Month: August 2018

A Los Angeles man upset about The Boston Globe’s coordinated editorial response to President Donald Trump’s attacks on the news media was arrested Thursday on charges he threatened to kill the newspaper’s journalists, who he called an “enemy of the people,” federal prosecutors said.

Robert Chain’s threatening phone calls to the Globe’s newsroom started immediately after the Globe appealed to newspapers across the country to condemn what it called a “dirty war against the free press,” prosecutors said. He is charged with making 14 calls in all, between Aug. 10 and Aug. 22.

On Aug. 16, the day scores of editorials were published , Chain, 68, of the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles, told a Globe staffer that he was going to shoot employees in the head at 4 o’clock, according to court documents. That threat prompted a police response and increased security at the newspaper’s offices.

​‘Enemy of the people,’ he said

Chain said he would continue threatening the Globe until it stops its “treasonous and seditious” attacks on Trump, according to a court complaint.

Several times, he called Globe employees the “enemy of the people,” a characterization of journalists that Trump has used repeatedly, including in a tweet Thursday before the charges were announced.

Newsrooms have received threats for years and rarely do they result in charges. However, sensitivity has been heightened since a gunman with a long-running grudge against the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, killed five employees there in June.

Heightened enforcement

Federal officials pledged to continue to go after anyone who puts others in fear of their lives.

“In a time of increasing political polarization, and amid the increasing incidence of mass shootings, members of the public must police their own political rhetoric. Or we will,” Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said.

Jane Bowman, a spokeswoman for the Globe, said the newspaper is grateful for law enforcement’s efforts to protect its staffers and track down the source of the threats.

“While it was unsettling for many of our staffers to be threatened in such a way, nobody — really, nobody — let it get in the way of the important work of this institution,” she said in an email.

Chain was expected to appear in Los Angeles’ federal courtroom Thursday afternoon and be transferred to Boston at a later date. He’s charged with making threatening communications in interstate commerce, which calls for up to five years in prison.

It was not immediately clear if Chain has an attorney. Phone messages left at his wife’s law office weren’t immediately returned and with a person listed as a relative didn’t immediately return phone messages.

Yelling at his television

A neighbor who lived across the street from Chain and only knew him as “Rob” said he had a bombastic personality and could frequently be heard yelling at his television.

Tim McGowan said he knew nothing of Chain’s political leanings and assumed he was an old hippie because he wore his hair in a “man bun” and frequently walked around in just shorts.

McGowan said he couldn’t imagine Chain following through with violence, “but I could see him making the threats because he’s such a loudmouth.”

McGowan said he was startled awake by three loud bangs at 6 a.m. Thursday. When he looked outside, he saw about 30 heavily armed officers and a tank-like vehicle. Chain eventually emerged from the house in handcuffs, wearing only boxer shorts.

Records show Chain owns several guns, including a 9mm carbine rifle he bought in May, authorities said.

In 2013, Chain said he hadn’t worked in more than 20 years and suffered from “continuing health issues,” according to court documents filed in a civil case against him over unpaid student loans. Chain said at the time that he had a heart attack in 2005 and was receiving Social Security benefits.
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Top NAFTA negotiators from Canada and the United States increased the pace of their negotiations Thursday to resolve final differences to meet a Friday deadline, with their Mexican counterpart on standby to rejoin the talks soon.

Despite some contentious issues still on the table, the increasingly positive tone contrasted with U.S. President Donald Trump’s harsh criticism of Canada in recent weeks, raising hopes that the year-long talks on the North American Free Trade Agreement will conclude soon with a trilateral deal.

“Canada’s going to make a deal at some point. It may be by Friday or it may be within a period of time,” U.S. President Donald Trump told Bloomberg Television. “I think we’re close to a deal.”

Trilateral talks were already underway at the technical level and Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo was expected to soon rejoin talks with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, possibly later on Thursday, people familiar with the process said.

Trump said in a Bloomberg interview: “Canada’s going to make a deal at some point. It may be by Friday or it may be within a period of time,” Trump said. “I think we’re close to a deal.”

Negotiations entered a crucial phase this week after the United States and Mexico announced a bilateral deal on Monday, paving the way for Canada to rejoin talks to modernize the 24-year-old accord that underpins over $1 trillion in annual trade.

The NAFTA deal that is taking shape would likely strengthen North America as a manufacturing base by making it more costly for automakers to import a large share of vehicle parts from outside the region. The automotive content provisions, the most contentious topic, could accelerate a shift of parts-making away from China.

A new chapter governing the digital economy, along with stronger intellectual property, labor and environmental standards could also work to the benefit of U.S. companies, helping Trump to fulfill his campaign promise of creating more American jobs.

Trump has set a Friday deadline for the three countries to reach an agreement, which would allow Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto to sign it before he leaves office at the end of November. Under U.S. law, Trump must wait 90 days before signing the pact.

The U.S. president has warned he could try to proceed with a deal with Mexico alone and levy tariffs on Canadian-made cars if Ottawa does not come on board, although U.S. lawmakers have said ratifying a bilateral deal would not be easy.

Dairy, dispute settlement

One sticking point for Canada is the U.S. effort to dump the Chapter 19 dispute-resolution mechanism that hinders the United States from pursuing anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases. Lighthizer said on Monday that Mexico had agreed to eliminate the mechanism.

Trump also wants a NAFTA deal that eliminates dairy tariffs of up to 300 percent that he argues are hurting U.S. farmers, an important political base for Republicans.

But any concessions to Washington by Ottawa is likely to upset Canadian dairy farmers, who have an outsized influence in Canadian politics, with their concentration in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec.

 “Ultimately, we’ve got huge issues that are still to be resolved,” said Jerry Dias, head of Canada’s influential Unifor labor union. “Either we’re going to be trading partners or we’re going to fight.”
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Microsoft will begin requiring its contractors to offer their U.S. employees paid leave to care for a new child.

It’s common for tech firms to offer generous family leave benefits for their own software engineers and other full-time staff, but paid leave advocates say it’s still rare to require similar benefits for contracted workers such as janitors, landscapers, cafeteria crews and software consultants.

“Given its size and its reach, this is a unique and hopefully trailblazing offering,” said Vicki Shabo, vice president at the National Partnership for Women and Families.

The details

The new policy affects businesses with at least 50 U.S.-based employees that do substantial work with Microsoft that involves access to its buildings or its computing network. It doesn’t affect suppliers of goods. Contractors would have to offer at least 12 weeks of leave to those working with the Redmond, Washington-based software giant; the policy wouldn’t affect the contractors’ arrangements with other companies. Leave-takers would get 66 percent of regular pay, up to $1,000 weekly.

The policy announced Thursday rolls out over the next year as the company amends its contracts with those vendors. That may mean some of Microsoft’s costs will rise to cover the new benefits, said Dev Stahlkopf, the company’s corporate vice president and general counsel.

“That’s just fine and we think it’s well worth the price,” she said.

Microsoft doesn’t disclose how many contracted workers it uses, but it’s in the thousands.

The new policy expands on Microsoft’s 2015 policy requiring contractors to offer paid sick days and vacation.

Facebook

Other companies such as Facebook have also committed to improve contractor benefits amid unionization efforts by shuttle drivers, security guards and other contract workers trying to get by in expensive, tech-fueled regions such as the San Francisco Bay Area and around Washington’s Puget Sound.

Facebook doesn’t guarantee that contract workers receive paid parental leave, but provides a $4,000 new child benefit for new parents who don’t get leave. A much smaller California tech company, SurveyMonkey, announced a paid family leave plan for its contract workers earlier this year.

Washington state law

Microsoft said its new policy is partially inspired by a Washington state law taking effect in 2020 guaranteeing eligible workers 12 weeks paid time off for the birth or adoption of a child. The state policy, signed into law last year, follows California and a handful of other states in allowing new parents to tap into a fund that all workers pay into. Washington will also require employers to help foot the bill, and will start collecting payroll deductions next January.

A federal paid parental leave plan proposed by President Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, could rely on a similar model but has gained little traction.

“Compared to what employers are doing, the government is way behind the private sector,” said Isabel Sawhill, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who has urged the White House and Congress to adopt a national policy.

Sawhill said it is “very unusual and very notable” that Microsoft is extending family leave benefits to its contract workers. Microsoft already offers more generous family leave benefits to its own employees, including up to 20 weeks fully paid leave for a birth mother.

Pushing the feds

Microsoft’s push to spread its employee benefits to a broader workforce “sends a message that something has to happen more systematically at the federal level,” said Ariane Hegewisch, a program director for employment and earnings at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Until then, she said, it’s helpful that Microsoft seems willing to pay contracting firms more to guarantee their workers’ better benefits.

“Paid family leave is expensive and they acknowledge that,” Hegewisch said. Otherwise, she said, contractors with many employees of child-bearing age could find themselves at a competitive disadvantage to those with older workforces.

Republican state Sen. Joe Fain, the prime sponsor of the measure that passed last year, said Microsoft’s decision was “a really powerful step forward.”

By applying the plan to contractors and vendors around the country, “it really creates a pressure for those state legislatures to make a similar decision that Washington made.”
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An attorney for a woman suspected of being a covert Russian agent said he’s confident she’s not “aware of or guilty of any crimes” in South Dakota as authorities have pursued an unrelated fraud investigation into her boyfriend.

Defense lawyer Robert Driscoll told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Maria Butina, 29, knew “very little” about the fraud case led by the U.S. Attorney’s office in South Dakota. Butina was arrested in July and has pleaded not guilty in Washington to charges of conspiracy and acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Russia.

In court papers filed shortly after Butina’s arrest, prosecutors accused her of using a personal relationship with an unnamed American political operative — identified only as 56-year-old “U.S. Person 1” — as part of her covert activities for Russia. She’s accused of gathering intelligence on American officials and political organizations and working to establish back-channel lines of communications for the Kremlin.

Offer to cooperate

During a July court hearing, Driscoll disclosed that Butina had offered to assist the government in the South Dakota fraud investigation into her boyfriend, U.S. Person 1. Prosecutors confirmed the investigation in court, but provided no further details other than to say it was unrelated to Butina’s charges in Washington.

“When the government incarcerated her, I stopped negotiating with them over her testimony,” Driscoll said Wednesday of the fraud investigation.

Driscoll said he’s operating under the idea that U.S. Person 1 is 56-year-old conservative operative and South Dakota businessman Paul Erickson. Butina’s defense said in a recent court filing that they’ve had a five-year relationship.

A South Dakota U.S. attorney’s office spokeswoman declined to comment, and Erickson hasn’t returned telephone messages from the AP.

South Dakota events

The new court documents were filed in a legal push to allow Butina to be released from jail and put on house arrest with electronic monitoring as she awaits trial. Butina’s defense said in a memorandum that the government has falsely smeared her reputation and painted her as a “Kremlin-trained seductress,” arguing she has genuine ties to the U.S. including her relationship with Erickson — she had planned to move in with him in South Dakota — and her wish to have a career in America.

The memorandum states Butina came to the U.S. to attend graduate school and that her activities weren’t “covert or clandestine.” A status conference in the case is scheduled for Sept. 10.

Erickson in 2015 helped arrange speeches in South Dakota for Butina to talk about freedom and entrepreneurship at a Sioux Falls school, at the University of South Dakota and at a teenage Republican camp held in the Black Hills.

Arranging the events followed an unusual career for Erickson that has included working on Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign and making an action movie with Jack Abramoff.
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Puerto Rico’s Archdiocese of San Juan filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday after officials embargoed $4.7 million from its accounts following a lawsuit filed by retired Catholic school teachers seeking their pensions. 

Archdiocese attorney Carmen Conde told The Associated Press that the filing was a last recourse. She said roughly 75 full time and part-time employees are affected, along with dozens of parishes across the U.S. territory. She said the Archdiocese cannot pay its water or power bills, has halted all charity work and is relying on a group of volunteers.

“The Archdiocese no longer has money to operate,” she said. “The embargo caused an economic and administrative crisis.”

A judge earlier this year ordered the Archdiocese to pay $4.7 million worth of pensions to both active and retired teachers working at dozens of its schools. The ruling comes two years after Archdiocese officials informed several hundred teachers that their pensions would be eliminated because payouts exceeded contributions, which led to the lawsuit. Enrollment at Catholic schools in Puerto Rico has plunged with hundreds of thousands of families leaving the island for the U.S. mainland amid a 12-year recession.

Antonio Bauza and German Brau, two attorneys who are representing the teachers, did not return messages for comment. In a June filing, the attorneys wrote that the teachers are mostly elderly people who are suffering irreparable damage.

“Some of them have lost, or are in danger of, losing their homes. Others, who suffer from serious and debilitating health conditions, are unable to pay for their medical costs, including cancer treatments,” they stated.

Conde said it’s the first time the Archdiocese has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. She said officials embargoed 21 Archdiocese accounts that hold a total of $606,000 and froze another 12 accounts that have nearly $341,500 in them. In addition, officials also froze 160 accounts belonging to dozens parishes that hold a total of $3.8 million.

She said the Archdiocese will be filing a document with more details, but that it has assets ranging from $10 million to $50 million, along with debts of that same amount.
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The leaders of the United States and Canada expressed optimism on Wednesday that they could reach new NAFTA deal by a Friday deadline as negotiators prepared to talk through the night, although Canada warned that a number of tricky issues remained.

Under pressure, Canada rejoined the talks to modernize the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement after Mexico and the United States announced a bilateral deal on Monday. Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said late on Wednesday that talks were at “a very intense moment” but said there was “a lot of good will” between Canadian and U.S. negotiators.

“Our officials are meeting now and will be meeting until very late tonight. Possibly they’ll be meeting all night long,” Freeland said. She and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer had agreed to review progress early on Thursday.

U.S. President Donald Trump has set a Friday deadline for the three countries to reach an in-principle agreement, which would allow Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto to sign it before he leaves office at the end of November. Under U.S. law, Trump must wait 90 days before signing the pact.

Trump has warned he could try to proceed with a deal with Mexico alone and levy tariffs on Canadian-made cars if Ottawa does not come on board, although U.S. lawmakers have said ratifying a bilateral deal would not be easy.

“They (Canada) want to be part of the deal, and we gave until Friday and I think we’re probably on track. We’ll see what happens, but in any event, things are working out very well.” Trump told reporters at the White House.

The upbeat tone contrasted with Trump’s harsh criticism of Canada in recent weeks, railing on Twitter against Canada’s high dairy tariffs that he said were “killing our Agriculture!”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he thought the Friday deadline could be met.

“We recognize that there is a possibility of getting there by Friday, but it is only a possibility, because it will hinge on whether or not there is ultimately a good deal for Canada,” he said at a news conference in northern Ontario on Wednesday.

“No NAFTA deal is better than a bad NAFTA deal.”

 Freeland, who is Canada’s lead negotiator, was sidelined from the talks for more than two months, and will be under pressure to accept the terms the United States and Mexico worked out.

She declined comment on the issues still in play, but said on Tuesday that Mexico’s concessions on auto rules of origin and labor rights had been a breakthrough.

Ottawa is also ready to make concessions on Canada’s protected dairy market in a bid to save a dispute-settlement system, The Globe and Mail reported late on Tuesday.

Sticking points

One of the issues for Canada in the revised deal is the U.S. effort to dump the Chapter 19 dispute resolution mechanism that hinders the United States from pursuing anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said on Monday that Mexico had agreed to eliminate the mechanism.

To save that mechanism, Ottawa plans to change one rule that effectively blocked American farmers from exporting ultra-filtered milk, an ingredient in cheesemaking, to Canada, the Globe and Mail reported, citing sources.

Trudeau repeated on Wednesday that he will defend Canada’s dairy industry.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Trump administration’s own anti-dumping duties on Canadian paper, used in books and newsprint, were thrown out by the U.S. International Trade Commission.

The independent panel ruled that about $1.21 billion in such paper imports from Canada were not harming U.S. producers.

Other hurdles to a NAFTA deal include intellectual property rights and extensions of copyright protections to 75 years from 50, a higher threshold than Canada has previously supported.

Some see the tight time-frame as a challenge.

“There’s nothing here that is not doable for Canada,” said Brian Kingston, vice president for international affairs at The Business Council of Canada.

“We’ve got the best negotiators in the world, but they can only stay awake so many hours of every day.”
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President Donald Trump’s administration backed off on Tuesday on plans to bypass Congress and roll back billions of dollars from the U.S. foreign aid budget after lawmakers pushed back, senators, congressional aides and U.S. officials said.

Reuters reported on Aug. 16 that the White House Office of Management and Budget had asked the State Department and Agency for International Development to submit information for a “rescission” package that would have led to sharp cuts in foreign assistance.

Rescissions cut money appropriated by Congress but not spent. The unusual plan from Mick Mulvaney, the former Republican congressman who heads the OMB, would have defied Congress by eliminating foreign assistance it had already approved.

Trump’s focus on his “America First” agenda has meant fewer funds for foreign aid. His administration has pushed repeatedly to cut the amount of money sent abroad since he took office in January 2017.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged the administration at a meeting on Tuesday to abandon the plan in the face of congressional opposition, several sources with knowledge of the situation said. It was a rare pushback against a Trump policy by fellow Republicans, who control Congress.

An OMB spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Republican Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said cutting a relatively small amount of foreign aid funding made no sense from an administration planning huge spending increases.

He speculated that the White House hoped the suggestion would “rev up” its base before November’s congressional elections but realized pushing the scheme would make it hard to work with angry lawmakers.

“I think they just kind of sat down and realized maybe that wasn’t so smart, and … they were right,” Corker told Reuters.

Loophole in law

Several administration officials had said the OMB was targeting some $3.5 billion in funds no longer needed for their original purpose, taking advantage of a loophole in the law to make cuts at the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

The cuts could have included more than $200 million Trump froze in March for recovery efforts in Syria.

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, vice chairman of the Appropriations Committee, welcomed the decision.

“Rescinding funds that had been agreed to by Congress and signed into law by the President, in the waning days of the fiscal year, would have set a terrible precedent and harmed programs that further United States interests around the world,” Leahy said in a statement.

Trump sought to slash foreign aid in this year’s budget, but he ended up signing a budget without those cuts after Congress objected.

The administration then tried to use the rescission process to slash $15 billion in domestic spending, including $7 billion for  children’s health insurance. That plan did not pass Congress.
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John McCain’s close friend Lindsey Graham mixed laughter and tears on the Senate floor Tuesday as he remembered “Operation Maverick,” which he described as lessons in choosing “what’s right at your own expense.”

“He taught me that honor and imperfection are always in competition,” Sen. Graham said, reading from a handwritten outline next to McCain’s empty desk, now topped with roses. “I do not cry for a perfect man. I cry for a man who had honor and always was willing to admit to his imperfection.”

The South Carolina Republican added, “There’s a little McCain in all of us.”

Graham’s tears were the rawest point in a day in which members were still coming to grips with a Senate now permanently without McCain’s wily, white-haired presence, something that had been a constant feature of the institution for more than 30 years.

At one point, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia stepped behind the desk, crossed himself, kissed his fingers and touched the black draping. At another, Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Tim Scott of South Carolina and Manchin formed a tight circle around McCain’s spot and admired the roses.

McCain died Saturday at home in Arizona after 13 months battling brain cancer. He had not been back to Washington since December because of his illness, but stayed engaged in policy debates and expressed his disdain for President Donald Trump in their ongoing feud.

But now he was truly gone, his absence confirmed by his empty chair and desk along a much-traversed aisle.

“When you walk by Sen. McCain’s desk and you see the black drape and the bowl of white roses, it really underscores the loss,” said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.

As the Senate churned though business Tuesday, McCain’s death sat very much at the center of proceedings and at the front of his colleagues’ minds. Only four of them know a Senate without McCain, who was elected in 1986 and had become a mentor and moral compass to newcomers. Several defended him against attacks from Trump, who questioned McCain’s heroism as a prisoner of war and chafed over McCain’s thumbs-down vote that sank the repeal of national health care.

“No one is more worthy of the word `hero’ than John McCain,” Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the most senior Republican in the Senate, said in his own speech.

Graham’s eyes and nose were red when he entered the chamber, and he unfurled his sorrow with emotion rarely seen on the televised Senate floor.

“I have been thinking about this. I have been dreading this. And now I’m going to do this” eulogy, Graham said, identifying himself as McCain’s “political wingman, code name Little Jerk.”

He said his speech would resemble an “after action report” and be titled, “Operation Maverick,” for McCain’s unconventional path and his rebellious streak.

He said McCain’s ultimate lesson is forgiveness and love. He remembered McCain’s role as national healer on the night in 2008 when McCain conceded the presidential race to Democrat Barack Obama by saying that Obama was now his president.

Graham also said he hopes people remember one thing “when it comes to the life of John McCain: that it’s okay to say, ‘I screwed up. I got this wrong,'” — as McCain did after the Keating Five savings and loan scandal, after the presidential race and even after cursing too much.

“Honor is, in my view, doing the right thing at your own expense. And he did that time and time again,” Graham said.

Later, Graham said he planned to honor McCain’s commitment to immigration issues, vowing to get some form of immigration reform passed “or die trying.”

The intractability of that issue vexed McCain, who also was an expert on veterans and the armed forces, Russia and campaign finance reform.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., recalled McCain’s expertise and knowledge. The Arizona senator had indeed “peeled the paint off the wall behind me with a fiery stream of profanity-laced invective,” Coons recalled, describing the McCain experience of several senators, but he almost always apologized. McCain, Coons said, “was a treasure and a challenge.”

McCain’s funeral procession will begin Wednesday in Phoenix, where he’ll lie in state at the state Capitol. Services will be held Thursday. He arrives back in Washington on Friday to lie in state under the Rotunda for public viewing and a formal ceremony. His casket will then pass the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and be moved to Washington National Cathedral for a service expected to include remarks by former Presidents Barack Obama and President George W. Bush.

People close to the McCain family and President Donald Trump said the family had asked the president to stay away. Trump announced Monday that he would send others to represent his administration.

Speeches by Graham and other senators were effectively the first public farewells of the procession.

Graham told reporters afterward that “what killed me was the black” on McCain’s desk.

“I thought I would do much better than I did,” he said.
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