RIYADMEDIA

A top U.S. State Department official resigned this week after President Donald Trump announced the United States is withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, according to a report in the journal Foreign Policy.

The report says 38-year-old nuclear proliferation expert Richard Johnson resigned his position as acting assistant coordinator in the State Department’s Office of Iran Nuclear Implementation, which had been involved in talks with Britain, France, Germany and other nations to salvage the deal that rewarded Iran for giving up much of its nuclear activities in trade for relief from economic sanctions.

Trump announced Wednesday that the U.S. would no longer be part of that deal. Johnson’s farewell party was held that night, according to Foreign Policy.

Johnson did not make a statement to the journal for its report, but Foreign Policy reports that his farewell email to colleagues and staff praised the deal, calling it an “extraordinary achievement” and saying it has “clearly been successful in preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.”

Johnson’s departure highlights the Trump administration’s loss of high-level career diplomats at the State Department and across the breadth of the federal government. The report notes that the office Johnson headed has gone from a full-time staff of seven to none since Trump’s inauguration.

That development was due in part to former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s decision to close the department’s office in charge of coordinating sanctions and move some experts to administrative roles.

Several former government employees contacted for the story, including former U.S. Treasury official Brian O’Toole, told Foreign Policy that they are dismayed at Johnson’s departure. O’Toole called the nonproliferation expert “exactly the kind of person we want to keep in government.”

O’Toole added, “You can’t be powerful without good people in government.”

Contacted for comment on the story, the State Department said in a statement that it does not comment on matters involving individual employees. But it added: “As directed by the President, we will continue to work with nations around the world to create a new coalition to counter Iran’s nuclear and proliferation threats, as well as its support for terrorism, militancy, and asymmetric weapons like ballistic missiles.”
…

White House chief of staff John Kelly said President Donald Trump is “somewhat embarrassed” by the special counsel’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Kelly told National Public Radio in an interview that aired Friday the probe “may not be a cloud” over the White House, but it gets discussed.

Said Kelly: “When world leaders come in, it’s kind of like, you know, Bibi Netanyahu is here … who’s under investigation himself, and it’s like, you know, you walk in, and you know, the first couple of minutes of every conversation might revolve around that kind of thing.”

Kelly also spoke about the Trump administration’s efforts to fight illegal immigration. He said most people coming into the country illegally “are not bad people,” but said they won’t assimilate easily.

“They’re overwhelmingly rural people. In the countries they come from, fourth-, fifth-, sixth-grade educations are kind of the norm,” Kelly said. “They don’t speak English; obviously that’s a big thing. … They don’t integrate well; they don’t have skills.”

While Kelly’s role in the administration appears to have diminished of late, he told NPR that he has a close relationship with Trump and said he has never considered leaving the White House.

“There’s times of great frustration, mostly because of the stories I read about myself or others that I think the world of, which is just about everybody who works at the complex, and wonder whether it’s worth it to be subjected to that,” he said.

He also said he wished he had been in his role sooner: “I think in some cases in terms of staffing or serving the president that first six months was pretty chaotic and there were people some people hired that maybe shouldn’t have.”
…

Young undocumented immigrants seeking permanent status in the United States received an unexpected boost Thursday on Capitol Hill as a small group of House Republicans mounted a last-minute effort to bring up an immigration vote in Congress.

The group of eight Republicans — some freed from political considerations by upcoming retirements and others facing tough re-elections races — defied their own party leadership, quickly persuading 10 more Republicans to sign on to a petition that would force debate on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

With all 193 Democrats expected to sign on, Republicans will have to persuade just seven more members of their own party to join the petition to trigger a vote on several immigration bills on the House floor.

But Republican leadership said the effort would be wasted if the end result is a presidential veto.

“I think it’s important for us to come up with a solution that the president can support,” House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters Thursday. These types of petitions are rare and seen as a threat to leadership’s ability to direct legislative action.

“It’s better to use the legislative process,” Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters Wednesday.

But that argument appears to be losing sway with House members who see an opportunity for legislative action in a mid-term election year. The growing group of House Republicans are joining Democratic colleagues who have long criticized Ryan for not bringing immigration bills up for a vote.

“This is about making sure we’re not consolidating power in the White House,” said Representative Mia Love, a Republican from Utah and one of the first lawmakers to sign petition.

The immigration issue had all but died after an effort to pass a DACA fix collapsed in the U.S. Senate earlier this year.

The program has been the focus of fierce negotiations on Capitol Hill since last September, when President Donald Trump announced he was ending the 2012 Obama-era program and called for a legislative fix.

The DACA program has shielded from deportation about 800,000 undocumented people who were brought to the United States illegally as children, mainly from Mexico and Central America. The U.S. Supreme Court gave DACA recipients a reprieve this spring when it declined to hear an appeal of several lower court rulings to maintain the program.

“The pressure point went away after the Supreme Court didn’t act — and I was happy that it gave more time to DACA recipients, but it took the pressure off here,” Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican from Florida, told VOA.

 “This is a way to bring it back. So this is very unique opportunity,” he said.

The lawmakers are pressing for a vote on a range of Republican, Democratic and bipartisan solutions to the status of DACA recipients, in addition to addressing concerns about border security and visa programs.

If the petition succeeds, the earliest the House could enter into debate on the bills would be in mid-June.

Under the rules of the so-called “Queen of the Hill” process, the bill with the most votes would be sent to the Senate.

“We believe that there’s going to be opportunities for members of all the different caucuses on the left and the right to vote on the bills they think are important — but the important thing is to have a full debate here,” said Representative Jeff Denham, a Republican from California who is leading the effort.

Several states have filed lawsuits against the DACA program. Those cases are expected to work their way up to the U.S. Supreme Court this summer. 
…

A long line of people, winding past a chain-link fence and a turnstile, distinguishes the boundary separating San Luis, in the U.S. state of Arizona, and San Luis Río Colorado in Sonora, Mexico. Otherwise, it would just appear to be desert.

At the U.S. port of entry, temporary farm workers leave their families and queue up daily before dawn to catch a bus to the fields, just outside town. Residents from Arizona join them.

On one nearby date palm farm, men and women wear handkerchiefs to protect themselves from the fine desert sand and temperatures that reach 41 degrees Celsius; but, Mexican farmworker Juán González voices few complaints. The work is steady for 11 months of the year, he says, and the border is calm.“There aren’t many problems,” González said. “There’s crime, but not like in other large cities.”

While others describe a sense of tranquility on either side of the border, there is an underlying tension, too. Drug trafficking is of particular concern, but not everyone wants to talk about it.

​It’s complicated

A mix of workers on temporary visas, permanent residents, and U.S. citizens with Mexican family members, residents of San Luis, Arizona, say it’s normal to have a foot on both sides of the border.

Among the Latino-majority population, residents quietly acknowledge that the deployment of the Arizona National Guard to the area — to assist the U.S. Border Patrol in monitoring illegal activity — isn’t the worst idea but has a caveat: “if it’s for narco-trafficking and trafficking of persons.”

“It’s good to end that because it’s dangerous for anyone here along the border,” said Candelario Vizcarra, a San Luis farmworker who lives in Mexico.

“They don’t go and attack nobody,” added Greg, a U.S. citizen who works in sales. “It’s just to protect the borders, and I agree.”

Others with business ties in San Luis agreed with Greg, who didn’t want to share his last name with VOA. But they were careful not to voice their opinions out of concern they might appear to be anti-immigrant.

María Herrera, a minimum-wage farmworker, mother, and permanent resident in Arizona, agrees that drug trafficking is a problem and that it is affecting the town’s children, some as young as 12.

“They don’t have work, there is no work, there’s nothing,” Herrera said. “And their best option a lot of times is to go the easy route: rob, use drugs, or act as drug mules (carry drugs) across the border.”

Creating more well-paying jobs would be her suggestion. Absent that, Herrera is skeptical of the National Guard troops’ presence. She worries about the effect of a militarized border on the undocumented.

“Like all Latinos, we worry about what happens to other families like our own, because one way or another, many are family or relatives of some friend of ours that we have in common.

“In the worst cases, they’ll deport the father,” Herrera continued, “and the mother and kids remain here — protected by whom?”​

Common ground

In Calexico, California, 127 kilometers northwest of San Luis, across subtropical desert, a section of 9-meter bollard-style replacement fence towers over the palms and brush to its south. Border Patrol sector supervisor Jorge Rivera says he is grateful for the upgrade because of another issue: the safety of his agents.

“Criminal organizations come over and they attack us with rocks; they throw any type of object toward us to avoid us apprehending any type of illegal activity,” Rivera told VOA.

In fiscal 2017, the U.S. Border Patrol in the El Centro Sector of southern California reported 21 assaults against agents and seized more than 200 kilos of cocaine, 690 kilos of methamphetamine and 70,000 grams of heroin.

But unlike San Luis, some residents concerned about illegal immigration in El Centro bring up a line of reasoning more in tune with pro-Trump areas of the country, including the narrative that those crossing the border illegally are an economic burden on society.

“They are leeching our system, and I pay so much (in) taxes every month,” said Steve Andrade, who runs a security management company. “It … (makes me angry) that all my money goes to those people. … I get nothing out of it!”

Ironically, Andrade admits to once being homeless and an undocumented immigrant himself, crossing multiple times from Mexicali until he successfully evaded the U.S. Border Patrol and settled in California in the early 1980s.

He maintains the Mexican border town was different then.

“In my time, there was nothing, no opportunities … to even survive Mexicali,” Andrade said. “There were no shelters to help you or anything.”

Andrade makes his stance on the wall clear — “go for it!” — but others who claim illegal immigration is a danger have other ideas.

Bill DuBois, an El Centro-area resident and owner of a local firearms store, holds firm that “if one illegal crosser gets across, the border is not secure.” But unlike Andrade, the lifelong Californian doesn’t subscribe to the idea of a wall.

“The only way to solve the problem of illegal immigration is to make things better in the other people’s home countries,” DuBois said.
…

The U.S. says it is looking for allied support to force Iran into new negotiations over its nuclear weapons development and military advances in the Middle East in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 international pact restraining Tehran’s nuclear program.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is planning discussions with allies in Europe, the Middle East and Asia in an effort to win their support to pressure Iran to open talks, Reuters reported Thursday. A day earlier, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told a congressional hearing the U.S. would “continue to work alongside our allies and partners to ensure that Iran can never acquire a nuclear weapon, and will work with others to address the range of Iran’s malign influence.”

The U.S., according to a senior State Department official, already has started discussions with Britain, France and Germany — three other signatories to the Iran nuclear deal that unsuccessfully lobbied Trump to keep the U.S. in the deal — as well as Japan, Iraq and Israel.

“There will be an effort to go out globally and talk to our partners around the world who share our interests,” the official told Reuters. “That is the first stage. The composition of what happens when we sit down with the Iranians is several stages out.”

The official said the focus of the talks is to increase pressure on Iran “in a way that is constructive and conducive to bringing them to the negotiating table.”

Trump has vowed to soon reimpose economic sanctions against Iran that were ended in 2015 when Iran agreed to curbs on its nuclear program, and stiffen them in hopes of forcing Iran into new talks. The earlier sanctions had hobbled the Iranian economy, and renewed sanctions could pose more problems.

“Iran will come back and say, ‘We don’t want to negotiate,'” Trump said Wednesday. “And of course they’re going to say that. And if I were in their position, I’d say that, too, for the first couple months: ‘We’re not going to negotiate.'”

“But they’ll negotiate, or something will happen,” Trump said. “And hopefully that won’t be the case.”

The U.S. leader said that if Iran restarts work on nuclear weaponry, there would be a “very severe consequence.”

John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, said in an opinion piece Wednesday in The Washington Post that the U.S. believes the Iran deal is a failure because Tehran, with sanctions lifted, used the economic windfall to create military chaos in the Middle East rather than improve the plight of its people.

“Rather than focusing on behaving responsibly, Tehran has poured billions of dollars into military adventures abroad, spreading an arc of death and destruction across the Middle East from Yemen to Syria,” Bolton said. “Meanwhile, the Iranian people have suffered at home from a tanking currency, rising inflation, stagnant wages and a spiraling environmental crisis.”

Bolton said Trump “has been willing to take unconventional action to turn momentum to America’s favor. The Iran deal is not an inescapable trap — it’s merely an inadequate deal that couldn’t withstand serious scrutiny.”
…

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday he thinks it’s time for special counsel Robert Mueller to conclude his criminal investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice by trying to thwart the probe.

Pence told NBC News, “In the interests of the country, I think it’s time to wrap it up.”

There is no indication, however, that Mueller is close to ending his year-long probe. His legal team has been negotiating with Trump’s lawyers over whether the president will sit for an interview and under what terms, such as the topics to be discussed, the length of the questioning and whether Trump would testify under oath.

If no agreement is reached, Mueller has suggested that he could subpoena Trump to testify under oath before a grand jury, which could spark a legal dispute that would have to be decided by the Supreme Court over whether a sitting president can be forced to testify.

“It’s been about a year since this investigation began,” Pence told NBC. “Our administration’s provided over a million documents. We’ve fully cooperated in it.”

Pence added, “I would very respectfully encourage the special counsel and his team to bring their work to completion.”

The vice president was asked about news that Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, collected more than $2 million after the 2016 election by promoting himself as someone with access to Trump and someone who could provide insight into the new president’s thinking on policy issues.

But Pence called it a “private matter” and “something I don’t have any knowledge about.”
…

The California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) decided not to divest from Walmart and other retailers that sell guns, but said it would use its financial clout to pressure retailers on their gun policies. 

The pension fund said Wednesday it wants to take a high-profile engagement strategy, and said it plans to hire two lobbyists.

CalSTRS’s board said it could reconsider its decision not to divest from Walmart and other retailers that sell guns if its engagement strategy “fails to achieve an acceptable outcome.”  The board did not say what outcome it was seeking. 

The pension fund invests more than $420 million in retailers, but the majority of the money is invested in Walmart. 

Walmart stopped selling assault weapons at its stores in 2015, and recently bump stocks — a device that can allow a gun to fire at speeds that mimic an automatic weapon.

CalSTRS divested from firearms manufacturers following the 2012 mass shooting at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School. 

Wednesday’s decision follows a similar announcement by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), which opted in March not to divest from retailers that sell assault rifles, saying that divesting from such companies would do little to reduce gun violence. 

California’s Treasurer John Chiang, who is running for governor in next month’s Democratic primary, is leading the push for the state’s pension funds to divest from retailers that sell weapons.
…

A Russian company accused by U.S. prosecutors of funding a propaganda operation to tilt the 2016 presidential election in President Donald Trump’s favor and stir disharmony in the United States pleaded not guilty Wednesday in federal court.

Concord Management and Consulting LLC is one of three entities and 13 Russian individuals indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office in February in an alleged criminal and espionage conspiracy to tamper in the U.S. race, boost Trump and disparage his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.

The indictment said Concord is controlled by Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin, who U.S. officials have said has extensive ties to Russia’s military and political establishment.

The indictment said Concord controlled funding, recommended personnel and oversaw the activities of the propaganda campaign.

Prigozhin, also personally charged by Mueller, has been dubbed “Putin’s cook” by Russian media because his catering business has organized banquets for Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior political figures. He has been hit with sanctions by the U.S. government.

“We plead not guilty. We exercise the right to a speedy trial,” the company’s U.S.-based defense lawyer Eric Dubelier said during the arraignment before Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey, who scheduled a May 16 status hearing.

Another business entity that prosecutors said was controlled by Prigozhin, Concord Catering, was named in the indictment, along with the Internet Research Agency, a St. Petersburg-based Russian troll farm.

Dubelier told the court he was not authorized to represent Concord Catering, adding that prosecutors had indicted a “proverbial ham sandwich” because the entity did not exist during the time the alleged misconduct occurred.

Mueller’s indictment said the Russian defendants adopted false online personas to push divisive messages, traveled to the United States to collect intelligence and orchestrated political rallies while posing as Americans. Moscow has denied meddling in the election.

Mueller also is investigating whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia and whether the president has unlawfully sought to obstruct the probe. Trump has denied collusion and obstruction, calling Mueller’s investigation a “witch hunt.”

Russia does not have an extradition agreement with the United States, making it difficult to apprehend the Russian defendants.

As expected, no corporate representatives for Concord or any of the other corporate defendants appeared in court.

“Alas, they are not here,” prosecutor Jeannie Rhee said. “The government would be thrilled if they were here.”

Mueller’s office tried unsuccessfully to win a delay in the arraignment, saying it was unsure if Dubelier and another U.S. lawyer hired by Concord Management and Consulting were authorized to represent the company because the Office of the Prosecutor General of Russia declined to accept a court summons.
…

Outside the rarified sphere of the super-rich, tycoon Viktor Vekselberg is mostly known in Russia for spending more than $100 million to bring cultural artifacts back to their homeland, including an array of Faberge eggs glittering with gold and jewels.

By Vekselberg’s standards, the money he laid out wasn’t all that much: His fortune has been estimated at about $14.6 billion.

But after his holding company Renova was hit by U.S. sanctions against Russia in April, his worth appeared to shrink markedly, and he reportedly has asked the Russian government for help to stay afloat.

Now Vekselberg is facing new scrutiny.

U.S. news reports said he has been questioned by the staff of Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating alleged Russian interference in the U.S. election in 2016 and any possible coordination with associates of President Donald Trump. And documents reviewed by The Associated Press suggest that a company associated with Vekselberg routed money to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s consulting firm in 2017.

Vekselberg, 61, was born in Soviet Ukraine. After graduating from the Moscow Transportation Engineering Institute, he reportedly made his first significant money by selling copper salvaged from scrapped cables during the period of economic reforms under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

He built his fortune by investing in the aluminum and oil industries, taking advantage of the wide-open and often-questionable privatization of state companies after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

He secured a controlling interest in the Tyumen Oil company, one of Russia’s largest oil operations, and his holding company Renova Group and two other holding companies later merged their assets and established the TNK-BP joint venture with British Petroleum, which later was acquired by state oil giant Rosneft. More recently, he has expanded his assets to include industrial equipment and high technology.

Renova has sizable investments in the U.S. through its subsidiary, the investment management company Columbus Nova. The firm’s operations include tech investments, real estate management and merchant banking, according to corporate and web documents.

Vekselberg’s U.S. operation, Columbus Nova, is headed by Andrew Intrater. The documents reviewed by AP and other media reports have said the two men are cousins.

Washington influence

Intrater donated $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration in 2017, presidential finance documents show. And both Vekselberg and Intrater attended Trump’s inauguration, according to a 2017 Washington Post report.

Before reportedly retaining Cohen, Vekselberg’s U.S. corporate entities have spent nearly 15 years trying to gain influence in Washington. Renova, Columbus Nova and its real estate arm combined to pay nearly $1.8 million to lobbyists between 2001 and 2015, at first concentrating on “encouraging trade and cultural exchanges” between the U.S. and Russia and later on small business issues.

A spokeswoman for the Carmen Group Inc., a lobbying operation paid more than $1.7 million by the Vekselberg firms, declined to explain its work, saying, “we do not comment on client matters.”

Vekselberg was one of a group of Russian business leaders who met with former President Barack Obama in Moscow in 2007 during Obama’s visit with then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev as well as then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Vekselberg was also in attendance when Putin sat during a Moscow gala in 2015 with retired U.S. Army General Michael Flynn, who was Trump’s national security adviser before he was fired. Flynn is now cooperating with the special counsel probe.

Payments to Cohen firm

Official documents reviewed Tuesday by the AP appeared to show that a company associated with Vekselberg routed eight payments totaling about $500,000 to Essential Consultants, established by Cohen between January and August 2017.

Vekselberg’s spokesman Andrey Shtorkh told the AP on Wednesday that “neither Viktor Vekselberg nor Renova has ever had any contractual relationship with Mr. Cohen” or his consulting company. In a statement on its website, Columbus Nova said it has managed assets for Renova, but has never been owned by Vekselberg.

As a wealthy and powerful Russian, Vekselberg is presumed to operate with the tacit approval of President Vladimir Putin. How deep his relations are with the Kremlin is an open question.

Anders Aslund, an expert on Russia’s economy, was quoted by the Russian business portal RBC as saying that Vekselberg’s ending up on the U.S. sanctions list was a surprise because “he has a good reputation. … He isn’t perceived to be especially close to Putin.”

But he apparently is close enough to the top to be willing to ask for help after the sanctions slashed the value of his holdings. According to the business newspaper Kommersant, he recently asked for state-owned banks to refinance 820 million euros ($967 million) in debt that he owes to Western banks and for preferential treatment in receiving state orders.

Vekselberg got wide public attention for buying nine Faberge eggs from the estate of Malcolm Forbes and bringing the czarist-era baubles back to Russia for display in a private museum.

He also heavily funded the establishment of a Jewish museum in Moscow and financed the return to a Moscow monastery of church bells that had been scrapped under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
…

A transatlantic diplomatic tussle appears to be looming after European leaders pledged to defend their countries’ commercial interests in Iran, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran. Fellow signatories Russia and China also said they would stick with the accord. Washington says it will begin phasing in sanctions on Iran in the coming months. Henry Ridgwell reports.
…

U.S. officials have called for a concerted effort to fight crime and corruption in South America and stop the erosion of democracy on the continent. At an annual conference on the Americas in Washington on Tuesday, the crisis in Venezuela was high on the agenda as leaders from across the region discussed issues affecting the Western Hemisphere. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports that U.S. officials named corruption and authoritarianism as the biggest threats to the region.
…

Republican voters rejected ex-convict Don Blankenship Tuesday in a West Virginia Senate primary in which he sold himself as “Trumpier than Trump” but was vigorously opposed by the president. GOP voters in Indiana, meanwhile, chose wealthy businessman Mike Braun over two sitting congressmen to lead the party’s charge against a vulnerable Democratic senator in the fall.

President Donald Trump and his allies cheered the West Virginia result, which helped avert a potential political disaster for a GOP bracing for major losses in the November midterm elections.

In a possible sign of party unrest, however, Rep. Robert Pittenger lost in North Carolina to the Rev. Mark Harris, a Baptist pastor he narrowly beat two years ago. Pittenger is the first incumbent to lose his seat this primary season.

The day’s slate of early season elections tested the limits of the anti-establishment fervor that has defined the Trump era.

Hopelessly behind in West Virginia, Blankenship conceded defeat in the contest to determine Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s general election challenger. The Republican president fought in the campaign’s final days to defeat Blankenship, a retired coal executive, who remained popular among some West Virginia Republicans despite having served a year in prison for his role in a deadly mine disaster and attacked the Asian heritage of the top Senate Republican’s wife.

State Attorney General Patrick Morrisey claimed the nomination instead, promoting his record of challenging policies of the administration of former President Barack Obama and deflecting criticism of his roots in New Jersey, where he lost a 2000 congressional race.

“Mr. President, if you’re watching right now, let me tell you, your tweet was huge,” Morrisey said in his nomination address, referring to Trump’s election eve call for voters to shun Blankenship’s candidacy. “You’ve been to the state now four times. I’d like you to come back as many times as you can between now and November.”

Key contests

The key Senate contests headlined primary elections across four states on Tuesday that will help shape the political landscape in this fall’s midterm elections. Control of Congress is at stake in addition to state governments across the nation.

In most cases, the Republican candidates on the ballot had competed to be seen as the most conservative, the most anti-Washington and the most loyal to the Republican president.

Indiana

In Indiana, Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly will face off in November against Braun, a multimillionaire owner of a national auto parts distribution business who loaned more than $5.4 million of his own money to his campaign. Braun credited his victory to voter disenchantment with “business as usual” and said he hoped to join other Republican senators who came from outside politics.

Another Indiana contest was less contentious: Greg Pence won the primary for the congressional seat his younger brother, Vice President Mike Pence, once held. Greg Pence is a Marine veteran and owner of two antique malls who once ran the now-bankrupt chain of Tobacco Road convenience stores. He’ll be the favorite to win the seat in November.

Ohio

In Ohio’s high-profile governor’s race, Democrats nominated Obama-era consumer watchdog Richard Cordray while Republicans selected state Attorney General Mike DeWine.

An Ohio state senator won the Republican primary to succeed retiring Rep. Pat Tiberi. The race had become a proxy fight between Tiberi, a GOP moderate, and conservative Republican Rep. Jim Jordan. Tiberi’s candidate, Troy Baldersonof Zanesville pulled out a win.

And on the local level, a woman who accused Trump of sexually harassing her more than a decade ago claimed the Democratic nomination in a race to represent an area southeast of Toledo in the state House of Representatives. Democrat Rachel Crooks, a 35-year-old university administrator, ran unopposed, but must next win a November general election to become the first Trump accuser to hold elected office.

A bright spot for Republicans in swing-state Ohio: GOP turnout was considerably stronger than Democratic voting in the open governor’s race. With nearly two-thirds of the vote counted, 567, 000 Republicans cast votes, to 412,000 Democrats.

U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci, with Trump’s support, won the Republican primary to challenge Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in November.

West Virginia

Yet none of Tuesday’s other contests was expected to have more impact on the midterm landscape than West Virginia, where Blankenship had embraced Trump’s tactics, casting himself as a victim of government persecution and seizing on xenophobia, if not racism, to stand out in a crowded Republican field that included Attorney General Morrisey and Congressman Evan Jenkins.

No matter Tuesday’s winner, Trump’s team was keeping pressure on Manchin. A pro-Trump political action committee America First was airing ads promoting Gina Haspel, Trump’s nominee to be CIA director, and urging residents to call Manchin to support her confirmation.

Manchin coasted to the Democratic nomination, but he remains a top Republican target this fall.

Speaking Tuesday night at his Charleston headquarters, he said he expects Trump to get involved in the contest, despite Manchin’s “good relationship” with the president. The Democrat said he would campaign as he always has: a bipartisan problem solver who works “for West Virginians.”
…

Stormy Daniels’ lawyer said Tuesday he has information showing that Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney, received $500,000 from a company associated with a Russian billionaire within months of paying hush money to Daniels, a porn star who claims she had an affair with Trump.

Lawyer Michael Avenatti also said hundreds of thousands of dollars streamed into Cohen’s account from companies including Novartis, AT&T and Korea Aerospace. AT&T confirmed its connection Tuesday evening.

Avenatti did not provide documents to support the claims and did not reveal the source of his information.

But in a seven-page memo he detailed what he said were wire transfers going into and out of the account Cohen used to pay Daniels $130,000 in October 2016 to stay silent about her alleged affair with the soon-to-be president. Trump denies having an affair with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

The memo, containing highly specific dates and amounts, stated that Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian billionaire, and his cousin “routed” eight payments totaling approximately $500,000 to Cohen’s company, Essential Consultants, between January and August 2017. The reason for the payment was not known.

Speculating without offering proof, the Avenatti memo said, “It appears these funds may have replenished the account following the payment to Ms. Clifford.”

Avenatti’s memo said the deposits into the account controlled by Cohen were made by Columbus Nova, an American investment company affiliated with the Renova Group, which is controlled by Russian billionaire Victor Vekselberg. 

Columbus Nova’s attorney Richard Owens said in a statement that, after Trump’s inauguration, the firm hired Cohen as a business consultant “regarding potential sources of capital and potential investments in real estate and other ventures,” but that it had nothing to do with Vekselberg.

Owens said any suggestion that Vekselberg used Columbus Nova as a conduit for payments to Cohen are false.

“Neither Viktor Vekselberg nor anyone else, other than Columbus Nova’s owners, were involved in the decision to hire Cohen or provided funding for his engagement,” he said.

Cohen and his attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

At the time of the payments, there was an active FBI counterintelligence investigation – which special counsel Robert Mueller took over last May – into Russian election interference and any possible coordination with Trump associates.

Vekselberg was targeted for U.S. sanctions by the Trump administration last month. He built his fortune, currently estimated by Forbes at $14.6 billion, by investing in the aluminum and oil industries. More recently, he has expanded his assets to include industrial equipment and high technology.

Offering confirmation for at least one of the payments, AT&T said in a statement that Essential Consultants was one of several firms it “engaged in early 2017 to provide insights into understanding the new administration.”

“They did no legal or lobbying work for us, and the contract ended in December 2017,” the company said.

Such a confidential relationship would not violate federal lobbying laws if Cohen did not seek to influence Trump on the companies’ behalf. But hiring the president’s personal attorney for advice on how to woo Trump would be highly unusual, especially given that Cohen was never formally involved in the campaign or Trump’s administration.

Making the arrangement even stranger, the blue-chip companies’ payments to Cohen were routed to Essential Consultants LLC – the same company Cohen used to buy Stormy Daniels’ silence about her alleged affair with the President.

Novartis and Korea Aerospace did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 
…

The attorney general of the U.S. state of New York resigned late Monday after four women accused him of physical abuse.

Democrat Eric Schneiderman had been in office since 2010 and was running for re-election.

The New Yorker magazine published an article Monday with the accounts of the four women who said Schneiderman subjected them to non-consensual physical violence during romantic encounters.

Schneiderman issued several statements denying he assaulted anyone or took part in non-consensual sex. His resignation announcement said the allegations will effectively prevent him from carrying out his office’s work.

He has been a vocal proponent of the #MeToo movement against sexual assault and harassment, including filing a lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein, one of the many high-profile men in politics, entertainment and business accused of assaulting women.
…

Ahead of her confirmation hearing Wednesday, the White House is defending acting Central Intelligence Agency director Gina Haspel as the best person for the job.

“She is 100 percent committed to going through this confirmation process and being confirmed as the next leader of the CIA,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters on Monday. 

The 61-year-old veteran agency operative offered to withdraw from consideration for the permanent position amid concerns about her involvement in previous harsh interrogation programs, but President Donald Trump — according to administration officials — has encouraged her to hold firm.

“She wants to do everything she can to make sure the integrity of the CIA remains intact, isn’t unnecessarily attacked. And if she felt that her nomination would have been a problem for that and for the agency, then she wanted to do what she could to protect the agency,” explained Sanders. 

The CIA on Monday delivered “a set of classified documents to the Senate today so that every senator could review acting director Haspel’s actual and outstanding record,” according to an agency spokesperson. “These documents cover the entirety of her career, including her time in the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center in the years after 9/11. We encourage every senator to take the time to read the entire set of documents.”

White House officials reportedly quickly went to see Haspel at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, last Friday to convince her not to withdraw from consideration. 

Trump on Monday asserted Haspel “has come under fire because she was too tough on Terrorists.”

Trump tweeted: “Think of that, in these very dangerous times, we have the most qualified person, a woman, who Democrats want OUT because she is too tough on terror. Win Gina!” Trump said.

Tuesday morning the president reiterated his support in another tweet.

Haspel will appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee in a partly open hearing on Wednesday. If confirmed, she would be the first woman to lead the agency, which was created by President Harry Truman in 1947. She will succeed Mike Pompeo, who was recently confirmed as Secretary of State. 

A 33-year veteran of the intelligence agency, Haspel previously ran CIA posts in four different countries and studied Russian and Turkish during her career. Most of the specifics of her background, including in which specific countries she operated undercover over the years, remain classified. 

Thailand detention center

Civil libertarians, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, and many Democrats said Haspel should be disqualified because among the known items on her resume is supervision of a secret CIA detention center in Thailand. In 2002, two Islamic terror suspects were waterboarded there — a practice that simulates drowning and critics call torture.

Haspel authored a cable three years later calling for the destruction of nearly 100 videotapes of the waterboarding (now an illegal practice) and other interrogations. 

The ACLU is calling for senators to demand that her “torture records” be declassified. 

One Republican senator, Rand Paul, who is from Haspel’s home state of Kentucky, also opposes her nomination because of her involvement in the waterboarding of detainees and has vowed to block her confirmation. 

Another Republican, Sen. Tom Cotton of the state of Arkansas, declares opposing Haspel’s nomination for political reasons “puts our national security at risk.” 

Haspel has been meeting with senators ahead of her hearing and has reportedly assured them, if confirmed, she would oppose a revival of brutal interrogation techniques. That is something she is expected to explicitly declare during Wednesday’s hearing. 

“Through the confirmation process, the American public will get to know her for the first time. When they do, we are confident America will be proud to have the deputy director as the next CIA director,” a CIA spokesperson told VOA. “She’s a tested and respected leader who will lead consistent with our mission, expertise, values, and the law.”

VOA’s Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.
…

A group of advocacy organizations plans to sue the Department of Housing and Urban Development and its secretary, Ben Carson, over his decision to delay an Obama-era rule intended to ensure that communities confront and address racial segregation.

A draft of the lawsuit argues that Carson illegally suspended the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Act when he abruptly announced earlier this year that cities and counties receiving federal funds won’t be required to analyze housing data and submit plans to HUD for addressing segregation until after 2020.

The lawsuit was expected to be filed Tuesday by the National Fair Housing Alliance, Texas Appleseed and Texas Low Income Housing Information Service. HUD did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment Monday.

Finalized in 2015, the rule for the first time required more than 1,200 jurisdictions receiving HUD block grants and housing aid to analyze its housing stock and come up with a plan for addressing patterns of segregation and discrimination. If HUD determined that the plan, called a Fair Housing Assessment, wasn’t sufficient, the city or county would have to rework it or risk losing funding. 

HUD said in January that it would immediately stop reviewing plans that had been submitted but not yet accepted, and that jurisdictions won’t have to comply with the rule until after 2020. The agency said the postponement was in response to complaints from communities that had struggled to complete assessments and produce plans meeting HUD’s standards; of the 49 submissions HUD received in 2017, roughly a third were sent back.

“What we heard convinced us that the Assessment of Fair Housing tool for local governments wasn’t working well,” HUD said in a statement. “In fact, more than a third of our early submitters failed to produce an acceptable assessment-not for lack of trying but because the tool designed to help them to succeed wasn’t helpful.”

Carson in an editorial in 2015 criticized the rule as being a form of “social engineering.”

But a draft of the suit says the fact that submissions are failing to meet the requirements “reaffirms, rather than calls into question, why HUD thought the rule necessary.”

Attorney Michael Allen said Carson’s action “tells every opponent of integration, every opponent of affordable housing and good neighborhoods, whether they’re individuals or elected officials or local governments, that nobody will put pressure on them at the HUD level for the foreseeable future.”

He said, “That means they’ll keep doing what they’re doing, which is perpetuating segregation.”

A federal judge late last year blocked Carson from suspending another Obama-era regulation intended to more accurately estimate appropriate dollar amounts for housing vouchers by basing them on ZIP codes rather than on metropolitan areas.

The plaintiffs are hoping a judge will make a similar finding in this case.

“The rule that was put into place was adopted after careful thought and consideration, and expensive input from the public, and time after time we are seeing this administration violate the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, whose firm is involved in the suit. “Secretary Ben Carson is abdicating his responsibility to fulfill HUD’s mission.”

Claudia Monterrosa, director of public policy and planning at the Los Angeles Housing and Community Investment Department, said that although the process proved to be a tremendous amount of work, it was immeasurably valuable for the city’s progress.

“The biggest takeaway for our city is, we had a chance to have an honest conversation about race, poverty concentration and investment, addressing the affordable housing crisis through a fair housing lens,” Monterrosa said. HUD suspended the rule one day before Los Angeles expected its plan to be approved, she said.

Paul Chrystie, a spokesman for Philadelphia’s Division of Housing and Community Development, said the city’s examination of segregation extended far beyond housing to include its education and transportation systems. “It helped us think outside of our bubble,” he said.

Among the plans HUD sent back was one from Hidalgo County, Texas. Historically, the county has ignored the needs of poor communities living in colonias, rural communities within the U.S.-Mexico border region that lack basic infrastructure such as electricity and running water. 

With the suspension of the rule, Hidalgo County is no longer required to continue working on its plan.

“We’re reverting to where we were before,” said Christina Rosales, communications director for the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

“It’s using federal dollars to further segregation,” she said, “to encouraging two separate and unequal societies.”
…

With the midterm primaries about to go into full swing, the Department of Homeland Security is playing catch-up in helping to ensure that state election systems are secure against cyber-tampering by the Russians or others bent on mischief.

 

The department says it has completed on-site risk assessments of election systems in just nine of 17 states that have formally requested them so far. It has pledged to do so by November for every state that asks.

 

The security reviews are designed to identify any weaknesses that could be exploited by hackers.

 

Homeland Security officials attribute the backlog to increased demand for such reviews since the 2016 presidential election. They say they are devoting more money and shifting resources to reduce wait times.

 

The security reviews typically take two weeks each.

 
…

Right after Republicans in the U.S. Senate passed their income tax overhaul in December, delivering tax cuts to businesses and most American taxpayers, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell was buoyant.

Surrounded by jubilant fellow Republicans, he told reporters, “If we can’t sell this to the American people, we ought to go into another line of work.”

Four months later, McConnell’s attempt at levity could prove prophetic.

The most vulnerable Republican incumbents in the tightest congressional races in the November elections are talking less and less about the tax cuts on Twitter and Facebook, on their campaign and congressional websites and in digital ads, the vital tools of a modern election campaign, a Reuters analysis of their online utterances shows.

All told, the number of tax messages has fallen by 44 percent since January. For several congressmen in tough reelection fights, Steve Knight in California, Jason Lewis in Minnesota, and Don Bacon in Nebraska, messaging is down much more – as much as 72 percent.

Right after the tax law passed, lawmakers piggybacked on a surge of corporate announcements of tax-cut fueled bonuses to employees, wage hikes and job creation plans to tout the benefits of the bill to voters.

As those corporate announcements trailed off in March and

April, so did Republican politicians’ messages about tax relief, the Reuters review found. With the exception of a flurry of news releases on or around April 17, when federal tax returns were due, few incumbents kept up the pace. The Reuters review did not capture candidates’ email, direct mail or private conversations with donors or voters or stump speeches.

Most of the 13 Republican incumbents in the most competitive reelection bids, and their aides, declined to answer Reuters’ questions on why they were communicating less online about the tax cuts. But a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted from March 14 to 29 found that just 3 percent of American adults were aware of receiving a material benefit from the Republican legislation.

Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist, said that is why his party’s candidates need to energize voters by talking about other issues, too, like restricting immigration and stopping Democrats from taking control of the House of Representatives so that they cannot impeach President Donald Trump.

Jesse Hunt, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, acknowledged there “has been a downtick in what voters are hearing from members and businesses on the tax reform front.” He said it was because lawmakers had moved on to other issues.

“Candidates and members need to make sure that they stay focused on what is our signature achievement in this Congress,” Hunt said.

Five of the 13 candidates who did respond to Reuters said they do talk regularly to voters at events.

The Republican tax law sharply cut the corporate tax rate, encouraged corporations to repatriate overseas income at lower rates, and at least temporarily, cut taxes for the wealthy and most other Americans. Many of the benefits to individuals won’t become obvious until they file their tax returns in early 2019, and that is long after the congressional elections.

Koch spending

The election cycle is still in its early stage, so the volume of talk on the tax overhaul could always increase. And even if politicians are reluctant to tout it, conservative financial supporters are showing an eagerness to fill the gap.

Billionaires Charles and David Koch are spending $20 million to promote the benefits of the tax cuts in battleground states with digital ads and even door-to-door canvassing.

Some polling results suggest that taxes are not the burning issue for voters that Republicans hoped they would be. A Quinnipiac University poll released in March said only 8 percent of voters thought taxes was the most important issue in deciding how to vote in the congressional elections. It was fifth, behind healthcare, the economy, gun policy and immigration.

It is also harder for Republicans to talk about lower taxes in states with high local taxes like New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia. That also happens to be where 10 of the 17 most competitive congressional races are.

Many taxpayers in those states will pay more in federal taxes because the new law reduces the deduction for state and local tax payments. About one in four Americans expect their state and local income taxes to rise because of the Republican

tax law, while only 11 percent expect them to fall, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.

What they do say

Barbara Comstock, locked in a tight race for reelection in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District, says she talks about the tax overhaul at campaign events.

The Reuters analysis shows that though she mentioned the benefits of the tax cuts 36 times in January in social media, she did so only 13 times in March and then 22 times in April.

She said in an interview that she is reacting to constituents, whose interests have moved on to other issues.

Don Bacon, of Nebraska’s 2nd district, sees economic growth, and the threats posed by North Korea and Islamic State as the election-winning issues for Republicans. “Taxes will be one of the pillars of our campaign, but more indirectly. In the end, it’s going to be about an economy that’s growing.”

Republican Mike Coffman, whose reelection prospects are rated a toss-up in his Denver-area congressional district, has not been visible at all on taxes via social media. But his campaign spokesman, Tyler Sandberg, said Coffman talks about tax cuts regularly with supporters via email and with small business owners.

When they do talk about taxes, Republican candidates prefer to talk about the tax law in the context of how it is really a form of financial assistance to help families cope with college tuition, buy new cars, make mortgage payments, or even pay for summer camp.

Democrats, meanwhile, are attacking the new tax law as a boon for corporations and the wealthy that will add $1.5 trillion to the federal debt over the next decade.

They received some unexpected help from Republican Senator Marco Rubio last week. Rubio, who is not facing re-election this cycle, told the Economist magazine that benefits are going to corporations instead of employees.

“They bought back shares, a few gave out bonuses; there’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker,” he said.

Despite that criticism, some Republican incumbents are still making a determined effort to sell voters on the merits of the new tax law.

Dean Heller, 2018’s most vulnerable Republican senator, has been far and away the most aggressive on tax messaging. He has sent out 380 messages in the first four months of the year, or almost one-third of a total 1,287 messages.

But even his communications have dropped by 44 percent since the end of January. “Let me be very clear, our campaign moving forward will be based on lower taxes and less regulation,” Heller said in an interview. “The trend you’ve seen in the first quarter of this year, I assure you, is not going to be the trend over the next six months.”
…

Chelsea Manning is no longer living as a transgender woman in a male military prison, serving the lengthiest sentence ever for revealing U.S. government secrets. She’s free to grow out her hair, travel the world, and spend time with whomever she likes.

 

But a year since former president Barack Obama commuted Manning’s 35-year sentence, America’s most famous convicted leaker isn’t taking an extended vacation. Far from it: The Oklahoma native has decided to make an unlikely bid for the U.S. Senate in her adopted state of Maryland.

 

Manning, 30, filed to run in January and has been registered to vote in Maryland since August. She lives in North Bethesda, not far from where she stayed with an aunt while awaiting trial. Her aim is to unseat Sen. Ben Cardin, a 74-year-old Maryland Democrat who is seeking his third Senate term and previously served 10 terms in the U.S. House.

 

 Manning, who also has become an internationally recognized transgender activist, said she’s motivated by a desire to fight what she sees as a shadowy surveillance state and a rising tide of nightmarish repression.

 

“The rise of authoritarianism is encroaching in every aspect of life, whether it’s government or corporate or technological,” Manning told The Associated Press during an interview at her home in an upscale apartment tower. On the walls of her barely furnished living room hang Obama’s commutation order, and photos of U.S. anarchist Emma Goldman and British playwright Oscar Wilde.

 

Manning’s longshot campaign for the June 26 primary would appear to be one of the more unorthodox U.S. Senate bids in recent memory, and the candidate is operating well outside the party’s playbook. She says she doesn’t, in fact, even consider herself a Democrat, but is motivated by a desire to shake up establishment Democrats who are “caving in” to President Donald Trump’s administration. She vows she won’t run as an independent if her primary bid fails.

Unconventional platform

She’s certainly got an eye-catching platform: Close prisons and free inmates; eliminate national borders; restructure the criminal justice system; provide universal health care and basic income. The top of her agenda? Abolish the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal agency created in 2003 that Manning asserts is preparing for an “ethnic cleansing.”

 

Manning ticks off life experiences she believes would make her an effective senator: a stint being homeless in Chicago, her wartime experiences as a U.S. Army intelligence analyst in Iraq – even her seven years in prison. She asserts she’s got a “bigger vision” than establishment politicians.

 

But political analysts suspect the convicted felon is not running to win.

 

“Manning is running as a protest candidate, which has a long lineage in American history, to shine light on American empire,” said Daniel Schlozman, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University. “That’s a very different goal, with a very different campaign, than if she wanted to beat Ben Cardin.”

 

Manning’s insurgent candidacy thus far has been a decidedly stripped-down affair, with few appearances and a campaign website that just went up.  In recent days, she approached an anti-fracking rally in Baltimore almost furtively, keeping to herself for much of the demonstration. But when it was her turn to address the small group, her celebrity status was evident. People who never met her called her by her first name and eagerly took photos.

 

Manning has acknowledged leaking more than 700,000 military and State Department documents to anti-secrecy site WikiLeaks in 2010. She said her motivation was a desire to spark debate about U.S. foreign policy, and she has been portrayed as both a hero and a traitor.

 

Known as Bradley Manning at the time of her arrest, she came out as transgender after her 2013 court-martial. She was barred from growing her hair long in prison, and was approved for hormone therapy only after litigation. She spent long stints in solitary confinement, and twice tried to kill herself.

 

The Pentagon, which has repeatedly declined to discuss Manning’s treatment in military prison, is also staying mum about her political ambitions. Democratic Party officials say they have no comment, citing a policy not to weigh in on primaries. Republican operatives are quiet.

Critics don’t see serious effort

In Maryland, a blue state that’s home to tens of thousands of federal employees and defense contractors, it appears Manning’s main supporters are independents or anti-politics, making them unlikely to coalesce politically. She recently reported contributions of $72,000 on this year’s first quarterly finance statement, compared with Cardin’s $336,000.

 

The candidate has barely made an effort at tapping sources of grassroots enthusiasm outside of activism circles. And it’s easy to find Democrats who feel her candidacy is just a vehicle to boost her profile.

 

“It feels to me almost like it’s part of a book tour – that this is her moment after being released from prison,” said Dana Beyer, a transgender woman who leads the Gender Rights Maryland nonprofit and is a Democratic candidate for state senate. “I don’t think this is a serious effort.”

 

Manning is indeed working on a book about her dramatic life. For now, she says she supports herself with income from speaking engagements. She’s spoken at various U.S. colleges and is due to take the stage at a Montreal conference later this month.

 

Last week, she appeared at a tech conference in Germany’s capital of Berlin, arriving to cheers from the audience of several thousand people. She told attendees she’s still struggling to adjust to life after prison and hasn’t gotten used to her celebrity status yet.

 

“There’s been a kind of cult of personality that is really intimidating and that is overwhelming for me,” she said in Berlin.

 

At her Maryland apartment, Manning told the AP she occasionally wakes up panicked that she’s back in the cage in Kuwait where she was first jailed, or incarcerated at the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, where a U.N. official concluded she’d been subjected to “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.” She works hard to overcome anxiety, centering herself with yoga, breathing exercises, and reading.

 

“I’ve been out for almost a year now and it’s becoming increasingly clear to me just how deep the wounds are,” she said in her Spartan living room.

 

Asked how she would define success, Manning responded with passionate intensity: “Success for me is survival.”

 

 
…

America’s latest jobs report suggests the country’s longest-ever economic expansion is continuing at a moderate, but steady pace. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, President Donald Trump is trumpeting U.S. economic performance as Washington looks ahead to November midterm elections in which Republicans will be defending majorities in both houses of Congress.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump’s new lawyer asserted Sunday that the president does not have to comply with a subpoena involving the burgeoning Russia investigation stemming from the 2016 election and might invoke his constitutional right against self-incrimination if he is forced to testify.

“We don’t have to” honor a subpoena, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who recently joined Trump’s legal team, told ABC’s Sunday news program “This Week.”

 He added, “He’s the president of the United States. We can assert the same privileges other presidents have.”

Trump often has said he would like to sit for an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team of lawyers, if he is “treated fairly,” as he said Friday. But Giuliani said there was no guarantee that Trump would answer questions and could instead assert his 5th Amendment right against incriminating himself.

“How could I ever be confident of that?” Giuliani said of the certainty of Trump answering questions. Giuliani voiced opposition to the prospect of Trump, often given to exaggerations or falsehoods, testifying about his campaign’s links to Russia and whether he obstructed justice by trying to thwart the investigation.

To allow his testimony, Giuliani said, “I’m going to walk him right into a prosecution for perjury like Martha Stewart,” the U.S. lifestyle maven sent to prison in 2004 for lying about a stock trade she made.

Giuliani said an agreement for Trump to testify could still be worked out with Mueller, but only if Trump is told the questions in advance and that his questioning was not under oath, conditions to which most U.S. prosecutors would not agree.

Mueller has suggested he could subpoena Trump to testify under oath before a grand jury if a voluntary agreement for his testimony is not reached.

If Trump rejects the subpoena, his lawyers could contest the demand for Trump to appear before a grand jury, with the case possibly and ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. U.S. legal precedent generally holds that no individual, including presidents, are above the law.

Giuliani said of Mueller’s investigators, “They don’t have a case on collusion. They don’t have a case on obstruction.”

ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos questioned Giuliani at length about a $130,000 reimbursement Trump made to another of his attorneys, Michael Cohen, who said he paid the money to adult film actress Stormy Daniels shortly before the election to keep her quiet about her claim she had a 2006 one-night affair with Trump at a Nevada hotel. Trump said the purported liaison did not occur.

Giuliani said the timing of the hush money paid to 39-year-old Daniels could have been related to the election, but that the payment was made chiefly because her accusations about the affair with Trump were “embarrassing to him and his wife,” now first lady Melania Trump.

Giuliani rejected the view of some Trump critics that the money amounted to an illegal campaign donation, made just weeks ahead of the Nov. 8, 2016, election, because its size was significantly bigger than the $2,700 limit individuals like Cohen can donate to candidates.

“It was not a campaign donation,” Giuliani contended, adding that “eventually, it was entirely reimbursed out of personal funds.”

Later on the same ABC show, Michael Avenatti, Daniels’ attorney, said, “No question, this had everything to do with the election.”

In April, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he did not know anything about the payment, although a New York Times report Friday said he knew of it months before.

Giuliani said, “I don’t know when the president learned about it. It could have been recently. It could have been a while back.”

In any event, Giuliani said that for a billionaire like Trump, the $130,000 was “not a great deal of money” and that Cohen made the payment without consulting ahead of time with Trump.

Giuliani said, ” I wouldn’t go and bother him two weeks before the election.” He said Cohen had a fund “to take care of situations like this … if it were necessary, yes.”

Giuliani said he knew of no other women linked to Trump who were paid by Cohen to keep quiet about their relations with the future president.

But former Playboy model Karen McDougal said she was paid $150,000 through the parent company of a tabloid newspaper to not talk about what she has said was a 10-month affair with Trump that allegedly started at the same celebrity golf tournament where Daniels said she met Trump. The president has also denied McDougal’s claims.

 
…

As primary season kicks into high gear, Republicans are engaged in nomination fights that are pulling the party to the right, leaving some leaders worried their candidates will be out of a step with the broader electorate in November.

Primaries in four states on Tuesday, all in places Donald Trump carried in 2016, showcase races in which GOP candidates are jockeying to be seen as the most conservative, the most anti-Washington and the most loyal to the president. It’s evidence of the onetime outsider’s deepening imprint on the Republican Party he commandeered less than two year ago.

 

In Indiana, Republicans will pick from among three Senate candidates who have spent much of the race praising the Trump and bashing each other. In West Virginia, a former federal convict and coal baron has taken aim at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., with racially charged accusations of corruption.

 

In Ohio, Republicans are certain to nominate someone more conservative than outgoing GOP Gov. John Kasich, a 2016 presidential candidate, moderate and frequent Trump critic. Even Kasich’s former running mate, Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, has pledged to unwind some of Kasich’s centrist policies, including the expansion of the Medicaid government insurance program following Democrats’ 2010 health insurance overhaul.

 

With Trump’s job approval hanging around 40 percent and the GOP-run Congress less than half that, the abandonment of the middle has some Republicans raising alarms.

 

“The far left and the far right always think they are going to dominate these elections,” said John Weaver, a Trump critic and top strategist to Kasich, who has been become a near-pariah in the primary to succeed him.

 

“You may think it’s wise in a primary to handcuff yourself to the president,” Weaver said. “But when the ship goes down, you may not be able to get the cuffs off.”

 

North Carolina Republicans will weigh in on the fate of Republican Rep. Robert Pittenger, facing a primary challenger who almost upset him two years ago. Pittenger features Trump prominently in his campaign. Challenger Mark Harris, a prominent Charlotte pastor, has tried to turn the table, saying Pittenger is a creature of Washington who refuses to help Trump “drain that swamp.”

 

Tough primaries certainly don’t have to be disastrous. They often gin up voter attention and engagement, and can signal strong turnout in the general election.

 

Dallas Woodhouse, who runs the North Carolina Republican Party, said candidates benefit because they must “make their arguments and voters become more aware of the election.”

 

Trump and his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton each survived internal party battles in 2016. Clinton won the national popular vote that year, but in the states that mattered most — Ohio and North Carolina, among them — wary Republicans gravitated back to Trump while Clinton struggled to hit the usual Democratic base targets.

 

Few national Republicans look at West Virginia and see helpful enthusiasm.

 

Former coal executive Don Blankenship has accused McConnell of creating jobs for “China people” and charges that the senator’s “China family” has given him millions of dollars. McConnell’s wife is Trump’s transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, who was born in Taiwan.

 

Indiana Senate candidates are trying to appeal to Trump voters by adopting the president’s harsh immigration rhetoric and penchant for personal insults. The candidates have even channeled Trump by assigning derisive nicknames to one another: “Lyin” Todd Rokita, Luke “Missing” Messer and “Tax Hike” Mike Braun.

 

In several of the Tuesday primaries, Democrats are watching with delight, and having less trouble aligning behind nominees. The chief beneficiaries would be Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Joe Donnelly of Indiana, both sitting on healthy campaign accounts after avoiding their own primary fights.

 

The leading Democrat for the North Carolina seat, Marine veteran Dan McCready, has raised almost $2 million, slightly more than Harris and Pittenger combined, in a district Trump won by about 12 percentage points. “He will absolutely make this competitive,” Harris said.

 

In the Ohio governor’s race, liberal former Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former state Attorney General Richard Cordray have managed to avoid open warfare. Cordray, who also led the federal consumer watchdog agency launched under President Barack Obama, is the favorite.

 

Republicans watched their state party, led by pro-Trump leadership that replaced Kasich allies after the 2016 elections, endorse state Attorney General Mike Dewine, while Taylor has effectively shunned an earlier endorsement from Kasich.

 

“If Ohio Republicans are divided into Trump Republicans and Kasich Republicans, the Trump Republicans have won,” said the state Democratic chairman, David Pepper. “That helps us.”

 

Gallup measures Trump with an 89 percent job approval rating among Republicans nationally, but 35 percent among independents and 42 percent overall. Historically, presidents below 50 percent watch their party suffer steep losses in midterm elections.

 

Democrats must flip about two dozen Republican-held seats to reclaim a House majority, and they must do it with Republican-run legislatures having drawn many districts to the GOP’s advantage. In North Carolina, Harris said the makeup of the district, which stretches from Republican areas of metro Charlotte east through small towns and rural counties, makes his pro-Trump, anti-establishment message a primary and November winner.

 

Senate Democrats are just two seats shy of a majority, but must defend 26 incumbents, 10 in states where Trump won, including Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia. Republicans are defending nine seats, just one in a state Trump lost.
…

Nearly 554,000 people were living on America’s streets last year, according to a government survey. That’s the first increase since 2010, driven, experts say, by a surge in the homeless in Los Angeles and other West Coast cities. Homelessness has been a serious problem for Los Angeles for years, but as the housing crisis intensifies, it seems to have gotten worse. Some say it’s time to cut municipal funding for the homeless, but others want to help. Angelina Bagdasaryan has more.
…

Located just outside Washington, Arlington County, Virginia, is one of the richest, most educated and mostly white counties in the United States. It didn’t matter to Cambodian-American Chanda Choun that less than 11 percent of the population is Asian. When a seat opened on the Arlington County Board after the November 2017 election, he decided to run.

Choun, who the Arlington County Department of Voter Registration and Elections believes is the first Asian-American to run for office there, saw his opportunity to be of service to a place he now calls home.

“I didn’t see anybody with a military background, I didn’t see anybody with an immigrant background, and I didn’t see anybody with a tech background stepping up,” he said. “That’s all it came down to.”

But it wasn’t quite so cut and dried. Arlington exerts a pull on Choun, who calls the place “the love of my life.”

“I didn’t get to choose where I was born. I didn’t get to choose where the refugee resettlement agency placed my family. I didn’t get to choose where the Army sent me. But I can choose where I am now. And I choose Arlington,” according to Choun’s campaign website. “I will get married in Arlington. My children will run through the parks of Arlington. I will die in Arlington and be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.”

Part-time position

The five-member Arlington County Board is the jurisdiction’s governing body. Being a board member is a part-time job, one that can be the first rung in the political career ladder. But Choun says he has no aspiration to higher office.

Choun, a 30-year-old program manager at the cybersecurity company Securonix, came to the United States as a baby when his family fled Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, which ruled from 1975-1979, a time when 1.7 million people died.

Grateful that his family was chosen for resettlement in Connecticut from a Thai refugee camp for Cambodians, Choun enlisted in the U.S. Army at 17. He rose from private to staff sergeant and left after 12 years, although he remains on part-time reserve duty.

Choun began campaigning in February to “Make Arlington the North Star of Virginia,” as his campaign literature proclaims.

He secured by the March 29 deadline 125 signatures of registered Arlington County voters, which is required to get on the primary ballot. He believes he can defeat in November independent John Vihstadt, an established incumbent county board member.

First, however, Choun must defeat fellow Democrat Matt de Ferranti in the June 12 primary. Choun and de Ferranti have already faced off in party-sponsored public debates.

Choun says his background has prepared him for working on two critical issues facing the county: the budget shortfall and attracting more tech companies to fill Arlington’s many vacant offices.

He’s also aware of the importance of raising money and has raised more than $28,000, largely through a personal loan. De Ferranti has raised more than $35,000 from small donors.

​Cambodian-Americans

Rithy Uong, the first Cambodian-American elected to any U.S. public office, served three terms on the City Council in Lowell, Massachusetts, which has the second-largest Cambodian community in the nation.

Uong, who says he is tracking Choun’s run, says a candidate must be able to raise funds, but it is critical for a candidate to build trust and rapport with voters. Voters, he says, care less about a candidate’s background and more about issues particular to their community.

Choun says his most immediate priority is building a nimble election campaign organization.

“Essentially, just as in any new endeavor, any sector, it’s a business startup,” he says. “I’d group it down to three domains: people, process, tools.”

Choun is self-managing his campaign until the voters decide his future in the June primary. However, he has hired creative director Minh Pham, a Vietnamese-American, who is also new to political campaigning. Pham also likens their effort to a startup. Choun has also hired a field manager, John Victoria.

While social media is an important tool for reaching out to voters, Choun says that to be seen as a member of the community, he needs to attend as many meet-and-greet events as possible in the 26-square-mile county.

“I’m bringing my message, my person to the community,” he says. “I don’t want the community to come to me.”

​VFW meet-and-greet

To that end Choun asked to hold his first meet-and-greet event at John Lyon Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3150, a veteran’s community meeting post in Arlington.

An Air Force veteran with 28 years of service, Patrick Pope met Choun before the event and said Arlington voters are open to candidates like Choun who don’t mirror the county’s white majority.

“I think a lot of Arlington voters are looking for somebody fresh, with some fresh ideas and fresh perspective, looking for someone who doesn’t have deep ties with a political machine, but instead speaks to power as a person of the community,” Pope said.

​Lynn Borton, 56, another Arlington resident, has lived in the county since 1985. She learned about Choun’s event from Facebook and, like Pope, believes that voters need to get to know first-time candidates.

“I think there is value in meeting people,” Borton says. “You can learn something, you can make an assessment that is unmediated, literally un-media-ated, but I don’t know that that’s everything.”

Choun’s main challenges as a first-time candidate, Pope notes, will be getting Democratic Party support and name recognition.

But Pope believes voters also need to make an effort to meet the candidates.

“I think it’s important to get to know who your candidates are. You can’t do that just by watching the television ad or looking at a newspaper advertisement. You’ve got to get out and be engaged,” he says. “If you expect your representative to be engaged, then you need to be engaged as [an] informed voter.”
…