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Washington is abuzz over what could prove to be the biggest diplomatic breakthrough of recent decades: a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, almost no concrete details are known about the encounter, which was announced without warning last week and took much of the world by surprise
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U.S. President Donald Trump unleashed new attacks Sunday on two of his favorite targets, opposition Democrats and the national news media.

In one of a string of Twitter comments, the U.S. leader contended that Democratic lawmakers were continuing “to obstruct the confirmation of hundreds of good and talented people who are needed to run our government.” He said there is a record number of vacancies in the State Department.

“Ambassadors and many others are being slow walked” in the confirmation process, he said. “Senate must approve NOW!”

However, 13 months into his presidency, Trump has failed to nominate officials to fill key openings, including his ambassador to South Korea, even though he has agreed to meet by May with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over the possible denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. There has been a wave of retirements among State Department officials, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has left top positions unfilled.

Trump complained about the national news media’s reports on polls showing him with “somewhat low” voter approval ratings, while he said they underplay the Republican-leaning Rasmussen Reports poll showing him “at around 50%.”

“They know they are lying when they say it. Turn off the show — FAKE NEWS!” Trump said.

The Rasmussen tracking survey on Friday actually showed voters disapproving of his White House performance by a 54-44 percent margin, not much better than Real Clear Politics’s national average of polls giving Trump a negative 53.7-40.9 standing.

Trump claimed news reports have failed to report a 5-0 Republican run of victories in special elections for seats in the House of Representatives since he took office, when the actual number is 5-1, and Republicans lost a Senate seat in Alabama to a Democrat for the first time in 25 years.

Trump also attacked a story in the “failing New York Times” about his possible hiring of another attorney to bolster his response to the ongoing criminal investigation of possible collusion between his 2016 campaign and Russia to help him defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. He described one of the writers of the story, Maggie Haberman, as “a Hillary flunky (who) knows nothing about me and is not given access.”
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President Donald Trump said Saturday that his controversial tariffs would bring back the U.S. steel industry, as he campaigned in Pennsylvania steel country for a Republican congressional candidate in a tight race.

Trump’s appearance was aimed at helping Republican Rick Saccone in a district Trump won overwhelmingly in 2016 as part of a narrow win in Pennsylvania.

Trump spent a lot of time talking about his own fortunes in a “Make America Great Again” rally for Saccone in an airport hangar at the Pittsburgh International Airport.

Economic boost forecast

A day after getting news that the U.S. economy produced 313,000 jobs last month, Trump said his policies were paying off. He said 25 percent tariffs on steel imports would help boost Pennsylvania’s economy.

Critics say the tariffs could trigger retaliatory trade measures and damage the U.S. economy. There are also doubts about how far Trump’s policies will go toward resuscitating the battered American steel industry.

“Your steel is coming back. It’s all coming back,” Trump told several thousand cheering supporters.

Trump vowed to fight any retaliatory trade measures by, for example, slapping taxes on imported European cars.

Trump also said he hoped to run against Oprah Winfrey, although the entertainer has ruled out a run despite pressure on her to seek the presidency.

“I’d love to beat Oprah. I know her weakness,” said Trump, without giving details.

Saccone is trying to win an election Tuesday in Pennsylvania’s 18th District to replace Republican Tim Murphy, who resigned last fall while enmeshed in a sex scandal.

Close race

Saccone is competing against Democrat Conor Lamb, and polls show a close race. Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway campaigned for Saccone on Thursday at a Lincoln Day dinner in Allegheny County.

A Saccone loss would be a blow to Trump, the first loss by Republicans of a seat in the House of Representatives since he took office in January 2017.

The results will not affect Republican control of the chamber.

The race could signal how much help Trump can provide Republican congressional candidates trying to keep control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate in midterm elections next November.

Typically the party that controls the White House loses seats in the U.S. Congress in the first election after a new president takes office. But Trump hopes a strong economy and tax cuts he pushed through Congress in December will help him beat the odds. 
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Russian President Vladimir Putin said he “couldn’t care less” if Russian citizens sought to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, insisting that the Kremlin had nothing to do with the efforts.

“Why have you decided the Russian authorities, myself included, gave anybody permission to do this?” Putin asked in an often-combative interview with NBC News aired late Friday.

U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller last month indicted 13 Russians and three Russian companies and charged them with running a social-media campaign to sow political divisions in the United States and help Donald Trump win the presidency.

“So what if they’re Russians?” Putin told NBC. “There are 146 million Russians. So what? I don’t care. I couldn’t care less…. They do not represent the interests of the Russian state.”

Putin said that the indicted individuals are “not working for the government” and suggested instead, “Perhaps some of them worked for one of the candidates.” 

The most well-known of the Russians indicted, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has ties to Putin and the state. Prigozhin is accused of funneling money into the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, which is often described as a notorious “troll factory” and which is also named in the indictment.

Despite Mueller’s 37-page indictment detailing charges against the Russians, Putin said he has seen no evidence that their actions broke any law. He was emphatic that he would never extradite the suspects to the United States to face trial.

“We in Russia cannot prosecute anyone as long as they have not violated Russian law,” he said.

Putin rejected allegations that Russia sought to interfere in the election, despite the conclusion last year by U.S. intelligence agencies that he personally directed a campaign to do so in 2016.

“Could anyone really believe that Russia, thousands of miles away…influenced the outcome of the election? Doesn’t that sound ridiculous, even to you?” Putin asked NBC interviewer Megyn Kelly.

“It’s not our goal to interfere. We do not see what goal we would accomplish by interfering,” Putin said.

The U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in January 2017 that in addition to aiding Trump, for whom they said the Kremlin had developed a clear preference, Russia’s aims included undermining faith in the U.S. electoral system and denigrating Trump’s main rival, Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton.

During the campaign, Clinton signaled that she would be tough on Russia over actions such as its interference in Ukraine, and Putin’s relationship with the former secretary of state has been marked by sometimes palpable tension. As he prepared to return to the presidency in 2012 after a stint as prime minister, Putin accused Clinton of fomenting anti-government protests in Russia.

Last month, U.S. intelligence chiefs said Russian attempts to meddle in U.S. politics are continuing unabated and pose a threat to midterm congressional elections in November.

Trump himself has repeatedly refused to condemn Russia over the alleged meddling and has said that he admires Putin as a strong leader.

Putin suggested in the interview that the reason Trump has seemed deferential to him is he knew upon taking office that he needed to develop a “cooperative relationship” with Russia and thus he needed to treat his counterpart with respect.

On another issue, Putin told NBC he has no plans to change the Russian Constitution to eliminate term limits on his presidency.

“I have never changed the constitution. I have no such plans today,” he said.

Some material for this article came from AFP.
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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday that the political reconciliation between Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga is “a very positive step,” adding that the United States supports Kenya’s political inclusion and democracy. Tillerson’s trip to Africa is his first as the top U.S. diplomat and promotes good governance, something high on his agenda. VOA State Department Correspondent Nike Ching reports from Nairobi, Kenya.
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The National Rifle Association (NRA), a U.S. gun rights group, is suing the state of Florida for enacting gun control legislation that raises the minimum age to buy rifles from 18 to 21.

Lawyers for the NRA are asking a federal judge to block the new age restriction, arguing that it violates the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Florida Governor Rick Scott, a Republican long allied with the NRA, signed the legislation earlier Friday after the Republican-controlled statehouse narrowly approved the measure.

The NRA insisted that the measure “punishes law-abiding gun owners for the criminal acts of a deranged individual.”

In addition to the new age restriction, the Florida bill also adds a three-day waiting period to buy long guns, which was previously only for handguns. It also bans bump stocks, a device that allow guns to mimic fully automatic fire.

The law also creates a so-called “guardian” program that enables school staff to carry handguns if they wish and if they complete law enforcement training.

The legislation comes three weeks after a shooter killed 17 people at Parkland, Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

“What I’m proud of in this state is that we reacted to a horrible situation,” Scott said after signing the bill Friday. He said the bill represents a compromise for people on both sides of the gun debate and balances “our individual rights with need for public safety.”

Student activists had campaigned for even tougher gun control restrictions, including a ban on assault-style weapons, which was not included in the final bill.

Authorities say the accused gunman, Nikolas Cruz, was 18 years old when he legally purchased the AR-15 assault-style rifle used in the massacre.

The NRA, which claims 5 million members, is one of the country’s most powerful lobbying groups for gun rights. Founded in 1871, it seeks to educate the public about firearms and defend U.S. citizens’ Second Amendment rights. It has directly lobbied for and against legislation since 1975.
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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is on the other side of the world on a week-long Africa tour, says President Donald Trump’s decision to hold talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un came from Trump himself, but he downplayed any suggestion that the State Department was blindsided by the announcement.

Speaking in Djibouti on Friday, the top U.S. diplomat said he spoke with the U.S. president by phone very early in the day.

“We had a good conversation; this is something he’s had on his mind for quite some time, so it was not a surprise in any way because I think this has long been something he’s expressed it openly before, about his willingness to meet with Kim Jong Un,” Tillerson told reporters.

Tillerson made his remarks one day after South Korean officials, standing in front of the White House, announced the summit between Trump and Kim. Tillerson sought to temper expectations for a diplomatic breakthrough with North Korea just hours earlier on Thursday.

“In terms of direct talks with the United States — and you asked negotiations, and we’re a long ways from negotiations — I think … we just need to be very clear-eyed and realistic about it,” Tillerson said.

When asked about what had changed in 24 hours, Tillerson made a distinction between “talks” with North Korea, and structured “negotiations.” Tillerson said what stood out for him was what he termed the dramatic shift in Kim Jong Un’s position.

“Really what changed was his posture in a fairly dramatic way that, in all honesty, came as a little bit of a surprise to us as well that he was so forward-leaning in his conversations with the delegation from South Korea,” the secretary said, referring to meetings this past week between a delegation from South Korea and the North Koreans in the North’s capital, Pyongyang.

Some former national security officials say it’s likely Tillerson was unaware such an announcement could come from Trump.

“We can only assume this announcement took the secretary by surprise because, earlier in the day, he [Tillerson] told reporters the United States was “a long way” from negotiations,” said Jeff Prescott, a senior national security aide to former President Barack Obama, told VOA on Friday.

“The secretary being out of the loop would fit a pattern of an erratic foreign policy that lacks process and rigor,” he added.

A number of North Korea and arms control experts have also expressed surprise at the announcement, saying they welcome talks, but are also concerned about the stakes of such a high-profile meeting, set to happen by May.

 

Prescott says the Trump administration must do all it can to turn this potential opening into an opportunity to advance U.S. interests, not Kim’s.

“That objective has been made all the more difficult because this administration confronts today’s news with one hand tied behind its back,” the former Obama administration official said. “We have no ambassador in Seoul—not even a nominee—and no senior State Department official charged with overseeing the North Korean nuclear challenge.”

Robert Einhorn with the Brookings Institution welcomed news of the summit and that North Korea will suspend nuclear and missile tests while talks are underway. But the senior fellow for the Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative said he has some reservations on the terms of such a summit.

“I am concerned by President Trump’s response to the invitation that he meet with Kim Jong Un — not that he agreed to meet but that he agreed to meet by May,” Einhorn said. “Such meetings have to be well prepared, and the president should have insisted on lower-level exploratory talks that could test North Korea’s seriousness before committing to a date.”

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce welcomed the summit announcement.

“Kim Jong Un’s desire to talk shows sanctions the administration has implemented are starting to work. We can pursue more diplomacy, as we keep applying pressure ounce by ounce,” the Republican lawmaker said Friday.

The ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, noted the president should rely on experts in other parts of his administration to carefully prepare for such a meeting.

 

“In the weeks before the summit, clear-eyed diplomacy and preparation will be vital, given the risks involved in such a high-stakes leaders meeting this early in a negotiation,” Schiff said in a statement. “It will require the president to rely on the expertise within the State Department, the intelligence community, and throughout the government, and not simply on his own estimation of his skills as a deal maker.'”

Former advisor to both Republican and Democratic secretaries of state Aaron David Miller told VOA the Trump administration currently lacks the experts on North Korea to prepare for direct talks.

 

“Right now, it is hard to identify any single individual or team of individuals that has both the negotiating experience and knowledge of the history, the cultural and political sensitivity, and knowledge of how the North Koreans behave and how they see the world,” he said.
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The National Rifle Association has given more than $7 million in grants to hundreds of U.S. schools in recent years, according to an Associated Press analysis, and few have shown any indication that they’ll follow the lead of businesses that are cutting ties with the group following last month’s massacre at a Florida high school.

Florida’s Broward County school district is believed to be the first to stop accepting NRA money after a gunman killed 17 people at one of its schools Feb. 14. The teen charged in the shooting had been on a school rifle team that received NRA funding.

Denver Public Schools followed Thursday, saying it will turn down several NRA grants that were to be awarded this year. But officials in many other districts say they have no plans to back away.

Shooting sports

The AP analysis of the NRA Foundation’s public tax records finds that about 500 schools received more than $7.3 million from 2010 through 2016, mostly through competitive grants meant to promote shooting sports. The grants have gone to a wide array of school programs, including the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, rifle teams, hunting safety courses and agriculture clubs.

“Whatever I think of the NRA, they’re providing legitimate educational services,” said Billy Townsend, a school board member in Florida’s Polk County district, whose JROTC programs received $33,000, primarily to buy air rifles. “If the NRA wanted to provide air rifles for our ROTC folks in the future, I wouldn’t have a problem with that.”

The grants awarded to schools are just a small share of the $61 million the NRA Foundation has given to a variety of local groups since 2010. But it has grown rapidly, increasing nearly fourfold from 2010 to 2014 in what some opponents say is a thinly veiled attempt to recruit the next generation of NRA members.

The NRA Foundation did not return calls seeking comment.

Broward announced Tuesday that it would no longer accept NRA grants, following more than a dozen major businesses that have split with the group in recent weeks. Companies including Delta Air Lines, MetLife insurance and the Hertz car agency have said they will no longer offer discounts to NRA members.

​Grants directed at youths

Annual reports from the pro-gun group say its grant program was started in 1992 and raises money through local Friends of NRA chapters. It says half the proceeds from local fundraisers go to local grants and half goes to the national organization. Tax records show roughly $19 million in grants going to the group’s Virginia headquarters in 2015 and in 2016.

Besides schools, other typical recipients include 4-H groups, which have received $12.2 million since 2010, Boy Scout troops and councils, which received $4 million, and private gun clubs. Overall, about half the grants go to programs directed at youths.

Nearly half of the 773 grants awarded to schools have gone to JROTC programs, which put students through a basic military curriculum and offer an array of small competitive clubs, like the rifle team at Broward’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. But JROTC leaders say few students ultimately enlist in the military, and the primary goal is to teach students skills like discipline and leadership.

“The safety that we’re teaching, the good citizenship that we’re teaching here, those are the things you don’t hear about,” said Gunnery Sgt. Jim Flores, a JROTC instructor at Cibola High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “The majority of people walk out of here awesome young men and women, respectful of authority, things of that nature. Not so much little tin soldiers.”

In some parts of the country, shooting clubs draw the same sort of following as any school sport. Bill Nolte, superintendent of the Haywood County district in North Carolina, says he still shows up at school sportsman’s club tourneys even though his son graduated. Starting in sixth grade, students can join the clubs to compete in shooting events, archery and orienteering. For many families, Nolte said, it’s just like any other weekend sports event.

“You take your lawn chair and your coffee in a thermos, and do much like you would do if you were going to a youth soccer or travel basketball or baseball event,” Nolte said, adding that NRA grants have helped buy firearms and ammunition and cover other costs that otherwise would fall to the parents. “We are constantly seeking revenue for sportsman’s club just like we do for cheerleading and track.”

Top grant recipients

Districts that tallied the largest sums of NRA money typically used it for JROTC programs, including $126,000 given to Albuquerque schools, $126,000 to Broward County and $125,000 to Anchorage, Alaska. The most awarded to a single district was $230,000, given to Roseville schools near Sacramento, California, which say much of the funding went toward ammunition and gear for trap-shooting teams.

Grants are often provided as equipment rather than cash, with schools given rifles, ammunition, safety gear and updates to shooting ranges. Nationally, about $1.3 million was provided as cash, while $6 million was provided through equipment, training and other costs.

Ron Severson, superintendent of the Roseville Joint Union High School District, says no parents have raised concerns over the funding, but administrators may reconsider it in the wake of the Florida shooting.

“After we get through this spring, we will probably take some time to assess how to move forward,” he said.

Like the program, not the NRA

School board members in some districts said they didn’t know about the grants. Donna Corbett, a Democrat on the school board in southern Indiana’s New Albany-Floyd County School Corporation, said she never heard about $65,000 that went to a JROTC program at one of the high schools. Corbett said she plans to raise the issue with her board but feels conflicted about it.

“I am not a big NRA fan, but I also realize that ROTC is a good program,” she said. “I’m not sure I would be willing to pull it to the detriment of the kids and their programs.”

In some ways, the issue reflects the nation’s deep political divide over guns. Nearly three-quarters of the schools that received grants are in counties that voted for President Donald Trump in the 2016 election, while a quarter are in counties that voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton, according to the AP analysis. Most are in medium-sized counties or rural areas, with few near major cities.

In Massachusetts, for example, known for its strict gun laws, no schools have received NRA grants since 2010, tax records show. Terry Ryan, a school board member in the Westford district northwest of Boston, says a local teacher considered applying for a grant in 2014, but the district ultimately didn’t pursue it.

“We were not interested in any way, shape or form endorsing the NRA or its philosophy,” Ryan said in an interview.

By contrast, parent Jana Cox in Louisiana’s Caddo Parish says few in the area would have a problem with the $24,000 in NRA grants that have gone to school JROTC programs.

“Everybody here has guns,” Cox said. “This is north Louisiana. You’ve got a lot of hunters and you’ve got a lot of guns.”

Grants keep programs afloat

Without NRA grants, some programs would struggle to stay afloat, officials say. For JROTC groups, which receive most of their money from their respective military branches, the grants have become more important as federal budgets have been cut. Programs at some high schools in Virginia, Missouri and other states have folded in recent years amid the pinch.

Lt. Colonel Ralph Ingles, head of the JROTC program at Albuquerque schools, says the Florida shooting has sparked a conversation about NRA grants, but he doesn’t anticipate cutting ties anytime soon.

“I don’t see anybody really backing down,” he said. “I think it’s just ingrained that we’re going to continue to move forward in a positive direction.”
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement of new tariffs on steel and aluminum is eliciting strong reactions at home and around the world.

America’s neighbors breathed a sigh of relief at being granted an exemption from the tariffs. Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said despite the concession, Canada would continue to push back.

“In recent days, we have worked energetically with our American counterparts to secure an exemption for Canada from these tariffs,” she said. “This work continues and it will continue until the prospect of these duties is fully and permanently lifted.”

Canada is the largest supplier of steel and aluminum to the United States. Freeland ridiculed Trump’s national security justification for the measure, saying: “That Canada could pose any kind of security threat to the United States is inconceivable.”

​Allies combative

Other allies took an equally combative stance. 

“Protectionism, tariffs never really work,” British trade minister Liam Fox said Thursday. “We can deal multilaterally with the overproduction of steel, but this is the wrong way to go about it,” he said.

As did Canada, Fox said it was “doubly absurd” to target Britain with steel tariffs on national security grounds when it only provided the U.S. with 1 percent of its imports and made steel for the American military.

France said it “regrets” Trump’s decision. 

“There are only losers in a trade war. With our EU partners, we will assess consequences on our industries and agree (to an) appropriate response,” Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire tweeted Thursday.

Last week, Le Maire had warned that any such measures by the U.S. would be “unacceptable” and called for a “strong, coordinated, united response from the EU.”

​Negotiate exemptions

During the announcement of the tariffs, the White House said that countries concerned by the tariffs could try to negotiate possible exemptions.

“The EU is a close ally of the U.S. and we continue to think that the EU must be exempted from these measures,” said EU Commissioner for Trade, Cecilia Malmstrom.

“I will demand more clarity on this issue in the days to come,” she said.

 

WATCH: Economists Warn of Escalating Trade War Following US Steel Tariffs

Invitation to a trade war

Others also panned the tariffs as an invitation to a trade war. 

“If you put tariffs against your allies, one wonders who the enemies are,” said the president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned, “Choosing a trade war is a mistaken prescription. The outcome will only be harmful. China would have to make a justified and necessary response.”

Brazil also said it planned such negotiations. 

“We will work to exclude Brazil from this measure,” acting Trade Minister Marcos Jorge told Reuters. Brazil is the United States’ No. 2 steel supplier.

​Mixed reactions on Capitol Hill

Many of the reactions around Washington were mixed.

“There are unquestionably bad trade practices by nations like China, but the better approach is targeted enforcement of those bad practices. Our economy and our national security are strengthened by fostering free trade with our allies,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said.

Senator Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, who is not planning to seek re-election, said he will “immediately” draft legislation that attempts to block the tariffs.

“These so-called ‘flexible tariffs’ are a marriage of two lethal poisons to economic growth: protectionism and uncertainty,” Flake said in a statement. “Trade wars are not won, they are only lost.”

But Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virgina said he was “excited” by the idea of tariffs.

“I’m encouraged, I really am, and I think it gives us a chance to basically reboot, get jobs back to West Virginia, back to America,” he said.
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The story of President Donald Trump’s alleged extramarital relationship with porn star Stormy Daniels has been an open secret in Washington’s media circles for weeks. 

Longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen has admitted paying Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, $130,000 to keep quiet about the alleged affair just before the 2016 presidential election. 

Celebrity magazine InTouch in February published an in-depth interview detailing Clifford’s story. But with denials and evasive silence, the story had remained on the sidelines of mainstream news until Wednesday when the White House appeared to acknowledge for the first time that Trump was involved in some way with the porn actress.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, during a Wednesday press briefing, tried to dismiss a question asked about the scandal by saying the president had already won a legal battle relating to the case. 

“This case has already been won in arbitration,” Sanders said, referring to a temporary restraining order issued last week by a private dispute-resolution firm that bars Clifford from talking publicly about her alleged affair with Trump and from suing the president.

Ruling ignored

Sanders added she was not aware that the president knew of the payment made to the actress.

Clifford ignored the order, filing a lawsuit Tuesday asserting that the nondisclosure agreement that accompanied the $130,000 payment was void because Trump never signed it. She contends in the lawsuit that she began “an intimate relationship” with Trump in the summer of 2006, and continued the relationship “well into the year 2007.”

According to the lawsuit, Trump’s lawyer filed the arbitration proceeding against Clifford last week to seek a restraining order to “shut her up” and “protect Mr. Trump.”

Trump ‘absolutely knew’

Clifford’s attorney, Michael Avenatti, told ABC News that Trump “absolutely knew” about the payment to his client. “Any suggestion that he didn’t know about it is, quite honestly, absurd,” he said.

Avenatti said the nondisclosure agreement was “sloppy” and referred to it as “amateur hour.”  

“He purposely did not sign it so that later he could have deniability as to its existence,” Avenatti told ABC News.

The nondisclosure agreement directed that $130,000 be paid into the trust account of Clifford’s then-attorney. In return, Clifford was not to disclose any confidential information about Trump or his sexual partners to anyone beyond the few individuals she had already talked to, or share any texts or photos from Trump. It also mandates “binding confidential arbitration of all disputes which may arise between them.”

The nondisclosure agreement also stipulates that any dispute be settled by a “solo, neutral arbitrator” at one of two private firms. One of those firms, Action Dispute Resolution Services, issued the restraining order against Clifford. 

David Dennison?

The agreement refers to Trump throughout as David Dennison, and Clifford as Peggy Peterson. In the side letter agreement, the true identity of “DD” is blacked out, but Avenatti says the individual is Trump. Each document includes a blank where “DD” is supposed to sign, but neither blank is signed.

The absence of the signatures is the basis for Clifford’s lawsuit filed Tuesday. Clifford claims that she is not bound by the nondisclosure agreement to stay quiet or go through arbitration because Trump never signed the agreement, rendering it unenforceable.

If the court agrees with Clifford and invalidates the agreement, Clifford will be free to bring her story involving the American president to the front pages of international news. 
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President Donald Trump is joking about Gary Cohn as he bids farewell to his departing economic adviser.

 

Trump says at a Cabinet meeting that will be Cohn’s last that the former Goldman Sachs executive “may be a globalist but I still like him.”

 

The president says Cohn may one day return to the White House after leaving to make what Trump’s calling another couple hundred million dollars.

 

Cohn announced this week that he’d be leaving the administration in the coming weeks. That announcement came amid a wave of staff departures and after Cohn failed to convince Trump that he should reconsider imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

At Thursday’s Cabinet meeting, Trump told Cohn: “I have a feeling you’ll be back.”
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President Donald Trump and his appointees have stocked federal agencies with ex-lobbyists and corporate lawyers who now help regulate the very industries from which they previously collected paychecks, despite promising as a candidate to drain the swamp in Washington.

A week after his January 2017 inauguration, Trump signed an executive order that bars former lobbyists, lawyers and others from participating in any matter they lobbied or otherwise worked on for private clients within two years before going to work for the government.

 

But records reviewed by The Associated Press show Trump’s top lawyer, White House counsel Don McGahn, has issued at least 24 ethics waivers to key administration officials at the White House and executive branch agencies.

 

Though the waivers were typically signed by McGahn months ago, the Office of Government Ethics disclosed several more on Wednesday.

 

One allows FBI Director Chris Wray “to participate in matters involving a confidential former client.” The three-sentence waiver gives no indication about what Wray’s conflict of interest might be or how it may violate Trump’s ethics order.

 

Before returning to the Justice Department last year, Wray represented clients that included big banks and other corporations as a partner at a white-glove law firm that paid him $9.2 million a year, according to his financial disclosure statement.

 

Asked about the waivers, Lindsay Walters, a White House spokeswoman, said, “In the interests of full transparency and good governance, the posted waivers set forth the policy reasons for granting an exception to the pledge.”

 

Trump’s executive order on ethics supplanted a more stringent set of rules put in place by president Barack Obama in 2009 to avoid conflicts of interests. Nearly 70 waivers were issued to executive branch officials during Obama’s eight years, though those were generally more narrowly focused and offered a fuller legal explanation for why the waiver was granted.

 

Craig Holman, who lobbies in Washington for stricter government ethics and lobbying rules on behalf of the advocacy group Public Citizen, said just five of the waivers under Obama went to former lobbyists, most whom had worked for nonprofit groups.

 

He was initially optimistic when Trump issued his executive order.

“I was very surprised and at the same time very hopeful that he was going to take his pledge to ‘drain the swamp’ seriously,” Holman said Wednesday. “It is now quite evident that the pledge was little more than campaign rhetoric. Not only are key provisions simply ignored and not enforced, when in cases where obvious conflicts of interest are brought into the limelight, the administration readily issues waivers from the ethics rules.”

 

Conflicts of interests

An analysis by the AP shows that nearly half of the political appointees hired at the Environmental Protection Agency under Trump have strong industry ties. Of 59 EPA hires tracked by the AP over the last year, about a third worked as registered lobbyists or lawyers for chemical manufacturers, fossil fuel producers and other corporate clients that raise the very type of revolving-door conflicts of interests that Trump promised voters he would eliminate.

 

Most of those officials have signed ethics agreements saying they would not participate in actions involving their former clients while working at the EPA. At least three have gotten waivers allowing them to do just that.

 

Erik Baptist, a top EPA lawyer, worked until 2016, as senior lawyer and registered federal lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, the national trade group for the oil and gas industry. According to disclosure reports, he lobbied Congress to pass legislation repealing the Renewable Fuel Standard, a program created more than a decade ago to set minimum production quotas for biofuels to be blended into gasoline, heating oil and jet fuel.

 

Baptist signed an ethics agreement pledging to recuse himself from any issues involving his former employer, including several lawsuits filed against the agency where he now works. But in August, McGahn granted him approval to advise EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt on issues surrounding the renewable fuel law.

McGahn wrote that he was exempting Baptist from the ethics pledge because “his deep understanding of the RFS program and the regulated industry, make him the ideal person to assist the administrator and his senior leadership team to make EPA and its renewable fuel programs more efficient and effective.”

 

Pruitt, a Republican who was closely aligned with the oil and gas industry as an elected official in his home state of Oklahoma, proposed modest cuts last summer to production quotas for biofuels that include ethanol, despite promises from Trump to leave the Renewable Fuel Standard alone.

 

That triggered bipartisan outrage among members of Congress from major corn-growing states, who threatened last fall to block Senate votes on the administration’s environmental nominees unless Pruitt backed down.

 

“Scott Pruitt has called on yet another fossil-fuel industry lobbyist … to help him tear down important protections for the American people,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat on the Senate Environment Committee. “And the White House plays along, granting the lobbyist an ethics waiver.”

 

Jeffrey M. Sands previously worked as a top lobbyist for Syngenta, a major pesticide manufacturer. Following a request from the EPA, McGahn determined it was “in the public interest” to allow Sands to work as Pruitt’s senior adviser for agriculture.

 

Dennis “Lee” Forsgren, the deputy assistant administrator helping oversee the EPA’s enforcement of clean water regulations, was allowed to work on the EPA’s hurricane response efforts involving the Miccosukee, a Native American tribe in Florida for whom he was a registered lobbyist up until 2016.

 

“All EPA employees get ethics briefings when they start and continually work with our ethics office regarding any potential conflicts they may encounter while employed here,” EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said when asked whether the ethics waivers violate the spirt of Trump’s executive order.

 

The Treasury Department asked McGahn for three waivers. Anthony Sayegh, appointed as the assistant secretary for public affairs, previously worked as a Fox News contributor. His waiver allows him to “participate in matters involving his former client.”

 

Brian Callahan, the department’s top lawyer at Treasury, was granted a waiver concerning issues involving his former position as general counsel at Cooper and Kirk PLLC. The law firm represents Fairholme Funds, which recently filed a lawsuit against the Treasury Department and the Fair Housing Finance Agency.

 

McGahn’s waiver allows Callahan to participate in discussions about policy decisions pertaining to housing finance reform, even though “some of these discussions could at some point touch upon issues that might impact the litigation.”

 

The State Department got five waivers. The former law firm of Edward T. McMullen, the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, represented Boeing. The Swiss government recently announced its intent to purchase military equipment and accept bids from American companies.

 

Another waiver allows communications director Heather Nauert to work with employees of Fox News even though she used to work as a broadcast journalist for the network. Nauert is identified in the waiver, which was heavily redacted before release, by her legal name, Heather Norby.

 

At the Pentagon, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs Randall G. Schriver got a waiver allowing him to “participate in any particular matter involving specific parties,” including his former client: the Japanese government.

 

Health and Human Services asked for waivers for senior counselor to the secretary Keagan Lenihan, a registered lobbyist who recently worked for a pharmaceutical and health services company and for chief of staff Lance Leggitt, who recently lobbied on behalf of his law firm’s health law practice group.

Agriculture Department policy adviser Kailee Tkacz is allowed to “participate personally and substantially in matters regarding the Dietary Guidelines for Americans,” a guide that offers nutritional information and recommendations.

 

McGahn’s waiver didn’t offer much detail into the potential conflict Tkacz’s appointment would pose. But other records show she most recently served as food policy director for the Corn Refiners Association, a trade organization representing producers of corn starch, corn oil and high fructose corn syrup.

 

Before that, she lobbied on behalf of SNAC International, a trade association for snack food manufacturers.

 
…

One of Donald Trump’s former campaign managers has arrived on Capitol Hill for a closed-door interview with the House Intelligence Committee as part of its Russia investigation.

 

Corey Lewandowski led Trump’s presidential campaign for nearly a year. He was fired before the November 2016 election and held no official positions after he was let go. But he’s remained close to Trump and some White House officials, and has been a prominent defender of Trump on television.

 

Lewandowski first appeared before the committee in January. He refused to answer questions about things that happened after his time on the campaign, according to the committee’s top Democrat, Adam Schiff of California.

 

 
…

One day after hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants formally lost temporary protection from deportation, Republican Jeff Flake of Arizona attempted to revive U.S. Senate debate on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which had provided temporary work and study permits to beneficiaries.

“There are teachers, students and members of the military who are DACA recipients. They are friends and colleagues who represent the very best ideas of America,” Flake said Tuesday on the Senate floor. “That’s why I’ve introduced legislation to extend DACA protections for three years and provide for three years of increased border funding.”

Another Republican, James Lankford of Oklahoma, objected to Flake’s motion, shelving the issue once again.

“If Congress does a temporary patch once, it’ll do it 20 times again,” Lankford said.

Last year, President Donald Trump set a March 5 expiration date for DACA, an Obama administration program protecting immigrants brought illegally into the country as children. Trump challenged Congress to enact a permanent fix granting the immigrants legal status. Lawmakers of both political parties back the goal, but Congress has yet to act.

In the meantime, federal court battles over Trump’s DACA order have prevented deportations from going forward — a reprieve for so-called “Dreamers” that could end at any time.

“It’s a politically tricky issue for Republicans,” said political analyst Molly Reynolds of the Washington-based Brookings Institution. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan “are really hesitant to expose those divides within the party. I also think they are hesitant to be seen as giving a win to Democrats,” she added.

On Twitter and in recent public speeches, Trump has blamed Democrats for Washington’s inaction.

“We’re trying to have a DACA victory for everybody, by the way, and the Democrats are nowhere to be found,” the president said Wednesday in an address to Hispanic business leaders.

Democrats insist they remain ready to make a deal with Republicans on immigration and border security, noting it was Trump who, in January, appeared to endorse a bipartisan proposal with a DACA fix, then rejected it days later.

“This humanitarian crisis in this country, and I call it that, was created by President Trump on September 5,” Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois said. “He has failed to agree to six different bipartisan proposals to solve the problem he created. And now these lives hang in the balance.”

Observers note that, while Democrats are in the minority in Congress, they are not without clout, especially in the Senate, where a three-fifths majority is required for most legislation to advance.

“It’s a matter of, do Democrats want to keep pushing the issue?” Reynolds said.

Democrats could apply pressure for action on immigration by withholding votes later this month on a yearlong government funding bill. They already used that tactic earlier this year, causing a brief federal shutdown, and Democratic leaders have shown little appetite for a repeat.

“We’re going to keep fighting hard for DACA, but we need to hear something from Republicans, because they’re the ones who have thwarted it time and time again,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.

Court challenges to Trump’s DACA decision have, in effect, extended the deadline for Congress to act. Political analysts believe that makes it more likely that Dreamers will remain in legal limbo through the November midterm elections.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to impose tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum has met criticism from his Republican allies in Congress, many of whom worry the measures could trigger a trade war that damages U.S. businesses. But the president does have supporters among some Senate Democrats from states where voters are concerned about the long-term loss of American manufacturing jobs.

“This welcome action is long overdue for shuttered steel plants across Ohio and steelworkers who live in fear that their jobs will be the next victims of Chinese cheating,” Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, said in a statement released after the plan was announced. “If we fail to stand up for steel jobs today, China will come after other jobs up and down the supply chain tomorrow.”

American labor unions have also broadly favored Trump’s proposed tariffs, saying they have been complaining for years that foreign countries frequently subsidize their own steel industries, putting American competitors at a disadvantage. 

Economists have been mostly critical of the plan, saying that overall it will hurt American manufacturers, some of whom may be targeted by trading partners for retaliatory sanction. They argue that the benefits to steel and aluminum workers are outweighed by job losses among Americans in other industries. 

Tariffs in focus in special election 

A test of how much the issue is resonating with American voters comes next week, when voters in Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district, vote in a special election to fill a vacated seat. 

Many voters are looking to the president to fulfill his campaign promise of protecting manufacturing jobs in America’s heartland.

The race for the seat left vacant by Rep. Tim Murphy’s sex scandal is coming down to the wire between Republican candidate Rick Saccone and Democrat Conor Lamb.

Saccone’s campaign endorsed Trump’s tariff plan in a statement, saying “If other countries aren’t playing by the rules and tariffs are needed to protect steel and aluminum jobs in Southwestern Pennsylvania, Rick would support those measures.”Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senator Bob Casey also voiced his support for the president’s plan in a Facebook statement Thursday.

“I commend the President for announcing his intent to take action to protect our steelworkers from countries, like China, that cheat on trade. I have repeatedly called on this and previous Administrations to aggressively enforce our trade laws. For years, foreign countries have been dumping steel into our markets and costing our workers their jobs and suppressing their wages,” he wrote.

But Trump’s plan to impose the new tariffs prompted White House Chief Economic Advisor Gary Cohn to resign Tuesday.

McConnell, Ryan concerned

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan also expressed their concerns to the president, urging him to target the tariffs against specific countries to avoid a potential trade war.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told cable news network CNBC Wednesday the administration is not seeking a trade war. 

“We’re going to have very sensible relations with our allies,” said Ross. “We hope and we believe that at the end of the day, there will be a process of working with the other countries that are our friends.”

Trump dismissed concerns about a trade war during a joint press conference with the Swedish prime minister Tuesday.

“When we’re behind on every single country, trade wars aren’t so bad,” he told reporters. “In some cases we lose on trade plus we give them military where we’re subsidizing them tremendously. So, not only do we lose on trade, we lose on military.”

The administration is considering the new tariffs under a so-called “232 report.” It allows the president to impose trade quotes or tariffs if a probe finds imports threaten national security.

‘National security’

“It’s about our economy,” Vice President Mike Pence said of the need to enact tariffs, during a February meeting with lawmakers. “It’s about our national security.”

A March 7 Politico/Morning Consult poll of 2,000 registered voters, found that 65 percent of Republicans support the president’s plan.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Wednesday the administration was still on pace to fully roll-out the tariffs at the end of this week.
…

Democrats flexed their muscles in the first primary voting of the 2018 midterm congressional election cycle in Texas on Tuesday.  More than one million Democrats cast ballots in the Senate primary for U.S. Senate, the highest number since 1994, the last time Democrats were able to win a statewide race in a state that has remained firmly in the Republican column ever since.

Republicans also delivered a strong turnout showing on Tuesday.  More than 1.5 voters cast ballots in the Republican primaries, setting a new record for a non-presidential election.

The Texas primary voting marked the official beginning of the 2018 congressional election campaign when all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and about one-third of the 100 Senate seats will be on the ballot.  This year’s midterm election is fraught with huge political consequences for President Donald Trump, his Republican allies in Congress and opposition Democrats.

One trend already apparent from Texas is a huge jump in the number of women candidates, especially Democrats, who are running for Congress and state offices around the country this year.  “We feel like it is time for our voices to be heard and for us to have a seat at the table,” said Democratic congressional candidate Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, who will now face a runoff election in May for her party’s nomination.

Trump is focus

Democrats have made opposition to Trump a central theme in their bid to win back control of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

But Republican voters also turned out in force in the Texas primaries this week and many are standing by the president.  “He is doing a lot of good for this country and I hope they see that we have people of all ethnicities here supporting our president,” said Trump supporter Jennifer Drabbant.  She helped organize a pro-Trump rally this past weekend in Austin.

Trump is also warning his supporters not to be complacent this year.

“You know, you are sitting back, you’re watching television and saying, ‘Ah, maybe I don’t have to vote today.  We just won the presidency.’  And then we get clobbered and we can’t let that happen,” Trump told attendees at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington.

Despite a politically rocky first year in office, Trump seems to have solidified Republicans behind him.  “The more strongly a voter identifies with the Republican Party, the more strongly he or she tends to approve of Donald Trump,” said Brookings Institution analyst Bill Galston.  “And so in a very real sense, I think the Republican Party is now the party of Trump.”

But Trump’s success with his base may have come at the expense of his overall approval rating, which remains historically low.  And that is a worry for many Republican candidates.  “As the president goes down, the trust and desire to vote for Republicans goes down, and that is a trend that is just quietly building against the Republicans,” said Quinnipiac pollster Tim Malloy in a Skype interview.  “They have a very rough midterm ahead.”

Bucking history

Even veteran Republicans like Republican National Committeeman Morton Blackwell of Virginia has noticed the energy among Democrats.  “There are signs that the Democrats as a movement rather than as a party are doing, I think, more than Republicans are doing to generate grass roots support.”

In another sign of what could be a Democratic surge this year, several Republicans have already decided to retire from Congress.  “There are many members who are retiring because of what the political landscape looks like,” said John Hudak of Brookings.  “There are many more targets among Republican-held seats than Democratic-held seats.”

Democratic victories in November could stall Trump’s agenda in Congress, setting the stage for a difficult two years for the president leading up to the next presidential election in 2020.

Republicans are hoping to confound history in this year’s elections.  The president’s party loses an average of 30 seats in a midterm election, and that number can go higher if the president’s approval rating is below 50 percent.  Of late, Trump’s approval has averaged about 40 percent.

Democrats need a gain of 24 seats to retake control of the House, and a pickup of two Senate seats to reclaim a majority in that body.

 
…

Senior adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, will visit Mexico on Wednesday and meet President Enrique Pena Nieto, the Mexican foreign ministry said, after a ratcheting up of tensions over trade and plans for a border wall.

Late last month, Trump and Pena Nieto postponed plans for the Mexican leader’s first visit to the White House, after a testy phone call involving the U.S. leader’s push to make Mexico pay for a border wall.

Trump has repeatedly insisted Mexico must pay for the wall, a stance Mexican leaders have just as often rejected.

Kushner is a top foreign policy adviser as well as the president’s son-in-law but has recently lost access to the most valued U.S. intelligence report, U.S. officials told Reuters last week.

Accompanied on his visit by other U.S. diplomats and security officials, the foreign ministry statement said Kushner will also meet Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray, who has often visited him in the White House, most recently to try to broker a Trump-Pena Nieto meeting.

The bilateral relationship was again rocked last weekend as Trump announced steel and aluminum tariffs that he later described served as an incentive to reach a favorable re-negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The tariff announcement came during the latest round of talks to update NAFTA, which wrapped up in the Mexican capital on Monday.
…

A porn star who has said she had sex with President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to invalidate a nondisclosure agreement that she signed days before the 2016 presidential election, which prevented her from discussing the alleged sexual encounters.

 

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleges that the agreement is “null and void and of no consequence” because Trump didn’t personally sign it.

 

Adult film actress Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, said she wanted to go public with the details of her alleged sexual relationship with Trump in the weeks leading up to the election, according to the lawsuit. Clifford and Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen signed the nondisclosure agreement on Oct. 28, 2016.

 

Clifford alleges that she began an “intimate relationship” with Trump in 2006 and that it continued “well into the year 2007,” according to the lawsuit. She said the relationship included encounters in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, and Beverly Hills, California.

 

Trump married his current wife, Melania Trump, in 2005.

 

Clifford has claimed she had sex with Trump once and then carried on a subsequent yearslong platonic relationship. She has also, through a lawyer, denied the two had an affair. Cohen has denied there was ever an affair.

 

Cohen has said he paid the porn actress $130,000 out of his own pocket as part of the agreement. He has also said that “neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly.”

 

The lawsuit charges that the “hush agreement” is legally invalid because it was only signed by Clifford and Cohen. The agreement refers to Trump as David Dennison and Clifford as Peggy Peterson, but an attached exhibit details their true identities.

 

Clifford’s lawsuit also alleges that Trump and Cohen “aggressively sought to silence Ms. Clifford as part of an effort to avoid her telling the truth, thus helping to ensure he won the Presidential Election.”

 

“To be clear, the attempts to intimidate Ms. Clifford into silence and ‘shut her up’ in order to ‘protect Mr. Trump’ continue unabated,” the lawsuit said. Clifford alleges that as recently as last week, Trump’s attorney tried to initiate an arbitration proceeding against her.

 

Neither Cohen nor the White House immediately responded to requests for comment Tuesday evening.

 

NBC News first reported the existence of the lawsuit.
…

The Trump administration Tuesday launched a new effort under the direction of presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner to overcome years of problems with electronic medical records and make them easier for patients to use.

 

Medicare will play a key role, eventually enabling nearly 60 million beneficiaries to securely access claims data and share that information with their doctors.

 

Electronic medical records were ushered in with great fanfare but it’s generally acknowledged they’ve fallen short. Different systems don’t communicate. Patient portals can be clunky to navigate. Some hospitals still provide records on compact discs that newer computers can’t read.

 

The government has already spent about $30 billion to subsidize the adoption of digital records by hospitals and doctors. It’s unclear how much difference the Trump effort will make. No timetables were announced Tuesday.

 

The government-wide MyHealthEData initiative will be overseen by the White House Office of American Innovation, which is headed by Kushner. His stewardship of a broad portfolio of domestic and foreign policy duties has recently been called into question due to his inability to obtain a permanent security clearance.

 

Medicare administrator Seema Verma said her agency is working on a program called Blue Button 2.0, with the goal of providing beneficiaries with secure access to their claims data, shareable with their doctors. Software developers are already working on apps, using mock patient data.

 

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is also reviewing its requirements for insurers, so that government policy will encourage the companies to provide patients with access to their records.

 

“It’s our data, it’s our personal health information, and we should control it,” Verma said, making her announcement at a health care tech conference in Las Vegas.

 

The longstanding bipartisan goal of paying for health care value — not sheer volume of services — will not be achieved until patients are able to use their data to make informed decisions about their treatment, Verma added.

Independent experts said the administration has identified a key problem in the health care system.

 

“This is a good first step, but several key challenges need to be addressed,” said Ben Moscovitch, a health care technology expert with the Pew Charitable Trusts.

 

For example, the claims data that Medicare wants to put in the hands of patients sometimes lacks key clinical details, said Moscovitch. If the patient had a hip replacement, claims data may not indicate what model of artificial hip the surgeon used.

 

“Claims data alone are insufficient,” said Moscovitch. “They are incomplete, and they lack key data.”

The administration could address that by adding needed information to the claims data, he explained.
…

A former Trump campaign aide spent much of the day promising to defy a subpoena from special counsel Robert Mueller, even throwing down the challenge to “arrest me,” then backed off his defiance by saying he would probably cooperate in the end.

In an interview Monday night with The Associated Press, Sam Nunberg said he was angry over Mueller’s request to have him appear in front of a grand jury and turn over thousands of emails and other communications with other ex-officials, among them his mentor Roger Stone. But he predicted that, in the end, he’d find a way to comply.

 

“I’m going to end up cooperating with them,” he said.

 

It was a reversal from his tone throughout the day, when he lashed out at Trump and his campaign and threatened to defy Mueller in a series of interviews.

 

“Why do I have to do it?” Nunberg told CNN of the subpoena. “I’m not cooperating,” he said later as he challenged officials to charge him.

 

In the earlier interviews, Nunberg said he thought Mueller may already have incriminating evidence on Trump directly, although he would not say what that evidence might be.

 

“I think he may have done something during the election,” Nunberg told MSNBC of the president, “but I don’t know that for sure.” He later told CNN that Mueller “thinks Trump is the Manchurian candidate.” A reference drawn from a Cold War novel and film, a “Manchurian candidate” is an American brainwashed or otherwise compromised to work on behalf of an adversarial government.

 

Shortly after Nunberg lobbed the first allegation, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders rebuffed him during the White House press briefing.

 

“I definitely think he doesn’t know that for sure because he’s incorrect. As we’ve said many times before, there was no collusion with the Trump campaign,” Sanders said. “He hasn’t worked at the White House, so I certainly can’t speak to him or the lack of knowledge that he clearly has.”

 

Nunberg also said he thinks former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page, a key figure in the Russia investigation, worked with the Kremlin. “I believe that Carter Page was colluding with the Russians,” Nunberg said on CNN. “That Carter Page is a weird dude.”

 

Page called Nunberg’s accusations “laughable” in a comment to The Associated Press.

 

The Justice Department and FBI obtained a secret warrant in October 2016 to monitor Page’s communications. His activities during the presidential campaign that raised concerns included a July 2016 trip to Moscow.

 

In the interviews, Nunberg said he believes the president probably knew about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between his eldest son, top campaign staff and a team of Russians, which Trump has denied. And he blamed Trump for the investigation into Russia meddling, telling MSNBC that he was “responsible for this investigation … because he was so stupid.”

 

A spokesman for the special counsel’s office declined to comment.

 

During his afternoon tirades, Nunberg detailed his interview with Mueller’s investigators, mocking them for asking such questions as if he had heard Russian being spoken in Trump Tower. He then said he would reject a sweeping demand from Mueller for communications between him and top Trump advisers.

 

“I think it would be funny if they arrested me,” Nunberg said on MSNBC.

 

He later added on CNN: “I’m not going to the grand jury. I’m not going to spend 30 hours going over my emails. I’m not doing it.”

 

Nunberg said he’d already blown a 3 p.m. Monday deadline to turn over the requested communications. He said he’d traded numerous emails a day with Stone and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, and said spending 80 hours digging through his inbox to find them all was unreasonable.

 

But in his call with the AP, Nunberg said he might be more willing to comply if Mueller’s team limits the scope of its request.

 

“I’m happy if the scope changes and if they send me a subpoena that doesn’t include Carter Page” he said, insisting the two had never spoken.

 

He also said he believes the only reason he’s being asked to testify before the grand jury is to provide information that would be used against Stone, a longtime Trump adviser, which he says he won’t do.

 

Nunberg is the first witness in the ongoing federal Russia investigation to openly promise to defy a subpoena. But he’s not the first to challenge Mueller: Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort filed a lawsuit in January challenging Mueller’s authority to indict him.

 

It’s unclear how much Nunberg would know about the inner workings of the Trump campaign or the White House. He never worked at the White House and was jettisoned from the Trump campaign early on, in August 2015, after racist social media postings surfaced. Trump filed a $10 million lawsuit against Nunberg in July 2016, accusing him of violating a nondisclosure agreement, but they settled the suit one month later.

 

John Dean, a White House counsel to President Richard Nixon during Watergate, tweeted Monday that Nunberg can’t flatly refuse to comply with a grand jury subpoena.

 

“This is not Mr. Nunberg’s decision, and he will be in criminal contempt for refusing to show up. He can take the Fifth Amendment. But he can’t tell the grand Jury to get lost. He’s going to lose this fight.”

 

Nunberg appeared pleased by his performance, telling the AP that he was “doing something I’ve never seen.”

 

“They don’t know what’s going on,'”he said, speculating that Mueller would not appreciate his comments and suggesting the authorities might send police to his apartment.

 

His usual cockiness, however, did appear, at times, to ebb. At the end of an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Nunberg asked whether the TV anchor thought he should instead cooperate with Mueller.

 

“If it were me, I would,” Tapper responded, telling Nunberg: “Sometimes life and special prosecutors are not fair, I guess.”

 

 

 
…

Two years ago, just one Texas Democrat volunteered to run against Republican Rep. John Culberson in a metro Houston congressional district. This year, not even that failed Democrat’s double-digit loss could scare seven Democrats away from jumping in the race.

 

As primary season opens on Tuesday with the Texas vote, Democrats across the country are enjoying a bumper crop of candidates. It’s the latest sign of enthusiasm — like massive women’s marches and victories in state races around the country — heading into midterm elections that look increasingly hopeful for the opposition party.

 

But the abundance of volunteers also comes with a reality check: The crowded primaries are giving the party’s ideological divide a full public airing and could give party leaders less control over who carries the mantle in November.

 

Conversations with more than a dozen Democratic candidates, party officials and strategists found confidence that a glut of crowded primaries won’t damage the party’s overall prospects for a big November. Yet Democrats acknowledged the lively nomination fights could result in victories for candidates with little experience, scant scrutiny or political views that are out of step with general electorate.

 

That’s largely because it’s the party’s left flank that has provided much of the enthusiasm since President Donald Trump’s election capped nearly a decade of Democrats’ losing more than 1,000 federal and state offices.

 

“Just any blue won’t do,” says Nina Tuner, a former Ohio legislator who leads Our Revolution, the spinoff of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. Like Sanders, the group calls for a $15 minimum wage, free public university tuition and a national health insurance plan.

 

“People are not just voting for people because they are Democrats,” Turner adds. “They want to vote for people who are fighting for their values.”

 

In Washington, though, there’s a hint of worry about what kinds of candidates can win in Republican-leaning areas Democrats may need to regain majorities on Capitol Hill and dent GOP advantages in some statehouses. Even in Democratic strongholds, where partisan control isn’t at play, the battles will help determine the direction of the party.

 

The tensions will get their next test in Texas with primaries Tuesday.

 

The party has candidates in every Texas congressional district — 36 of them — for the first time in 24 years. There are 25 contested Democratic primaries, including in each of the five districts that appear on national Democrats’ target list of 98 GOP-held seats. Democrats need to flip 24 seats to win control of the House.

 

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee raised eyebrows in Culberson’s district when it publicly released a memo calling one of its seven candidates, Laura Moser, a “Washington insider” who’d once declared she’d “rather have my teeth pulled out without anesthesia” than live in Paris, Texas.

 

Meredith Kelly, a party spokeswoman, explained the move saying the committee wants to “ensure that there’s a competitive Democrat on the ballot” in November, the implication being that Culberson and Republicans would use the same material to make Moser unelectable.

 

Local members of Our Revolution, Sanders’ political organization, endorsed Moser soon after the party memo surfaced.

 

For her part, Moser turned the flap into a television ad blasting Washington for meddling.

 

Meanwhile, in California, the state Democratic Committee ensured an internal fight when it snubbed Sen. Dianne Feinstein after 26 years in office and instead endorsed her more liberal Democratic rival.

Feinstein still leads in the polls and may not be seriously threatened in California’s so-called jungle primary system, which places all candidates, regardless of party, on the same first ballot, with the top two vote-getters advancing to a second round of voting. But the environment within the party still forces Feinstein to withstand a challenge from the left.

 

The same system that may help Feinstein, however, means a free-for-all among Democrats running for California congressional seats. The party is seriously targeting about a half-dozen Republican-held seats, with multiple Democrats running for each. Five signed up for retiring Republican Rep. Darrell Issa’s seat in San Diego County. Seven are taking on Rep. Mimi Walters in Orange County, while eight want to unseat Republican Dana Rohrbacher in a nearby district.

 

The same party committee that endorsed Feinstein’s Democratic challenger opted to stay out of the crowded House races.

 

Tom Perriello, who ran for Virginia governor in 2017 with backing from party liberals, says intense primaries, crowded or otherwise, don’t have to spell doom the winner. “I think people try to impose the 2016 Bernie-Hillary divide” on every matchup, he said, referring to the presidential nominating fight between Hillary Clinton and Sanders.

 

It’s rarely that simple. Perriello lost the Democratic nomination to Ralph Northam, viewed as the more moderate choice.

 

“We agreed on 90 percent of things,” Perriello says, remembering “a respectful primary based on ideas.” Afterward, Perriello campaigned for Northam and Virginia legislative hopefuls. Northam won by 9 percentage points, while a slate of liberal nominees changed the direction of the Virginia Assembly.

 

Periello says the Virginia results show there’s room in the party — even in the same primary — for a range of philosophies and styles.

 

In the Texas 7th, one of Moser’s opponents agrees.

 

“Even though it’s a crowded Democratic primary field, I think the upside of that is a lot of people working to turn out the vote and telling people this is a district where people can win,” says Lizzie Pannill Fletcher. “We all agree that our opponent is John Culberson.”
…

Washington became the first state Monday to set up its own net-neutrality requirements after U.S. regulators repealed Obama-era rules that banned internet providers from blocking content or impairing traffic.

“We know that when D.C. fails to act, Washington state has to do so,” Gov. Jay Inslee said before signing the measure that lawmakers passed with bipartisan support. “We know how important this is.”

The Federal Communications Commission voted in December to gut U.S. rules that meant to prevent broadband companies such as Comcast, AT&T and Verizon from exercising more control over what people watch and see on the internet.

Because the FCC prohibited state laws from contradicting its decision, opponents of the Washington law have said it would lead to lawsuits.

Inslee said he was confident of its legality, saying “the states have a full right to protect their citizens.”

Oregon law has not been signed 

The new law also requires internet providers to disclose information about their management practices, performance and commercial terms. Violations would be enforceable under the state’s Consumer Protection Act. 

While several states introduced similar measures this year seeking to protect net neutrality, only Oregon and Washington passed bills. But Oregon’s measure would’t put any new requirements on internet providers. 

It would stop state agencies from buying internet service from any company that blocks or prioritizes specific content or apps, starting in 2019. It’s unclear when Oregon’s measure would be signed into law.

Washington state was among more than 20 states and the District of Columbia that sued in January to try and block the FCC’s action. There are also efforts by Democrats to undo the move in Congress. 

Governors in five states — Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, Montana and Vermont — have signed executive orders related to net-neutrality issues, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Expect new rules by mid-June 

Big telecom companies have said net neutrality rules could undermine investment in broadband and introduce uncertainty about what are acceptable business practices. Net-neutrality advocates say the FCC decision would harm innovation and make it harder for the government to crack down on internet providers who act against consumer interests.

The FCC’s new rules are not expected to go into effect until later this spring. Washington’s law will take effect mid-June.

Messages left with the Broadband Communications Association of Washington, which opposed the bill, were not immediately returned.

 

 

            
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U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is hoping to defuse an issue that has dogged her for years, her claims of Native American heritage, ahead of a possible run for president in 2020.

Last month, Warren addressed the National Congress of American Indians, trying to cast her family’s story in the larger context of challenges facing native peoples. The prominent Democrat has also met with tribal leaders, signed on to legislation supported by Native American activists, and called on Republican President Donald Trump to nominate a director for the Indian Health Service.

The push is in part a rebuttal to Trump, who has repeatedly referred to Warren as “Pocahontas” to try to discredit a potential rival in 2020 by calling into question her claims of heritage.

“Every time someone brings up my family’s story, I’m going to use it to lift up the story of your families and your communities,” Warren told those gathered for the Washington event.

The story is largely consistent with what the Oklahoma native has said for years, including during a 2012 interview with The Associated Press, when she said she and her brothers were told her paternal grandparents didn’t want her father to marry her mother because she “was part Cherokee and part Delaware.”

In the speech, Warren, who doesn’t claim citizenship in a tribe, said “my mother’s family was part Native American. And my daddy’s parents were bitterly opposed to their relationship. So, in 1932, when Mother was 19 and Daddy had just turned 20, they eloped.”

Many Native Americans have welcomed Warren’s advocacy.

Cheryl Andrews-Maltais, chairwoman of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), introduced Warren at the gathering as “a formidable force and an Indian country ally.”

“She truly understands Indian country and what sovereignty really means,” Andrews-Maltais said.

Cedric Cromwell is tribal council chairman for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, which has tried for years to persuade federal officials that it qualifies to have more than 300 acres of land in Massachusetts taken into trust.

“We especially appreciate her remarks about how this government owes its native citizens ‘a fighting chance to build stronger communities and a brighter future — starting with a more prosperous economic future on tribal lands,’” Cromwell said.

Not all Native American advocates embrace Warren’s story.

Rebecca Nagle, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation living in Oklahoma, has said Warren needs to apologize for her “false claims,” saying there’s no evidence the former Harvard Law School faculty member has Native American heritage.

“How can a former law professor at the most prestigious university in the country examine the mountain of evidence about her own family and not come to the only logical conclusion?” Nagle wrote in an opinion piece in The Boston Globe following Warren’s speech.

Warren’s public embrace of her family story could carry political risks — but not necessarily from Trump. Rob Gray, a Republican political analyst, said the criticism could hurt Warren more if it came from a rival Democrat.

“Her Indian heritage claims have the potential to be a wildfire, but it will take one of her primary opponents raising it to strike the match,” Gray said. “It comes down to authenticity and whether she’s believable and trustworthy.”

Warren has been discussed as a possible 2020 presidential candidate but has said she is focused on winning re-election in November.

But Warren is also maintaining a national profile, butting heads with Trump on issues from health care to immigration, while stockpiling more than $14 million in her campaign account and donating hundreds of thousands to Democratic state committees and candidates through her PAC for a Level Playing Field.

Warren’s playbook has precedent. Think Mitt Romney’s 2007 speech to quell concerns about his Mormon faith or Obama’s 2008 address about race.

For her critics, Warren’s speech did little to quell suspicions she used claims of Native American heritage to give herself a leg up early in her academic career.

“Only Elizabeth Warren can answer why she assumed a Native American identity as she was climbing the career ladder in academia,” said Beth Lindstrom, a Republican hoping to unseat Warren.

Warren has acknowledged telling Harvard and her previous employer, the University of Pennsylvania, of her Native American heritage, but only after she had been hired.

Harvard Law School professor Charles Fried, who helped recruit Warren, has called any suggestion she enjoyed an affirmative-action benefit “nonsense.”

Jeffrey Berry, a professor of American politics and political behavior at Tufts University, said no speech will make the narrative go away, in part because conservative groups and Trump enjoy taunting her.

In the end, he said, voters are more interested in fundamentals like the economy.

“Side issues may be fun to talk about for ideologues, but by and large the public isn’t paying attention,” he said.

Gabby Archilla, a 26-year-old law student in Boston, said taking a DNA test might help Warren, but probably wouldn’t silence her critics.

“It could maybe put that issue to rest,” Archilla said, “but I think a lot of people just have issues with Elizabeth Warren in general.”
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The National Rifle Association pounced when former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate, declared at an AFL-CIO event in Cleveland that the death of conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia “happened at a good time.”

Scalia remains a hero to many gun owners and the NRA alerted its members to Strickland’s disrespect. It was part of a barrage by the group to portray its one-time ally as an anti-gun politician interested only in money and power.

“That was painful,” said Strickland, recalling the NRA’s effort to tear down the public trust he’d spent years building. “They were out to get me.”

The anti-Strickland campaign in the battleground state of Ohio two years ago is a window into how the influential gun rights group wields its political muscle. That clout will be on display heading into the 2018 midterm elections as gun control advocates demand swift action following the Feb. 14 shooting at a high school in Florida.

The NRA’s deep pockets and bare-knuckled approach leave the impression it effectively purchases loyalty from lawmakers. But the NRA actually donates small amounts of money to candidates when compared to the large sums it spends on potent get-out-the-vote operations and ad campaigns.

NRA-funded advertisements that air on cable networks and travel across the internet during the months and weeks before an election are carefully crafted to warn members of candidates that, if elected, will come for their guns. The NRA’s political action committee, the Political Victory Fund, also grades elected officials on an A to F scale, a shorthand voting guide that steers members to pro-gun candidates.

The Political Victory Fund and the NRA’s lobbying arm spent about $52.5 million overall during the 2016 elections on “independent expenditures,” according to political money website OpenSecrets.org. There’s no limit on this type of campaign spending and it includes money for television and online advertising, mailers and other forms of communication designed to support or oppose a particular candidate.

Nearly 70 percent of the NRA’s 2016 budget was used to target Democrats, with Hillary Clinton topping the list of candidates the group sought to defeat. The rest went to backing Donald Trump and congressional Republicans who’ve consistently shot down attempts by Democrats to approve gun control measures in the wake of mass shootings in the United States.

But pressure for at least modest firearms restrictions is heavy after 17 people were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which in turn raises the stakes for the NRA. Trump stunned his GOP allies last week when he sided with Democrats by urging quick and substantial changes to the nation’s gun laws. Yet later, after meeting with Trump, NRA leaders declared the president and his administration “don’t want gun control.” The mixed messages brought action on gun legislation in Congress to a halt.

The figures compiled by Open Secrets show that in Ohio the NRA spent nearly $1.6 million to oppose Strickland in the 2016 Senate race, while devoting about half as much to support the Republican incumbent, Sen. Rob Portman, who defeated Strickland by a wide margin.

The NRA donated $9,900 directly to Portman’s campaign, the same amount the group gave to 12 other Republican lawmakers. Unlike independent expenditures, donations from individuals and PACs are capped for each election cycle. Portman said the NRA’s money represented just a fraction of the more than $25 million his campaign raised in 2016 and he denied the gun group acquired any leverage through the donations.

“I never make a decision based on a contribution,” Portman said. “That’s just not how you operate.”

The NRA’s Political Victory Fund ran its first ad against Strickland in July when the Ohio Senate race was still competitive, and the 30-second spot illustrates the gun group’s tactics. Strickland is portrayed as a traitor for turning his back on gun rights.

“Ted Strickland. Out for power. Out for money. Out . . . for himself,” the narrator said as suspenseful music plays in the background.

Strickland said the NRA succeeded in shifting the impression many Ohioans had of him. Suddenly it didn’t matter as much that he was a steelworker’s son who’d grown up on a dirt road in the state’s Appalachia region. Or that he was raised among guns and just a few years before the Senate race had earned the NRA’s coveted A+ rating.

All that mattered to the NRA was that Strickland, troubled by a spate of mass shootings, had changed his mind. After stepping down as governor, he joined a liberal advocacy group and backed comprehensive background checks for gun buyers and a ban on assault-style rifles.

David Niven, a professor of American politics at the University of Cincinnati, said the NRA almost certainly wanted to punish Strickland for being an “apostate” on top of ensuring the gun-friendly GOP maintained its majority in the Senate. Political action committees and other outside groups tend to sweep in during the last stages of an election, but Niven said the NRA got an early start in Ohio.

“I don’t think there’s any question that they intended their participation in this race to send a message,” Niven said. “There was something intolerable to them about having an ally turn into a skeptic.”

Strickland served in Congress for more than a decade until 2006, when he successfully ran for governor with the NRA’s backing. He got the group’s support a second time when he ran for re-election in 2010, but lost to Republican John Kasich as the governor’s race centered on economic woes gripping the state.

The NRA’s endorsement commended Strickland as “an unwavering defender of our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms” and noted his opposition to a 2004 ban on certain semi-automatic weapons while in Congress and his signature on an update of concealed carry laws.

But that opinion changed drastically after Strickland in 2014 became president of the left-leaning Center for American Progress Action, which the NRA called a “radical anti-gun group” for proposing gun control measures.

When Strickland sought to unseat Portman two years later, the NRA “reframed the race in ways that were detrimental to me,” he said. Trump won Ohio by about 447,000 votes. Scioto, Strickland’s home county on the border with Kentucky, backed Trump and Portman overwhelmingly.

The NRA’s opposition had an effect, Strickland said, but he didn’t believe it was the deciding factor in his loss to Portman.

Portman raised $25 million, more than twice as much as Strickland did, and won over labor unions that had once been firmly in Strickland’s corner. As Strickland failed to gain traction with voters, national Democrats pulled millions of dollars in planned pro-Strickland ads out of the state more than a month before the election.

The NRA wasn’t the only one funneling money into Ohio. Outside groups, including those tied to the billionaire Koch brothers, spent upward of $30 million on anti-Strickland ads focused on Ohio’s economy during his governorship, which coincided with the national recession.

The NRA struck out in Nevada and New Hampshire, where the Democratic candidates won despite the gun group’s opposition. In Nevada, a battleground state like Ohio, the NRA plowed $2.4 million into the race to stop Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto. She narrowly won.

“They spent millions of dollars to try to beat me and didn’t,” said Masto, a former federal prosecutor who served for eight years as Nevada’s attorney general before her Senate run. “It was ridiculous.”
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