RIYADMEDIA

The Trump administration is setting out to do what this year’s farm bill didn’t: tighten work requirements for millions of Americans who receive federal food assistance.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Thursday proposed a rule that would restrict the ability of states to exempt work-eligible adults from having to obtain steady employment to receive food stamps.

The move comes the same day that President Donald Trump signed an $867 billion farm bill that reauthorized agriculture and conservation programs while leaving the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which serves roughly 40 million Americans, virtually untouched.

Passage of the farm bill followed months of tense negotiations over House efforts to significantly tighten work requirements and the Senate’s refusal to accept the provisions.

Currently, able-bodied adults ages 18-49 without children are required to work 20 hours a week to maintain their SNAP benefits. The House bill would have raised the age of recipients subject to work requirements from 49 to 59 and required parents with children older than 6 to work or participate in job training. The House measure also sought to limit circumstances under which families that qualify for other poverty programs can automatically be eligible for SNAP.

Measures don’t make final farm bill

None of those measures made it into the final farm bill despite Trump’s endorsement. Now the administration is using regulatory rule making to try to scale back the SNAP program.

Work-eligible able-bodied adults without dependents, known as ABAWDs, can currently receive only three months of SNAP benefits in a three-year period if they don’t meet the 20-hour work requirement. But states with an unemployment rate of 10 percent or higher or a demonstrable lack of sufficient jobs can waive those limitations.

States are also allowed to grant benefit extensions for 15 percent of their work-eligible adult population without a waiver. If a state doesn’t use its 15 percent, it can bank the exemptions to distribute later, creating what Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue referred to as a “stockpile.”

The USDA’s proposed rule would strip states’ ability to issue waivers unless a city or county has an unemployment rate of 7 percent or higher. The waivers would be good for one year and would require the governor to support the request. States would no longer be able to bank their 15 percent exemptions. The new rule also would forbid states from granting waivers for geographic areas larger than a specific jurisdiction.

​Proposed rule a tradeoff

Perdue said the proposed rule is a tradeoff for Trump’s support of the farm bill, which Trump signed Thursday.

“I have directed Secretary Perdue to use his authority to close work requirement loopholes in the food stamp program,” Trump said at the signing ceremony. “That was a difficult thing to get done, but the farmers wanted it done, we all wanted it done, and in the end, it’s going to make a lot of people happy.”

Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday slammed the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict SNAP.

“Why at Christmas would you take food out of the mouths of American people?” she said.

The USDA in February solicited public comment on ways to reform SNAP, and Perdue has repeatedly voiced support for scaling back the program.

The Trump administration’s effort, while celebrated by some conservatives, has been met with criticism from advocates who say tightening restrictions will result in more vulnerable Americans, including children, going hungry.

A Brookings Institution study published this summer said more stringent work requirements are likely to hurt those who are already part of the workforce but whose employment is sporadic.

Conaway leads the way

House Agriculture Chairman Michael Conaway, R-Texas, was the primary champion for tighter SNAP work requirements in the House farm bill and remained committed to the provision throughout negotiations.

Conaway praised the rule Thursday for “creating a roadmap for states to more effectively engage ABAWDs in this booming economy.”

Conaway in September blasted the Senate for refusing to adopt work requirements and suggested that Perdue doesn’t have the authority to make broad changes to the SNAP program.

“The Senate seems to have abandoned the idea that it is Congress’ responsibility to fix the waiver issue and that somehow Secretary Perdue could wave a magic wand and fix that. It’s not his responsibility; he does not have the authority,” Conaway said in an interview with Pro Farmer, a trade publication.

Democrats blast farm bill

On Thursday, Conaway spokeswoman Rachel Millard said the congressman was referring to Perdue’s authority to change laws, which he does not have, not the secretary’s ability to pursue regulatory action. She said Conaway continues to support Perdue’s efforts to limit SNAP.

The top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, who along with its Republican chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, crafted the bipartisan Senate bill without any changes to SNAP, blasted the Trump administration for its attempt to restrict the program.

“This regulation blatantly ignores the bipartisan farm bill that the president is signing today and disregards over 20 years of history giving states flexibility to request waivers based on local job conditions,” Stabenow said. “I expect the rule will face significant opposition and legal challenges.”
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With a single tweet, U.S. President Donald Trump shocked many in Washington, changing the course of U.S. policy in Syria and, simultaneously, announcing an end to the fight against the Islamic State terror group’s self-declared caliphate. But as U.S. officials scurry to explain the change, many questions remain unanswered. VOA national security correspondent Jeff Seldin has more.
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North Korea’s human rights record is emerging as the latest issue separating Washington and Pyongyang, as denuclearization talks have stalled.

Often condemned as having one of the worst human rights records in the world — in a 2017 report, the U.S. State Department called the violations “egregious” — North Korea has rejected such criticisms, calling them ploys to overthrow its political system.

President Donald Trump said he raised North Korea’s human rights issue to Kim during the Singapore summit in June and that Kim responded “very well.” But Trump was criticized for failing to obtain a concrete human rights agreement in the joint statement signed by the two leaders at the summit.

US sanctions

The latest tension is triggered by sanctions imposed by the U.S. under the “maximum pressure” campaign designed to push Pyongyang toward denuclearization.

The North Korean Foreign Ministry said that “it will block the path to denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula forever” if the U.S. escalates the human rights campaign against its country and increases sanctions.

The ministry said that it would be the “greatest miscalculation” to think such a campaign would cause it to denuclearize.

The statement issued Sunday came after the U.S. Treasury Department last week blacklisted three top North Korean officials suspected of human rights abuses and censorship, including a top aide to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The sanctions bar the three senior officials from engaging in transactions with anyone in the U.S. and freeze their assets within U.S. jurisdiction.

​UN resolution

On Monday, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution condemning North Korea’s “systematic, widespread and gross violation of human rights.”In response, North Korea’s U.N. Ambassador Kim Song said the resolution is “a product of a political plot and hostile forces,” which Pyongyang “categorically rejects.”

A State Department official said the U.S. will continue to bring up North Korea’s human rights issues.

“The president raised North Korea’s human rights record in his summit meeting with Chairman Kim (Jong Un), and will continue to raise this issue going forward,” the official said in an email sent to VOA Korean Service on Monday.

The official added, “(North Korea) is among the most repressive authoritarian states in the world. The United States continues to work with the international community to raise awareness, highlight abuses and violations, promote access to independent information, and keep pressure on (North Korea) to respect human rights.”

​Denuclearization talks

North Korea’s warning comes after denuclearization talks between Washington and Pyongyang stalled in early November when North Korea suddenly called off a planned meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

It remains unclear if the human rights issue will derail denuclearization talks.

Ken Gause, director of the International Affairs Group at the Center for Naval Analyses, believes the U.S., by raising North Korea’s human rights record, could disrupt denuclearization talks because Pyongyang sees the issue as undercutting agreements it made with Washington at the Singapore summit in June.

“I think it would be because North Korea sees the agreement at the Singapore summit as one of the agreements — that the objectives, goals that they had — was to improve the U.S.-North Korean relationships, and North Korea sees these actions by the United States undermining that agreement,” Gause said.

John Feffer, director of Foreign Policy in Focus, disagrees. He said the U.S. campaign against North Korea’s human rights violations will not derail denuclearization talks but might “undermine” Trump’s “negotiating position” on the process of denuclearization.

“I don’t think that human rights issues will ultimately derail the talks,” Feffer said. “Ultimately, North Korea is more interested in seeking whether Trump will agree to some kind of mutual process of give and take. That is the major hurdle at this point — the process. The talks will continue to limp along if the process remains murky.”

Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, thinks the Trump administration should delink North Korea’s human rights issues from denuclearization talks in the beginning of the negotiation process, because speaking out against North Korea’s human rights violations might divert diplomatic efforts.

“I think it is appropriate for the administration to speak out on the issue,” Manning said. “But not to link it to denuclearization. If the diplomacy advances, and we begin discussions on U.S.-(North Korea) normalizations, human rights has to be discussed as part of that process.”

​Improving relations

Despite its sharp retort against U.S. actions toward its alleged human rights abuses, Pyongyang credited Trump’s willingness to improve relations with North Korea, suggesting it is open to talks with him.

A State Department official said the Singapore agreements Trump and Kim made on denuclearization will be fulfilled.

“At the summit in Singapore, President Trump and Chairman Kim made the first leader-level U.S.-(North Korea) commitment on denuclearization in history,” said the official in an email message sent to VOA Korean Service on Sunday.

“We remain confident that the commitments made by President Trump and Chairman Kim at their summit Singapore will be fulfilled.”

Baik Sung-won of VOA’s Korean Service contributed to this report.
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A Honduran migrant who had recently been deported from the United States was shot and killed a few blocks from his home, his family said Wednesday, in another sign of the dangers faced by migrants fleeing Central 

American gangs. 

Nelson Espinal, 28, was shot 15 times on Tuesday night shortly after leaving his home in the capital Tegucigalpa, said his sister, Patricia Espinal. The neighborhood is dominated by the Barrio 18 gang, one of the country’s most dangerous. 

Espinal was deported from the United States in late November and barred from returning for five years, according to documents from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Nevertheless, Espinal, who worked in construction, planned to make another attempt to enter the country in January, his sister said.

“He said that if he did not leave, they were going to kill him,” Patricia Espinal said as her mother, Sara Matamoros, wept. “That’s why he left following the caravan.” 

​Crossed illegally

Espinal was detained after crossing the border illegally in Arizona, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. He did not appear to be part of the migrant caravans trekking from Central America to the United States and did not seek asylum, the agency said.

On Wednesday, a U.S. federal judge struck down Trump administration policies aimed at restricting asylum claims by people citing gang or domestic violence in their home countries. 

In Mexico, authorities are investigating the deaths of two migrant teenagers from Honduras who were killed in the border city of Tijuana last weekend.

The youths, believed to be about 16 or 17, showed signs of having been stabbed and strangled. It could not be determined whether the victims had planned to apply for asylum. 

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters on Wednesday that his government would seek “fair treatment” for migrants.

More than 2,000 mainly Honduran immigrants who traveled with the caravan remain in a shelter in Tijuana, Lopez Obrador said. 

U.S. President Donald Trump has insisted that they will not be allowed into the United States, but a few asylum seekers have already crossed the border. 

The killings could fuel criticism of a policy proposal that Mexico and the United States discussed earlier this year to have Central American migrants wait in Mexico while their asylum claims are processed. 
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The top Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee sent 10 letters on Wednesday to Trump administration officials demanding documents, setting the stage for congressional investigations expected to begin in January.

Representative Elijah Cummings, who will become chairman of the House Oversight Committee in January when Democrats take majority control of the chamber, wrote to officials repeating requests that had already been made in conjunction with Republicans, but that the administration did not comply with. Cummings gave the administration until January 11 to comply.

When he becomes committee chairman, he will be able to subpoena the documents.

“Many of these requests were bipartisan, and some are now more than a year old. As Democrats prepare to take the reins in Congress, we are insisting “as a basic first step” that the Trump Administration and others comply,” Cummings said in a statement to Reuters.

The letters cover a range of topics including separation of immigrant children from their parents, the federal response to the hurricane in Puerto Rico, lead poisoning of the water in Flint, Michigan, and travel by White House staff and cabinet secretaries.

The letters indicated the committee will press the administration on these issues, as well as topics involving Trump’s personal finances and his family.

In a letter to Trump’s business the Trump Organization and his attorney Sheri Dillon, Cummings asked for details about payments from foreign governments to the president’s hotels.

Democrats have charged that Trump has been violating the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution by profiting through his businesses from payments from foreign governments for hotel rentals.

In a different letter, Cummings asked White House counsel Pat Cipollone to provide information about the use of private emails by administration staff, citing use of private emails by Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, and her husband Jared Kushner, both senior advisers to the president.

Cummings asked the Environmental Protection Agency for documents about former administrator Scott Pruitt’s travel and expenses, and to Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta seeking information about document preservation at his agency.

The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.
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The White House and Congress appeared headed toward agreement Wednesday on a stopgap spending plan to avert a partial government shutdown at midnight Friday, but it does not include the $5 billion President Donald Trump wanted for construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate would vote later in the day on the measure funding operations for a quarter of the U.S. government until Feb. 8, when Trump and lawmakers could again face the possibility of a partial closure.

Democratic leader Charles Schumer said Democrats would support the temporary spending plan, with the remainder of the U.S. government already funded through the end of next September.

Trump made a pledge during his 2016 campaign to build a border wall to thwart illegal immigration and make Mexico pay for it. The president, however, has not been able to secure U.S. taxpayer funding for it even though both houses of Congress currently are under the control of his Republican Party.

He faces an even more daunting political challenge in the new year, when Democrats, who are adamantly opposed to the wall, take control of the House of Representatives, while Republicans retain their Senate majority.

On Twitter, Trump said, “One way or the other, we will win on the Wall!”

Trump aide Kellyanne Conway told reporters that the U.S. leader would “take a look at” the stopgap funding plan, “certainly.”

Trump last week said he would “proudly” own a shutdown in order to get $5 billion in funding for construction of a wall along the 3,200-kilometer border with Mexico; but, without enough votes in Congress, Trump retreated Tuesday, with the White House saying it would look for “other ways” to secure funding by trying to tap unused money from several federal agencies.

“We’ll see what happens,” Trump said. “It’s too early to say. We need border security.”

Democrats have proposed keeping 2019 funding at $1.3 billion for border security fencing and other improvements, but not specifically for the wall.

In a pair of tweets, Trump blamed opposition Democrats for the spending impasse, although some Republicans also oppose construction of the wall.

“In our Country, so much money has been poured down the drain, for so many years, but when it comes to Border Security and the Military, the Democrats fight to the death,” he said.

Trump wrongly claimed that “Mexico is paying (indirectly) for the Wall” through the new U.S. trade deal with Mexico and Canada, with “far more money coming to the U.S.” But the pact has yet to be ratified by Congress and has not taken effect.

Congress has approved funding for three-quarters of U.S. government operations through Sept. 30, but the remaining quarter left without a 2019 spending plan includes the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees border control operations, and the State Department handling U.S. diplomatic operations.

If a deal is not reached to avert the partial government shutdown, the affected agencies would start winding down nonessential operations Friday, with more than 800,000 federal workers furloughed or working for no pay.

On Tuesday, McConnell proposed $1.6 billion for border fencing — money already agreed upon in a bipartisan Homeland Security bill — and an additional $1 billion Trump could use to spend on the border.

McConnell called the offer “reasonable.” Democratic leaders said no.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said she and Schumer could “not support the offer they made of a billion-dollar slush fund for the president to implement his very wrong immigration policies.”
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Decades after the U.S. stopped institutionalizing kids because large and crowded orphanages were causing lasting trauma, it is happening again. The federal government has placed most of the 14,300 migrant toddlers, children and teens in its care in detention centers and residential facilities packed with hundreds, or thousands, of children.

As the year draws to a close, some 5,400 detained migrant children in the U.S. are sleeping in shelters with more than 1,000 other children. Some 9,800 are in facilities with 100-plus total kids, according to confidential government data obtained and cross-checked by The Associated Press.

That’s a huge shift from just three months after President Donald Trump took office, when the same federal program had 2,720 migrant youth in its care; most were in shelters with a few dozen kids or in foster programs. Some of the children may be released sooner than anticipated, because this week the administration ended a portion of its strict screening policies that had slowed the placement of migrant kids with relatives in the U.S.

Until now, public information has been limited about the number of youths held at each facility overseen by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, even for attorneys representing the kids. But the AP obtained data showing the number of children in individual detention centers, shelters and foster care programs for nearly every week over the past 20 months, revealing in detail the expanse of a program at the center of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

The data shows the degree to which the government’s approach to migrant youth has hardened, marking a new phase in a federal program originally intended to offer safe haven to vulnerable children fleeing danger across the globe. It’s been taking at least twice as long — on average two months rather than one — for youth held inside the system to get out, in part because the Trump administration added more restrictive screening measures for parents and relatives who would take them in.

That changed Tuesday when the administration ended a policy requiring every adult in households where migrant children will live to provide the government with fingerprints. All still must submit to background checks, and parents themselves still need to be fingerprinted. Nonetheless, officials said they could now process some children more rapidly, and hoped to shorten shelter stays that had dragged on so long kids sometimes wondered if their parents had abandoned them for good.

“It’s a pain we will never get through,” said Cecilio Ramirez Castaneda, a Salvadoran whose 12-year-old son, Omar, was taken from him when they were apprehended in June under the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which led to nearly 3,000 children being separated from their families. Omar feared his father had given up on him during the five months he spent in a Southwest Key shelter in Brownsville, Texas, with dozens of kids.

Ramirez was reunited with Omar last month only to learn that his son had been hospitalized for depression and medicated for unclear reasons and suffered a broken arm while in government custody.

“It’s a system that causes irreparable damage,” he said. “My son says they would tell him that because he wasn’t from here, he had no rights.”

Experts say the deep anxiety and distrust children suffer when they’re institutionalized away from loved ones can cause long-lasting mental and physical health problems. It’s dangerous for all but worse for younger children, those who stay more than a few days and those who are in larger facilities with less personal care.

“This is not a perplexing scientific puzzle. This is a moral disaster,” said Dr. Jack Shonkoff, who heads Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child. “There has to be some way to communicate, in unequivocal terms, that we are inflicting punishments on innocent children that will have lifelong consequences. No matter how a person feels about immigration policy, very few people hate children — and yet we are passively allowing bad things to happen to them.”

Administration officials said increased need has driven them to expand the number of beds available for migrant children from 6,500 last fall to 16,000 today. Mark Weber, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees ORR, said sheltering children in large facilities, while not preferable, is a better alternative than holding them for long periods at Border Patrol stations ill-suited to care for them.

“This is an amazing program with incredibly dedicated people who are working to take care of these kids,” he said. “There are a large number of children and it’s a difficult situation, and we are just working hard to make sure they are taken care of and placed responsibly.”

Weber confirmed a number of specific shelter populations from the data the AP obtained. To further verify the data, reporters contacted more than a dozen individual facilities that contract with ORR to house migrant children. Reporters also cross-referenced population numbers previously collected by AP and its partners.

The kids in government care range in age from toddlers to 17. The vast majority crossed the border without their parents, escaping violence and corruption in Central America, but some were separated from their families at the border earlier this year.

The care they receive varies greatly in the opaque network, which has encompassed 150 different programs over the last 20 months in 17 states. Some children live with foster families and are treated to Broadway shows, while others sleep in canvas tents exposed to the elements amid the Texas desert.

Through dozens of interviews and data analysis, AP found:  

— As of Dec. 17, some 9,800 children were in facilities housing more than 100 kids; 5,405 of those were in three facilities with more than 1,000 youths — two in Texas and one in Florida.

— Texas had the most growth over the last 20 months in the number of kids under ORR custody. In April 2017, there were 1,368 migrant children in facilities or foster care in Texas. As of Dec. 17, the number was about 8,700.

— New York had the second-highest number of children: 1,653, up from 210 in April 2017. Cayuga Centers grew from about 40 kids to close to 900; all are in foster homes.

— The five largest providers, in order, are Austin, Texas-based Southwest Key; San Antonio-based BCFS Health and Human Services; Comprehensive Health Services Inc., based in Cape Canaveral, Florida; Cayuga Centers in Auburn, New York; and Chicago-based Heartland Alliance. Together they had about 11,600 children — or more than 80 percent of the 14,314 migrant youth in ORR custody as of Dec. 17.  

— The states with children in care are: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington state.

Kids continue to enter the system, though dozens of the care providers have been sued or disciplined before for mistreating children in their care. Now new litigation is piling up as attorneys fight to get migrant children released.

Staff members at a Southwest Key shelter in Phoenix allegedly physically abused three children this year, leading to the closure of the shelter in October, federal officials said. And a lawsuit filed earlier this year alleged that Latino youths at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center in Virginia were beaten while handcuffed and locked up for long periods in solitary confinement, left nude and shivering in concrete cells.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and many experts warn against institutionalizing children in large groups. Dr. Ryan Matlow, a Stanford clinical psychologist whose work addresses the impact of early life stress, said best practices minimize the number of children in any one shelter.

“Children are being treated as cogs in a machine, and their individual backgrounds, interests and unique identities are devalued as they are lost amongst the masses. This experience then becomes internalized, with significant psychological consequences,” said Matlow, who recently met with migrant children in custody. “There is no way in which a mass detention setting can replicate the experience and support that comes from family and community.”

The number of migrant children caught by immigration officials and then turned over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement has dropped under Trump: there were 49,100 in fiscal year 2018 compared to a high of 59,170 in fiscal year 2016, when a surge of youth crossing the border prompted the Obama administration to open emergency shelters at military bases. The average length of stay has increased, however, from about 34 days in January 2016 to around 60 days , according to government reports. In October, the average length of stay reached 89 days, according to data HHS provided to members of Congress, who shared it with AP.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration added new screening requirements that made it harder for parents and other relatives to get approved to take custody of the migrant children — including the fingerprint policy. That information has been shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, resulting in the arrests of dozens of would-be sponsors.

Under this week’s change, only a parent or individual directly responsible for a child will have to submit fingerprints.

HHS spokesman Weber said some fingerprinting requirements were necessary to ensure children are released to a safe environment: “Given the multitude of bad actors around the children, you really have to be careful.”

The ORR migrant children’s program has already cost taxpayers more than $1.5 billion, according to federal grant disclosures. Another $1.1 billion has been requested as part of the 2019 budget.  

The facilities housing these children range from bucolic to jail-like.

In a Baltimore suburb, Board of Child Care shelters about 50 migrant children amid 28-acres of cottages and grassy lawns; Rite of Passage in Arizona has about 100 kids sheltered at facilities that look like posh, private schools surrounded by trees and fields. Youth for Tomorrow, founded in Bristow, Virginia, by former Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs to serve troubled teens, is housing about 110 migrant kids on its 215-acre campus with soccer fields and volleyball courts, music and art therapy.   

Suspected gang members can be sent to several high-security facilities. An attorney for a Guatemalan teen held in the Yolo County, California, juvenile detention center for 11 months said his client was locked in restraints when he acted out and stung with pepper spray. Attorney Travis Silva convinced a judge to release the boy in November to his mother in Ohio. He’s now being treated for trauma and mental illness, said Silva, and shelter statistics show 14 other teens remain locked inside.

“He was locked in a cell, allowed one hour a day outside,” said Silva. “And outdoor time was anxiety-provoking, because that’s when there could be fights.”

At Tornillo, Texas — the largest of all the facilities — some 2,745 teens are held in massive tents. Staff aren’t allowed to touch them, except for fist bumps. They can’t hug.

“The programs vary wildly from place to place,” said Shana Tabak, who directs the Atlanta office of the Tahirih Justice Center, which represents immigrant women and girls. “The federal government has taken a haphazard approach to caring for these human beings.”

Republican Congressman Will Hurd, whose district includes Tornillo, demanded that the government reunite the children with their families and shut down the detention camp by the end of the year, when the contract expires.

“Unnecessarily holding children for prolonged periods of time is no deterrent to illegal immigration,” he said. “All of this is a symptom of a broader problem, and that is that we’re not doing enough to address root causes of migration. We are the United States. We are better than this.”

Every kid comes with their own set of needs, many severe.

“We mostly have housed teenagers, some with their babies, and some sibling pairs whose parents have been murdered,” said Regina Moller, executive director of Noank Community Support Services in Groton, Connecticut. Noank can house up to 12 of the kids at a time and has been at or near capacity for weeks now.

Abbott House in Irvington, New York, takes kids with medical needs such as diabetes, cerebral palsy, depression and anxiety. It is housing 51 migrant boys and girls; the youngest is 3 years old, said medical director Dr. Luis Rodriguez.  

A handful of boys are getting therapeutic intervention for sexual behavior or mental health issues at Friends of Youth in Seattle. “Most of these children are coming from great trauma and really terrible things have happened to them in their short lives,” said president Terry Pottmeyer. “They respond so positively, we see incredible results.”

This December, many will be enduring their first holidays without family.

Manuel Marcelino Tzah, a Guatemalan father whose 12-year-old daughter, Manuela, was taken from him and held in a Southwest Key facility in Houston for nearly two months, said his family is still processing the pain of separation and detention.

“She’s doing OK now; she is going to school and learning some English,” said Marcelino, whose immigration case is pending in a New York court near his new home in Brooklyn. “We really went through some difficult times, and sometimes she remembers it and is hit with the sadness of it. I tell her what happened, happened, and now we are here and struggling for a better life.”
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The White House said on Tuesday it was searching for ways to unilaterally fund the building of a controversial wall on the U.S.-Mexico border that Congress is balking at, possibly easing chances of a government shutdown this weekend.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters President Donald Trump has asked his Cabinet agencies to “look and see if they have money that can be used” to begin building the wall.

Previously, Trump had demanded that Congress approve $5 billion in new funds for the wall that he argues is needed to stop illegal immigrants and drugs from entering through the southwest border.

On Tuesday, Trump said it was too early to say whether a partial government shutdown will be averted by a Friday midnight deadline when existing funds for several agencies expire. “We’ll see what happens,” he told reporters.

But some Republican senators said they thought the president could be persuaded to sign a bill that does not fund his wall, and several Republican and Democratic senators spoke of the possibility of a stop-gap funding bill passing this week that would simply extend government operations into the new year.

The new Congress that convenes on Jan. 3 would then have to grapple with the budget impasse.

Given the continued uncertainty, however, federal agencies began publicizing their plans in case of a partial government shutdown.

The State Department, for example, said its consular operations, both domestic and abroad, would continue “as long as there are sufficient fees to support operations.” However, passport agencies might not operate if they are located in government buildings affected by the lapse in appropriations.

Earlier on Tuesday, Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had proposed a plan that would have had Congress approve $1 billion in unspecified money that Trump could use to advance his border security priorities.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer called it a “slush fund” that was promptly rejected.

Democrats, along with some Republicans, oppose the wall as a costly, ineffective border security tool.

Even some Republicans balked at the $1 billion fund. “I’m not sure I would insist on that,” Senator Roger Wicker told reporters.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio, referring to the prospects of a bill to extend current spending for a short period, such as a few weeks “might be the only route forward considering the time constraints we face.” Schumer said Democrats would “very seriously consider” such a move.

Congress has been trying to approve around $450 billion in funds to keep a variety of federal agencies operating beyond Friday. Included is the Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for border security.

Failure to agree to new appropriations by that deadline could leave about a quarter of the federal workforce without paychecks and some federal programs shuttered until the impasse is resolved.

Trump has demanded $5 billion as a down payment on construction of a wall, which was a key pledge of his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump originally said Mexico would pay for the wall, but Mexico has refused.

It was unclear whether any Cabinet heads, such as Defense Secretary James Mattis, would find money in their existing accounts to funnel to a wall, or whether they even had the authority to do so.
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U.S. President Donald Trump told his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan that Washington “would take a look at” the possibility of extraditing a U.S.-based Muslim cleric who Ankara suspects of being behind a 2016 coup attempt, but he made no commitment, the White House said on Tuesday.

“The only thing he said is that we would take a look at it,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters. “Nothing further at this point beyond that … nothing committal at all in that process.”

Turkey’s foreign minister said on Sunday that Trump told Erdogan that Washington was working on extraditing the cleric, Fethullah Gulen, a former Erdogan ally who has lived in self-imposed U.S. exile for nearly two decades.

No commitment

Asked about the comment on Monday, another White House official said only that Trump did not commit to extraditing Gulen when he spoke to Erdogan at the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires last month. The official offered no further detail on the conversation.

Turkish officials blame Gulen for a failed coup in Turkey in which rogue soldiers attacked parliament and shot unarmed civilians. Gulen denies any involvement.

The United States and Turkey, NATO allies, have gone through a rough patch in 2018, exacerbated by the Turkish detention of a U.S. pastor. Turkey’s release of the pastor, Andrew Brunson, was a “tremendous step” toward improved relations, Trump said in October, while denying he made a deal with Ankara for the move.

Tension builds … again

But tensions flared again last week over the two countries’ positions on Syria. The Pentagon warned that unilateral military action into northeast Syria by any party would be “unacceptable,” after Turkey said it would launch a new military operation in the region.

Trump said last month he was not considering extraditing Gulen as part of efforts to ease Turkish pressure on Saudi 

Arabia over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul. 
…

Bijan Rafiekian, the ex-business partner of former U.S. national security adviser Michael Flynn, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to charges he covertly lobbied for Turkey to discredit and extradite a Muslim cleric living in the United States.

Rafiekian, a former director at the U.S. Export-Import Bank who worked on U.S. President Donald Trump’s transition, was indicted on Monday along with a Turkish-Dutch businessman for undisclosed lobbying and for allegedly lying about their work.

Trial set to start Feb. 11

Rafiekian, 66, entered the plea at an arraignment in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, and is set to fight the charges at a trial starting on Feb. 11, court records show.

The indictment alleges that Rafiekian and the businessman, Ekim Alptekin, worked with Turkish government officials on a secret plan to return Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is living in exile in Pennsylvania, to Turkey.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has blamed Gulen for stoking a failed coup against him in 2016, and has been pushing for his extradition for more than two years. The United States has rejected the plea, citing a lack of evidence.

Rafiekian, a co-founder of the Flynn Intel Group, the consultancy at the heart of the lobbying case, has become one of the few people prosecuted for a rarely enforced law requiring that lobbyists disclose their work for a foreign power.

Prosecutors contend that Rafiekian provided false statements to the Justice Department about his work, citing emails with Alptekin that appeared to show Alptekin was coordinating the $600,000 project with two Turkish government ministers.

The case against Rafiekian and Alptekin was built in part on information provided by Flynn, who has admitted to lying about his role in the lobbying effort and has been cooperating with the investigation of Rafiekian and Alptekin.

Flynn was to be sentenced on Tuesday for lying to the FBI related to his contacts with the then Russian ambassador to the United States. But the judge in his case gave him the option of a delay so he could cooperate with any pending investigations and bolster his case for leniency.

Flynn accepted the offer, and his lawyer said he was expecting to testify at Rafiekian’s trial.

Where is Alptekin?

U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga, who will oversee Rafiekian’s trial, asked prosecutors about the whereabouts of Alptekin, who through a spokesman denied the charges against him on Monday.

Alptekin was believed to be in Turkey and was not expected to appear in court, a prosecutor told the judge, said a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia, which is prosecuting the case.
…

Michael Flynn may have given extraordinary cooperation to prosecutors, but the run-up to his sentencing hearing Tuesday has exposed raw tensions over an FBI interview in which the former national security adviser lied about his Russian contacts.

 

Flynn’s lawyers have suggested that investigators discouraged him from having an attorney present during the January 2017 interview and never informed him it was a crime to lie. Prosecutors shot back, “He does not need to be warned it is a crime to lie to federal agents to know the importance of telling them the truth.”

 

The mere insinuation of underhanded tactics was startling given the seemingly productive relationship between the two sides, and it was especially striking since prosecutors with special counsel Robert Mueller’s office have praised Flynn’s cooperation and recommended against prison time. The defense arguments spurred speculation that Flynn may be trying to get sympathy from President Donald Trump or may be playing to a judge known for a zero-tolerance view of government misconduct.

 

“It’s an attempt, I think, to perhaps characterize Flynn as a victim or perhaps to make him look sympathetic in the eyes of a judge — and, at the same time, to portray the special counsel in a negative light,” said former federal prosecutor Jimmy Gurule, a University of Notre Dame law school professor.

 

Until the dueling memos were filed last week, the sentencing hearing for Flynn — who pleaded guilty to lying about conversations during the transition period with the then-Russian ambassador — was expected to be devoid of the drama characterizing other of Mueller’s cases.

Prosecutors, for instance, have accused former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort of lying to them even after he agreed to cooperate. Another potential target, Jerome Corsi, leaked draft court documents and accused Mueller’s team of bullying him. And George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser recently released from a two-week prison sentence, has lambasted the investigation and publicly claimed that he was set up.

 

Flynn, by contrast, has been notably silent even as his supporters advocated a more combative stance. He met privately with investigators 19 times and provided cooperation so extensive that prosecutors said he was entitled to avoid prison altogether.

 

Then came his sentencing memo.

 

Although Flynn and his attorneys stopped short of any direct accusations of wrongdoing, they took pains to note that Flynn, unlike other defendants in Mueller’s investigation, was not informed that it was against the law to lie to the FBI. They suggest the FBI, which approached Flynn at the White House just days after Trump’s inauguration, played to his desire to keep the encounter quiet by telling him the quickest way to get the interview done was for him to be alone with the agents — rather than involve lawyers.

 

They also insinuate that Flynn, of Middletown, Rhode Island, deserves credit for not publicly seizing on the fact that FBI officials involved in the investigation later came under scrutiny themselves. Former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who contacted Flynn to arrange the interview, was fired this year for what the Justice Department said was a lack of candor over a news media leak. Peter Strzok, one of the two agents who interviewed Flynn, was removed from Mueller’s team and later fired for trading anti-Trump texts with another FBI official.

 

Mueller’s team has rejected any suggestion that Flynn was duped, with prosecutors responding in a sentencing memo Friday that there was no obligation to warn Flynn against lying.

 

“A sitting National Security (Adviser), former head of an intelligence agency, retired Lieutenant General, and 33-year veteran of the armed forces knows he should not lie to federal agents,” prosecutors wrote.

Former FBI Director James Comey criticized the broadsides on the Flynn investigation during a Monday appearance on Capitol Hill, saying, “They’re up here attacking the FBI’s investigation of a guy who pled guilty to lying to the FBI.”

Trump has made no secret that he sees Mueller’s investigation as a “witch hunt” and has continued to lash out at prosecutors he sees as biased against him and those who help them. He’s shown continued sympathy for Flynn, though, calling him a “great person” and asserting erroneously last week that the FBI said he didn’t lie.

 

Flynn has not tried to retract his guilty plea, and there’s every indication the sentencing will proceed as scheduled.

 

Arun Rao, a former Justice Department prosecutor in Maryland, said the defense memo is striking because it’s “inconsistent” with Flynn’s cooperative stance so far.

 

“You also wonder in this very unusual situation,” he said, “whether it is a play for a pardon.”

 

It’s possible at least some of the defense arguments may resonate with U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who directed prosecutors to produce FBI records related to Flynn’s interview. That included portions of the notes from Flynn’s Jan. 24, 2017 interview with FBI agents.

 

Responding to Sullivan’s order, prosecutors filed a redacted copy of the FBI interview notes Monday evening. The notes show FBI agents interviewed Flynn about his Russian contacts, including past trips to the country and his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, then Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.

 

Last year, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying about the contents of his conversations with Kislyak during the presidential transition.

 

The notes show Flynn told agents he didn’t ask Kislyak not to escalate Russia’s response to sanctions imposed by the Obama administration over election interference. But Flynn admitted as part of his guilty plea that he did.

The notes also show Flynn told agents he didn’t ask Kislyak to see if Russia would vote a certain way on a United Nations resolution involving Israeli settlements. But last year he admitted having asked Kislyak to see if Russia would vote against or delay the resolution. Court papers show Flynn made the request at the direction of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.

 

Sullivan was the judge in the Justice Department’s botched prosecution of now-deceased Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska. He dismissed the case after prosecutors admitted that they withheld exculpatory evidence, prompting the judge to say that in nearly 25 years on the bench, “I’ve never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I’ve seen in this case.”

 

In an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal last year, Sullivan said the experience inspired him to explicitly remind prosecutors in every criminal case before him of their obligation to provide defendants with favorable evidence. He says he has encouraged colleagues to do the same.

 

But while Sullivan has proved especially sensitive to hints of government overreach, nothing about the Flynn case comes close, said Gurule, the law professor.

 

“To portray him as somehow an innocent dupe, as somehow just this innocent victim in the process, this suggestion that there was a perjury trap — it’s an absurd allegation,” he said.
…

The fight over President Donald Trump’s $5 billion wall funds deepened Monday, threatening a partial government shutdown in a standoff that has become increasingly common in Washington.

It wasn’t always like this, with Congress and the White House at a crisis over government funding. The House and Senate used to pass annual appropriation bills, and the president signed them into law. But in recent years the shutdown scenario has become so routine that it raises the question: Have shutdowns as a negotiating tool lost their punch?

Monday brought few signs of progress. A partial shutdown that could occur at midnight Friday risks disrupting government operations and leaving hundreds of thousands of federal employees furloughed or working without pay over the holiday season. Costs would be likely in the billions of dollars.

Trump was meeting with his team and getting regular updates, said White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Trump was also tweeting Monday to keep up the pressure.

Exiting a Senate Republican leadership meeting late Monday, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota said, “It looks like it probably is going to have to build for a few days here before there’s a solution.”

The president is insisting on $5 billion for the wall along the southern border with Mexico, but he does not have the votes from the Republican-led Congress to support it. Democrats are offering to continue funding at current levels, $1.3 billion, not for the wall but for fencing and other border security.

It’s unclear how many House Republicans, with just a few weeks left in the majority before relinquishing power to House Democrats, will even show up mid-week for possible votes. Speaker Paul Ryan’s office had no update. Many Republicans say it’s up to Trump and Democrats to cut a deal.

​Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Trump talk most days, but the senator’s spokesman would not confirm if they spoke Monday about a plan. McConnell opened the chamber hoping for a “bipartisan collaborative spirit” that would enable Congress to finish its work.

“We need to make a substantial investment in the integrity of our border,” McConnell said. “And we need to close out the year’s appropriation process.”

Meanwhile more than 800,000 government workers are preparing for the uncertainty ahead.

The dispute could affect nine of 15 Cabinet-level departments and dozens of agencies, including the departments of Homeland Security, Transportation, Interior, Agriculture, State and Justice, as well as national parks and forests.

About half the workers would be forced to continue working without immediate pay. Others would be sent home. Congress often approves their pay retroactively, even if they were ordered to stay home.

“Our members are asking how they are supposed to pay for rent, food, and gas if they are required to work without a paycheck,” said a statement from J. David Cox, Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the large federal worker union. “The holiday season makes these inquiries especially heart-wrenching.”

Many agencies, including the Pentagon and the departments of Veterans Affairs and Health and Human Services, are already funded for the year and will continue to operate as usual, regardless of whether Congress and the president reach agreement this week.

Congress already approved funding this year for about 75 percent of the government’s discretionary account for the budget year that began Oct. 1.

The U.S. Postal Service, busy delivering packages for the holiday season, wouldn’t be affected by any government shutdown because it’s an independent agency.

Trump said last week he would be “proud” to have a shutdown to get Congress to approve a $5 billion down payment to fulfill his campaign promise to build a border wall.

​During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump promised that Mexico would pay for the wall. Mexico has refused.

Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, in a meeting last week at the White House, suggested keeping funding at its current level, $1.3 billion, for improved fencing. Trump had neither accepted nor rejected the Democrats’ offer, telling them he would take a look.

Schumer said Monday he had yet to hear from Trump. Speaking on the Senate floor, Schumer warned that “going along with the Trump shutdown is a futile act” because House Democrats would quickly approve government funding in January.

“President Trump still doesn’t have a plan to keep the government open,” Schumer said Monday. “No treat or temper tantrum will get the president his wall.”

One option for lawmakers would be to provide stopgap funding for a few weeks, until the new Congress convenes Jan. 3, when Pelosi is poised to become House speaker.

Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, who is in line to become the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, suggested a stopgap bill could be one way to resolve the issue or a longer-term bill that includes money for border security.

GOP leaders, though, were frustrated as the clock ticked away. Leaving the weekly leadership meeting, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said any planning was a “very closely held thing. That’s why we should never let this happen. We should pass the bills the way we’re supposed to pass them.”
…

The U.S. Senate advanced a bipartisan bill Monday that would decrease America’s large prison population by lowering some mandatory federal sentences and giving prisoners added opportunities to earn reductions in jail time.

With the 82-12 procedural vote, the Senate formally took up the First Step Act, which is backed by President Donald Trump but has fewer than two weeks to reach his desk before the end of the current Congress.

“This landmark legislation restores fairness in sentencing by ensuring that penalties fit their crimes, gives low-level, non-violent offenders a better chance to turn over a new leaf upon release from prison, and ultimately reduces crime and makes our streets and neighborhoods safer,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said in a statement.

“These historic changes will make communities SAFER and SAVE tremendous taxpayers dollars,” Trump tweeted. “It brings much needed hope to many families during the Holiday Season.”

The First Step Act would retroactively end the discrepancy in federal sentences for drug offenses involving crack and the powder form of cocaine, reducing jail time for thousands of prisoners already serving time for crack offenses.

The bill also would reduce some mandatory sentences, give federal judges more flexibility to make exceptions to mandatory prison terms, and allow prisoners to earn greater sentence reductions through good behavior and vocational training.

“The vast majority of prison inmates will one day be released back into our communities after serving their sentence,” Grassley said. “It is in everyone’s best interest to equip inmates with the skills and training needed to be become productive citizens, rather than returning to a life of crime.”

Proponents say the bill aims to correct a failed 1980s-era attempt to deter illegal drug use that established long mandatory prison sentences for drug convictions.

“Since 1980, the federal prison population has grown by over 700 percent,” Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin said. “Today, the United States of America holds more prisoners by far than any country in the world, more than Russia or China.”

Durbin added that existing law has unfairly targeted people of color, saying, “The majority of illegal drug users and dealers in America are white. But three-quarters of the people serving time in prison for drug offenses are African-American or Latino.”

The House of Representatives passed a similar version of the bill earlier this year. Now, the Senate is racing to complete work on the legislation before the chamber adjourns for the Christmas holiday.

Criticism of bill

The First Step Act has robust but not universal Senate support in its current form. Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton is demanding the bill stipulate that some prisoners will be barred from early release.

“Unfortunately, the bill still has major problems & allows early release for many categories of serious, violent criminals,” Cotton tweeted. “This includes felons who commit violent bank robberies with dangerous weapons, who assault children, & who commit carjacking with the intent to cause death.”

Cotton and several other Republicans are pressing an amendment that would specify which offenders are ineligible for sentence reductions, something that proponents of the First Step Act say the bill already sets forth.

“This bill will not allow dangerous, violent criminals to be released early — that [assertion] is pure fiction,” said the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, John Cornyn of Texas. “It’s important that we look at people who are low risk of recidivism [committing more crimes] and low risk to public safety, because what we can do is use the resources — not to keep people like that behind bars unnecessarily — but to focus on the truly violent criminals.”

America’s prison population exceeds 2 million people, and incarceration consumes vast resources within the nation’s justice system. Even if it becomes law, the First Step Act would have a modest impact on incarceration numbers, as the bill only applies to federal inmates, who account for less than 10 percent of the national total. Other initiatives seek to achieve similar results at the state level.

Support for bill

A wide array of law enforcement organizations support the bill, as do both right-leaning and left-leaning advocacy groups.

Durbin hailed “the most extraordinary political coalition I’ve ever witnessed in the time I’ve been in Washington” joining forces to back the legislation.

“Every once in a while, the stars line up, and the Democrats and the Republicans, and the conservatives and the progressives, and the president and the Congress agree on something,” the Illinois Democrat said.
…

A quarter of U.S. government operations could shut down Friday at midnight unless the White House and lawmakers agree on a new spending plan, including whether to fund President Donald Trump’s proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexican border to thwart illegal immigration.

Spending for three-fourths of the government has already been approved through next September, but the remaining bills include 2019 funding for the Department of Homeland Security, and possible money for the wall, a favorite Trump campaign vow while campaigning for the presidency in 2016.

But the $5 billion down payment Trump wants for the $20 billion wall is adamantly opposed by Democrats and some Republicans, leaving its fate in doubt. Democrats have offered a maximum of $1.6 billion, for enhanced border security, not specifically for the wall. 

Trump last week said he would proudly shut down the government if money is not included for his wall. But to avert a Friday shutdown he also could reach agreement on some kind of stopgap spending plan to carry all government operations through the end of this year and into 2019. Aside from Homeland Security, funding is at stake for the State Department, the Department of Justice and the Interior Department.

In a meeting last week at the White House, Trump told the top two Democratic congressional leaders, House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, that he would be happy to take responsibility for a government shutdown rather than give up any ground on the border wall issue.

​If the government is forced into a partial shutdown, it could be short, like the two that took place early this year — the first lasted three days, and the second lasted only about six hours. 

Or it could resemble the longest shutdown in U.S. history, which started December 16, 1995, and ended 21 days later. The second longest occurred in October 2013, when the government closed for 16 days, costing it $2.5 billion in wages and benefits to workers who were not allowed to do their jobs because they were furloughed, according to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.

Results of a shutdown

With each shutdown come questions about what federal services will and will not be provided. Generally, agencies or offices funded by service fees, such as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, can continue their work, so the shutdown would not affect naturalization interviews or citizenship ceremonies. 

In a new shutdown, about 380,000 federal workers could be furloughed.

National parks have shut down in the past, but during the shutdowns earlier this year, the head of the Office of Budget and Management, Mick Mulvaney, pledged that they would be kept open.

​Experts say the Internal Revenue Service may not be able to process tax refunds. Health safety inspections could be stalled. Most employees at the U.S. space agency NASA would likely be furloughed and might not get paid for that time, although Congress usually grants pay retroactively after a shutdown is over.

About 420,000 federal workers are deemed “essential” and are expected to remain on the job.

Voice of America continues to broadcast, and air traffic controllers are usually expected to keep working — along with FBI agents, members of the Transportation Security Administration, and the Secret Service agents that protect the president. Like the furloughed workers, they may not see any pay until after the shutdown concludes.

The Friday deadline is the result of a spending agreement Congress reached in September and the death of a former president. 

The September measure set a December 7 deadline for passing the seven spending bills that remain outstanding. That deadline was pushed back two weeks after the death November 30 of former U.S. President George H.W. Bush, whose funeral ceremonies were held the following week.

In one more possible hurdle, Schumer has indicated that the Democrats might block the spending bill unless Congress also approves a bill protecting special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Trump 2016 campaign links to Russia and whether Trump, as president, obstructed justice by trying to thwart the probe.

A looming shutdown is not expected to affect the investigation because it is funded with an appropriation that does not require renewal.
…

A draft report prepared for the U.S. Senate, and seen by the Washington Post, says Russia used every major social media platform to target voters with misinformation to try to get Donald Trump elected president.

The Post said Sunday the report was done by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and network analysis firm Graphika.

The report says Russians working for a group called The Internet Research Agency (IRA) began experimenting with social media to influence local elections in 2009 and expanded its operations to U.S. elections in 2013 using Twitter.

It gradually added other popular social media sites to its campaign, including YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.

For the 2016 presidential campaign, the report says Russians attempted to stir up conservative voters to back Trump by stressing such issues as gun rights and immigration.

At the same time, the Russian operatives sent black voters messages and other information aimed at confusing them about the electoral process, including misleading information on how to vote.

​Other groups, such as liberals, women, Muslims, Latinos, and veterans, were also targeted with similar messages either appealing to their politics or trying to discourage them from voting.

“What is clear is that all of the messaging clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party and specifically Donald Trump,” the report says according to The Washington Post. 

The newspaper says the report criticizes technology companies for what it calls their “belated and uncoordinated response” when the misinformation campaign was discovered and their delay in sharing information with investigators.

The report also warns that social media is morphing from what it says are tools for “sharing collective grievances and coordinating civic engagement,” including in the Middle East, to threats to democracy from “canny political consultants” and “politicians in democracies and dictatorships alike.”

The Post says Facebook and Google have not commented on the report. But Twitter says it has made “significant strides since the 2016 election to harden its digital defenses.”

The United States has already leveled criminal charges against Russia’s Internet Research Agency for interfering in the 2016 campaign. 

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election and whether the president has tried to obstruct justice by trying to undermine the probe.

Trump denies there was any collusion and calls the Mueller probe a “witch hunt.”
…

Saudi Arabia has hit back at a U.S. Senate resolution to end U.S. military support for the war in Yemen and blame the Saudi crown prince for the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

“The Kingdom condemns the latest position of the U.S. Senate that was based on unsubstantiated allegations and rejects the blatant interference in its internal affairs,” the foreign ministry said in a statement released by the official Saudi Press Agency.

The Senate delivered a rare double rebuke to U.S. President Donald Trump on Saudi Arabia last week, voting to end American military support for the war in Yemen.

It also condemned Khashoggi’s death and called Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, “responsible” for it.

Riyadh warned that it would not tolerate any “disrespect” of its rulers. “This position by the U.S. Senate sends the wrong messages to all those who want to cause a rift in Saudi-U.S. relationship,” the Saudi ministry said.

The Senate resolution acknowledged that the U.S.-Saudi relations were “important,” but it called on the kingdom to “moderate its increasingly erratic foreign policy.”

Khashoggi, a contributor to the Washington Post, was killed Oct. 2 shortly after entering the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul in what Riyadh has called a “rogue” operation.
…

Dale Cresswell keeps his gun on his hip at all times: in his classroom, at sporting events, whenever he’s at school.

Cresswell, head coach to the senior boys’ track and cross-country teams, is one of a small, but growing group of teachers around the United States who are volunteering to carry a weapon. His employer, Heber Springs School District, just came online this semester.

“It was a no-brainer. I have a daughter still in school,” said Cresswell of his decision, acknowledging that he might know any potential shooter. “I see it as, I’m protecting more than one person. I’m protecting all the other students.”

Tests and training

In order to qualify, Cresswell and other faculty, including administrators and IT professionals who can move around more easily, underwent background checks and psychological tests. They continue to go through rigorous training.

“I know that last summer there was a big movement here. We were fortunate that we had made the decision early, and we were able to secure trainers and get our time slot locked in,” said Heber Springs School District Superintendent Alan Stauffacher, noting that some other schools are “struggling” to get set up.

A semester in, the novelty of Cresswell carrying a weapon has worn off. He said that when asked, the students tell him they don’t even notice his gun anymore.

​Sandy Hook 

While there appears to have been no law prohibiting it, guns were rarely carried by teachers in Arkansas schools before a 20-year-old gunman killed 20 young children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the northeastern U.S. state of Connecticut in 2012.

That incident prompted David Hopkins, superintendent of the Clarksville Public Schools in Clarksville, Arkansas, to begin searching for more effective ways to protect his students.

“It was just so terrible. Something like that, it makes you really pause,” Hopkins said. “I started getting calls from parents and grandparents asking, ‘What are you doing to protect our kids?’”

At that time, Hopkins wondered whether what he had in mind — arming faculty across each school in the district — was even legal. Since then, he has counseled other Arkansan schools as they follow suit.

“It’s not like we want to be cowboys, but if you stop and think about the reality of someone coming into your business or your school, don’t you want to be prepared?” he asked.

Protecting schools, students

Protecting schools from future shootings has increasingly occupied administrators and lawmakers’ time. Just this year, 113 people were killed or injured in school shootings in the U.S.

After the Parkland, Florida, school shooting in February, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson tasked a committee with studying how to prevent future school shootings.

Their report, released earlier this month, stressed that individual schools need to make decisions for themselves, but recommended that “no campus should ever be without an armed presence when staff and children are attending class or a major extracurricular activity.”

A study published by Vice News in March found that at least 14 of the 50 states arm teachers and another 16 allow local school boards to decide on the issue.

But while Cresswell and Hopkins believe arming teachers serves as a deterrent for gun violence, not everyone agrees.

Following the Safety Commission report, Moms Demand Action stated that “putting guns in the hands of teachers is not the answer…” and that “research indicates that arming teachers will make children less safe.”

“As a general rule, I don’t think anyone believes that it is preventative. I think that most thoughtful individuals know that if a person sets out to do harm to themselves or someone else, they’re not gonna stop and think ‘Oh, there might be someone armed,’” said Cathy Koehler, president of the Arkansas Education Association.

Koehler stopped short of saying that faculty shouldn’t be armed, recognizing that it can take 20 minutes for police in some rural counties to respond to a situation. She stressed that schools should gain community buy-in, which superintendents in both Clarksville and Heber Springs said they did.

“Our preference is always going to be that the investment is made in the mental health services that are so desperately needed and are underfunded,” Koehler said.

Scott Gauntt, a member of the Safety Commission and superintendent of Westside Consolidated School District, said he has received no pressure to arm teachers.

Westside was the site of a deadly shooting 20 years ago, so it is often invoked in conversations about school safety. Like other superintendents interviewed, Gauntt takes his role as protector of students very seriously.

“Just about every time we hear of another shooting, we look at how that took place. How would we have combated that? Could we fix that?” Gauntt asked.

Over the years, the school has installed dozens of surveillance cameras and stronger classroom locks. Teachers undergo survival training to apply a tourniquet, for example, in order to prevent kids from bleeding out from bullet wounds. Students as young as those in elementary school are taught to be a “partner in [their] own survival.” Instead of hiding quietly under their desks, they are now taught to make loud noises and throw things.

“It’s mind boggling that I’ve gotta go down and tell a kindergartener that if a man comes in and tries to shoot you, that you need to run around and scream,” Gauntt said. “That’s not why I got into education.”

When it comes to arming teachers inside the classroom, he’s reluctant to take a hard stance but admits that he worries about guns getting loose.

Ultimately, most parties agree that despite all precautions, a motivated shooter will find a way to do harm.

“School safety is an illusion,” Gauntt said.
…

A relatively modest, independently owned bookstore in Washington has become a standout on the cultural scene in the U.S. capital. It’s called Politics and Prose. Since opening in 1984, it’s managed to survive the age of online book buying and thrive as a magnet for some of the world’s highest profile authors, from former Presidents Clinton and Obama, to J.K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie and photographer Annie Leibovitz. Ani Chkhikvadze stopped by Politics and Prose to learn more about its success.
…

Kansas clinics still don’t know whether it will be legal for them to offer telemedicine abortions in January. Meanwhile a state-court judge Friday derided the upcoming ban as an “air ball” that can’t stop doctors from providing pregnancy-ending pills to patients they don’t see in person.

An abortion rights group seeking an order to block the ban found its request enmeshed in larger legal battles over abortion. Attorneys for the state raised the question of whether other state laws might block telemedicine abortions, and District Judge Franklin Theis held off on issuing an order.

​Suit: Ban unconstitutional

The Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit last month on behalf of Trust Women of Wichita, which operates a clinic there that performs abortions. Since October, some patients seeking abortion pills have consulted with offsite doctors through teleconferencing, and the clinic hopes to start providing abortion pills to women in rural areas without having them come to Wichita.

The center argues that the new law violates the state constitution by placing an undue burden on women seeking abortion and singling out abortion for special treatment as part of broader policies otherwise meant to encourage telemedicine.

“The use of telemedicine right now for medication abortions is extremely important,” said Leah Wiederhorn, an attorney for the center. “It’s a way for women to access this type of health care during a time when there are a lot of hostile laws that are meant to shut down clinics across the country.”

Seventeen other states have telemedicine abortion bans, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a group that advocates for abortion rights. The new Kansas law says that in policies promoting telemedicine, “nothing” authorizes “any abortion procedure via telemedicine.”

But Theis said the law doesn’t give a prosecutor any avenue for pursuing a criminal case. While the state medical board could act against the clinic’s doctors, the judge added, “There’s no jeopardy yet.”

Few clinics

Kansas has no clinics providing abortions outside Wichita and the Kansas City area. The Republican-controlled Legislature has strong anti-abortion majorities, and the state has tightened restrictions over the past decade.

Lawmakers have tried three times to ban telemedicine abortions. In 2011, a ban was part of legislation imposing special regulations on abortion clinics that critics said were meant to shut them down. Providers sued and Theis blocked all of the regulations. The case is still pending.

Legislators passed a law in 2015 requiring a doctor to be in the same room when a woman takes the first of two abortion pills. The Center for Reproductive Rights argues that it’s covered by the 2011 lawsuit over clinic regulations and has been blocked by Theis. Though the judge said he’s inclined to agree, state attorneys argued that it is in effect, even if it hasn’t been enforced.

The anti-abortion group Kansans for Life filed a complaint Friday against the Wichita clinic with the state medical board, asking it to investigate its “illegal” telemedicine abortions. Jeanne Gawdun, the group’s senior lobbyist, called them “dangerous.”

“Where’s that important physician-patient relationship?” Gawdun said. “It’s not there.”

​Few complications

A study of abortions in California, published in the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ journal in 2015, said less than one-third of 1 percent of medication abortions resulted in major complications.

The Kansas health department has reported that in 2017, nearly 4,000 medication abortions were reported, or 58 percent of the state’s total, all in the first trimester. It’s not clear if any were telemedicine abortions.

Wiederhorn said banning telemedicine abortion would be a hardship for the clinic’s patients because its doctors, while licensed in Kansas, are outside the state and can spend only two days a week in Wichita. Also, many women in rural areas would face hardships in getting medication abortions without telemedicine, she said.

But Assistant Attorney General Shon Qualseth said: “We’re just theorizing on what could happen.”

 
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The 7-year-old Guatemalan migrant girl who died in U.S. custody this month was inseparable from her father and had looked forward to being able to send money home to support her impoverished family, relatives said  Saturday. 

Nery Caal, 29, and his daughter Jakelin Caal Maquin were in a group of more than 160 migrants who turned themselves in to U.S. border agents in New Mexico on Dec. 6. Jakelin developed a high fever and died two days later while in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. 

 

“The girl said when she was grown up she was going to work and send dough back to her mom and grandma,” said her mother, Claudia Maquin, who has three remaining children, speaking in the Mayan language Q’eqchi’ and betraying little outward emotion. 

“Because she’d never seen a big country, she was really happy that she was going to go,” she added, explaining how her husband had gone to the United States to find a way out of the “extreme poverty” that dictated their lives. 

 

Corn stood behind her palm-thatched wooden house, and there were a few chickens and pigs in the yard. The mother was dressed in a traditional blouse and held a 6-month-old baby in her arms. 

A family photograph at the house showed Jakelin smiling and looking up at the camera, wearing a pink T-shirt with characters from the cartoon series Masha and the Bear. 

Hard lives

 

Deforestation to make way for palm oil plantations has made subsistence farming increasingly hard for the 40,000 inhabitants of Raxruha municipality, where the family’s agricultural hamlet of San Antonio de Cortez lies in central Guatemala, local officials said. That has spurred an exodus of migrants.  

Setting out on Dec. 1, Caal and his daughter traveled more than 2,000 miles (3,220 km) so Jakelin’s father could look for work in the United States, said her mother, who learned of the girl’s death from consular officials. 

 

Almost 80 percent of Guatemala’s indigenous population is poor, with half of those people living in extreme poverty. The mayor of San Antonio de Cortez described the Caal family as among the worst off in the village. 

 

Mayor Cesar Castro said in recent months that more and more families were uprooting to try to reach the United States, often selling what little land they owned to pay people traffickers thousands of dollars for the trip.

“It’s not just the Caal family. There are endless people who are leaving,” Castro said. “I see them drive past in pickups, cars and buses.” He said most of them came back in the end, often penniless after being dropped off by traffickers, caught by authorities and deported. 

 

Jakelin’s death has added to criticism of U.S. of President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policies from migrant advocates and Democrats in the U.S. Congress. 

 

The U.S. government defended Jakelin’s treatment, and said there was no indication she had any medical problems until several hours after she and her father were taken into custody. 

 

Inseparable 

 

Domingo Caal, Jakelin’s grandfather, said she had gone on the journey because she did not want to leave her father. 

 

“The girl really stuck to him. It was very difficult to separate them,” said Domingo, 61, wearing muddy boots and a faded and torn blue shirt.  

Jakelin’s uncle, Jose Manuel Caal, said he had heard she was ill before she died, but he had expected her to recover. “The girl’s death left us in shock,” he said. 

 

The family hopes the girl’s father can remain in the United States. 

 

“What I want now is for Nery to stay and work in the United States. That’s what I want,” said his wife. 

 

A Guatemalan consular official told Reuters on Friday that Caal told him he had crossed the border planning to turn himself in to U.S. authorities, and would try to stay. 

 

Record numbers of parents traveling with children are being apprehended trying to cross the U.S. border with Mexico. In November, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers detained 25,172 members of “family units,” the highest monthly number ever recorded, the agency said. 

 

Parents with children are more likely to be released by U.S. authorities while their cases are processed because of legal restrictions on keeping children in detention. 

 

Caal remains in the El Paso, Texas, area, where his daughter died after being flown by helicopter to a hospital there for emergency treatment when she stopped breathing. 

 

A brain scan revealed swelling and Jakelin was diagnosed with liver failure. She died early in the morning on Dec. 8, with her father at the hospital, a CBP official said. 

 

U.S. authorities are investigating the death.  
…

U.S. lawmakers will travel to New Mexico in the coming week as they search for answers about how a 7-year-old Guatemalan girl died while in federal custody. 

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus said Friday that it would lead a delegation on Dec. 18 to Lordsburg Station in Lordsburg, N.M., the detention center Jakelin Caal Maquin was en route to, along with her father and scores of other migrants detained with them on the night of Dec. 6, after being taken into custody by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Jakelin died in an El Paso, Texas, hospital 27 hours later of what medical officials preliminarily determined to be “sepsis shock,” according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Her official cause of death has not yet been released. 

Symptoms of sepsis, or septic shock, can include extremes in body temperature, lethargy and restlessness. Official accounts indicate the girl received a quick assessment, as all people taken into custody do, before waiting for hours to be transported to the next detention facility with the group.  

​Minors transported first 

 

Among the 163 people detained that night in a remote area of southern New Mexico, near the Antelope Wells Port of Entry, were 50 unaccompanied minors, who were transported to Lordsburg Station first, according to DHS. 

 

It was en route to Lordsburg that Jakelin’s symptoms worsened, according to the government’s timeline of events.  

“This is not who we are or who we want to be as a nation,” U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas, chairman-elect of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said in a statement Friday that included an open invitation to lawmakers to join the visit. “We must understand what led to this child’s death and how these stations are equipped to protect the health and safety of those seeking refuge at our borders.” 

 

Jakelin crossed into the U.S. with her father, Nery Caal, 29, after traveling from Raxruha in Alta Verapaz, northern Guatemala. The father and daughter left home on Nov. 30.   

Guatemalan media reported the girl’s mother and three siblings remain in Raxruha, citing an interview with Tekandi Paniagua, Guatemala’s consul in Del Rio, Texas.

 

Language barrier 

 

Prior to the bus ride to Lordsburg, Caal signed a form indicating Jakelin did not have health issues. However, there may have been a language barrier. 

 

CBP said border agents provided Spanish interpretation to fill out the English-language form. However, a Guatemalan official in Texas told Univision that Jakelin’s father is a native speaker of the Mayan language of Ke’chi, also called Q’eqchi’.

The Guatemalan press also reported on the potential language problem. A consular official told El Pais that Caal said he “doesn’t fully understand Spanish” and has received consular services in Q’eqchi’.

 

It can be challenging for U.S. personnel to find Q’eqchi’ interpreters even during normal business hours, a DHS staffer with experience interviewing Guatemalan migrants told VOA on condition of anonymity.  

 

“It’s a difficult thing,” the staffer said, describing the need to schedule “relay interviews” with a Q’eqchi’ interpreter who interprets to Spanish, then a Spanish interpreter who speaks in English to the U.S. government employee, a process that often involved a full 24 hours of planning. 

 

More questions than answers 

 

The girl’s death on Dec. 8 was not initially made public by CBP or DHS. The Washington Post first reported the story on Dec. 13.  

Since then, the agencies have made several public comments and provided a timeline about the events leading to Jakelin’s death. In a Facebook statement, DHS related that according to the girl’s father, she “had not been able to consume water or food for days” before her death. 

 

The Office of the Inspector General at DHS announced Friday that it would be investigating Jakelin’s death. 

 

U.S. House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi said Friday that in addition to the DHS inspector general’s investigation, “Congress will also investigate this horrific tragedy to ensure the safety and security of every child.”

 

Additionally, a letter sent Friday by six members of Congress, including New Mexico Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich, to DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan and acting DHS Inspector General John V. Kelly raised the issue of why CBP did not report the death of an individual in its custody within 24 hours as required. 

 

The lawmakers requested, in part, details and a full investigation into Jakelin’s death, as well as a meeting with the commissioner.

 

McAleenan testified before Congress this week but made no mention of the death.  
…

Republican lawmakers have been mostly silent on Friday’s court ruling that the Affordable Care Act, known commonly as Obamacare, is unconstitutional. Democrats, however, have said they’ll hold the GOP to its commitment to retain popular provisions of the law, such as guaranteed coverage for those with pre-existing health conditions. 

“The GOP spent all last year pretending to support people with pre-existing conditions while quietly trying to remove that support in the courts,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said in a tweet Saturday. “Next year, we will force votes to expose their lies.” 

U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat who will assume the speaker’s role next year, said the House “will move swiftly to formally intervene in the appeals process to uphold the lifesaving protections for people with pre-existing conditions and reject Republicans’ effort to destroy” the law. 

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas ruled Friday that a change in tax law last year eliminating a penalty for not having health insurance invalidated the entire ACA. The decision is expected to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the ACA will remain the law during the appeal.  

U.S. President Donald Trump had promised during his presidential campaign to dismantle the ACA, a program that made affordable health insurance available to millions of Americans.  

‘Great news’

The president took to Twitter Friday night:  “Wow, but not surprisingly, ObamaCare was just ruled UNCONSTITUTIONAL by a highly respected judge in Texas. Great news for America!” 

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the judge’s decision “vindicates President Trump’s position that Obamacare is unconstitutional. Once again, the President calls on Congress to replace Obamacare and act to protect people with pre-existing conditions and provide Americans with quality, affordable health care.”  

Americans with pre-existing conditions, before ACA, faced either high premiums or an inability to access health insurance at all.  

Schumer said in a statement Friday that the ruling “seems to be based on faulty legal reasoning, and hopefully it will be overturned. Americans who care about working families must do all they can to prevent this district court ruling from becoming law.”   

“Today’s misguided ruling will not deter us,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, the leader of an alliance of states opposing the lawsuit, said in a statement Friday.  “Our coalition will continue to fight in court for the health and well-being for all Americans.”  

New law unlikely for now

Some legal observers believe Congress is unlikely to pass a new law while the case is in the courts. Many senior Republican lawmakers have said they did not plan to also strike down provisions such as pre-existing condition coverage when they repealed the law’s fines for people who can afford coverage but remain uninsured. 

If the case reaches the Supreme Court, it would be the third time the high court considers a challenge to ACA provisions. The law’s opponents lost the first two cases. 

Polls have regularly shown wide public support for the guarantee of health insurance coverage regardless of pre-existing health conditions, an issue Democrats successfully leveraged in last month’s midterm elections to win control of the House of Representatives.
…

A U.S. federal judge has ruled that the Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare, is unconstitutional.

U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas ruled Friday that a change in the U.S. tax law last year eliminating a penalty for not having health insurance invalidates the entire ACA.

Last year’s $1.5 trillion tax bill included a provision eliminating the individual mandate.

The decision is expected to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The ACA will remain the law during the appeal process.

About 11.8 million consumers nationwide enrolled in 2018 Obamacare exchange plans, according to the U.S. government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

U.S. President Donald Trump promised during his presidential campaign to dismantle the ACA, a program that made affordable health insurance available to millions of Americans.

The president took to Twitter Saturday night:

“The ruling seems to be based on faulty legal reasoning and hopefully it will be overturned,” U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer said in a statement. “Americans who care about working families must do all they can to prevent this district court ruling from becoming law.

“If this awful ruling is upheld in the higher courts,” he added, “it will be a disaster for tens of millions of American families, especially for people with pre-existing conditions.”

Americans with pre-existing conditions, before ACA, faced either high premiums or an inability to access health insurance at all.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the judge’s decision “vindicates President Trump’s position that Obamacare is unconstitutional. Once again, the president calls on Congress to replace Obamacare and act to protect people with pre-existing conditions and provide Americans with quality affordable health care.”

“Today’s misguided ruling will not deter us,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, the leader of an alliance of states opposing the lawsuit, said in a statement. “Our coalition will continue to fight in court for the health and well-being for all Americans.”
…

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed a sweeping package of Republican legislation Friday that restricts early voting and weakens the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general, brushing aside complaints that he is enabling a brazen power grab and ignoring the will of voters.

Signing the bills just 24 days before he leaves office, the Republican governor and one-time presidential candidate downplayed bipartisan criticism that they amount to a power grab that will stain his legacy.

Just two hours later, a group run by former Democratic U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced it planned legal action to block the limitation on early voting.

Walker’s action Friday came as Michigan’s Rick Snyder, another Midwestern GOP governor soon to be replaced by a Democrat, signed legislation in a lame-duck session that significantly scales back minimum wage and paid sick leave laws that began as citizen initiatives. Michigan’s Republican legislators also are weighing legislation resembling Wisconsin’s that would strip or dilute the authority of incoming elected Democrats.

The push in both states mirrors tactics employed by North Carolina Republicans in 2016.

Walker: No power shift

Speaking for 20 minutes and using charts to make his points, Walker detailed all of the governor’s powers, including a strong veto authority, that will not change while defending the measures he signed as improving transparency, stability and accountability.

“There’s a lot of hype and hysteria, particularly in the national media, implying this is a power shift. It’s not,” Walker said before signing the measures during an event at a state office building in Green Bay, about 130 miles (209 kilometers) from his Capitol office that has frequently been a target for protesters.

Walker was urged by Democrats and Republicans, including Democratic Gov.-elect Tony Evers and former Republican Gov. Scott McCallum, to reject the legislation. Walker, who was defeated by Evers for a third term, had earlier said he was considering partial vetoes, but he ultimately did not strike anything.

Governor-elect reviewing options

Evers accused Walker of ignoring and overriding the will of the people by signing the bills into law. He held a five-minute news conference in Madison shortly after the signing to accuse Walker of ignoring the will of the voters.

“People will remember he took a stand that was not reflective of this last election,” Evers said. “I will be reviewing our options and do everything we can to make sure the people of this state are not ignored or overlooked.”

Evers didn’t elaborate and left without taking questions.

Walker, speaking after he signed the bills, brushed aside what he called “high-pitched hysteria” from critics of the legislation. He said his legacy will be the record he left behind that includes all-but eliminating collective bargaining for public workers, not the lame-duck measures.

“We’ve put in deep roots that have helped the state grow,” Walker said. “You want to talk about legacy, to me, that’s the legacy.”

Lawsuit promised on voting change

Holder’s group, the National Redistricting Foundation, along with the liberal One Wisconsin Now, promised a swift legal challenge to one provision Walker signed limiting early voting.

Holder, in a statement, called it a “shameful attack on our democracy.”

Holder’s group and One Wisconsin Now successfully sued in federal court in 2016 to overturn similar early voting and other restrictions enacted by Walker.

The Wisconsin bills focus on numerous Republican priorities, including restricting early in-person voting to two weeks before an election, down from as much as nearly seven weeks in the overwhelmingly Democratic cities of Milwaukee and Madison.

The legislation also shields the state’s job-creation agency from Evers’ control until September and limits his ability to enact administrative rules. The measures also would block Evers from withdrawing Wisconsin from a multistate lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act, one of his central campaign promises.

The legislation imposes a work requirement for BadgerCare health insurance recipients, which Walker won federal approval to do earlier this year, and prevents Evers from seeking to undo it.

Attorney general restricted

It eliminates the state Department of Justice’s solicitor general’s office, which outgoing Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel used to launch contentious partisan litigation. Doing away with it ensures Democratic-Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul can’t use the office to challenge Republican-authored laws.

The bills also allow lawmakers to intervene in lawsuits, ensuring Republicans will be able to defend their policies and laws in court if Kaul refuses to do it. Kaul also would need approval from the Legislature’s budget-writing committee before he can reach any settlements, further increasing the power of that GOP-controlled panel.

The Republican-controlled Legislature introduced and passed the bills less than five days after unveiling them late on a Friday afternoon two weeks ago. Outraged Democrats accused the GOP of a power grab that undermined the results of the November election. Evers and others have argued Walker will tarnish his legacy by signing the bills, and Kaul has predicted multiple lawsuits challenging the legislation.

Republican legislative leaders countered that they were merely trying to balance the power of the executive and legislative branches. They said they wanted to ensure Evers must negotiate with them rather than issue executive orders to undo their policy achievements.

Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said by signing the bills, Walker was “acknowledging the importance of the Legislature as a co-equal branch of government.”

Walker uses power new bills take away

Walker’s signing of the bills comes a day after he announced a $28 million incentive package to keep open a Kimberly-Clark Corp. plant in northeast Wisconsin. One of the lame-duck bills would prevent Evers from making such a deal, instead requiring the Legislature’s budget committee to sign off.
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