RIYADMEDIA

One of the nation’s least populated states could have one of the biggest voices in the Senate’s confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court. President Trump’s pick could be the deciding vote on many issues, including Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion. North Dakota’s pro-choice Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp, who is running for re-election, has to balance the pro-life views of many of her constituents. VOA’s Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports from North Dakota.
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Ayanna Pressley’s victory Tuesday over 10-term House member Michael Capuano in Massachusetts’ 7th District Democratic primary virtually assured that for the first time, an African-American woman will represent her state in Congress.

Pressley’s performance against Capuano was reminiscent of Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s New York primary win in June over veteran House member Joseph Crowley, as progressive insurgents seek to challenge the Democratic establishment.

Pressley, a member of the Boston City Council, and Ocasio-Cortez, a Hispanic community organizer, are likely to draw at most nominal opposition in the November general election.

The two women are part of a historic surge in women entering politics and running for office, in the wake of President Donald Trump’s 2016 victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton. A record number of women have won primary elections for the House of Representatives this year, according to The New York Times.

The Times reports that 200 female nominees are now headed into the general election campaign, the largest number in history.

More than three-quarters of the female primary winners are Democrats. In the current makeup of the House, less than 20 percent of the 435 seats are held by women.
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Chaos, protests and partisan discord marked the first day of Senate confirmation hearings for President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, conservative U.S. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh. As VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, minority Democrats repeatedly sought to postpone the proceedings, but majority Republicans were determined to plow ahead.
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Top U.S. intelligence and defense officials caution the threat to the U.S. in cyberspace is not diminishing ahead of November’s midterm elections despite indications that Russia’s efforts to disrupt or influence the vote may not match what it did in 2016.

The warnings of an ever more insidious and persistent danger come as lawmakers and security officials have increasingly focused on hardening defenses for the country’s voter rolls and voting systems.

It also comes as top executives from social media giants Facebook, Twitter and Google prepare to testify on Capitol Hill about their effort to curtail the types of disinformation campaigns used by Moscow and which are increasingly being copied by other U.S. adversaries.

“The cyberthreat to the U.S. is not limited to U.S. elections, a point that is too often missed,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told a conference outside of Washington Tuesday. “The weaponization of cybertools and the relative lack of global guardrails in a cyber domain significantly increases the risk that a discrete act will have enormous strategic implications.

“Foreign influence efforts online are increasingly being used around the globe,” he added.

Others ramp up attacks

Government officials as well as those from private cybersecurity have said repeatedly over the past few months that they have not yet seen a repeat of what Coats himself described as the “robust” campaign Moscow launched in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

Still, there are concerns that even if the Kremlin has eased its efforts, other countries and a variety of nonstate actors have ramped up their own campaigns, often learning from Russia’s 2016 exploits.

“I remain deeply concerned about threats from several countries to upcoming U.S. elections — the midterms this year, the presidential elections in 2020 and beyond,” Coats said.

While the director of national intelligence did not name any countries in particular, other officials have previously pointed to China, Iran and North Korea as the main culprits.

Two weeks ago, social media giants Facebook and Twitter announced they had removed hundreds of pages and accounts linked to a disinformation campaign that originated in Iran and targeted the U.S. as well as other countries.

​Once major attacks now normal

U.S. cybersecurity officials warn that hacking, phishing attacks and disinformation campaigns have become increasingly popular tools for so-called bad actors’ and that they often escape the attention of the general public.

One reason is that what might have been described as a major cyberattack 10 years ago is often seen now as part of the normal threat landscape.

“We’ve crossed that threshold many, many times,” said John Rood, the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for policy. “We are in that environment where on a near daily basis we are being challenged with those activities.”

What worries him, he said, is not the cyberattacks on their own but the prospects of someone combining cyber with a more traditional type of attack on the U.S. homeland.

“Some of our allies or friends have experienced a combination of cyberactivities, manipulation of the electromagnetic spectrum and physical — air, land, sea — domain [attacks], whether that be Ukraine or Georgia.”

​Small attacks just as worrisome

Yet other U.S. officials believe it is not the prospect of large-scale cyberattacks that should be the sole reason for concern.

“While I don’t see a dramatic cyberattack coming at us, every day there are small ones,” according to National Security Agency Deputy Director George Barnes.

“The problem is we focus on the big and the slow drip happens out the back,” he said. “And the slow drip is the continued theft of intellectual properties from our industries.”

Part of the problem, according to Barnes and other officials, is the extent to which government and industry in the U.S. in connected to and dependent on cyberspace, creating what they describe as a large and vulnerable “attack surface.”

And despite government efforts to reach out to private companies to share information about the threats, and even about ongoing or imminent attacks, U.S. officials fear the current level of cooperation is still not enough.

As a result, the U.S. is “continually pummeled by nation state and non-nation state sponsored malicious cyber activity,” Barnes said.

In response to the growing pace of attacks, the U.S. military and intelligence agencies have become ever more vocal in identifying the perpetrators and calling attention to their exploits.

Increasingly, they are also talking out loud about hitting back.

“We are not standing idly by,” Coats said.

“Every kind of cyberoperation, malicious or not, leaves a trail,” he said. “Persistence on our part has enabled us to identify and publicly attribute responsibility for numerous cyber attacks and foreign influence efforts and then prepare for the response.”
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Ayanna Pressley is all but assured of becoming the first black woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts, the latest example of the Democratic Party’s embrace of diversity and progressive politics as the recipe for success in the Trump era.

The 44-year-old’s upset victory against longtime Democratic Rep. Michael Capuano in Tuesday’s primary sets the stage for Pressley to represent an area once served by Tip O’Neill and John F. Kennedy. Her win comes at the tail end of a primary season in which black politicians have made a series of advances.

In nearby Connecticut, Jahana Hayes is on track to become that state’s first black woman to win a congressional seat if she prevails in November. And black politicians in three states, Florida, Georgia and Maryland, have won the Democratic nomination for governor, a historic turn for a country that has elected just two black governors in U.S. history.

Unabashedly progressive

Greeting voters at a Boston polling station, Pressley spoke of “the ground shifting beneath our feet and the wind at our backs.”

“This is a fight for the soul of our party and the future of our democracy,” she told reporters. “This is a disruptive candidacy, a grassroots coalition. It is broad and diverse and deep. People of every walk of life.”

For Pressley, as with many other ascendant candidates of color, unabashedly progressive credentials smoothed her path to victory in the primary. No Republicans were running, so only a write-in campaign in November could possibly stand between her and Washington.

She was endorsed by fellow congressional upstart Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who knocked off veteran Rep. Joe Crowley of New York in June. Pressley backs Medicare-for-all, the single-payer health care proposal, which helped her garner backing from Our Revolution, the offshoot of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign.

Pressley called for defunding the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, which helped her draw support from Massachusetts’ popular attorney general, Maura Healey, who’s gained a national following for repeatedly suing President Donald Trump in an attempt to block his policies on immigration, gun control and other issues.

‘Be disruptive in our democracy’

“We have to be disruptive in our democracy and our policymaking and how we run and win elections,” she said in an interview this summer with The Associated Press, adding that Ocasio-Cortez’s victory challenged “narratives about who has a right to run and when, and who can win” in American politics.

“My mother did not raise me to ask for permission to lead,” she added.

Pressley tapped into growing cries within the Democratic Party for newer, more diverse leadership. She and Ocasio-Cortez both defeated older, white congressmen who were reliable liberal votes, but who didn’t look like many voters in their districts.

“With so much at stake in the era of Trump, tonight’s results make clear what Ayanna Pressley knew when she boldly launched her campaign against a 10-term incumbent: Change in the country and Congress can’t wait,” said Jim Dean, chair of the liberal group Democracy for America.

The district she’s competing in includes a wide swath of Boston and about half of Cambridge as well as portions of neighboring Chelsea, Everett, Randolph, Somerville and Milton. It includes both Cambridge’s Kendall Square, development there is booming, and the neighborhood of Roxbury, the center of Boston’s traditionally black community.

Pressley has bristled at the notion that race was a defining issue in her campaign.

“I have been really furious about the constant charges being lobbed against me about identity politics that, by the way, are only lobbed against women and candidates of color,” she said in one debate. “I happen to be black and a woman and unapologetically proud to be both, but that is not the totality of my identity.”

Massachusetts’ last Democratic primary upset came in 2014, when Seth Moulton defeated Rep. John Tierney in the state’s 6th Congressional District.
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Former Arizona Senator John Kyl was named to replace the late Senator John McCain.

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, who was required by state law to pick another Republican to fill the seat, said Tuesday of his choice: “There is no one in Arizona more prepared to represent our state in the U.S. Senate than Jon Kyl. He understands how the Senate functions and will make an immediate and positive impact benefiting all Arizonans.”

McCain’s widow, Cindy McCain, praised Kyl, calling him “a dear friend of mine and John’s. It’s a great tribute to John that he is prepared to go back into public service to help the state of Arizona.”

Kyl, 76, has been working as a lobbyist at a Washington law firm since retiring from the Senate at the end of his third, six-year term in 2013. He is expected to be a placeholder through 2020, and not run in the election to fill the last years of McCain’s term ending in early 2023.

Kyl has helped shepherd Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh through his Senate confirmation hearings that started Tuesday, giving Republicans one more vote to seat Kavanaugh on the high court.

McCain, who for 5-1/2 years was a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War in the 1960s before representing Arizona in Congress for more than 30 years, died last month after a yearlong battle with brain cancer. His life was celebrated with five days of services and remembrances before he was buried Sunday in a cemetery at his college alma mater, the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, near Washington.
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Excerpts from a new book about the Donald Trump presidency, authored by the journalist credited with helping to drive President Richard Nixon from power, describes the current administration as suffering an “administrative coup d’etat” and a “nervous breakdown” during its first 19 months.

“Fear: Trump in the White House,” a 448-page work by Bob Woodward set to be released on Sept. 11, describes aides stealing papers off the president’s desk and taking other actions to circumvent the intentions of the commander in chief. It paints Trump as dangerously ignorant of world affairs and his White House as dysfunctional and devastatingly beset by internal feuds.

Although there have been previous revelations by journalists and former White House staffers of upheaval in the White House west wing since last January’s inauguration, Woodward’s account paints a more disturbing portrait of this administration.

Excerpts are contained in stories Tuesday from CNN and The Washington Post.

The book quotes White House Chief of Staff John Kelly describing the president as “unhinged.”

Kelly also is quoted saying in a staff meeting that because the president is an “idiot,” it is “pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in crazytown.”

The retired Marine Corps general, whose reported frustrations with his current post and boss have previously made the news, is quoted then saying: “I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”

​

Defense secretary Jim Mattis is quoted saying Trump comprehends material at the level of “a fifth or sixth grader.”

The book claims that after the Syrian president ordered chemical weapons to be used against civilians in April of last year, Trump called Mattis and said he wanted to assassinate Bashar al-Assad. Mattis is quoted as telling an aide after hanging up the phone that “We’re not going to do any of that. We’re going to be much more measured.”

VOA queried White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders for a response to the book’s excerpts, but there was has been no immediate response.

One of Sanders’ predecessors, Ari Fleischer, who served as a press secretary for President George W. Bush, notes he has been on “the receiving end” of one of Woodward’s previous books. There “were quotes in it I didn’t like. But never once — never — did I think Woodward made it up.”

Fleischer writes on Twitter that, “anonymous sources have looser lips and may take liberties. But Woodward always plays is straight. Someone told it to him.”

The president’s former lead personal attorney, John Dowd, is quoted in graphic language referring to Trump as a “liar” who will end up wearing an “orange jump suit” if he gives testimony to special counsel Robert Muller, who is looking into ties between the 2016 Trump election campaign and Russia.

Two officials who since left the White House, the president’s top economic advisor, Gary Cohn, and Staff Secretary Rob Porter, are said to have swiped documents from the president’s desk to prevent him from signing them “to protect the country.”

Woodward’s book relies on hundreds of hours of taped interviews and dozens of sources in Trump’s inner circle, speaking on the condition they not be identified, as well as documents and includes summarizations of top-secret meetings.

Woodward repeatedly tried to request an interview with Trump for the book but did not succeed.

According to a tape of a call Woodward made to Trump last month, and released by The Washington Post, Trump accused the journalist of writing a “very inaccurate book” that would not reflect that no predecessor has “ever done a better job than I’m doing as president.”

The book also includes excerpts of discussions between the president’s lawyer and Mueller.

The special counsel is quoted saying “I need the president’s testimony,” to determine Trump’s intent in firing James Comey as director of the FBI.

“I want to see if there was corrupt intent,” Mueller is quoted as stating.

The president recently escalated his feud with his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who has recused himself from oversight of the Mueller investigation, a move that angered Trump.

“This guy is mentally retarded,” Trump is quoted in the book, saying of Sessions. “He’s this dumb southerner,” Trump tells then White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter, mocking Sessions by feigning a southern U.S. accent.

The president’s penchant for making provocative statements on social media is examined in Woodward’s book, which notes national security leaders feared and warned Trump that “Twitter could get us into a war.”

Woodward characterizes the president as prioritizing national security in terms of trade deficits and the expense of keeping U.S. troops overseas. Questioned why the United States has to pay for the large troop presence in South Korea, for example, Mattis reportedly told the president: “We’re doing this in order to prevent World War III.” 

The book, by the former Washington Post reporter who shared a 1973 Pulitzer Prize for stories on the Watergate scandal, contains contemporary echoes of Nixon White House paranoia and anger, with Trump reacting to the ongoing Russia inquiry by saying, “everybody’s trying to get me.”
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Monica Lewinsky said Tuesday that she stormed offstage at a Jerusalem speaking event because of an interviewer’s “off limits” question about former President Bill Clinton.

The former White House intern turned anti-bullying activist tweeted that there were agreed-upon parameters regarding the topics of her televised conversation Monday night with a well-known Israeli news anchor, following a conference speech she gave about the perils of the internet.

Lewinsky called Yonit Levi’s first question about her relationship with Clinton a “blatant disregard for our agreement.”

Levi, the main anchor of Israel’s top-rated evening newscast, asked Lewinsky if she still expected a personal apology from Clinton over the fallout of the scandal of their affair 20 years ago. Lewinsky responded: “I’m so sorry. I’m not going to be able to do this.” She then put down her microphone and walked offstage.

Levi reached out her hand and then anxiously followed Lewinsky offstage as some of the stunned audience awkwardly clapped. The confused hosts then rushed opposition lawmaker Yair Lapid onstage to keep the event moving along. A smiling Lapid, who plans to challenge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the next Israeli elections, quipped: “Everything has happened to me but stepping in for Monica Lewinsky is a first. There is no way I’ll be interesting enough in the next few minutes but we’ll do our best.”

In a tweet several hours later, Lewinsky said she had been misled.

“In fact, the exact question the interviewer asked first, she had put to me when we met the day prior. I said that was off limits,” she explained. “I left because it is more important than ever for women to stand up for themselves and not allow others to control their narrative. To the audience: I’m very sorry that this talk had to end this way.”

Levi’s employer, the Israeli News Company, said it did its utmost to abide by all agreements made with Lewinsky.

“The question asked was legitimate, worthy and respectful and in no way deviated from Ms. Lewinsky’s requests,” said company spokesman Alon Shani. “We thank Ms. Lewinsky for her fascinating speech to the conference, respect her sensitivity and wish her all the best.”

Clinton recently came under fire for responding defensively to questions in an NBC interview about his sexual relationship with the White House intern in the late 1990s. He insisted he did not think it necessary to offer her a personal apology since he had already repeatedly apologized publicly. Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky helped lead to his impeachment.

Lewinsky, who for years kept quiet about the relationship before re-emerging as a public speaker, wrote in March that their relationship “was not sexual assault” but “constituted a gross abuse of power.”
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Pakistan’s new foreign minister said he will “have exchanges” with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over Washington’s cancellation of a $300 million disbursement for the Pakistani military when he visits Islamabad on Wednesday.

Adopting a tougher line with an ally that U.S. President Donald Trump considers unreliable, the United States halted the disbursement of Coalition Support Funds due to Islamabad’s perceived failure to take decisive action against Afghan Taliban militants operating from Pakistani soil.

The United States has now withheld $800 million from the CSF so far this year.

The latest move comes just as the less-than-one-month-old government of Prime Minister Imran Khan faces a looming balance of payments crisis that could force it to seek a fresh bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), or other lenders.

“On the 5th, the American (secretary of state) Pompeo will be arriving, and we will have a chance to sit down with him. There will be exchanges,” Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told reporters late on Sunday night.

“We will take our mutual respect for each other into consideration and move forward,” he added.

Qureshi argued that the U.S. was not justified in cutting the $300 million because it was intended to reimburse Pakistan’s military for money spent fighting the Taliban and other militants threatening U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

“It is not aid. It is not assistance, which was suspended. This the money, which we have spent. This is our money. We have spent it,” Qureshi said. “We did it for our betterment, which they had to reimburse.”

Officially allies in fighting terrorism, Pakistan and the United States have a complicated relationship, bound by Washington’s dependence on Pakistan to guarantee a supply route for U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

U.S. officials have repeatedly accused Pakistan of playing a double game, by covertly providing safe havens for Afghan Taliban insurgents and fighters from the Haqqani group, who are waging a 17-year-old war against Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed government.

Pakistan consistently denies providing safe havens for the militants.

In an editorial on Monday, Pakistan’s English-language Dawn newspaper railed against the Trump administration’s decision to halt the disbursement of funds.

“The U.S. has delivered an object lesson in how not to conduct diplomacy,” Pakistan’s English-language Dawn newspaper said in an editorial on Monday.

It went on to speculate whether Pompeo would “try and bully the Pakistani leadership during his visit or if he will be deployed in a more traditional ‘good cop’ diplomatic role.”

Pompeo will be accompanied by top U.S. military officer, General Joseph Dunford, for talks with the Pakistani leadership.

Relations between the new Pakistani government and Washington got off to a rocky start last month when Qureshi publicly disputed that Pompeo had brought up the thorny issue of terrorist havens in a phone call with Prime Minister Khan.

The Pakistani side later downplayed the issue after Washington shared a transcript of the call, Pakistani media reported.

The Trump administration a year ago resolved to take tougher line with Pakistan than previous U.S. administrations.

In his first tweet of 2018, Trump slammed Pakistan, saying the country has rewarded past U.S. aid with “nothing but lies & deceit.” Washington announced plans in January to suspend up to roughly $2 billion in U.S. security assistance to Pakistan.
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It’s coal people like miner Steve Knotts, 62, who make West Virginia Trump Country.

So it was no surprise that President Donald Trump picked the state to announce his plan rolling back Obama-era pollution controls on coal-fired power plants.

Trump left one thing out of his remarks, though: northern West Virginia coal country will be ground zero for increased deaths and illnesses from the rollback on regulation of harmful emission from the nation’s coal power plants.

An analysis done by his own Environmental Protection Agency concludes that the plan would lead to a greater number of people here dying prematurely, and suffering health problems that they otherwise would not have, than elsewhere in the country, when compared to health impacts of the Obama plan.

Knotts, a coal miner for 35 years, isn’t fazed when he hears that warning, a couple of days after Trump’s West Virginia rally. He says the last thing people in coal country want is the government slapping down more controls on coal — and the air here in the remote West Virginia mountains seems fine to him.

People here have had it with other people telling us what we need. We know what we need. We need a job,” Knotts said at lunch hour at a Circle K in a tiny town between two coal mines, and 9 miles down the road from a coal power plant, the Grant Town plant.

The sky around Grant Town is bright blue. The mountains are a dazzling green. Paw Paw Creek gurgles past the town.

Clean-air controls since the 1980s largely turned off the columns of black soot that used to rise from coal smokestacks. The regulations slashed the national death rates from coal-fired power plants substantially.

These days pollutants rise from smoke stacks as gases, before solidifying into fine particles — still invisible — small enough to pass through lungs and into bloodstreams.

An EPA analysis says those pollutants would increase under Trump’s plan, when compared to what would happen under the Obama plan. And that, it says, would lead to thousands more heart attacks, asthma problems and other illnesses that would not have occurred.

Nationally, the EPA says, 350 to 1,500 more people would die each year under Trump’s plan. But it’s northern two-thirds of West Virginia and the neighboring part of Pennsylvania that would be hit hardest, by far, according to Trump’s EPA.

Trump’s rollback would kill an extra 1.4 to 2.4 people a year for every 100,000 people in those hardest-hit areas, compared to under the Obama plan, according to the EPA analysis. For West Virginia’s 1.8 million people, that would be equal to at least a couple dozen additional deaths a year.

Trump’s acting EPA administrator, Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist whose grandfather worked in the coal camps of West Virginia, headed to coal states this week and last to promote Trump’s rollback. The federal government’s retreat on regulating pollution from coal power plants was “good news,” Wheeler told crowds there.

In Washington, EPA spokesman Michael Abboud said Trump’s plan still would result in “dramatic reductions” in emissions, deaths and illness compared to the status quo, instead of to the Obama plan. Obama’s Clean Power Plan targeted climate-changing carbon dioxide, but since coal is the largest source of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels, the Obama plan would have curbed other harmful emissions from the coal-fired power plants as well.

About 160 miles to the south of Grant Town, near the state capital of Charleston, shop owner Doris Keller figures that if Trump thinks something’s for the best, that’s good enough for her.

“I just know this. I like Donald Trump and I think that he’s doing the right thing,” said Keller, who turned out to support Trump Aug. 21 when he promoted his rollback proposal. She lives five miles from the 2,900-megawatt John Amos coal-fired power plant.

“I think he has the best interests of the regular common people at the forefront,” Keller says.

Trump’s Affordable Clean Energy program would dismantle President Barack Obama’s 2015 Clean Power Plan, which has been caught up in court battles without yet being implemented.

The Obama plan targeted climate-changing emissions from power plants, especially coal. It would have increased federal regulation of emissions from the nation’s electrical grid and broadly promoted natural gas, solar power and other cleaner energy.

Trump’s plan would cede much of the federal oversight of existing coal-fired power plants and drop official promotion of cleaner energy. Individual states largely would decide how much to regulate coal power plants in their borders. The plan is open for public review, ahead of any final White House decision.

“I’m getting rid of some of these ridiculous rules and regulations, which are killing our companies … and our jobs,” Trump said at the rally.

There was no mention of the “small increases” in harmful emissions that would result, compared to the Obama plan, or the health risks.

EPA charts put numbers on just how many more people would die each year because of those increased coal emissions.

Abboud and spokeswoman Ashley Bourke of the National Mining Association, which supports Trump’s proposed regulatory rollback on coal emissions, said other federal programs already regulate harmful emissions from coal power plants. Bourke also argued that the health studies the EPA used in its death projections date as far back as the 1970s, when coal plants burned dirtier.

In response, Conrad Schneider of the environmental nonprofit Clean Air Task Force said the EPA’s mortality estimates had taken into account existing regulation of plant emissions.Additionally, health studies used by the EPA looked at specific levels of exposure to pollutants and their impact on human health, so remain constant over time, said Schneider, whose group analyzes the EPA projections.

With competition from natural gas and other cleaner energy helping to kill off more than a third of coal jobs over the last decade, political leaders in coal states are in no position to be the ones charged with enforcing public-health protections on surviving coal-fired power plants, said Vivian Stockman of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.

“Our state is beholden to coal. Our politicians are beholden to coal,” Stockman said outside Trump’s West Virginia rally, where she was protesting. “Meanwhile, our people are being poisoned.”

And when it comes to coal power plants and harm, Schneider said, “when you’re at Grant Town, you’re at Ground Zero.”

Retired coal miner Jim Haley, living 4 miles from the town’s coal-fired power plant, has trouble telling from the smokestack when the plant is even operating.

“They’ve got steam coming out of the chimneys. That’s all they have coming out of it,” Haley said.

Parked near the Grant Town post office, where another resident was rolling down the quiet main street on a tractor, James Perkins listened to word of the EPA’s health warnings. He cast a look into the rear-view mirror into the backseat of his pickup truck, at his 3-year-old grandson, sitting in the back.

“They need to make that safe,” said Perkins, a health-care worker who had opted not to follow his father into the coal mines. “People got little kids.”

 
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Democrats know who their voters are. They just have to figure out how to get them to the polls in November — and that’s where the puppies come in.

Students returning to the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus this summer were greeted by therapy dogs for petting. Those lured by the chance to ruffle a dog’s ears were then asked to register to vote — a “Pups to the Polls” gimmick that was just one of several similar events being staged in 11 battleground states by the liberal group NextGen America.

Young people tend to vote for Democrats, but they also tend stay away during midterm elections. It’s a perennial frustration for the party — one they are trying to overcome as they seek to take control of Congress.

NextGen America, formed by billionaire activist Tom Steyer, hopes to be a game changer. Steyer is investing more than $30 million in what’s believed to be the largest voter engagement effort of its kind in U.S. history.

The push to register and get pledges from college students to vote is focusing on states such as Wisconsin, Virginia, California and North Carolina with competitive races for Congress, U.S. Senate and other offices.

NextGen sees young voters such as Kellen Sharp as key to flipping targeted seats from red to blue.

“The outcome of this election definitely affects us,” said Sharp, an 18-year-old freshman from Milwaukee who stopped to register during the dog event the week before classes started. “I’m just excited to have a voice and say something.”

A poll this summer by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MTV found that most Americans ages 15 to 34 think voting in the midterm elections gives their generation some say about how the government is run. The poll found young people eager to vote for someone who shared their political views on issues such as health care and immigration policy. They expressed far less excitement about voting for a candidate described as a lifelong politician.

“If we all vote, we can make a change,” said 20-year-old Grace Austin, who stopped to pet the dogs at the Wisconsin event and wound up registering to vote.

Austin and other college students who registered said they feel like their friends are more interested in politics than ever before — boosting hopes of Democrats trying to reverse the trend of declining youth participation in midterm elections.

“We want them to know they need to show up and when they do, we will win,” said NextGen’s Wisconsin director George Olufosoye. “We want them to know they have power.”

They certainly have the numbers.

Since the last midterm election in 2014, 15 million post-millennials — those between the ages of 18 and 21 — have become eligible to vote. But while Generation X, millennials and post-millennials make up the majority of voting-eligible adults nationwide, they are not expected to cast the most votes in November.

In the 2014 midterm, they cast 21 million fewer votes than voters over age 54, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center. Turnout among 18- to 24-year-olds hit a 40-year low in 2014, bottoming out at 17.1 percent, according to an analysis by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, or CIRCLE, at Tufts University.

‘Energy, passion and activism’

NextGen points to higher voter turnout on the University of Wisconsin campus for a spring state Supreme Court election won by a liberal, and spikes in turnout in other targeted races, to argue that their push to register 122,000 young people to vote is bearing fruit.

“We’re trying really hard to have this be much more of an infrastructure, organizational thing than a two-month campaign,” NextGen founder Tom Steyer said in an interview. “We’re trying to get the broadest possible democracy, the biggest representation.”

More media coverage of competitive races, combined with energy from the March for Our Lives movement that seeks stricter gun laws, has empowered young voters and made them “feel like it’s time to have their voice heard about what happens to their generation,” said Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, director of CIRCLE.

That’s what NextGen hopes. It has nearly 800 organizers on 421 college campuses in Wisconsin, Arizona, California, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia. In Wisconsin alone, NextGen has 27 full-time workers and 40 student fellows registering voters on 26 campuses.

Republicans recognize the power that motivating young voters could have for Democrats, but they’re skeptical that participation will increase much. In Wisconsin, Republicans have been targeting college voters for years.

“Wisconsin Republicans win by connecting with voters directly where they are — and young voters are no different when it comes to that strategy,” said Wisconsin Republican Party spokesman Alec Zimmerman.

Wisconsin has two of the nation’s competitive and closely watched races. Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin is being challenged by GOP state Senator Leah Vukmir, while Republican Governor Scott Walker faces a challenge from Democratic state schools chief Tony Evers. Polls show the races to be a dead heat — just the kind of competitive elections research shows excite younger voters.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said NextGen worker and 2016 University of Wisconsin graduate Joe Waldman. “I’ve never seen the energy, passion and activism there is now.”
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Heading into the midterm elections, the most volatile candidate this year isn’t on the ballot.

 

But President Donald Trump still loves to take his freewheeling political stylings on the road on behalf of his fellow Republicans and he’s raring to go for the sprint to Nov. 6.

 

His eagerness to campaign for candidates – and protect his political flank – has led Republican officials and Trump’s political team to devise a strategy for managing the president’s time. It’s designed to keep him in places where he can be helpful.

 

They’re also determined to try to manage his unpredictability so the party’s strongest asset in turning out core GOP voters doesn’t end up doing damage instead.

 

There’s a constant effort to keep him on best behavior.

 

This past week, Trump heeded pleas from advisers and Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, head of the GOP Senate campaign committee, to refrain from picking a favorite in the fractious Arizona primary, waiting until after the results were in to back the winner. Later, at a rally in Indiana for Senate candidate Mike Braun, the president largely stuck to his script, promoting his agenda and criticizing Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind.

 

“Senate Republicans will not get to where they need to go without the president this fall. That means doing exactly what he’s been doing,” said Josh Holmes, a longtime adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “The great danger in a midterm is an enthusiasm gap and there is nobody who can close the enthusiasm gap quite like the president.”

 

Aides believe Trump’s drawing power is critical to a strong turnout among the most loyal GOP voters, which is helpful in many statewide contests. But his presence could be counterproductive in many House districts where incumbents are struggling to hold onto voters in the center.

 

But this is a celebrity-turned-president who hardly is a selfless leader of his adoptive party. He launched his own re-election campaign weeks after his swearing-in last year, rather than waiting until after the midterm elections, as did his predecessors. With Democrats increasingly optimistic about retaking the House, Trump is motivated by self-protection. He’s keenly aware of the threats and investigations that could come his way if Democrats hold a majority in either the House or Senate.

 

It hasn’t all been smooth sailing, and Trump created an unnecessary political firestorm with his delayed and muted response to the death of Sen. John McCain. Still, aides think he generally has grown more focused and disciplined entering the final push to the fall elections.

 

At his Indiana rally Thursday night, Trump stuck to familiar themes, talking about tax cuts and trade tariffs, slamming high-tech companies, railing against the Justice Department and calling MS-13 gang members animals. But he did not mention McCain, avoiding recounting the well-worn tale about the senator’s pivotal vote against the president’s health care bill.

 

After a week in which aides pushed Trump to rise above his personal grudges against McCain, the mere fact that Trump kept the senator out of his remarks was notable.

 

While Trump’s White House remains marked by turbulence, insiders said the political shop has managed to impose some discipline. On potential endorsements, for example, political director Bill Stepien and adviser John DeStefano bring Trump detailed binders on candidates’ voting records, including their past comments on Trump, where they have broken with the president and other details.

 

While Stepien and DeStefeno have gained influence, they must compete with other power centers. Vice President Mike Pence and the White House office of legislative affairs weigh in at times, and Donald Trump Jr. has proved a powerful influence.

 

Some races have proved complicated, as in the Arizona Senate race, where Kelly Ward and former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio both promoted their ties to Trump, as did establishment favorite Rep. Martha McSally. Trump stayed out of the race and McSally handily defeated the two more controversial candidates, averting what GOP operatives believed could have been a disaster for the party this fall.

 

In the Tennessee governor’s race, Rep. Diane Black also pushed for an endorsement. Trump stayed out of that race, which she lost, on the advice of staff.

 

But the president could not be persuaded to stay silent in other cases.

 

He supported Foster Friess in the GOP gubernatorial primary in Wyoming. Friess, who lost, was strongly backed by Trump Jr. Aides also had pushed Trump not to endorse Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach in his bid to be governor, but Trump did at the last minute, helping put Kobach over the top in the primary but making the race in November more competitive for Democrats.

 

Aides said they pick their battles with the president, prioritizing races that could swing the balance of congressional control.

 

For political travel, White House staffers, who are coordinating with party aides, have divided the electoral map into places Trump can be helpful and places where it’s better to send in others such as Pence, Cabinet secretaries or members of the first family.

 

“He’s prioritizing places where he’s performed well and where there’s a strong network of grassroots support,” said North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.

When Trump makes a political trip, aides try to make sure the candidate meets the president at the airport, has time with him in the car and gets the right sound bites on stage. That script was followed Thursday with Braun; Trump called him a “special guy” and promised that Braun would “be a truly great senator.”

 

On Friday, as he praised a pair of North Carolina Republican candidates at both an official and political event, Trump was effusive in his praise before turning the spotlight on his own accomplishments.

 

Trump’s rallies also have served as a boost to the GOP’s massive email and voter contact database. Attendees are entered into the party’s system within 48 hours.

 

Republican National Committee staffers gather signatures on petitions from people waiting in line and register voters at the event. Within five days, those that have expressed an interest in volunteering are contacted to schedule their first session.

 
…

A U.S. Senate panel begins confirmation hearings Tuesday on the nomination of federal appellate court judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, a pivotal life-time appointment President Donald Trump hopes will cement a conservative-leaning majority on the court for years to come.

Kavanaugh will face tough questioning from lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee about his views on a range of issues, including abortion, the powers of a special prosecutor to investigate Trump and Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the conflict between religious beliefs and gay rights, environmental controls and numerous other issues.

The White House is hoping the full Senate will confirm the 53-year-old Kavanaugh to the nine-member court later in September, in time for him to fill the vacancy left by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy when the court opens a new term on October 1.

Kennedy most often sided with the court’s four-member conservative bloc, but provided a fifth vote with court liberals to reject efforts to curb abortion and gay rights or limit universities in their use of affirmative action to open up admissions to more racial minorities.

Most independent Supreme Court analysts are predicting, based on hundreds of decisions that Kavanaugh has written at the appellate court level, that Kavanaugh, if confirmed, would most often side with the conservatives on the court, rather than prove to be the swing vote that Kennedy often provided on key issues favoring liberal interpretations of U.S. law.

The eventual full Senate vote on Kavanaugh is expected to be close, with Republicans holding a narrow 50-49 majority with the death of Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona. But Arizona Governor Doug Ducey is required by state law to name another Republican to replace McCain and says he expects to do so in the coming days.

If all 51 Republicans support Kavanaugh, he would become the court’s 114th justice. At the moment, no Republicans have said they will reject Kavanaugh’s nomination and no Democrats have said they will support it.

Democrats are expected to vote overwhelmingly against Kavanaugh’s nomination, although three Democratic senators who voted for Trump’s first high court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, have yet to voice opposition or support for Kavanaugh, pending the confirmation hearing.

Democratic Senators Joe Donnelly in Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota and Joe Manchin in West Virginia all face tough re-election battles in November in states Trump won easily in the 2016 election and could face pressure from voters to approve the Trump court selection.

Kavanaugh has had a long career in Washington that spans work two decades ago on the impeachment investigation of former President Bill Clinton, as a White House aide to former President George W. Bush, and most recently 12 years on the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington, a court often considered a stepping stone to a Supreme Court seat.
…

President Donald Trump’s administration wants to shut down U.S. government radio stations that announce official time, a service in operation since World War II.

WWV and WWVB in the state of Colorado and WWVH on the island of Kauai in the mid-Pacific state of Hawaii, send out signals that allow millions of clocks and watches to be set either manually or automatically.

WWVB continuously broadcasts digital time codes, using very long electromagnetic waves at a frequency of 60 kilohertz, which are automatically received by timekeeping devices in North America, keeping them accurate to a fraction of a second.

“If you shut down these stations, you turn off all those clocks,” said Don Sullivan, who managed the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) stations between 1994 and 2005.

​GPS not good enough

Some argue the terrestrial time signal have been rendered obsolete by the government’s Global Positioning System, whose satellites also transmit time signals, but users disagree, noting GPS devices must have an unobstructed view of a number of satellites in space to properly function.

“Sixty kilohertz permeates in a way GPS can’t,” Sullivan told VOA, explaining that WWVB’s very low frequency signal can be received inside buildings and it is an important backup to GPS in case adversaries attempt to interfere with the satellite radio-navigation system.

WWV and WWVH broadcast on a number of shortwave frequencies, meaning their signals can be received globally.

The Trump administration proposes, in its Fiscal 2019 budget to Congress, cutting $26.6 million and 136 jobs from NIST’s fundamental measurements, quantum science and measurement dissemination activities.

The budget document acknowledges that in addition to synchronizing clocks and watches, the time signals are also used in appliances, cameras and irrigation controllers.

“It’s crazy,” Sullivan said of the proposed cut. “It’s absolutely insane.”

NIST officials say they cannot comment on budget matters. The White House referred questions about NIST’s funding to the Office of Management and Budget, which has not responded to an inquiry from VOA.

Oldest continuously operating radio station

WWV, the oldest continuously operating radio station in the United States, first went on the air from Washington in 1919, conducting propagation experiments and playing music. In the early years, it also transmitted — via Morse code — news reports prepared by the Agriculture Department.

The station subsequently was moved to Maryland and then to Colorado in 1966. WWV has been a frequency standard since 1922 and has disseminated official U.S. time since 1944.

All of the NIST stations rely on extremely precise atomic clocks for the accuracy of their time signals.

WWV, at two minutes past every hour, also transmits a 440 hertz note (A above middle C), something it has done since 1936, allowing musicians to tune their pianos and other instruments.

All three stations retain a huge following worldwide, according to Sullivan.

WWV and WWVH broadcasts can also be heard by telephone and about 2,000 calls are received daily, according to NIST. (To listen to the broadcasts by phone, dial +1-303-499-7111 for WWV and +1-808-335-4363 for WWVH.)

The telephone time-of-day service also is used to synchronize clocks and watches, and for the calibration of stopwatches and timers (although slightly less accurate than radio reception). 

Tom Kelly, an amateur radio operator in the state of Oregon, has launched a petition to try to save the stations. His goal is to collect 100,000 online signatures from U.S. residents by September 15 that would compel a response from the White House.

Kelly’s petition calls the stations “an instrumental part in the telecommunications field, ranging from broadcasting to scientific research and education,” noting their transmissions of marine storm warnings, GPS satellite health reports and specific information about solar activity and radio propagation conditions.

Britain, China, Germany, Japan and Russia also have very low frequency time transmissions, but their stations are too distant to automatically set clocks in the United States.

Among other proposed cuts for NIST are its environmental measurement projects measuring the impact of aerosols on pollution and climate change and gas reference materials used by industry to reduce costs of complying with regulations and the Urban Dome research grants for determining how to measure greenhouse gas emissions for cities and across regions.
…

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos says she has “no intention of taking any action” regarding any possible use of federal funds to arm teachers or provide them with firearms training.

DeVos’ comments came Friday after a top official in her department, asked about arming teachers, said states and local jurisdictions always “had the flexibility” to decide how to use federal education funds.

Frank Brogan, assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education, said arming educators “is a good example of a profoundly personal decision on the part of a school or a school district or even a state.” President Donald Trump and DeVos have said that schools may benefit from having armed teachers and should have that option.

DeVos not authorized

DeVos said Friday that “Congress did not authorize me or the Department to make those decisions” about arming teachers or training them on the use of firearms.

Her comments were in a letter to Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott, the top Democrat on the House committee overseeing education, and were posted by the department on Twitter.

“I will not take any action that would expand or restrict the responsibilities and flexibilities granted to state and local education agencies by Congress,” DeVos wrote.

Democrats and education groups have argued, however, that the funds are intended for academics, not guns.

DeVos heads a federal commission on school safety that was formed after the deadly Valentine’s Day shooting at a Florida high school.

An early draft of the commission’s report recommends that states and communities determine “based on the unique circumstances of each school” whether to arm its security personnel and teachers to be able to respond to violence. The draft’s section on training school personnel was reviewed by AP.

Official cites Texas program

In an interview with The Associated Press Thursday, Brogan cited the “school marshal” program in Texas where school employees can volunteer to carry weapons on campuses after undergoing training. Educators from some remote rural schools also told the panel that they rely on armed school personnel because the police may take too long to arrive. Others, however, argued that arming teachers is dangerous and could make schools feel like prisons.

Brogan said the Every Student Succeeds Act, a bipartisan law that shifts education authority to states, provides about $1 billion in annual funding for various school needs, including 20 percent specifically set aside for school safety.

“The people at the local level who’ve been there for years could make the decisions about what services to purchase, what equipment to buy to fulfill the general broad obligations laid out in that law,” he said.

The debate arose earlier this month after a small rural school district in Oklahoma and the state of Texas asked the department to clarify what the funds can be used for.

“The position is: You have the language … the language was written specifically to and always interpreted to mean ‘this is your money,”’ Brogan said.

Democratic lawmakers and teachers blasted the idea, accusing the Trump administration of acting in the interests of the National Rifle Association, and several congressmen called for legislation that would prohibit the use of those funds for guns.
…

The Trump administration is under increasing pressure to speed up the reunification of immigrant families it separated at the Mexican border, following allegations three youngsters were sexually abused while in U.S. custody.

The government of El Salvador said the three, ages 12 to 17, were victimized at shelters in Arizona, and it asked the U.S. to make their return a priority.

“May they leave the shelters as soon as possible, because it is there that they are the most vulnerable,” Deputy Foreign Relations Minister Liduvina Magarin said in San Salvador on Thursday.

Deadline a month ago

The U.S. government already is facing heavy criticism over its slow pace in reuniting more than 2,600 children who were separated from their parents last spring before the Trump administration agreed to stop the practice. Most have since been reunited, but hundreds remain apart more than a month after the deadline set by a judge.

Before the Trump administration reversed course, many of the parents had been deported to their home countries while their children remained in shelters in the U.S.

Attorneys for the U.S. government and the immigrant families discussed how to accelerate the process at a hearing Friday in San Diego in front of U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, who set the deadline.

Magarin gave few details on the three cases other than to say they involved “sexual violations, sexual abuses.” She said her government is ready with lawyers and psychologists to help the families, adding: “The psychological and emotional impact is forever.”

“It’s unbelievable that children who were fleeing violence here were met in the United States with the worst violence a child could encounter,” said Cesar Rios, director of the Salvadoran Migrant Institute.

More information is needed to investigate, the U.S. Department Health and Human Services said in a statement Friday, that adding that “without additional details, we are unable to confirm or deny these allegations took place” at a facility overseen by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. It contracts with nonprofits and other third parties to run shelters for unaccompanied minors arriving at the border.

Administration asks ACLU to find the families

In trying to reunite families, the Trump administration has put the onus on the American Civil Liberties Union, asking that the organization use its “considerable resources” to find parents in their home countries, mostly Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

The governments of those countries and nonprofit organizations have been trying to locate the families. Those efforts have included posting public notices and putting hotline numbers on billboards in the hope a parent missing a child might see the signs and call.

“Every day that these children are separated and left in government facilities does more damage,” said Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney representing separated families. “Even if the facilities were palaces, the separation of young children from their parents causes potentially permanent trauma.”

The government and ACLU indicated in the hearing Friday that the process should start to speed up.

200 cases could be resolved soon

Gelernt told the judge as many as 200 cases could be resolved in the next week or two. Those include families who want to be reunited in their home countries and those who want to waive their right to reunification and keep their child in the United States to pursue asylum.

The judge also said the administration can expedite cases where families have expressed the desire for the child to be sent back and not worry about it violating a temporary halt on deportations of families seeking asylum.

Justice Department attorney Scott Stewart said the government wants to remove any roadblocks.

“There are a lot of folks that want to move forward with reunification,” he told the judge.

Parents increasingly anxious

More than 300 parents who have been deported are waiting for their sons and daughters to be returned to them in their homelands. Many are growing increasingly anxious.

Among them is Evelin Roxana Meyer, whose 11-year-old son, Eduardo Almendarez Meyer, was told this week that he won’t be leaving the U.S. until Nov. 27. He has been held at a government-contracted shelter in Brownsville, Texas, since he was separated from his father in early June.

The boy’s mother said her husband was told when he signed his deportation papers that his son would be waiting for him in Honduras.

“Now it’ll be six months before we see him? Oh my God,” Meyer said Friday, crying during a telephone interview from her hometown of La Union. “I don’t know why it’s taking so long. My son is worried. He tells me, ‘More time here, Mommy? Oh, no. Why?’ I don’t know what to tell him.”

Child psychologist Barbara Van Dahlen, founder of Give an Hour, a network of mental health professions that is offering to counsel the separated families, said the reports of abuse are likely to worsen the immigrant parents’ anxieties.

“I can’t imagine the stress, the anxiety, the terror, if I was separated from my child, and then the thought that possibly some of these kids are being abused,” Van Dahlen said. “It would be so debilitating and destructive that it would be hard for some parents to function.”
…

The Trump administration has cut funding to the U.N. agency that helps Palestinian refugees, calling the organization “irredeemably flawed.”

The U.S. State Department ended decades of support to the organization Friday, saying “the administration has carefully reviewed the issue and determined that the United States will not make additional contributions to UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency).”

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the U.N. agency’s “endlessly and exponentially expanding community of entitled beneficiaries is simply unsustainable and has been in crisis mode for many years.”

UNRWA provides health care, education and social services to Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The agency says it provides services to about 5 million Palestinian refugees, most of whom are descendants of Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes during the war that led to Israel’s establishment in 1948.

The United States supplies nearly 30 percent of the total budget of UNRWA and donated $355 million to the agency in 2016. However, in January, the Trump administration withheld $65 million it had been due to provide UNRWA and released only $60 million in funds.

Last week, the Trump administration announced it would cut more than $200 million in economic aid to the Palestinians, following a review of the funding for projects in the West Bank and Gaza. A senior State Department official said the decision took into account the challenges the international community faces in providing assistance to Gaza, where “Hamas control endangers the lives of Gaza’s citizens and degrades an already dire humanitarian and economic situation.”

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that runs Gaza, seized the coastal territory in 2007 from the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority. That led to Israel and Egypt placing severe economic restrictions on the region.

Under the Trump administration, Washington has taken a number of actions that have angered the Palestinians, including recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December and moving the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv in May. The Palestinian leadership has been boycotting Washington’s peace efforts since the Jerusalem announcement.
…

The remains of the late Senator John McCain are lying in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda Friday as Americans continue to mourn the loss of the long-time legislator and war hero.

McCain’s remains were flown Thursday to Washington from Arizona, the southwestern U.S. state he represented in Congress since he was first elected in 1982.

Hundreds of members of Congress are expected to attend a ceremony in the rotunda, an honor that has been bestowed upon just 30 Americans throughout the country’s history. McCain’s coffin will rest on a wooden platform known as a catafalque, which was first used in 1865 to support the casket of assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.

President Donald Trump was not invited to Friday’s ceremony or McCain’s funeral on Saturday, a decision viewed by many as a rebuke of Trump. A bitter feud between Trump and the two- time presidential hopeful took root during Trump’s 2016 campaign, when he mocked McCain for getting captured during the Vietnam War and said McCain was not a war hero.

Vice President Mike Pence will, instead, speak at the ceremony and other administration officials will be present, as will McCain’s widow, Cindy, his seven children and his 106-year-old mother, Roberta McCain.

After Friday’s ceremony, McCain will lie in state for the rest of the day for public viewing in the rotunda, where his flag-draped coffin will be presided over by a Capitol Hill Guard of Honor.

Two former presidents, Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama, will deliver remarks at Saturday’s memorial service at the National Cathedral in Washington.

McCain lost the Republican presidential nomination to Bush in 2000 and the presidential election to Obama in 2008.

The former aviator who was a prisoner of war for more than five years will be buried Sunday at his college alma mater, the U.S. Naval Academy in nearby Annapolis, Maryland.

McCain died last Saturday at age 81 after a year-long battle with brain cancer.

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday described his old friend as a man who lived by an ageless code of honor, courage and duty for his country.

Three former NATO secretaries general have called for the alliance’s new $1.4 billion Brussels-based headquarters to be named McCain.

“Despite his being a U.S. Senator, across Europe we all felt that John McCain III was one of our own,” they said in a letter to the British paper The Times.

In a letter, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who served in the top post from 2009-2014, George Robertson (1999-2003) and Javier Solana (1995-1999) have supported the tribute to the Arizona Republican’s work in “promoting transatlantic unity.”

The letter, published Thursday, reads: “As three former secretary-generals of NATO, we believe that the transatlantic alliance is the cornerstone of a stable, peaceful and free world. Few things symbolize this alliance, and the enduring benefits of American global leadership, more vividly than the life and work of John McCain.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg confirmed he received the request to name the new NATO headquarters after Senator John McCain.

“This proposal will be studied carefully,” said NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescuin in a statement.

McCain lost the Republican presidential nomination to Bush in 2000 and the presidential election to Obama in 2008.

The former aviator who was a prisoner of war for more than five years will be buried Sunday at his college alma mater, the U.S. Naval Academy in nearby Annapolis, Maryland.

McCain died last Saturday at age 81 after a year-long battle with brain cancer.

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday described his old friend as a man who lived by an ageless code of honor, courage and duty for his country.

“Character is destiny, John had character,” Biden said at a funeral service for the 81-year-old McCain in the Arizona capital of Phoenix.

 

 
…

Thousands of mourners have come to pay their respects to music legend Aretha Franklin, who will be laid to rest Friday in Detroit, Michigan. A star-studded roster of performers and speakers are scheduled to attend. From Washington, VOA’s Jill Craig has more.
…

Notably absent from the final tribute ceremonies for U.S. Senator John McCain, who died last Saturday, is President Donald Trump. McCain and Trump disagreed on a number of issues, including U.S. relations with Russia. Some analysts view the feud as emblematic of the clash of values within the Republican Party. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump, at political rally in the Midwestern state of Indiana, again directed his ire at the country’s top national law enforcement officials.

“Our Justice Department and our FBI have to start doing their job, doing it right and doing it well,” Trump said Thursday evening. “People are angry.”

“What’s happening is a disgrace,” declared the president.

“I wanted to stay out, but at some point if it doesn’t straighten out properly … I will get involved and I’ll get in there if I have to,” Trump added.

Sessions’ job

Earlier in the day at the White House, the president referred to the special counsel’s probe into whether his 2016 campaign colluded with Russians as an “illegal investigation.”

Speaking to the Bloomberg news agency, Trump said the job of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has recused himself from oversight of the investigation, is safe until, at least, the November midterm election.

“I just would love to have him do a great job,” Trump said during the Oval Office interview, adding that he would “love to have him look at the other side,” reiterating calls for the Justice Department to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the origins of the Russia probe.

“I do question what is Jeff doing,” he added.

The president has repeatedly ridiculed Sessions, the top U.S. law enforcement officer, as “weak” for not pursuing what the president and many other Republicans perceive as anti-Trump bias in the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

​FBI refuted Trump claim

The FBI, on Wednesday, refuted the claim Trump made without citing evidence that the e-mails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom he defeated in the 2016 election, had her e-mails hacked by China.

Trump, earlier Wednesday had said federal law enforcement risked losing credibility if it did not further investigate the matter.

“Look at what she’s getting away with?” Trump said about Clinton at the Indiana rally, prompting the crowd in the 11,000-seat Ford Center to briefly chant “lock her up.”

Trump has repeatedly called the investigation, headed by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is a former FBI director, a politically motivated witch hunt.

The president repeatedly asserts there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia.

Six convictions, 12 indictments

Mueller’s investigation has so far resulted in six people being convicted of crimes. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, on August 21 was the first person to be convicted in a jury trial from the probe, which also returned indictments in July against 12 Russian intelligence officers in the computer hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.

On Twitter earlier in the day Trump denied referenced reports he has tried to have Sessions and Mueller removed from their positions.

Discussing his soon-to-depart White House Counsel, Donald McGahn, the president tweeted: “I liked Don, but he was NOT responsible for me not firing Bob Mueller or Jeff Sessions. So much Fake Reporting and Fake News!”

During the evening’s rally in Evansville, Trump again targeted journalists for harsh criticism, accusing them of being in alliance with those who oppose him politically, including “deep state radicals.”
…

Environmentalists are alarmed that President Donald Trump is following through on his campaign pledges to roll back Obama-era rules that tightened restrictions on greenhouse gases, promising the moves would lead to more American jobs and economic growth.

At a recent rally in Charleston, West Virginia, under a “Trump Digs Coal” banner, the president announced plans to roll back the Clean Power Plan.

“We are putting our great coal miners back to work.” Trump said, claiming that coal is necessary for the nation’s energy security. “You can do a lot of things to those solar panels, but you know what you can’t hurt? Coal. You can do whatever you want to coal.”

Trump’s plan abandons the previous administration’s goal of scaling back U.S. reliance on coal and reducing the nation’s carbon emissions by a third by the year 2030. Instead, Trump wants to allow coal-producing states like West Virginia to set their own limits on greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration proposed a repeal of the American Clean Cars Standards, the Obama-era regulation that set stringent limits on vehicle fuel-efficiency and emissions. The proposal include revoking the rights of states to set their own strict vehicle emission targets, setting up a legal battle with California and 18 other states with ambitious clean cars programs.

Xavier Becerra, California’s attorney general, said the state will fight what it believes to be “an egregious proposal that violates the law and is damaging to the interests of the people of this country when it comes to improving air quality.”

 

Environmental activists also have denounced the proposals. Tomas Carbonell of the Environmental Defense Fund said cars and power plants are responsible for the majority of carbon pollution in the U.S. He added that the administration’s rollback of these climate protections “sends a real signal to the world that America is not going to do its part to reduce pollution.”

 

Even the administration’s Environmental Protection Agency’s own analysis acknowledges that increased pollution from the rollback of the Clean Power Plan could lead to 1,400 more premature deaths each year by 2030. Carbonell said this would mean health and economic costs with potentially “billions of dollars in net harm to Americans resulting from this proposal even after you take into account the compliance cost.”

The plan is supported by the industry lobby that says Trump’s coal-friendly policies create jobs. Jason Bostic from the West Virginia Coal Association said that since Trump took office, the state has added about 3,000 direct mining jobs. He dismissed criticism that coal is a dying industry that hurts the environment.

“I think what you have are critics outside of this industry that are a little bit unrealistic in their goals about a renewable economy built on wind power, wishes and unicorns.” he said.

 

If approved, Trump’s proposal, called the “Affordable Clean Energy Rule,” could keep coal plants operating longer, by allowing them to invest in facilities without having to upgrade pollution control technologies to meet existing standards.

Yet, experts are skeptical the proposal would actually would save coal jobs in the long term given that there are cheaper and cleaner energy sources like natural gas, and that the cost of renewable energy like solar and wind continue to drop.

Blair Beasley of the Bipartisan Policy Center said, “The coal industry is still facing some pretty significant headwinds,” despite Trump’s rollbacks.

Most analysts believe Trump’s proposal is driven more by political rather than economic considerations. In West Virginia, Trump’s approval ratings are almost always above the national average. Beasley noted, however, that as the power sector transitions away from coal, there are communities that potentially could be left behind, and this is an important consideration in policymaking.

The Clean Power Plan was blocked by the Supreme Court in early 2016 and never implemented. Yet, West Virginians blamed President Barack Obama for the decline of the coal industry.

In his last year in office, Obama’s approval rating in the state was 24 percent, the lowest in the nation. Jake Zuckerman, political reporter at the Charleston Gazette-Mail said that a fair criticism for the Obama administration is they did not hold public hearings in West Virginia on the Clean Power Plan.

“I think that people got this feeling that they weren’t being heard, which I think carries a lot of weight here,” he said.

Now these coal miners feel Trump is listening. At the Trump rally in Charleston, Kevin Abbot from Gilbert, West Virginia, said he lost his job under Obama, but now he’s back to work.

“I’m tickled to death,” he said. “The pay went up. The mining industry went up. So, everything’s looking real good as far as mining goes.”

Abbott, who has been mining for 32 years, said he likes everything Trump has done. “He’s sticking with his campaign promises.”

 

The administration’s proposals to roll back antipollution standards are in line with Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement. Every country in the world except the U.S. and Syria, are now signatories of the agreement, which aims to mitigate the effects of global warming.
…

President Donald Trump has followed through on pledges to roll-back Obama-era rules that tightened restrictions on greenhouse gases, promising the moves would lead to more American jobs and economic growth. Trump’s proposal includes loosening restrictions to the American Clean Cars Standards and the Clean Power Plan. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has more.
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The National Enquirer has long explained its support for Donald Trump as a business decision based on the president’s popularity among its readers. But private financial documents and circulation figures obtained by The Associated Press show that the tabloid’s business was declining even as it published stories attacking Trump’s political foes and, prosecutors claim, helped suppress stories about his alleged sexual affairs.

The Enquirer’s privately held parent company, American Media Inc., lost $72 million for the year ending in March, the records obtained by the AP show. And despite AMI chairman David Pecker’s claims that the Enquirer’s heavy focus on Trump sells papers, the documents show that the Enquirer’s average weekly circulation fell by 18 percent to 265,000 in its 2018 fiscal year from the same period the year before, the greatest percentage loss of any AMI-owned publication. The slide follows the Enquirer’s 15 percent circulation loss for the previous 12 months, a span that included the presidential election.

More broadly, the documents obtained by the AP show that American Media isn’t making enough money to cover the interest accruing on its $882 million in long-term debt and that the company expects “continued declines in circulation and advertising revenues” in the current year. That leaves AMI reliant on debt to keep its operations afloat and finance a string of recent acquisitions that are transforming the tabloid news industry.

New Jersey creditors

That creditor backstopping AMI is a New Jersey investment fund called Chatham Asset Management. Its top executive dined with Pecker and Trump at the White House last year, and the fund has both a history of Republican political donations and ties to the administration of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, which awarded it hundreds of millions of dollars in state retirement funds to manage.

AMI’s current debts stem from the declining fortunes of the magazine industry and a series of acquisitions. Chatham has kept this number from ballooning further by converting some of the debt it is owed into shares in the company.

Hush money allegations

The publisher’s precarious financials and reliance on Chatham are a backdrop to the publisher’s growing entanglement in a federal investigation of allegations of hush money payments and violations of campaign finance laws.

Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty last week to criminal violations of campaign laws, accepting prosecutors’ claim that he, Trump and the National Enquirer were involved in buying the silence of an adult-film actress and a former Playboy model who claim to have had affairs with Trump. Pecker and his top editorial deputy, Dylan Howard, have received immunity in exchange for their cooperation. Along with Cohen, they are among the latest longtime Trump loyalists to be swept up in the federal investigations engulfing the president and his inner circle.

Neither AMI nor company officials have been charged in the case.

AMI did not provide an on-the-record response to detailed questions from the AP sent to Howard, Pecker and its outside spokesman. But a confidential financial document obtained by the AP argues that investors should focus on its current cash flows and not its profitability. Over the last two years, it has generated a combined $12 million cash flow from operations even as it has posted $160 million in overall losses.

AMI also recently announced efforts to refinance as much as $450 million in debt. Despite the company’s recent purchases of US Weekly and rival gossip publisher Bauer Media, revenue from AMI’s existing publications continues to drop, the financial report obtained by the AP shows.

Trump’s ‘a personal friend of mine’

Pecker has long maintained an aura of absolute control over the Enquirer and its sister publications, boasting of his willingness to spend AMI’s money to benefit Trump.

“The guy’s a personal friend of mine,” he told The New Yorker magazine last summer, explaining why AMI paid former Playmate Karen McDougal $150,000 in a deal that prevented her from going public with her claim that she’d had an affair with Trump.

Owned by management firm

But Pecker owns only a small fraction of AMI, around 8 percent, according to the company. More than 80 percent of AMI, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars of its debt, belongs to Chatham Asset Management, with billionaire investor Leon Cooperman owning an additional 7 percent.

Chatham declined to address questions about the Enquirer’s relationship with Trump or the future of its investment in AMI. But the firm released a statement saying Chatham “has no involvement in the editorial process or the day-to-day business decisions of the company.”

Among Chatham’s largest investors, according to public records, is New Jersey’s public pension fund. Chatham manages investment decisions for more than $300 million in pension holdings for the state.

Asked about AMI’s alleged involvement with campaign finance law violations and hush money payments, state Treasury spokeswoman Jennifer Sciortino told the AP that “we expect our investment partners to invest in good businesses with strong management teams that follow all applicable laws.” She declined to say whether New Jersey had discussed AMI with Chatham, but said, “We are in regular contact with our investment partners regarding underlying portfolio companies and we provide feedback when appropriate.”

The confidential financial document obtained by the AP states that AMI’s $882 million in long-term debt owed to creditors as of March is a competitive disadvantage that may compromise its ability to launch new projects, borrow additional money or even pay for “general corporate requirements.”

​Trump concern

While the details of AMI’s financial difficulties described in the confidential document haven’t been previously reported, the prospect that Pecker and AMI might not protect Trump’s secrets forever has long been a concern. Trump and Cohen even discussed the possibility that the ties between Trump and the National Enquirer might someday unravel.

In July, Cohen released an audio recording in which the men discussed plans to buy McDougal’s story of an affair with Trump from the National Enquirer. Such a purchase was necessary, they suggested, to prevent Trump from having to permanently rely on a tight relationship with the tabloid.

“You never know where that company — you never know what he’s gonna be,” Cohen says.

“David gets hit by a truck,” Trump says.

“Correct,” Cohen replies. “So, I’m all over that.”

According to the documents accompanying Cohen’s guilty plea last week, Trump’s purchase of McDougal’s story never occurred.
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