Democrats routinely and inaccurately blame Trump for creating “cages” for children. They are referring to chain-link fencing inside the McAllen center — Obama’s creation. 

Conditions for detained migrants deteriorated sharply during a surge of Central American arrivals under Trump, particularly in El Paso, Texas. 

Trade 

TRUMP, in remarks Thursday with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: “This will be the largest trade deal ever made, and it won’t even be close.  If you take a look at the numbers, second is so far away, you don’t even call it second.  So it’s very exciting. And very exciting for Mexico; very exciting for Canada.” 

THE FACTS:  That’s wrong, simply by virtue of the number of trade partners involved. 

The proposed new agreement, replacing the North American Free Trade Agreement, covers the same three countries. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, negotiated by the Obama administration, included the three NAFTA partners — United States, Canada and Mexico — plus Japan and eight other Pacific Rim countries. Trump withdrew the United States from the pact on his third day in office. 

Even the Pacific deal pales in comparison with one that did go into effect with the U.S. on board, the Uruguay Round. Concluded in 1994, the round of negotiations created the World Trade Organization and was signed by 123 countries. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston said the WTO’s initial membership accounted for more than 90 percent of global economic output. 

TRUMP, on his tariffs, in a rally Tuesday in Orlando, Fla.: “We are taking in billions and billions of dollars into our Treasury. … We have never taken 10 cents from China.” 

THE FACTS: It’s false to say the U.S. never collected a dime in tariffs on Chinese goods before he took action. They are simply higher in some cases than they were before. It’s also wrong to suggest that the tariffs are being paid by China. Tariff money coming into the Treasury is mainly from U.S. businesses and consumers, not from China. Tariffs are primarily if not entirely a tax paid domestically. 

Iran 

TRUMP, in a Friday tweet: “President Obama made a desperate and terrible deal with Iran – Gave them 150 Billion Dollars plus 1.8 Billion Dollars in CASH! Iran was in big trouble and he bailed them out. Gave them a free path to Nuclear Weapons, and SOON. Instead of saying thank you, Iran yelled … Death to America. I terminated deal.” 

TRUMP, on his accomplishments, in Fox News interview Wednesday: “And then terminating one of the worst deals ever made, the Iran deal that was made by President Obama — paid $150 billion. Paid $1.8 billion in cash. I terminated that and Iran is a much different country.”  

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

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

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

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

Energy 

TRUMP, at Orlando rally: “We’ve ended the last administration’s cruel and heartless war on American energy. What they were doing to our energy should never be forgotten. The United States is now the No. 1 producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world.” 

TRUMP, in Fox News interview Wednesday: “We’re now No. 1 in the world in energy.”  

THE FACTS: As he’s done many times before, Trump is crediting himself with things that happened under Obama. 

Here’s what the government’s U.S. Energy Information Administration says: “The United States has been the world’s top producer of natural gas since 2009, when U.S. natural gas production surpassed that of Russia, and the world’s top producer of petroleum hydrocarbons since 2013, when U.S. production exceeded Saudi Arabia’s.” 

Jobs 

TRUMP, at Orlando rally: “Almost 160 million people are working. That’s more than ever before.” 

THE FACTS: True but that’s a tribute to Americans making babies and immigrants coming to the country. Population growth, in other words. 

Other than during recessions, employment growth has been trending upward since 1939, when the Labor Department started counting. The phenomenon is not a marker of leadership; it has spanned successful and failed presidents. 

More on point, the annual rate of job growth has been within the same range since roughly 2011. It was 1.6% through May. 

Another measure is the proportion of Americans with jobs, and that is still below record highs. The Labor Department says 60.6 percent of people in the U.S. 16 years and older were working in May. That’s below the all-time high of 64.7 percent in April 2000 during Bill Clinton’s administration, though higher than the 59.9 percent when Trump was inaugurated in January 2017. 

TRUMP, at Orlando rally: “Women’s unemployment is now the lowest it’s been in 74 years.” 

THE FACTS: No, the jobless rate for women of 3.1% in April was the lowest in 66 years, not 74, and it ticked up in May to 3.2%. 

Economy 

TRUMP, at Orlando rally: “It’s soaring to incredible new heights. Perhaps the greatest economy we’ve had in the history of our country.” 

THE FACTS: The economy is not one of the best in the country’s history. It expanded at an annual rate of 3.2 percent in the first quarter of this year. That growth was the highest in just four years for the first quarter. 

In the late 1990s, growth topped 4 percent for four straight years, a level it has not yet reached on an annual basis under Trump. Growth even reached 7.2 percent in 1984. 

The economy grew 2.9% in 2018 — the same pace it reached in 2015 under Obama — and simply hasn’t hit historically high growth rates. 

Trump has legitimate claim to a good economy but when it comes to records, there’s one he will have to share with Obama. The economy is on track to achieve its longest expansion ever, in July. Much of that decade-long growth came during Obama’s presidency, an achievement that Trump so far has largely sustained.  Other than in its durability, the economy is far from the finest in history. 

The wall 

TRUMP, in Fox News interview Wednesday: “We’ll have over 400 miles built by the end of next year.” 

TRUMP, at Orlando rally:  “We’re going to have over 400 miles of wall built by the end of next year. It’s moving very rapidly.” 

THE FACTS: That’s highly unlikely, and even if so, the great majority of the wall he’s talking about would be replacement barrier, not new miles of construction. Trump has added strikingly little length to barriers along the Mexico border despite his pre-eminent 2016 campaign promise to get a wall done. 

Even to reach 400 miles or 640 kilometers, he would have to prevail in legal challenges to his declaration of a national emergency or get Congress to find more money to get anywhere close. 

So far, the administration has awarded contracts for 247 miles (395 km) of wall construction, but that initiative has been constrained by court cases that are still playing out. 

In any event, all but 17 miles (27 km) of his awarded contracts so far would replace existing barriers. 

Taxes 

TRUMP, at Orlando rally:  “We’ve done so much … with the biggest tax cut in history.” 

THE FACTS: His tax cuts are nowhere close to the biggest in U.S. history. 

It’s a $1.5 trillion tax cut over 10 years. As a share of the total economy, a tax cut of that size ranks 12th, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 cut is the biggest, followed by the 1945 rollback of taxes that financed World War II. 

Post-Reagan tax cuts also stand among the historically significant: President George W. Bush’s cuts in the early 2000s and Obama’s renewal of them a decade later. 

Environment 

TRUMP, in Fox News interview Wednesday: “Our water and our air today is cleaner than it ever was. … Our air — it’s the best it ever was.” 

TRUMP, at Orlando rally: “Our air and water are the cleanest they’ve ever been by far.” 

THE FACTS: Not true about air quality, which hasn’t gotten better under the Trump administration. U.S. drinking water is among the best by one leading measure. 

After decades of improvement, progress in air quality has stalled. Over the last two years the U.S. had more polluted air days than just a few years earlier, federal data show. 

There were 15% more days with unhealthy air in America both last year and the year before than there were on average from 2013 through 2016, the four years when America had its fewest number of those days since at least 1980. 

The Obama administration, in fact, set records for the fewest air-polluted days, in 2016. 

On water, Yale University’s global Environmental Performance Index finds 10 countries tied for the cleanest drinking water, the U.S. among them. On environmental quality overall, the U.S. was 27th, behind a variety of European countries, Canada, Japan, Australia and more. Switzerland was No. 1. 

Judges 

TRUMP, on the confirmation of federal judges, at Orlando rally: “President Obama was very nice to us. He didn’t fill the positions.”  

THE FACTS: Trump’s sarcasm aside, he does have a better success rate than Obama in filling judicial vacancies. The Republican-controlled Senate in Obama’s last two years avoided taking action on many of his nominees. Republicans still control the Senate and have been able to confirm about 120 of Trump’s picks despite their slim majority. That’s about 35 more than Obama had confirmed at this point in his presidency. 

Health care 

TRUMP, at Orlando rally: “We will always protect patients with pre-existing conditions. Always.” 

THE FACTS: His administration’s actions say otherwise. It is pressing in court for full repeal of Obama’s health law, which requires insurers to take all applicants, regardless of medical history, and charge the same standard premiums to healthy people and those who had medical problems before or when they signed up. 

Trump and other Republicans say they’ll have a plan to preserve protections for people with pre-existing conditions, but the White House has provided no details. 

Abortion 

TRUMP, at Orlando rally: “Leading Democrats have even opposed measures to prevent the execution of children after birth.” 

THE FACTS: Executing children is already a crime. 

Trump is offering here a somewhat toned down version of a distorted story he’s been telling for months that falsely suggests Democrats are OK with murder. 

His account arises from extremely rare instances when babies are born alive as a result of an attempted abortion. When these cases occur, “execution” is not an option. 

When a baby is born with anomalies so severe that he or she would die soon after birth, a family may choose what’s known as palliative care or comfort care. This might involve allowing the baby to die naturally without medical intervention. Providing comfort without life-extending treatment is not specific to newborns. It may happen with fatally ill patients of any age. 

Veterans 

TRUMP, at Orlando rally: “We passed VA Choice. …They’ve been trying to get that passed also for about 44 years.” 

THE FACTS: No, Congress approved the private-sector Veterans Choice health program in 2014 and Obama signed it into law. Trump signed an expansion of it. 

Russia investigation 

TRUMP, on Fox News interview Wednesday: “I’m the most transparent president in history. I let Mueller have everything they wanted.” 

THE FACTS: It’s highly questionable to say Trump was fully cooperative in the Russia investigation. 

Trump declined to sit for an interview with Robert Mueller’s team, gave written answers that investigators described as “inadequate” and “incomplete,” said more than 30 times that he could not remember something he was asked about in writing, and — according to the report — tried to get aides to fire the special counsel or otherwise shut or limit the inquiry. 

In the end, the Mueller report found insufficient evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia but left open the question of whether Trump obstructed justice. 

According to the report, Mueller’s team declined to make a prosecutorial judgment on whether to charge partly because of a Justice Department legal opinion that said sitting presidents cannot be indicted. The report instead factually laid out instances in which Trump might have obstructed justice, specifically leaving it open for Congress to take up the matter. 

…

President Donald Trump has asserted executive privilege over documents that were subpoenaed by Congress related to the Trump administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

The claim comes as the House Oversight Committee considers whether to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt for failing to turn over the subpoenaed documents. A contempt vote by the committee would be an escalation of Democratic efforts to use their House majority to aggressively investigate the inner workings of the Trump administration.

In a letter to the committee’s chairman, Rep. Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the Justice Department asserted that the administration has “engaged in good-faith efforts” to satisfy the committee’s oversight needs and said the planned contempt vote was premature.

Democrats fear the question will reduce census participation in immigrant-heavy communities. They say they want specific documents to determine why Ross added the citizenship question to the 2020 census and contend the Trump administration has declined to provide them despite repeated requests.

The administration has turned over more than 17,000 of pages of documents and Ross testified for nearly seven hours. The Justice Department has said two senior officials also sat for interviews with committee staff members and it was working to produce tens of thousands of additional pages of relevant documents.

Cummings disputed the Justice Department’s account and said most of the documents turned over to the committee had already been made public.

“We must protect the integrity of the census and we must stand up for Congress’ authority under the Constitution to conduct meaningful oversight,” Cummings said.

‘Fight all the subpoenas’

The administration’s refusal to turn over requested documents “does not appear to be an effort to engage in good-faith negotiations or accommodations,” he added. “Instead, it appears to be another example of the administration’s blanket defiance of Congress’ constitutionally mandated responsibilities.”

Trump has vowed to “fight all the subpoenas” issued by Congress and says he won’t work on legislative priorities, such as infrastructure, until Congress halts investigations of his administration.

Cummings postponed a planned vote Wednesday morning to allow lawmakers time to read the Justice Department letters.

Ross told the committee the decision in March 2018 to add the question was based on a Justice Department request to help it enforce the Voting Rights Act.

Cummings disputed that, citing documents unearthed last week suggesting that the real reason the administration sought to add the citizenship question was to help officials gerrymander legislative districts in overtly partisan and racist ways.

Supreme Court

The Supreme Court is considering the citizenship question in a ruling expected by the end of the month.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said Democrats were trying to use the committee’s oversight power to “pre-empt” the Supreme Court’s decision.

“Why don’t they want to know how many citizens — and non-citizens — are in the U.S.?” he asked.

Some of the documents the committee is seeking are protected by attorney-client privileges and other confidential processes, Boyd said, adding that the president has made a “protective assertion” of executive privilege so the administration can fully review all of the documents.

“The president, the Department of Justice, has every right to do that,” White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said on MSNBC. Democrats are “asking for documents that are privileged, and I would hope that they can continue to negotiate and speak about what is appropriate and what is not, but the world is watching. This country sees that they’d rather continue to investigate than legislate.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said the Trump administration has repeatedly thwarted congressional efforts to obtain key documents and exercise legitimate oversight. “All we get from the administration is a middle finger” of defiance, Raskin said. “And that’s not appropriate for the power of Congress.”

…

Two U.S. senators asked the FBI on Wednesday to explain what it has done to investigate the suspected hack by Russian intelligence of a Florida-based voting software company before the 2016 election.

In a letter sent to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who is the ranking member of the committee with jurisdiction over federal elections, asked for answers by July 12 regarding steps the agency has taken in response to the breach of VR Systems’ computer servers.

Robert Mueller’s report on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election describes how Kremlin-backed spies installed malware on the network of an unnamed company that “developed software used by numerous U.S. counties to manage voter rolls.”

VR Systems has said it believes it is the company referred to in the report. The Tallahassee, Florida-based company has maintained, however, that its system was never penetrated. It told Wyden in a letter last month that the cybersecurity firm Fire Eye conducted a security audit and found no evidence of a breach. The audit was conducted more than seven months after the election.

The Department of Homeland Security said last week that its computer experts will examine North Carolina polling equipment supplied by VR Systems, at the state’s request. The forensic analysis will look at laptops and replicas of computer hard drives that were used in heavily Democratic Durham County to determine whether hacking was responsible for malfunctions on election day in 2016.

State and local officials said previously they found no indication that the software system, used for voter registration and check-in, had been targeted by hackers, but they never did a forensic examination. VR Systems has blamed the trouble on poorly trained poll workers and inadequate computer maintenance. A report by a security consultant hired by Durham County’s elections board supported that claim.

Wyden and Klobuchar asked whether the FBI has examined VR Systems’ servers and the equipment that malfunctioned in Durham County. They also asked if the agency has reviewed the conclusions of Fire Eye’s audit and for details on its key findings. VR Systems has refused to release even redacted versions of the report, citing client confidentiality.

Lastly, the senators want to know how the FBI planned to work with local and state election officials ahead of the 2020 election to ensure that they felt comfortable reporting cybersecurity incidents and had the information necessary to be aware of threats.

VR Systems, the Homeland Security Department and FBI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
 

…

President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the next U.S. envoy to the United Nations is defending her record on climate change, saying it is a “real risk to our planet” that must be addressed.
 
Kelly Knight Craft tells the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on  Wednesday she believes human behavior has contributed to climate change and she’ll push countries to deal with it. Democrats are expected to question her about comments she made doubting the cause and severity of climate change. Democrats are also concerned about possible conflicts of interest as she holds extensive investments in fossil fuels.
 
Craft is currently U.S. ambassador to Canada and would be first major political donor to occupy the U.N. post if confirmed.  Trump nominated her to replace Nikki Haley after his first choice withdrew from consideration.

…

U.S. President Donald Trump kicked off his re-election campaign at a rally  in Orlando, Florida, one of the swing states that fueled his poll-defying victory in 2016.

The crowd greeted him with “USA” chants as he recalled the “movement” he started four years ago.

“It turned out to be more than just a great political campaign. It turned out to be a great political movement because of you,” the president said, echoing the same  message of his first presidential run. “It’s a movement made up of people… who believe that a nation must care for its own citizens first.”

While promoting issues like the economy and border security, the president also condemned his Democratic opponents as “socialists” and “left-wing” extremists who have tried to destroy him and his family, and have “looked down” on his supporters.

The president promoted issues like border security and trade tariffs, and chastised the media and the Democrats for spotlighting the Russian issue and other controversies surrounding his presidency.

“Nobody has done what we have done in two-and-a-half years,” he said.

Tim Murtaugh, Director of Communications of the Trump-Pence 2020 Campaign, stressed Trump’s record of “promises made, promises kept”.

“When he was a candidate in 2016. He promised a lot of things he was going to lead America back to world prominence. He was going to improve the economy. And he did exactly those things. The economy is booming. America is back to its rightful place as the leader of the free world. And the president is going to be running on keeping those promises,” Murtaugh said.

Supporters line up

From early afternoon, thousands of people have lined up to enter the 20,000-capacity venue. But many will have to watch outside on giant television screens under the downpour that has been drenching supporters and volunteers on and off all day.

Trump’s most loyal fans have camped outside the Amway Center since early Monday to claim their spot in line. Monday night, several hundred were gathered a block away from the rally venue, with the first ones in line saying they have been there since 4 a.m. They brought tents, lawn chairs and coolers full of snacks and beverages, and plenty of umbrellas to protect against the elements, including a thunderstorm that lasted about an hour in the early evening.

Many of them say they support Trump’s economic and immigration policies.

Nathan Gunn, who will be voting for the first time in 2020, said he supports Trump’s America First agenda and loves what the president is doing with “the big crisis we have in the border with people flooding in.” Gunn also likes the fact that Trump is “not politically correct.”

“People don’t really see what’s really true about him, and that’s why they hate him,” Gunn said. “They don’t really see what he’s capable of, what he’s actually doing for the country.”

Maureen Bailey from Volusia County and her twin sister Laureen arrived at 6 a.m. She said she is a lifelong Republican who prior to 2016 has always supported establishment candidates. Bailey used to think that Trump’s name-calling was “unnecessary” but now finds his controversial speech “refreshing.”

“He’s just a breath of fresh air,” Bailey said. “He just gets up there and he goes off script. You just never know what’s going to come out of his mouth.”

Tweeting supporters

Monday night Trump tweeted about those waiting. 

Thousands of people are already lined up in Orlando, some two days before tomorrow nights big Rally. Large Screens and food trucks will be there for those that can’t get into the 25,000 capacity arena. It will be a very exciting evening! Make America Great Again!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2019

Christian Ziegler, vice chairman of the Florida Republican Party, said that Trump has truly energized the party.

“It’s night and day difference versus other cycles for the Republican Party,” he said, adding that it’s normally difficult to get volunteers. “When you look at McCain (in) 2008 and Romney (in) 2012, we couldn’t give away yard signs,” Ziegler said.

Not all who show up Tuesday will be supporters.

The Miami Chapter of the Democratic Hispanic Caucus of Florida and the Puerto Rican Democratic Club of Miami Dade have organized a “caravan” from Miami to Orlando to give the president the message that he is not welcomed.

The bus and the car caravan made stops in Palm Beach and Boca Raton, and eventually joined activists from various groups in an Orlando rally hours before the event. They say they are mobilizing to demand that Trump stop what they call “attacks on the Hispanic communities.”

Several of Trump’s former employees at his golf clubs in New York and New Jersey who were fired after revealing their undocumented status are also crashing his 2020 campaign kickoff.  

Trump Org. undocumented ex-employees traveling to Orlando to Trump rally. They have a message for America. “We are good people who love America and deserve better. Together we make this country the greatest in the world” Get to work Congress! pic.twitter.com/ok0cImEWSo

— Abogado Anibal NY/NJ (@AnibalRomeroLaw) June 17, 2019

Florida is key

With its 29 electoral college votes, Florida is one of the biggest swing states in the nation, and winning it is key. Republican pollster Whit Ayres called Florida “absolutely critical” for the president’s re-election prospects. “It’s very difficult to put together the pieces to get 270 electoral votes without Florida’s votes,” he said.

Trump won Florida by a margin on one percentage point in 2016, and his re-election launch specifically targets Central Florida, where Orlando is located. The region is strategic politically, given the fact that other parts of the state are either solidly Democrat or Republican. But Central Florida, where about half of the state’s registered voters live, is largely independent.

Orlando, the town most known as a tourist destination, home of Universal Studios and Sea World, is part of what is known as the I-4 corridor — the 214-kilometer-long interstate highway that goes from the eastern to the western part of Florida.

Linda Trocine, chairman of the Republican Party of Seminole County, one of the most densely populated suburbs of Orlando, leads a team of Trump volunteers in the area. She explained how the I-4 corridor is the swing part of the state and decides how the state will vote.
 
Trocine said that 2020 is different than 2016 because now there is “complete unity.”

“We have unity at the Republican National Committee level, at the Republican Party of Florida level, and here locally in Seminole County,” she said.

Luisana Perez, Hispanic spokesperson for the Democratic Party, acknowledged that Trump is eyeing independent voters.

“He’s trying to say that he cares about our communities when we know that’s not true,” she said, adding that Trump continues to focus on his base voters.

Perez said that the Democratic Party are talking to voters about core Democratic values, including more funds for public education, affordable health care, protection for immigrant communities and minorities, including LGBTQ.

While Florida’s state legislators and governorship have been controlled by Republicans since the mid-’90s, in presidential elections, the state has flipped back and forth and usually by a very narrow margin. This includes the 2000 presidential race when George W. Bush was declared the winner over Democrat Al Gore by about 500 votes.

In the past 50 years, with the exception of Bill Clinton in 1992, the road to the White House has always included Florida.

…

VOA’s Jorge Agobian contributed to this report.

U.S. President Donald Trump is in Orlando, Florida, to officially kick off his re-election campaign with a rally at 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Amway Center.

From early afternoon, thousands of people have lined up to enter the 20,000-capacity venue. But many will have to watch outside on giant television screens under the downpour that has been drenching supporters and volunteers on and off all day.

Trump’s most loyal fans have camped outside the Amway Center since early Monday to claim their spot in line. Monday night, several hundred were gathered a block away from the rally venue, with the first ones in line saying they have been there since 4 a.m. They brought tents, lawn chairs and coolers full of snacks and beverages, and plenty of umbrellas to protect against the elements, including a thunderstorm that lasted about an hour in the early evening.

Many of them say they support Trump’s economic and immigration policies.

Nathan Gunn, who will be voting for the first time in 2020, said he supports Trump’s America First agenda and loves what the president is doing with “the big crisis we have in the border with people flooding in.” Gunn also likes the fact that Trump is “not politically correct.”

“People don’t really see what’s really true about him, and that’s why they hate him,” Gunn said. “They don’t really see what he’s capable of, what he’s actually doing for the country.”

Maureen Bailey from Volusia County and her twin sister Laureen arrived at 6 a.m. She said she is a lifelong Republican who prior to 2016 has always supported establishment candidates. Bailey used to think that Trump’s name-calling was “unnecessary” but now finds his controversial speech “refreshing.”

“He’s just a breath of fresh air,” Bailey said. “He just gets up there and he goes off script. You just never know what’s going to come out of his mouth.”

Monday night Trump tweeted about those waiting.

Thousands of people are already lined up in Orlando, some two days before tomorrow nights big Rally. Large Screens and food trucks will be there for those that can’t get into the 25,000 capacity arena. It will be a very exciting evening! Make America Great Again!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2019

Christian Ziegler, vice chairman of the Florida Republican Party, said that Trump has truly energized the party.

“It’s night and day difference versus other cycles for the Republican Party,” he said, adding that it’s normally difficult to get volunteers. “When you look at McCain [in] 2008 and Romney [in] 2012, we couldn’t give away yard signs,” Ziegler said.

‘Caravan’ of critics

Not all who show up Tuesday will be supporters. 

The Miami Chapter of the Democratic Hispanic Caucus of Florida and the Puerto Rican Democratic Club of Miami Dade have organized a “caravan” from Miami to Orlando to give the president the message that he is not welcomed.

The bus and the car caravan made stops in Palm Beach and Boca Raton, and eventually joined activists from various groups in an Orlando rally hours before the event. They say they are mobilizing to demand that Trump stop what they call “attacks on the Hispanic communities.” 

Several of Trump’s former employees at his golf clubs in New York and New Jersey who were fired after revealing their undocumented status are also crashing his 2020 campaign kickoff.  

Trump Org. undocumented ex-employees traveling to Orlando to Trump rally. They have a message for America. “We are good people who love America and deserve better. Together we make this country the greatest in the world” Get to work Congress! pic.twitter.com/ok0cImEWSo

— Abogado Anibal NY/NJ (@AnibalRomeroLaw) June 17, 2019

Florida is key

With its 29 electoral college votes, Florida is one of the biggest swing states in the nation, and winning it is key. Republican pollster Whit Ayres called Florida “absolutely critical” for the president’s re-election prospects. “It’s very difficult to put together the pieces to get 270 electoral votes without Florida’s votes,” he said.

Trump won Florida by a margin on one percentage point in 2016, and his re-election launch specifically targets Central Florida, where Orlando is located. The region is strategic politically, given the fact that other parts of the state are either solidly Democrat or Republican. But Central Florida, where about half of the state’s registered voters live, is largely independent.

Orlando, the town most known as a tourist destination, home of Universal Studios and Sea World, is part of what is known as the I-4 corridor — the 214-kilometer-long interstate highway that goes from the eastern to the western part of Florida.

Linda Trocine, chairman of the Republican Party of Seminole County, one of the most densely populated suburbs of Orlando, leads a team of Trump volunteers in the area. She explained how the I-4 corridor is the swing part of the state and decides how the state will vote.

Trocine said that 2020 is different than 2016 because now there is “complete unity.”

“We have unity at the Republican National Committee level, at the Republican Party of Florida level, and here locally in Seminole County,” she said.

Embed

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Trump to Launch Re-Election Bid Tuesday in Florida video player.

Luisana Perez, Hispanic spokesperson for the Democratic Party, acknowledged that Trump is eyeing independent voters. 

“He’s trying to say that he cares about our communities when we know that’s not true,” she said, adding that Trump continues to focus on his base voters.

Perez said that the Democratic Party is talking to voters about core Democratic values, including more funds for public education, affordable health care, protection for immigrant communities and minorities, including LGBTQ.

While Florida’s state legislators and governorship have been controlled by Republicans since the mid-’90s, in presidential elections, the state has flipped back and forth and usually by a very narrow margin. This includes the 2000 presidential race when George W. Bush was declared the winner over Democrat Al Gore by about 500 votes. 
 
In the past 50 years, with the exception of Bill Clinton in 1992, the road to the White House has always included Florida. 

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