RIYADMEDIA

U.S. President Donald Trump has signed legislation that encourages U.S. officials to travel to Taiwan to meet their counterparts and vice versa, a move that has angered China.

The president signed the Taiwan Travel Act late Friday.

Taiwan’s foreign ministry said Saturday that the self-ruled island’s government would “continue to uphold the principles of mutual trust and mutual benefit to maintain close contact and communication with the U.S.”

U.S. and Taiwan officials already travel back and forth between the two countries, but the visits are usually kept low profile to avoid offending China.

China considers Taiwan a wayward province and seeks the island’s reunification with China.

After Trump signed the legislation, the Chinese embassy said in a statement that clauses in the travel act “severely violate the one-China principle, the political foundation of the China-U.S. relationship.”

China said the Taiwan Travel Act violated U.S. commitments not to restore direct official contacts with Taiwan that were severed when Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.
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Following Rex Tillerson’s abrupt firing as secretary of state Tuesday, many around the world are turning their attention to President Donald Trump’s designee to take his place: CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Whether it be Iran, North Korea or Russia, analysts say Pompeo’s views are more in sync with Trump’s than Tillerson’s were, and — like the president — Pompeo favors U.S. military strength over the “soft power” of diplomacy. VOA Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more.
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No one is getting fired right now. That is what the White House is telling reporters and its own jittery staff.

Chief of Staff John Kelly gathered some personnel Friday and told them “people shouldn’t be concerned,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. “We should do exactly what we do every day, and that’s come to work and do the very best job that we can.”

Sanders took to Twitter on Thursday night to rebut breaking news stories that President Donald Trump had decided to remove national security adviser H.R. McMaster.

“I spoke directly to the president last night,” Sanders told reporters Friday. “He asked me to pass that message along to General McMaster. I know the two of them have been in meetings today. Whether or not that came up, I don’t know.”

A little while later, McMaster was seen escorting guests out of the West Wing entrance.

“Sarah set it straight yesterday. Everybody has got to leave the White House at some point,” he said.

Asked by a reporter whether he was leaving sooner rather than later, McMaster replied, “I’m doing my job.”

​Media reports on dismissal

The Washington Post and several other news organizations have reported the three-star general’s removal from the key post had already been decided by Trump, but it is not yet being announced to spare McMaster embarrassment.

There is also speculation the president will award the general a fourth star and send him back into the field to command troops, perhaps on the Korean Peninsula.

Trump has made little effort to hide his frustration with the active-duty career officer who is regarded as an iconoclastic battle veteran.

McMaster, according to White House insiders, also seems eager to leave, fed up with an unconventional administration and flummoxed by a commander-in-chief with whom he has failed to bond.

The president chastised McMaster last month after the national security adviser said Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election was “incontrovertible.”

“General McMaster forgot to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the Russians and that the only Collusion was between Russia and Crooked H, the DNC and the Dems,” Trump tweeted.

Reports of McMaster’s impending removal followed the firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson this week.

‘There will always be change’

There is also intense speculation that several members of the president’s Cabinet could be short-timers, primarily because of bad publicity about costly and dubious travel, as well as questionable cosmetic but expensive office modifications.

“There will always be change,” Trump told reporters Thursday. “And I think you want to see change. I want to also see different ideas.”

If the president follows through in replacing him, McMaster will become the second national security adviser to leave the job since Trump took office. 

The first one, retired Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, was fired weeks into his tenure in 2017 after misleading White House officials about contacts with Russians.

Flynn has made a plea deal with federal prosecutors for lying about conversations with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and is bound to fully cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian government efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

Mueller’s team appears to be examining a wide range of transactions involving Trump’s businesses, as well as those of his associates, and now has reportedly issued a subpoena for records from the Trump Organization. 
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Last month, San Diego police knocked on Brandon Snyder’s door and took away his rifle. They did it using a new tool: an emergency protective order issued by a court, just like orders that for years have been used to prevent spousal abuse or stalking.

California is one of only two states that allow family members to seek a gun restraining order when they see warning signs that a gun owner might pose a danger to himself or others. Five other states allow only police officers to seek gun proactive orders. Nearly 20 other states are considering such measures.

In the wake of last month’s mass shooting at a Florida high school, many on both sides of the gun debate — from firearms control advocates to gun lobbyists — see so-called “red flag” laws like California’s as a politically viable solution to gun violence. And they’re pushing more states to adopt them.

Co-workers of Snyder, 31, a mechanic at a car dealership, became alarmed after he praised Las Vegas mass shooter Stephen Paddock for not “committing suicide until he’d gunned down enough people to set a modern record,” said Mara Elliott, San Diego’s top prosecutor.

That wasn’t all.

“What he told his co-workers is, if it was up to him, he’d have shot up a mosque and then shot it out with the cops,” recalled Elliott, whose office investigated the case.

Snyder, facing the prospect of dismissal, told his Ford dealership colleagues that if he was let go, he’d return with a gun. A co-worker called police.

Semiautomatic rifle surrendered

Unable to charge Snyder with a crime, prosecutors obtained an emergency firearms protective order. On February 27, he surrendered his semiautomatic rifle and “significant killing capability,” Elliott said.

“We take no chances,” she told VOA.

Snyder could not be immediately reached for comment. Tom Nicholl, the general manager of the dealership where Snyder worked, did not respond to requests for comment.

In the United States, where many citizens take their constitutional right to own firearms very seriously, removing a gun from a lawful owner is no easy task. But San Diego has done it 19 times in the past three months under California’s three-year-old law.

And Elliott said it’s working.

The law “gives people the opportunity to speak up and get a response before waiting for a crime or tragedy to happen,” the prosecutor said.

Last week, Florida passed a gun law that allows police officers, though not family members, to obtain gun restraining orders.

The state’s two senators, one a Republican and one a Democrat, recently introduced a bill in Congress that incentivizes states to adopt gun restraining order laws. The White House has spoken out for the measure.

In an about-face, the National Rifle Association (NRA), the nation’s main gun lobby, has thrown its support behind it.

“We need to stop dangerous people before they act, so Congress should provide funding for states to adopt risk protection orders,” Chris Cox, the NRA’s chief lobbyist, said in a video message last week.

Does it work?

However, hard evidence that gun restraining orders are effective remains thin. In recent years, there has been only one major study on the topic, and it focused on the law’s effectiveness in preventing suicide in Connecticut.

The 2016 study, widely cited by gun control advocates, showed that for every 10 to 20 gun restraining orders issued in the state from 1999 to 2013, a life was saved.

Though the NRA has come on board, other gun rights advocates say treatment, not gun seizure, is the answer to dealing with gun owners who show signs of trouble.

“If you really believe somebody is a danger to themselves or others, then you ought to think about involuntarily committing them to some type of mental health facility,” said John Lott, an economist and founder of the right-leaning Crime Prevention Research Center.

Others worry that gun protection order laws may infringe on free speech, due process and other constitutional rights.

“I don’t want a police officer simply judging somebody’s talk to be sufficient to seize their arms,” said Peter Langrock, a Vermont lawyer who says he’s not a supporter of the NRA.

Right balance

But supporters of gun restraining orders say the law strikes the right balance between public safety and civil liberties.

“The due process goes into balancing public safety,” said John Hemmerling, a prosecutor in the San Diego city attorney’s office.”The due process plays itself out within 21 days.”

On March 20 — 21 days after giving up his rifle — Snyder will have his day in court, where a judge will hear his side of the story and decide whether to allow Snyder to retrieve his gun or extend the restraining order for up to a year.

Researcher Lynn Davis contributed to this report.
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Pennsylvania’s tight congressional special election underscores the need for states to replace aging voting machines and use paper ballots as backups to ensure the integrity of vote counts ahead of pivotal November U.S. midterm elections, election security advocates said on Wednesday.

Democrat Conor Lamb led Republican Rick Saccone by only a few hundred votes out of nearly 230,000 cast in the closely watched U.S. House of Representatives election on Tuesday in western Pennsylvania.

With many states using antiquated voting machines and with concerns about potential interference in U.S. elections by Russia or other actors, there is rising concern among experts about the need to safeguard American balloting.

“At the end of the day, the winners need be assured that they won and the losers need to know that they lost,” said former Pennsylvania election official Marian Schneider, president of Verified Voting, a group that advocates for

auditable elections.

While there have been no issues raised about the integrity of the Pennsylvania race, election security experts said the razor-thin margin highlighted the importance of protecting voting machines from tampering, failure or human error.

“Whenever you are talking about computers, there are risks” of tampering or programming error, Schneider said.

In the face of federal inaction on election security, nearly every state has taken steps since the 2016 election to purchase more secure equipment, expand the use of paper ballots, improve cyber training or seek federal assistance, according to groups that track election security.

Voting systems that do not produce a paper backup of a ballot, which election officials can use to check electronic tabulations, are more difficult to audit for signs of tampering or error, according to experts.

The four counties where voters cast ballots on Tuesday are among the 50 Pennsylvania counties, out of a total of 67, that use voting machines without an auditable paper trail, according to Verified Voting.

“With paper, you can recount or audit that paper and carefully check the performance of the voting system, ensuring that the electronic result would match what a full hand count would show,” said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, an election security expert with the Center for Democracy & Technology.

“Without a paper audit trail, any recount is just like hitting enter on the keyboard over and over again: You get the same answer and you have no clue if that answer is correct,” Hall added.

Probing by Russia

The Department of Homeland Security said last year that 21 of the 50 states had experienced initial probing of their election systems from Russian hackers and that a small number of networks were compromised, but that there remains no evidence any votes were actually altered.

U.S. intelligence agencies previously concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election through a campaign of propaganda and hacking to help Trump win. Russia has denied this.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat, last month issued a directive requiring new voting machines in the state to have paper records of votes cast. Pennsylvania has not provided funding for counties to buy new equipment, making it unclear whether existing systems will be replaced before the November elections.

President Donald Trump, who in the past has raised questions about the integrity of American elections, endorsed the paper backups in elections as useful to protect against Russian meddling. Trump said at a news conference last Thursday that “it’s old-fashioned, but it’s always good to have a paper

back-up system of voting.”

But Congress, controlled by his fellow Republicans, has not provided funding to states to upgrade voting machines.

Democrats have introduced election security legislation and called for congressional hearings. Congressional Republicans have not acted on warnings from senior U.S. intelligence officials who said Russia is likely to target November’s midterm races in which Democrats are trying to seize control of the House of Representatives and Senate.

Some experts have warned that voter confidence could be undermined if states do not install newer machines that can be audited with a paper trail.

New Jersey, Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina have no verifiable paper ballot backup across their states, though some are looking to purchase systems that provide such audits. Eight other states, including Pennsylvania, have some electoral districts without paper backups.

Reporting by Dustin Volz.
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What comes next in the U.S. Congress to address gun violence, after thousands of students walked out of their classrooms to demand action in the wake of the Florida school massacre? As VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, it appears there is still no clear path forward as lawmakers consider gun laws and how to deal with school safety.
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A difference in how the United States and North Korea define denuclearization could potentially derail the summit scheduled for May between President Donald Trump and Kim Jon Un, according to experts.

Last week, Trump accepted North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s summit invitation, which was conveyed by South Korean envoys who had met with Kim in Pyongyang.

If the U.S. military threat to North Korea is removed and the safety of the Kim regime is guaranteed, the “North side clearly affirmed its commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” said South Korean National Security Chief Chung Eui-yong after meeting with Kim. Days later, Chung delivered Kim’s proposal to Trump.

WATCH: US Moving Forward with Proposed US- North Korea Talks

What is denuclearization

But the fate of the summit scheduled could hinge on the definition of denuclearize, which the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines as “to remove nuclear arms from or prohibit the use of nuclear arms in” — in this case, North Korea.

In the past, Pyongyang has interpreted denuclearization as the removal of what it perceives as threats, including the U.S. nuclear umbrella over the Korean Peninsula, the U.S.-South Korea security alliance, and the presence of the U.S. troops in the South, according to experts, while Washington interprets denuclearization as the complete dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

“A rift in views of denuclearization could make Trump-Kim summit difficult and possibly even be canceled,” said Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Evans Revere, a former State Department official who was involved in previous talks with North Korea, warned that Trump should not expect denuclearization to be the topic that Kim wants to discuss at the summit.

“A very complicated situation has just gotten a lot more complicated primarily because the invitation seems to have been accepted on the premise or with the assumption that the North Korean leader is interested in denuclearization, even though I see no evidence whatsoever that he’s actually interested in discussing denuclearization,” Revere said.

North Korea’s focus

North Korea will most likely attempt to shift the focus from dismantling its nuclear program to demanding the U.S. remove what North Korea perceives as threats posed against its regime as a condition for giving up its nuclear program, according to experts.

Withdrawing its military from the South, “will be unacceptable to the U.S.,” Manning said.

Ken Gause, director of the International Affairs Group at the Center for Naval Analyses, thinks divergent demands resulting from the differing views of denuclearization will prevent the U.S. from finding “a common ground to begin negotiations.”

Former State Department official Revere believes diplomatic progress will be severely impeded if Trump and Kim have different outcomes in mind.

“There is a rule in diplomacy that you never agree to a summit unless you understand the outcome that you are seeking in the summit, and your adversary also understands and agrees with the outcome that both parties are seeking. That doesn’t seem to be the case here,” Revere said.

​North Korea’s commitment

North Korea’s commitment to denuclearize is highly deceptive, according to Revere. 

“What Ambassador Chung, whom I have a lot of respect for, … heard from the North Koreans is not a commitment to denuclearization,” Revere said. “It’s a commitment to North Korea’s vision of the end of the U.S.-South Korean alliance and the end of the U.S. military presence. And that’s not an acceptable condition.”

North Korea has not made an official public pledge to give up its nuclear weapons program. The message that Pyongyang is willing to denuclearize was conveyed by the South Korean envoys who met with Kim. Without a direct statement from Kim, there is room to misinterpret North Korea’s definition of, and willingness to denuclearize, according to experts.

Manning warned that possible clashes over denuclearization at the summit could potentially lead to a diplomatic breakdown and raise the possibility of U.S. military action.

“There is a danger that if there is a Trump-Kim summit and President Trump feels played or betrayed, military action might be more likely,” Manning said.

“If diplomacy fails, the voices in the U.S. calling for military strikes will gain momentum,” Gause said. “The voices for diplomacy will be drowned out.”

Trilateral diplomacy

The trilateral diplomatic move began when South Korean envoys traveled to Pyongyang early in March at Kim’s invitation. Their trip was followed by the announcement of the inter-Korean summit to be held in April. The delegation then visited Washington to deliver Kim’s invitation for the U.S-North Korean summit that Trump agreed to have by May.

Youngnam Kim from VOA Korean Service contributed to this story.

 
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A major shakeup in U.S. President Donald Trump’s Cabinet has not derailed plans for an unprecedented meeting between the president and the leader of North Korea, according to the State Department. But foreign policy experts warn caution may be necessary. VOA’s Korean service spoke with a former CIA analyst on Korean issues about the high stakes summit. VOA’s Jesusemen Oni has more.
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The private school that Barron Trump attends has joined other schools in calling for gun control.

 

St. Andrew’s Episcopal School and more than 100 schools in Maryland and the Washington area on Wednesday signed an open letter calling on Barron Trump’s father, Republican President Donald Trump, and Congress to support gun control measures and to reject arming teachers. The White House has proposed arming educators.

 

The schools support a “robust system of registration and background checks” with an emphasis on assault weapons. They also back stronger mental health services.

The letter was published as tens of thousands of students walked out of their classrooms Wednesday to demand action on gun violence and school safety. The walkout was triggered by the Feb. 14 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

 
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President Donald Trump freestyled with the facts when talking trade with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The Republican described the discussion during a fundraising speech in St. Louis on Wednesday.

 

According to audio obtained by The Washington Post, Trump insisted that the United States runs a trade deficit with Canada.

 

Trump said Trudeau told him there was no trade deficit. Trump said he replied, “‘Wrong, Justin, you do.’ I didn’t even know. … I had no idea. I just said, ‘You’re wrong.'”

 

Trump claimed the figures don’t include timber and energy.

 

However, the Office of the United States Trade Representative says the United States has a trade surplus with Canada.
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Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu’s planned visit to Washington Monday has been postponed, his spokesman said Thursday, following the U.S. decision to replace Rex Tillerson as secretary of state.

A planned visit Monday to Washington by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has been postponed. No reason was given but Cavusoglu had earlier described the meeting as key to resolving ongoing differences between the countries over Washington’s support of the Syrian Kurdish militia, the YPG, in its war against the Islamic State.

Ankara considers the militia terrorists linked to a Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey.

Turkey has been angered by Washington’s support for the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia in the fight against Islamic State. Turkey sees the YPG as a terrorist group and an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

There had been signs of an easing in strains between the NATO allies after a recent visit to Turkey by Tillerson, whom U.S. President Donald Trump sacked Tuesday as secretary of state.

But Turkish media has seized on a tweet purportedly made by Pompeo after a failed coup in July 2016, and before he became CIA director, which referred to Turkey as a “totalitarian Islamist dictatorship.” The tweet was later removed.

Turkey has been angered by the U.S. failure to extradite the Pennsylvania-based cleric whom Ankara blames for orchestrating that attempted putsch and by the conviction of a Turkish banker in an Iran sanctions-busting case.
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 As students staged a coordinated school walkout in districts across America, U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday grilled federal officials on the failure to act on repeated warnings about Nikolas Cruz, the alleged gunman who killed 17 people at a Florida high school last month.

“It appears that the FBI did not communicate with local law enforcement,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said.

“There was a catastrophic failure at every single level (of law enforcement) that occurred here which made this shooting possible, and we have to find a way to plug those holes,” Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas said.

The Senate panel met as throngs of students and activists converged outside the Capitol and in other locations nationwide to demand restrictions on firearms.

Democrats backed their call. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California noted that the United States has suffered more than 200 school shootings in the last five years.

“This averages out to five school shootings per month. This is outrageous,” Feinstein said. “This Congress cannot continue to do nothing, because (doing) nothing means more lives are lost, including the youngest and the most vulnerable among us.”

Most Democrats favor establishing universal background checks for all gun purchases as well as reestablishing a ban on the sale of  semi-automatic rifles.

“It’s common sense to get the assault rifles and banana (high capacity) clips off the streets,” Florida Senator Bill Nelson said. “Universal background checks are common sense.”

By contrast, most Republicans back measures to boost law enforcement’s capability to detect dangerous individuals and prevent gun sales to those deemed a security risk, rather than banning entire classifications of firearms or subjecting every gun sale to a background check.

In addition, President Donald Trump has directed the Justice Department to craft regulations banning the sale of so-called “bump stocks” that dramatically increase the number of rounds a semi-automatic rifle can fire in a given time period. He has also voiced support for allowing trained teachers to carry firearms in schools.

Weeks ago, Trump appeared to endorse universal background checks as well as raising the minimum purchase age for assault weapons, but reversed himself days later.

“There are things we (Republicans and Democrats) agree on. We should pass those things,” Florida Senator Marco Rubio said.

“We must rally around consensus,” Grassley said. 

Democrats countered that limiting congressional action to the lowest common denominator of measures palatable to majorities of members in both parties will not prevent future mass shooting incidents.

“Guns and assault weapons continue to flood our streets by the millions,” Feinstein said, adding that gun deaths in America rose sharply after a previous assault weapons ban expired in 2004. “We have seen more and more children, families, communities victimized by mass shootings from military-style assault weapons.”

On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, announced his support for a bipartisan proposal to provide federal funding to train school districts and local and state police forces to identify security threats, form crisis intervention teams, and boost security infrastructure at schools nationwide.

“We use a variety of security measures to protect workplaces and government buildings across America. We ought to be able to do the same to protect our children,” McConnell said in a statement.

Democrat Sherrod Brown of Ohio called the proposal an initial step to boost school safety, adding that further steps “must also include gun safety measures.”
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U.S. President Donald Trump is naming Larry Kudlow, a longtime conservative economic analyst and television business show commentator, as his new top White House economic adviser.

The 70-year-old Kudlow told news media he accepted Trump’s offer Wednesday to become director of the White House’s National Economic Council. Reports say a formal announcement could come Thursday.

He will replace former Wall Street financier Gary Cohn, who resigned last week after breaking with President Trump on trade policy. Cohn had lost an internal debate, among Trump advisers, aimed at convincing the president not to impose steep new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

 

Kudlow, who was an informal economic adviser to Trump during the first year of his presidency, also opposed Trump’s imposition of the 25 percent levy on steel and 10 percent tax on aluminum. Kudlow, however, was also an adviser to Trump during his successful 2016 White House run and worked with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in designing the tax cut plan Trump pushed through Congress in December.

Kudlow worked decades ago in the White House of President Ronald Reagan, but has spent much of the time since then as a television show host, much like Trump, who served as executive producer of The Apprentice reality television show before turning to politics.

One of Kudlow’s first White House efforts is likely to involve the ongoing renegotiation of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, the U.S. pact with Canada and Mexico.

Kudlow has said that it would be a “calamitously bad decision” to end the accord, but Trump has said NAFTA has left the United States at a disadvantage in trade deals with the two countries. The president has said he wants better terms for American farmers in their exports to Canada and wants Mexico to step up its border security at the U.S. line to keep undocumented immigrants from crossing into the United States.

 
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Republican U.S. Senator Rand Paul said on Wednesday he would oppose President Donald Trump’s nomination of CIA Director Mike Pompeo to be secretary of state and CIA Deputy Director Gina Haspel to become the new director of the CIA.

Paul also said he would “do everything I can” to block them.

Haspel has faced strong criticism for overseeing a secret Central Intelligence Agency prison where detainees were tortured in the years following the Sept. 11 attacks.

“I find it just amazing that anyone would consider having this woman at the head of the CIA. My opposition to her is over her direct participation in interrogation and her gleeful enjoyment at the suffering of someone who was being tortured,” Paul told a news conference.

Pompeo, a former Republican member of the House of Representatives, was confirmed as CIA director with the support of two-thirds of the Senate last year. Many legislators have said they are happy with his workat the agency, and expect he will be confirmed as the United States’ top diplomat.

Paul is the first Republican to come out against the nominations, which Trump announced on Tuesday. He was the only Republican who voted last year against Pompeo’s nomination to be CIA director.

Another Republican senator, John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, also had questions about Haspel, but did not say he would oppose her. McCain has not been in Washington to vote this year as he undergoes cancer treatment at home in Arizona.

Haspel is respected for her work in the clandestine service and held in high regard at the CIA. Early indications are that, if her hearing goes well, she would be supported by at least enough moderate Democrats to be confirmed.

An intelligence officer who worked with Haspel denied she was anything like a “gleeful participant,” saying, “That makes it sound like she was holding the bucket and laughing, when all she was was a bureaucrat following orders.”

A CIA spokesman said the agency was aware of Paul’s statement and had no immediate comment.

Trump’s fellow Republicans have a 51-49 majority in the Senate, so it would take little Republican dissent to block a nomination, but only if all Democrats vote no.

Paul could make the process difficult particularly for Pompeo. He is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which will hold Pompeo’s confirmation hearing and vote on whether to report his nomination favorably to the full Senate.

His opposition could keep the committee from doing so, if every Democrat also opposed the nominee, although the Senate’s Republican leaders could hold a vote anyway.

Committee Democrats said it was too early to say how they would vote.

Senate Republicans said they expect both confirmation hearings to be held soon. Pompeo’s is expected in April.

Every Democrat on the Foreign Relations panel voted against Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, in January 2017, but the panel advanced his nomination by an 11-10 vote because every Republican, including Paul, backed him.

 
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An unexpected resurgence of gun control proposals following last month’s shooting at a Florida high school is showing signs of ebbing in the U.S. Congress, where a bill to strengthen a national background check for gun ownership is treading water despite public pressure in favor of it.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, so far has held back on bringing it to the floor for debate and a vote, even though it has at least 69 co-sponsors in the 100-member chamber.

McConnell told reporters on Tuesday that he was “extremely interested” in passing both the background check measure and a school safety bill “soon,” but he did not elaborate.

The background check bill aims to improve the investigation of prospective gun buyers who have criminal backgrounds.

Students, their parents and gun control activists increased efforts nationwide to address gun-related deaths in the United States after 14 students and three adults were shot and killed by a former student at a school in Parkland, Florida on February 14.

The background check bill is being pushed by Republican Senator John Cornyn following last November’s mass shooting at a church in his home state of Texas that was carried out by someone with a domestic violence conviction. That crime was not reported to the federal gun-check data base.

“I’m convinced that those 26 people and the 20 more who were wounded would be alive today and the injured would not have been shot if an appropriate background check system had been in place,” Cornyn said on Tuesday.

Cornyn, the No. 2 Senate Republican, has accused Democrats of erecting roadblocks to his bill by demanding debate on broader, tougher gun controls, even though they also support the background check measure.

Proposals favored by gun control advocates, including a ban on assault-style weapons and the closing of loopholes on requiring background checks before gun purchases, are opposed by the National Rifle Association gun rights group, which has broad influence in U.S. politics through its election campaign donations that largely go to Republicans.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York has called for a full-fledged debate on guns, including legislation closing loopholes that let certain sales at gun shows and over the internet skirt background checks.

‘Something tiny’

Democrats also want votes on banning assault-style weapons like the one used in Parkland and legislation to facilitate gun-restraining orders on people thought to be posing an imminent danger to a community.

“Our Republican friends hope we’ll pass something tiny, something small, so they can clap their hands and say they did something on gun violence and move on,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor.

A handful of Republican senators oppose Cornyn’s background check bill as written, even though it has the support of the National Rifle Association.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has stepped back from his tough talk of just a few weeks ago in which he suggested raising the minimum age for some weapons purchases and even forgoing “due process” court procedures in order to speed law enforcement’s ability to take guns away from those threatening violence.

Against that backdrop, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Wednesday is slated to debate a bill authorizing $50 million a year to help schools and law enforcement agencies prevent violent attacks.

The bill stops short, however, of allowing the money to be used to train and arm teachers and other school officials so they can attempt to repel shooters.

With McConnell devoting Senate floor debate time this week and next to other legislation, there is the possibility that any gun measure will have to wait at least until April because of a two-week spring break.

Some gun advocates fear that by then the political will in Congress for gun legislation will have evaporated.

Democrats disagree, noting that Wednesday’s planned nationwide walkouts by students demanding tougher gun laws will be followed by demonstrations across the United States and elsewhere on March 24.

Also, a makeshift memorial on the Capitol grounds was receiving national media attention. Composed of about 7,000 pairs of shoes, it commemorates child gun-related deaths since the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
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It is unclear how Mike Pompeo becoming U.S. secretary of state may affect the Iran nuclear deal.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s choice of the Central Intelligence Agency director to replace Rex Tillerson means an Iran hawk who fiercely opposed the 2015 pact as a member of Congress will now be in charge of the U.S. diplomacy trying to strengthen, and perhaps save, it.

Former U.S. officials and serving European officials were at a loss to gauge how the switch would affect negotiations between the United States and three European powers — Britain, France and Germany — that are also parties to the agreement.

Some said Washington may take a harder line under Pompeo and the Europeans may be under more pressure to offer concessions, while others suggested his views on the deal have evolved and he may be better placed to influence Trump to keep it.

U.S., British, French and German officials are due to meet on the deal Thursday in Berlin.

“Any officials negotiating with the Europeans right now will get a much more aggressive set of requirements from Pompeo,” said Richard Nephew, a former White House and State Department official who worked on Iran during the Obama administration.

“The odds of them coming up with a thoughtful compromise by May just got a lot longer,” he added.

Trump on Tuesday singled out the Iran nuclear deal as one of the main differences he had with Tillerson.

“I think it’s terrible, I guess he thinks it was OK,” Trump said.

Trump delivered an ultimatum to the European powers on Jan. 12, saying they must agree to “fix the terrible flaws of the Iran nuclear deal” or he would refuse to extend U.S. sanctions relief on Iran. U.S. sanctions will resume unless Trump issues fresh “waivers” to suspend them on May 12.

The crux of the July 2015 pact between Iran and six major powers — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States — was that Iran would restrict its nuclear program in return for relief from sanctions that have crippled its economy.

Trump sees three defects in the deal: its failure to address Iran’s ballistic missile program; the terms under which international inspectors can visit suspect Iranian nuclear sites; and “sunset” clauses under which limits on the Iranian nuclear program start to expire after 10 years. He wants all three strengthened if the United States is to stay in the deal.

In a Jan. 13 cable, the State Department sketched out a path under which the three European allies would simply commit to try to improve the deal over time in return for Trump keeping the pact alive by renewing sanctions relief in May.

Trump ‘is what matters here’

Other European officials and former U.S. officials said Pompeo’s rise, if he is confirmed as secretary of state by the Senate, might have a more ambiguous effect on the negotiations and that, in any case, Trump’s views are paramount.

“All our work is going into delivering a credible package that is sellable to Trump,” said a European diplomat on condition of anonymity. “He is what matters here.”

While Pompeo was a fierce critic of the deal, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as a congressman, he tempered his views when testifying before Congress in January 2017 to seek confirmation as CIA director.

“Pompeo was a hawk on Iran. However, my understanding is he doesn’t want the deal to disappear,” said a former senior U.S. official. “People should not jump to conclusions.”

Many of Trump’s top national security aides, like Tillerson, have argued that the United States is better off with the Iran nuclear deal than without it. That stance was echoed Tuesday by the U.S. general who heads the U.S. military command responsible for the Middle East and Central Asia.

Former U.S. officials suggested that, as the administration nears a planned summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un about Pyongyang’s nuclear program, it could rethink its stance on the Iran deal.

European diplomats saw some chance Pompeo may have more influence over Trump than Tillerson, who antagonized the U.S. president by reportedly calling him a “moron” and who differed with Trump on Iran and other issues.

“If Pompeo is that hawkish, then in reality all it is is the affirmation of Trump’s policies. It’s Trump’s line,” said another European diplomat. “Hopefully, he’ll have the mandate that Tillerson didn’t have.”
…

President Donald Trump is considering ousting embattled Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, who has faced an insurgency within his department and fresh allegations that he used a member of his security detail to run personal errands.

Trump has floated the notion of moving Energy Secretary Rick Perry to the VA to right the ship, believing Shulkin has become a distraction, according to two sources familiar with White House discussions. The sources were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations.

 

Shulkin has faced several investigations over his travel and leadership of the department, but until now has received praise from the president for his work to turn it around. The news comes after Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Tuesday.

 

Trump raised the idea with Perry on Monday but did not offer the job to him, according to one White House official. Trump has been angry with Shulkin, the official said, but is known to float staffing changes without always following through.

 

Shulkin did not respond to requests for comment via phone and text message. He has been holding on to his job by a thread since a bruising internal report found ethics violations in connection with his trip to Europe with his wife last summer. A spokeswoman for Perry also had no comment.

 

The VA inspector general also is looking into a complaint by a member of Shulkin’s 24-7 security detail that he was asked to accompany the secretary to a Home Depot and carry furniture items into his home, according to two people familiar with the allegation who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

 

Within the agency, a political adviser installed by Trump has openly mused to other VA staff about ousting the former Obama administration official. And a top communications aide has taken extended leave following a secret, failed attempt to turn lawmakers against him.

 

“The honeymoon is ending with a crash that hurts veterans most of all,” said Paul Rieckhoff, founder and CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, who has been a close observer of VA for more than a decade. “VA always has bad news, but Shulkin’s ethical and leadership failures are still significant — despite any internal attacks.”

 

Senior administration officials describe a growing frustration that Shulkin repeatedly ignores their advice, only to beg for their help when he runs into ethical trouble. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to describe sensitive internal discussions, say Shulkin has been given a final warning to end the swirl of distractions. The administration is currently seeking to push Trump’s agenda of aggressively expanding the Veterans Choice program, which major veterans groups worry could be an unwanted step toward privatizing VA health care.

 

The issue came to the fore at a White House meeting last week, when chief of staff John Kelly told Shulkin to stop talking to the news media without clearing it first with the White House and to stay focused on fixing veterans care.

 

Shulkin was escorted from that meeting to the Oval Office, where Trump questioned him about his efforts to push the Choice expansion, which lawmakers are now seeking to include in a massive spending bill that must be approved by next week to avert a government shutdown.

 

With Shulkin present, the president telephoned conservative Pete Hegseth, a “Fox & Friends” contributor who was vetted in late 2016 for VA secretary, to get his views on how to proceed with the expansion. Hegseth, a former president of the conservative group Concerned Veterans for America, declined to comment for this article.

 

Dan Caldwell, executive director of CVA, lauded the White House focus on Choice amid the ongoing controversies involving Shulkin. “Despite the internal drama going on in the VA, which has been a distraction, Congress has continued to work to a solution that everyone can rally around,” he said.

 

Shulkin is blaming the internal drama on a half-dozen or so political appointees whom he had considered firing, only to be blocked by Kelly.

 

“I regret anything that has distracted us from what we should be focusing on, which is serving veterans,” Shulkin told the AP shortly before release of an inspector general report that faulted the VA for “failed leadership” and an unwillingness or inability of leaders to take responsibility for accounting problems at a major VA hospital that put patients at risk.

 

It wasn’t always this way.

 

Early in the administration, Shulkin was often seen at Trump’s side, waving to crowds at campaign-style events in Pennsylvania or addressing reporters in a doctor’s lab coat as he tutored Trump on telehealth. Trump called him the “100-to-nothing man” — a reference to his unanimous Senate confirmation vote — and publicly teased that he probably would never be fired because he had successfully shepherded legislation to improve accountability at the VA and speed disability appeals.

 

By December, relations at the VA between Shulkin and several political appointees began to fray over philosophical differences.

 

In a Dec. 4 internal email obtained by the AP, Jake Leinenkugel, a senior aide installed as part of a Cabinet-wide program to monitor secretaries’ loyalty, said Shulkin was becoming increasingly distrustful and regarded Camilo Sandoval, a senior adviser in VA’s health arm, as a White House “spy.”

 

The email to Sandoval alluded to White House efforts to gain more control, including ousting Shulkin’s chief of staff, and said the secretary had been “put on notice to exit” once the administration gets the Choice legislation through Congress.

 

There were other signs.

 

At a Jan. 17 hearing, Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., openly blamed the deadlock over Choice to Shulkin’s ever-shifting positions. “I am of the opinion that our inability to reach an agreement is in significant part related to your ability to speak out of both sides of your mouth, double-talk,” Moran said. A grim Shulkin denied the accusation, but the White House was later forced to clarify its position on the bill due to lawmaker confusion.

 

Last month, the inspector general released a blistering report finding ethical violations in Shulkin’s trip last July to Denmark and England that mixed business with pleasure. The IG found that Shulkin’s chief of staff Vivieca Wright Simpson had doctored emails to justify his wife accompanying him at taxpayer expense. Wright Simpson retired after the report was issued.

 

Seizing on the report, John Ullyot, a top communications aide, and VA spokesman Curt Cashour told the Republican staff director of the House Veterans Affairs Committee that Shulkin would be out by that weekend and asked if Republicans would push for his removal.

 

The staff director, John Towers, told Ullyot “no,” and made clear that committee Chairman Phil Roe had expressed support for Shulkin, according to a House aide familiar with the phone conversation. That aide also requested anonymity in order to discuss a sensitive internal matter. In a statement, Cashour and Ullyot deny that account, saying the call was intended instead to warn the committee that some of Shulkin’s denials of wrongdoing were unfounded.

 

Asked this week about Ullyot’s current leave of absence, Cashour released a statement saying, “there are no personnel changes to announce at the Department of Veterans Affairs.”

 

For now, Shulkin appears to be hanging on. At a Cabinet meeting last Thursday, Shulkin took a different seat reserved for him — next to the president.
…

Not two weeks ago, President Donald Trump wagged his finger at a Republican senator and scolded him for being “afraid of the NRA,” declaring that he would stand up to the powerful gun lobby and finally get results on quelling gun violence following last month’s Florida school shooting.

On Monday, Trump struck a very different tone as he backpedaled from his earlier demands for sweeping reforms and bowed to Washington reality. The president, who recently advocated increasing the minimum age to purchase an assault weapon to 21, tweeted that he’s “watching court cases and rulings” on the issue, adding that there is “not much political support (to put it mildly).”

Over the weekend, the White House released a limited plan to combat school shootings that leaves the question of arming teachers to states and local communities and sends the age issue to a commission for review. Just two days earlier, Trump had mocked commissions as something of a dead end while talking about the opioid epidemic. “We can’t just keep setting up blue-ribbon committees,” he said, adding that all they do is “talk, talk, talk.”

Seventeen people were killed in last month’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, prompting a national conversation about gun laws, fierce advocacy for stronger gun control from surviving students and, initially, a move from Trump to buck his allies at the National Rifle Association.

In a televised meeting with lawmakers on Feb. 28, Trump praised members of the gun lobby as “great patriots” but declared “that doesn’t mean we have to agree on everything. It doesn’t make sense that I have to wait until I’m 21 to get a handgun, but I can get this weapon at 18.”

He then turned toward Senator Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican, and questioned why previous gun control legislation did not include that provision.

“You know why?” said Trump, answering his own question. “Because you’re afraid of the NRA, right? Ha ha.”

Toomey had a ready response after the president’s tweet Monday: “It’s quite obvious that I’m the guy that stood up to the NRA,” he said. Asked if Trump was afraid of the NRA, Toomey said, “I don’t know what’s driving his decision.”

His words rattled some Republicans in Congress and sparked hope among some gun control advocates that, unlike after so many previous mass shootings, meaningful regulations would be enacted. But Trump appeared to foreshadow his change of heart with a tweet the very next night.

“Good (Great) meeting in the Oval Office tonight with the NRA!” the president wrote.

Following ‘process’

White House aides said Monday the president was focusing on achievable options, after facing significant opposition from lawmakers on a more comprehensive approach. Trump will back two modest pieces of legislation, and the administration pledged to help states pay for firearms training for teachers.

Seemingly on the defensive after his about-face, Trump tweeted Monday of the age limit that “States are making this decision. Things are moving rapidly on this, but not much political support (to put it mildly).”

The White House insisted that Trump remained committed to more significant changes even if they are delayed.

“We can’t just write things down and make them law. We actually have to follow a process,” said press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “Right now the president’s primary focus is pushing through things we know that have broad bipartisan support.”

She placed blame for the inaction on Capitol Hill. But Trump has made little effort to marshal the support of congressional Republicans or use his popularity with NRA voters to provide cover for his party during a contentious vote.

Democrats and gun control advocates were quick to pounce on the president’s retreat from previous demands, with Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, tweeting that Trump “couldn’t even summon the political courage to propose raising the age limit on firearm purchases – despite repeated promises to support such a step at a meeting with lawmakers.”

Television personality Geraldo Rivera — who had urged the president to consider tougher age limits during a dinner at Trump’s Florida club — tweeted that Trump had “blinked in face of ferocious opposition from #NRA.”

Bipartisan support

Still, Trump argued that this was progress.

“Very strong improvement and strengthening of background checks will be fully backed by White House,” he tweeted. He added that an effort to bar bump stock devices was coming and that “Highly trained expert teachers will be allowed to conceal carry, subject to State Law. Armed guards OK, deterrent!”

Without strong advocacy from the White House, an ambitious gun package was unlikely to even get off the ground, given most Republicans’ opposition to any new restrictions. The two measures backed by Trump — an effort to strengthen the federal background check system and an anti-school violence grant program — both enjoy bipartisan support, though some Republicans object and many Democrats say they are insufficient.

Trump drew some Republican backing, with Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, who wrote the school safety bill, tweeting he was “grateful” for the White House backing and calling the measure “the best first step we can take” to make students safer.

No deadline was set for recommendations from Trump’s planned commission, but officials expected them within a year.
…

It’s a time-tested Washington strategy for making a difficult policy question disappear: death by “blue ribbon” commission.

Presidents, Congress and some agency heads set up panels stocked with subject experts to offer sage advice to policymakers. But these panels sometimes are used to slow-walk thorny policy into oblivion. 

President Donald Trump chose what one expert calls “the blue ribbon option” when he assigned a sensitive gun control proposal to a new panel on school safety, part of a package the White House announced Sunday in response to the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. He put Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in charge of the panel and left clues that a key proposal he’s voiced support for — raising the purchase age for some firearms — was now in doubt

There’s “not much political support (to put it mildly),” the president tweeted about the proposal, which is opposed by the National Rifle Administration.

For lawmakers and presidents, creating a commission “represents movement, it’s something that they can report, especially if they’re subject to criticism that they’re taking no action or they’re tone deaf,” said Kenneth D. Kitts, a political science professor at the University of North Alabama and the author of “Presidential Commissions and National Security: The Politics of Damage Control.”

Trump has made it clear he doesn’t think much of such panels, either. 

“We can’t just keep setting up blue-ribbon committees with your wife and your wife and your husband and they meet and they have a meal and they talk. Talk, talk, talk,” the president groused when discussing the opioid crisis at a rally Saturday outside Pittsburgh. “That’s what I got in Washington. I got all these blue-ribbon committees. Everybody wants to be on a blue-ribbon committee.”

Commissions through history have produced important historical information, policy and even material for criminal trials. President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the Warren Commission to produce a record of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. President George W. Bush’s 9/11 Commission was established to account for the circumstances surrounding the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.Others were less successful. In 2010, President Barack Obama’s bipartisan debt reduction commission did not win enough votes among its members to send it to Congress for a vote.

In 2001, President George W. Bush created a 16-member bipartisan commission to study the feasibility of “modernizing” Social Security. Its recommendations floundered in Congress.

Critics of commissions say they’re primarily created for reasons other than good public policy: They allow lawmakers and officials to look like they’re doing something about controversial topics without having to take a position that could alienate some constituencies — such as the NRA, in the case of Republicans in this midterm election year. Their members are not elected or accountable to the public.

There’s also no quality control, and they’re expensive. The Congressional Research Service in November 2017 reported that commission costs can range from several hundred thousand dollars to more than $10 million. And after all that, lawmakers can simply ignore a commission’s conclusion.

Trump has had some experience as president with the peril of blue-ribbon commissions.

His unsubstantiated claim that millions of illegally cast ballots cost him the popular vote in 2016 led to his executive order last May establishing a commission on “election integrity.” The panel’s work quickly devolved into squabbling, with states refusing to give up their voting information and critics saying the commission was actually about suppressing votes.

In January, Trump terminated the commission and transferred its duties to the Department of Homeland Security.

His commission on opioids produced limited results. In October, Trump declared opioid abuse a national public health emergency. He announced an advertising campaign to combat what he said was the worst drug crisis in the nation’s history, but did not direct any new federal funding toward the effort.

Trump’s declaration stopped short of the emergency declaration that had been sought by a federal commission the president created to study the problem. An interim report by the commission argued for an emergency declaration, saying it would free additional money and resources.

But in its final report in November, the panel called only for more drug courts, more training for doctors and penalties for insurers that dodge covering addiction treatment. It did not call for new money to address the epidemic.

“Do you think the drug dealers who kill thousands of people during their lifetime, do you think they care who’s on a blue-ribbon committee?” Trump railed on Saturday.
…

Immigrants from four countries and their American-born children sued the Trump administration Monday over its decision to end a program that lets them live and work legally in the United States.

Nine immigrants and five children filed the suit in federal court in San Francisco alleging the decision to end Temporary Protected Status for El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan was racially motivated.

The status is granted to countries ravaged by natural disasters or war. It lets citizens of those countries remain in the U.S. until the situation improves back home.

More than 200,000 immigrants could face deportation due to the change in policy, and they have more than 200,000 American children who risk being uprooted from their communities and schools, according to plaintiffs in the case filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and other immigrant advocates.

Salvadoran plaintiff Orlando Zepeda has lived in California for more than three decades and is raising his 12- and 14-year-old children in Los Angeles. He said the change would be daunting.

Zepeda has worked in building maintenance for the past eight years and fears he wouldn’t recognize the country he left during the middle of a civil war when he was just a teenager.

“My home and family are here,” he said in a statement.

A message for the Department of Justice seeking comment was not immediately returned.

It’s the latest lawsuit filed against the Trump administration over its crackdown on immigration. A case filed last month by Haitian and Salvadoran immigrants in Massachusetts also alleges the decision to end temporary protected status was racially motivated.

Both suits came after Trump used vulgar language to describe the arrival of immigrants from Haiti and African countries.

The lawsuit in California alleges that the U.S. narrowed its criteria for determining whether countries qualified for temporary protected status. Since taking office, the Trump administration has ended the program for the four countries.

Choice: Country or family

The program was created for humanitarian reasons and the status can be renewed by the U.S. government following an evaluation.

El Salvador was designated for the program in 2001 after an earthquake and the country’s status was repeatedly renewed. The Trump administration announced in January that the program would expire for El Salvador in September 2019.

At that time, the American children of those immigrants could face the choice of leaving their country with their parents or staying without them, according to the lawsuit, which seeks class-action status for the children.

“These American children should not have to choose between their country and their family,” Ahilan Arulanantham, advocacy and legal director of the ACLU of Southern California, said in a statement.
…

The White House pledged Sunday to help individual states provide “rigorous firearms training” to some teachers and endorsed a bill to tighten the federal background check system for gun purchasers, but backed off of President Donald Trump’s earlier endorsement of raising the minimum age to purchase some guns.

In a conference call with reporters, administration officials said Trump will urge states to give law enforcement the power to temporarily seize guns from people or preventing them from purchasing the weapons if they demonstrate a threat. The president will also support expanding mental health programs.

WATCH: Student walkout

​Trump earlier expressed support for raising the minimum age for buying assault weapons from 18 to 21, but the plan announced Sunday does not include that. 

There has been an increased national focus on gun control policy following last month’s mass shooting at a Florida high school that left 17 people dead. Authorities have charged a 19-year-old with the killings, saying he used a semi-automatic rifle.

Many students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., have been vocal in calling for state and national leaders to take actions to ensure another such shootings do not happen again. Students across the country are planning a walkout Wednesday, the one-month anniversary of the Parkland shooting, as well as a march in Washington on March 24.

Trump wants to help states train specially qualified school personnel who volunteer to carry firearms and to encourage military veterans and retired police officers will be encouraged to seek new careers as teachers.

The idea of arming some teachers has been controversial and has drawn sharp opposition from the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers lobby, among other groups. NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia has said teachers should be focused on educating students and that there need to be solutions that will “keep guns out of the hands of those who want to use them to massacre innocent children and educators.”

Under the White House plan, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos will chair a commission on school safety and violence that will report recommendations to Trump, probably within a year, according to administration officials. The panel will focus on a number of areas, including existing rating systems for “violent entertainment,” effects of press coverage of mass shootings, campus security best practices and the effectiveness of “psychotropic medication for treatment of troubled youth.”

DeVos characterized the administration’s efforts as “a pragmatic plan to dramatically increase school safety.”

“We are committed to working quickly because there’s no time to waste,” DeVos told reporters. “No student, no family, no teacher and no school should have to live the horror of Parkland or Sandy Hook or Columbine again.”

Senator Chuck Schumer criticized the White House plan in a tweet Sunday night, saying the administration “has taken tiny baby steps designed not to upset” the National Rifle Association gun-lobbying group while a gun violence epidemic “demands giants steps be taken.” He pledged Democrats will push for stricter steps, including universal background checks for gun buyers and a ban on assault weapons.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence was also critical of the Trump administration’s plan.

“Americans should be able to expect President Trump to follow-through on the critical measures he acknowledged were needed, but today’s announcement was woefully inadequate and showed a profound lack of leadership that is crucial at this time,” said the group’s Co-President Avery Gardiner.

Gardiner said the group also wants universal background checks, bans on new assault weapons and allowing court-issued restraining orders to prevent people who represent a threat to themselves or to others from having access to guns.

Florida enacted its own law last week banning the purchase of firearms by anyone under the age of 21.

The NRA has filed a lawsuit challenging the law, calling it “an affront” to the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, which many believe enshrines gun ownership.
…

Students across the country have been protesting school gun violence since the Feb. 14 shooting in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead. On March 14, the one-month anniversary, a national student walkout is planned to last 17 minutes in commemoration of the victims and as a statement to policymakers. From Washington, VOA’s Jill Craig has more.
…

The White House on Sunday vowed to help provide “rigorous firearms training” to some schoolteachers and formally endorsed a bill to tighten the federal background checks system, but backed off President Trump’s earlier call to raise the minimum age to purchase some guns to 21 years old from 18 years old.

Responding directly to last month’s gun massacre at a Florida high school, the president said the federal government will help states implement a number of moves, including training for specially qualified school personnel volunteers to carry firearms. Military veterans and retired police officers will be encouraged to seek new careers as teachers.

The idea of arming some teachers has been controversial and has drawn sharp opposition from the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers lobby, among other groups.

The White House says Trump also backs new laws to reform and  strengthen background checks for potential gun buyers and allow states to seek court orders to take away weapons from those who have shown to be a threat to themselves and others.

Trump is also proposing expanding mental health programs.

Many of the student survivors have urged Washington to toughen restrictions on gun purchases, including  raising the minimum age to purchase some guns to 21 years old from 18 years old.  But, such measures are fiercely opposed by the National Rifle Association.

After 17 people were shot and killed last month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Trump elevated the issue of school safety in his administration. He called for raising the minimum age for purchasing an AR-15 or similar-style rifles from 18 to 21 years old.

“Now, this is not a popular thing to say, in terms of the NRA. But I’m saying it anyway,” Trump said in a Feb. 28 meeting with lawmakers. “You can buy a handgun — you can’t buy one; you have to wait until you’re 21. But you can buy the kind of weapon used in the school shooting at 18. I think it’s something you have to think about.”

But the plan released Sunday did not address the minimum age for gun purchases. When asked by reporters about the age issue, a senior administration official said it was “a state-based discussion right now” and would be explored by a commission chaired by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

DeVos characterized the administration’s efforts as “a pragmatic plan to dramatically increase school safety.”

“We are committed to working quickly because there’s no time to waste,” DeVos said on a Sunday evening conference call with reporters.  “No student, no family, no teacher and no school should have to live the horror of Parkland or Sandy Hook or Columbine again.”

Nikolas Cruz, charged with the shooting at Marjory Stonelam Douglas High School last month, is just 19 and allegedly used a AR-15 assault-style weapon.

He was also a well-known troublemaker at Douglas high school and made a number of violent threats.
…

The main events in a political campaign used to happen in the open: a debate, the release of a major TV ad or a public event where candidates tried to earn a spot on the evening news or the next day’s front page.

That was before the explosion of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as political platforms. Now some of a campaign’s most pivotal efforts happen in the often-murky world of social media, where ads can be targeted to ever-narrower slices of the electorate and run continuously with no disclosure of who is paying for them. Reporters cannot easily discern what voters are seeing, and hoaxes and forgeries spread instantaneously.

Journalists trying to hold candidates accountable have a hard time keeping up.

“There’s a whole dark area of campaigns out there when, if you’re not part of the target group, you don’t know anything about them,” said Larry Noble of the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, which seeks greater transparency in political spending. “And if reporters don’t know about it, they can’t ask questions about it.”

The problem came to widespread attention during the 2016 presidential race, when Donald Trump’s campaign invested heavily in digital advertising, and the term “fake news” emerged to describe pro-Trump propaganda masquerading as online news. Russian interference in the campaign included covert ads on social media and phony Facebook groups pumping out falsehoods.

The misinformation shows no sign of abating. The U.S. Senate election in Alabama in December was rife with fake online reports in support of Republican Roy Moore, who eventually lost to Democrat Doug Jones amid allegations that Moore had sexual contact with teenagers when he was a prosecutor in his 30s. Moore denied the accusations.

Politicians also try to create their own news operations. U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes’ campaign funded a purported news site called The California Republican, and the executive director of Maine’s Republican party last month acknowledged that he runs an anonymous website that is critical of Democrats.

Phony allegations are nothing new in politics. But they used to circulate in automated phone calls, mailers that were often tossed in the trash or, as far back as the 1800s, in partisan newspapers that published just once a day, noted Garlin Gilchrist, executive director of the Center for Social Media Responsibility at the University of Michigan.

The difference now is how quickly false information spreads.

“The problem is something that’s always existed … but social media is a different animal than news distribution in the past,” Gilchrist said.

A study released this past week found that false information spreads faster and wider on Twitter than real news stories. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology traced the path of more than 126,000 stories on Twitter and found that the average false story takes about 10 hours to reach 1,500 users compared with about 60 hours for real ones. On average, false information reaches 35 percent more people than true news.

A data analysis by Buzzfeed’s news site after the 2016 election found that the most popular fake stories generated greater engagement on Facebook than the top real stories in the three months before Election Day.

Because it’s increasingly easy to fabricate videos, which are viewed as the most reliable evidence available online, reporters “need stronger tools” to weed out frauds, Gilchrist said.

Social media also upends campaign advertising practices. Federal regulations require a record of every political advertisement that is broadcast on television and radio. But online ads have no comparable requirements.

Earlier this month, Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey announced that the platform would take new steps to try to stop harassment and false information. Facebook has partnered with media organizations, including The Associated Press, to flag false information on its platform. It recently announced plans to reform its political advertising, including making all ads on a page visible to all viewers, regardless of whether they were intended to see the spots. It also will require a line identifying the buyer on every political ad and create a four-year archive.

Still, because there are so many candidates for office in the U.S., Facebook is limiting itself to federal races at first.

“Facebook is moving faster than regulators are around the world toward some better stuff,” said Sam Jeffers of the UK-based group Who Targets You, which pushes for better online campaign disclosure.

He cited three recent elections in which underdog campaigns invested heavily in online ads and beat the polling expectations to win: the 2015 parliamentary races and the Brexit vote and the U.S. presidential race the following year.

Who Targets You designed an online tool that will collect Facebook political ads and deposit them in a database.

In the U.S., the nonprofit investigative outlet ProPublica has a similar project underway with a widget called Political Ad Tracker, which can be downloaded by readers to build a database of online ads. Other organizations, including the AP, have begun publishing stories specifically intended to knock down false information circulating on social media.

Some efforts are more local. In Seattle’s municipal election last year, online ad spending increased 5,000 percent over the previous cycle in 2013. Eli Sanders, a reporter for the alternative weekly The Stranger, unearthed a city ordinance that requires any outlet that distributes a political ad to make copies available for public inspection. His reporting inspired the city’s ethics and elections commission to demand the data from online outlets.

Google and Facebook have shared some fragmentary information with the Seattle commission, and through them Sanders is getting his own window into the online political marketplace. One outside group that supported the candidate who won the mayoral election, Jenny A. Durkan, spent $20,000 on one ad on a Google platform that the company displayed between 1 million and 5 million times.

“Just like at the national level, locally there is this whole segment of political advertising that is not transparent,” Sanders said.
…