Month: June 2020

Beyond the physical burdens of COVID-19, the disease can impose an emotional and spiritual weight on patients. It extends to their loved ones and to the health workers who treat them.Matthew Arlyck is staff chaplain at Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia in the eastern U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Ordained as a Presbyterian minister in January 2019, he joined the center three months later. Now 44, Arlyck says the pandemic has challenged his ability to provide hands-on solace and comfort. Physical contact and nuanced facial expression have been key tools of chaplaincy, he explained in a Zoom interview.The interview has been edited for length and clarity.MATTHEW ARLYCK: I’m so used to the experience of providing support to people who are in grief and trauma as such a tactile and physical one. I rely so much on nonverbal communication, on people being able to read my face, but also for me to be able to read theirs. And so, it’s harder to have an experience of your impact on people, because I go into a patient’s room who’s COVID positive, then wearing a gown and gloves. And if I’m going to be close to them, literally at the bedside, then I also would be wearing a face shield. And so, even though I’m wearing a mask, my eyes become that much more important in terms of what they convey. I can still gesture with my hands.VOA: I understand that the hospital chaplain’s work isn’t only with patients but also with the staff.Absolutely. That happens both on a very informal basis where we just are talking to staff and just checking in with them and seeing how they’re doing, to much more programmatic efforts of having call-in times for prayer, for mindfulness and moments to show appreciation for staff. But it’s an ongoing challenge, because staff are very busy and don’t necessarily feel comfortable opening up about how they’re feeling.Are you able to level with each other about these difficulties?Oh, yeah. A big part of connecting with them is empathizing and being able to be vulnerable and being able to share a little bit about my own experience.Help me understand why religion and spirituality belong in a hospital.I believe that we are all spiritual beings, in that we are all in the process of making meaning. And it’s been very challenging in this time of COVID for people to make meaning of this experience, because it’s unprecedented, and it’s a particularly unsettling time. For some people, their beliefs get validated. For others, it really shakes those beliefs to their core.What my experience has been and what I hear people talking about is the interconnectedness, both in ways that are beautiful and kind of emotionally supportive, but also in the ways in which our interconnectedness is also what right now is dangerous.In our hospital, we’ve had couples that have died, people who have lived together for their whole adult lives. And because of that closeness that they have, have infected each other and have died because of that closeness.The Rev. Matthew Arlyck, shown in selfies, gears up for work at Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia.You mentioned the beauty of interconnection, as well. What about for you?I’ve connected with all kinds of staff who I never had before. Clerks, people who work in registration, janitorial staff. I think there’s a sense in which we really are all in this together. And I find that people are responding so much more honestly when we’re all struggling so much.This is exactly what you signed up for as a hospital chaplain, isn’t it?Yeah. This is what I feel like I was called to do. And I’m so grateful that I’ve been put in this place at this time.Now, you’re an ordained Presbyterian minister. How does your own personal faith and theology figure into your work during the COVID era?A big part of my Christian faith has to do with a very particular kind of hope that I think is sort of unique to Christianity in that its sort of irrational, almost foolish hope in God’s ability to break through in a world that can feel utterly dark.And it really feels very distinct from optimism, because personally, I find it pretty difficult to be optimistic in the world that we live in. But I’m always hopeful. And I think that that really comes from that sense that God can do the impossible. And that’s kind of manifested in Jesus’ life and in Jesus’ death and resurrection.Are you saying there’s some sort of golden message hidden in this catastrophe?I’m careful not to say that this is happening for a good reason, but I do think that there is always a seed of transformation, even in the worst trauma, the worst oppression and the worst kind of evil, whether it’s human-made or whether it’s a disease.This report originated with VOA’s English to Africa service.  
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A federal judge on Friday ordered Roger Stone, President Donald Trump’s longtime friend and adviser, to report to prison by July 14 to begin his sentence after being convicted of seven criminal counts last year, granting him a 14-day extension over concerns about the coronavirus.The 67-year-old veteran Republican operative and self-described “dirty trickster,” who lives in South Florida, had been scheduled to report to a federal prison in Jesup, Georgia, by next Tuesday. Florida is experiencing rising numbers of coronavirus infections.Stone was found guilty by a jury last November of obstruction, witness tampering and lying to Congress under oath during its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who in February sentenced him to three years and four months in prison, granted the extension sought by Stone and ordered him placed in home confinement.“This will address the defendant’s stated medical concerns during the current increase of reported cases in Florida, and Broward County in particular, and it will respect and protect the health of other inmates who share defendant’s anxiety over the potential introduction and spread of the virus at this now-unaffected facility,” Berman said.Trump, who has argued that Stone was treated unfairly, declined to answer directly when asked in a Fox News Channel interview on Thursday whether he would issue him a pardon.Stone was one of several Trump associates who were convicted or pleaded guilty to charges stemming from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that detailed Russian meddling in the 2016 election to boost Trump’s candidacy.He was convicted of lying to the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee about his attempts to contact WikiLeaks, the website that released damaging emails about Trump’s 2016 Democratic election rival Hillary Clinton that U.S. intelligence officials have concluded were stolen by Russian hackers.  
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Former White House national security adviser John Bolton unleashed a scathing critique of President Donald Trump as an “erratic” leader, willing to undercut American security to improve his reelection prospects, during a VOA interview on Wednesday. VOA’s Brian Padden reports on Bolton’s sweeping allegations of presidential misconduct as well as White House responses slamming Bolton as a liar and a traitorous divulger of classified information.Producer: Brian Padden.
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Attorney General William Barr on Friday ordered the establishment of a task force to counter what he called “anti-government extremists” committing violence as protests against police brutality convulse the United States.In a memo to law enforcement and prosecutors released by the Department of Justice, Barr said alleged extremists had “engaged in indefensible acts of violence designed to undermine public order,” including attacking police officers, damaging property and threatening innocent people.Protests have spread nationwide over George Floyd’s death in police custody last month and the deaths of other African Americans at the hands of police.Although largely peaceful, some demonstrators have turned violent, which President Donald Trump and his allies have blamed on left-wing extremists among the protesters.Barr said the extremists “profess a variety of ideologies.””Some pretend to profess a message of freedom and progress, but they are in fact forces of anarchy, destruction, and coercion,” Barr said.Barr named the militant anti-government movement known as the “boogaloo,” as well as the left-wing antifa as among those posing “continuing threats of lawlessness.”Antifa is an amorphous movement whose adherents use confrontational tactics to oppose people or groups they consider authoritarian or racist.”Boogaloo” members believe the United States will enter into a second civil war, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups. While the ideology itself is not white supremacist, some white supremacist groups have embraced it, the Anti-Defamation League has found.Federal prosecutors filed charges early this month against three alleged members of the movement accused of plotting to cause violence and destruction at a Las Vegas protest.The new task force would be headed by two U.S. attorneys, from Texas and New Jersey, Barr said.It would include members from different law enforcement agencies but would “particularly draw on the capabilities of the FBI,” he said. 
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A Lebanese American businessman who was a key witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report and who helped broker the release of American hostages was sentenced Friday to 10 years in prison sentence on child sex charges.
George Nader pleaded guilty in January to bringing a 14-year-old boy from the Czech Republic to the U.S. 20 years ago to engage in sexual activity. He also acknowledged possessing child pornography.
Nader’s name appears more than 100 times in the Mueller report. It details Nader’s efforts to serve as liaison between Russians and members of President Donald Trump’s transition team.
In the 1990s, Nader served as a broker to facilitate the release of American hostages held in the Middle East.
The convictions carried a 10-year mandatory minimum. The judge could have imposed a longer term, though prosecutors also recommended a 10-year sentence.
Nader also agreed to pay $150,000 in restitution to the Czech boy he abused, who is now an adult and testified at Friday’s sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria by phone.
“George destroyed practically my entire life, and I am trying to put it back together piece by piece,” he said through a translator.
Nader’s interest in children and his status as a behind-the-scenes power player both extend back decades. And there’s at least some indication that the latter shielded him from the consequences of the former.
Almost 30 years ago, Nader was caught by customs officials transporting two films, hidden in candy tins, of minor boys into the U.S. He received a six-month sentence, a term that prosecutors in the current case acknowledge is “far below what would be expected of such a crime today.”
In 1991, as he awaited sentencing, his case was twice delayed so he could continue his work on hostage negotiations. Court records cited by his current defense lawyers indicate that British hostage Jon McCarthy and American hostage Edward Tracy were released in July of that year and that Nader played an outsized role in securing the release. Participants in the negotiations wrote letters to the judge on Nader’s behalf.
Later, in 2003, Nader sentenced to a 1-year prison term in the Czech Republic after being convicted there on 10 counts of sexually abusing minors and sentenced to a one-year prison term in 2003.
Prosecutors say the abused boys were largely child prostitutes. The 14-year-old boy brought to the U.S. also alleged he was victimized by Nader int he Czech case, though Nader’s lawyers say he wasn’t convicted there. The two sides dispute the extent of abuse inflicted on the boy in the U.S. but Nader has admitted to one sex act.
Nader “used his contacts and his wealth to accomplish” bringing the Czech boy into the U.S., prosecutor Jay Prabhu wrote.  
The current case against Nader began in 2018 when images were found on his phone after it was confiscated under a search warrant connected to the Mueller probe.  
The images found in Nader’s phones at Dulles International Airport ended up not being the basis for the child-pornography conviction. Instead, prosecutors relied on images and videos he received via email in 2012 that in some cases involved sadistic depictions of infants or toddlers.
Even though it had no bearing on the sentence Nader received, defense lawyers and prosecutors continued to argue at Friday’s sentencing hearing as to whether the images found on the phone were child pornography. Nader’s attorney, Jonathan Jeffress, acknowledged that the photos showed naked children and were obscene, but said they amounted to “dirty jokes” and that Nader had put his struggles with child pornography behind him in 2012.
Prosecutors say the images included clear depictions of child pornography and bestiality and show that Nader is a lifelong recidivist.
Parts of the sentencing papers detailing Nader’s testimony to the special counsel remain blacked out.
Nader, for his part, apologized for his actions at Friday’s hearing.
“I have listened to what’s been said about me,” he said. “I can say I am sincerely, deeply sorry for the suffering I have caused.”
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Crews arrived with heavy equipment arrived early Friday at Seattle’s “occupied” protest zone, apparently ready to dismantle barriers set up by demonstrators, but halted work when demonstrators resisted, including by lying on top of some of the makeshift structures.
Stefanie Formas, a spokeswoman for Mayor Jenny Durkan, said the goal is to improve access for neighborhood residents. She said city officials would discuss the plans later Friday morning with protest organizers.
The collective of protesters, activists, educators and volunteers in the Capitol Hill Organized Protest was born after clashes with police who tear-gassed people protesting the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.  
Durkan has expressed support for the protest, calling it “a peaceful expression of our community’s collective grief and their desire to build a better world.”  
But following several recent shootings in the area, Durkan said this week the city would wind down the protest zone, at first by encouraging demonstrators to leave, and that police would return to a nearby precinct they abandoned following clashes with demonstrators.
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California protesters this week toppled several statues of Spanish priest Junipero Serra, spurred by the anti-racist movement sparked by the death of an African American man last month while in police custody in Minneapolis. Discussions about police brutality have ignited debate over historical symbols of colonialization, slavery and cultural genocide, such as statues of Confederate war heroes and Christopher Columbus.On June 19, protesters toppled a statue of Serra in San Francisco; a day later, during demonstrations in Los Angeles, protesters brought down a second Serra statue that stood near Union Station.  Happy to see the Junípero Serra statue taken down. He was part of the colonial system when my town rose up against the Spanish in 1755. He was a fundamentalist and played a key role in the subjugation of Indigenous people, from Queretaro to the Bay. He deserves no monument.
— Chema Hernández Gil (@elsanfranciscan) June 20, 2020 Serra was an 18th century Spanish missionary who established 21 Catholic missions in California as part of efforts to Christianize and assimilate Native Americans into European culture.These missions pushed Native Americans into harsh labor and poor living conditions that left them vulnerable to disease and famine, often costing them their lives. “So many Native Americans were abused and killed in order to get these missions built,” said Rick Cuevas, a disenrolled member of the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Mission Indians.Serra and the missions he established had previously been a subject in the California education system.“The sad thing is that part of the California educational system, up until a year or two ago, one of the fourth-grade projects was to have them build missions,” Cuevas said. “But there was never any discussion about how those missions were built and what labor it took undertaking those tasks.” today i learned it wasn’t just a thing at my school: everybody from california had to build a model of a mission in 4th grade
— Megan Adams (@mnmnadams) June 23, 2020In 2015, Pope Francis sparked controversy when he canonized Serra as a Roman Catholic saint.In an open letter to Pope Francis, the Pechanga Band denounced the canonization of Serra.Serra’s mission system “triggered a collapse of our indigenous societal structure and way of life and set into motion the atrocities and hardships that our people endured for nearly two centuries,” the letter said.While many Native Americans view the dismantling of Serra statues as progress toward dismantling the legacy of racism in the U.S., some Native Americans believe there are better ways to encourage change.“The proper way is to learn and teach rather than put a rope around the side [of the statue],” Cuevas said.Several California pastors have removed statues of Serra in order to protect them from vandalism. “The Church cannot support such violence imposed on any group, nor can it support the violent destruction of sacred symbols of any faith community,” Bishop Daniel E. Garcia wrote in a letter to the Monterey Diocese he oversees. “After exhaustive investigation it is clear St. Serra made heroic sacrifices to protect the indigenous people of California from their Spanish conquerors and soldiers.”The Embassy of Spain USA this week defended Serra on Twitter. (1/4) We deeply regret the destruction of the statue of Saint Junípero Serra in San Francisco today, and would like to offer a reminder of his great efforts in support of indigenous communities.
Thread ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/qJOmsjorjS
— Embassy of Spain USA (@SpainInTheUSA) June 20, 2020
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When Texas began lifting coronavirus restrictions, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott didn’t wear a mask. He wouldn’t let mayors enact extra precautions during one of America’s swiftest efforts to reopen. He pointed out that the White House backed his plan and gave assurances there were safe ways to go out again.  
Two months later, a sharp reversal is unfolding as infections surge.
The backpedaling is not just in Texas, where Abbott abruptly halted the push to loosen more restrictions and is now urgently telling people to stay home. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, also a Republican, did the same, declaring the state “on pause” as hospitals accelerate toward capacity.  
As an alarming coronavirus resurgence sets records for confirmed cases and hospitalizations across the U.S. South and West, governors are retreating to measures they once resisted and striking a more urgent tone.  
“I think they’re going to have to,” said Dr. Mark McClellan, former head of the Food and Drug Administration. “It doesn’t take most people in a community getting sick to overwhelm health care systems.”Critics bristle that the actions are too little, or worse, possibly too late as patients fill up intensive-care beds and the U.S. closes in on hitting all-time highs for daily confirmed cases.  
And governors are not entirely bending in their resolve: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who until recently had rarely worn a face covering, has said he won’t impose statewide mask orders or delay reopening. And Abbott says shutting down the Texas economy again is a last resort.  
The escalating crisis is testing governors — many of them Republicans who aggressively reopened before most of the U.S. — as pressure mounts from their biggest cities, health experts and even friendly business groups. Any move backward could land them at odds with President Donald Trump, who has sought to move on from the virus and return to the campaign stage, all while refusing to wear a mask in public.
A June survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research says many Americans never fully embraced the reopening effort now underway in many states. A majority of Americans still have concerns about contracting COVID-19, and significant shares still support the kinds of public health restrictions that states have rolled back.
The most widespread about-face in GOP states is a sudden openness to letting local authorities mandate masks — a concession that cities including Phoenix and Little Rock, Arkansas, quickly put into action but is increasingly criticized as insufficient as the outbreaks rage.  
In Florida, which has reported over 5,000 new cases in each of the past two days, DeSantis has resisted calls to mandate masks, leaving that decision to local leaders. The Republican contends that areas not as severely affected should not have to bear the same burdens.
Add to that the political optics of reimposing restrictions less than two months before Republicans descend on the state in late August to renominate Trump. The Republican National Committee awarded Jacksonville the convention. Trump got in a tiff with North Carolina’s Democratic governor over social distancing restrictions that threatened to dampen his celebration.
The number of cases in Duval County, which is home to Jacksonville, has shot up along with statewide numbers.
“It’s not political. You’re in a situation where the whole reason the mitigation was done was to flatten the curve so the hospitals weren’t overwhelmed,” DeSantis said last weekend. “We didn’t 100 percent know what was going to happen.”  
U.S. Rep. Donna Shalala of Florida, a former secretary of Health and Human Services during the Clinton administration, called on DeSantis to make a course correction.
“He followed the president’s leadership, and people have died because of it,” she said. “He can pivot and take very strong steps.”
In Arkansas, Gov. Asa Hutchinson has urged people to cover their faces and even begins his daily briefings by showing off his mask. But the Republican governor has resisted calls to require them, arguing that it would be difficult to enforce in a rural state.
Hutchinson also says he’s concerned such a mandate could spark a backlash, with people refusing to wear masks. Some cities have acted on their own, and he says he won’t get in their way.  
“How do you encourage people to wear a mask?” Hutchinson said this week. “I think we’re taking it by providing the guidelines.”
In Arizona, Ducey resisted pressure to close restaurants as the virus first spread in March, saying the state wasn’t seeing explosive growth like New York and didn’t need to act so aggressively. The Democratic mayors of Phoenix, Tucson, Flagstaff and elsewhere imposed their own restrictions.
The governor responded with an executive order closing restaurants in counties with known coronavirus infections but also defining some businesses cities couldn’t restrict, such as golf courses.
Last week, Ducey changed his mind. Under extreme pressure to act as COVID-19 cases soar, Ducey gave local leaders the power to require masks, while avoiding making it a statewide mandate.
The numbers “continue to go in the wrong direction,” Ducey said Thursday.
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The U.S. coronavirus task force is expected to hold a public briefing Friday. Vice President Mike Pence will lead the session, the first public briefing in nearly two months.Late Thursday, as the coronavirus cases in the U.S. climbed to record highs, the White House filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to invalidate the Affordable Care Act, the health care insurance also known as Obamacare.Unlike most Western countries, U.S. health coverage is tied to jobs. Since the lockdowns started in the U.S., tens of millions of people have lost their jobs and their health insurance.In addition, not all U.S. jobs provide health insurance, forcing people to buy their own health insurance. The intention of the ACA was to help the public purchase health insurance at reasonable rates.’Unfathomable cruelty’House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement, “President Trump and the Republicans’ campaign to rip away the protections and benefits of the Affordable Care Act in the middle of the coronavirus crisis is an act of unfathomable cruelty.”The Supreme Court justices will hear oral arguments in October.The U.S. leads the world in coronavirus infections. It has 2.4 million cases, followed by Brazil with 1.2 million cases and Russia with more than 613,000 infections, according to Johns Hopkins University.The number of new single-day coronavirus infections in the U.S. is near record highs as the government revealed more than 20 million people in the U.S. could have contracted the virus.The U.S. states reported 39,327 new cases Thursday, according to The  Washington Post, the highest one-day total since the outbreak began in December.Johns Hopkins University recorded 34,300 cases Wednesday, just shy of its reported record high of 36,400 on April 24.Premature reopenings trigger spikeHarvard Global Health Institute director Ashish Jha said in an interview Thursday on NBC’s “Today” show that the recent increase in U.S. infections was due to the premature reopening of the country’s economy without appropriate safety procedures.Meanwhile, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday the number of coronavirus cases may be 10 times greater than has been reported.A count by Johns Hopkins University puts the number of cases at 2.5 million.But the real number of estimated cases could be about 20 million, the CDC said.Officials have long believed the actual number of cases has been underreported.The CDC says it bases its new estimate after studying blood samples from across the country. It says many cases were not caught because early testing was limited or carried out only on those people who showed symptoms.The CDC estimates that 6 percent of the U.S. population has had COVID-19.Officials report the number of single-day deaths in the U.S. fell last week, but the number of cases appears to be growing.Several states set new one-day records this week – mostly in the South and West. They include Arizona, California, Nevada, Oklahoma and Texas. Other states are also reporting a rise in the number of new cases.Pregnant women at riskOfficials are generally blaming the surge in new cases on young people who they say refuse to wear masks, won’t heed calls for social distancing, and are spreading the virus to more vulnerable older adults.Texas Governor Greg Abbot said Thursday that the state would delay reopening plans to contain surges of new infections. He signed an executive order suspending elective surgery at hospitals in four counties to guarantee adequate space for coronavirus patients.“The last thing we want to do as a state is go backwards and close down businesses,” Abbott said.Also Thursday, the CDC updated its list of those it says are at higher risk for a severe case of COVID-19 to include pregnant women.It also says a person’s age does not necessarily put him or her at an increased risk.The CDC also added sickle cell disease as an underlying condition that would make a COVID-19 victim suffer more.CDC officials say they expect to come out with recommendations for racial and ethnic minority groups soon.Dr. Rick Bright, a top government medical researcher, is charging the Trump administration of increasing what he called a “coordinated effort” to punish him for exposing what he said is a bungled response to the coronavirus.Bright has filed a new complaint with the federal watchdog agency to which government whistleblowers can turn.Bright was the head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.His complaint said he has been downgraded to a much lesser role in the National Institutes of Health, and that because of his reduced role, he “is cut off from all vaccine work, cut off from all therapeutic work, and has a very limited role in the diagnostic work.”According to the complaint, a former colleague said Health and Human Services chief Alex Azar warned him and others that if anyone were to help Bright, “there would be hell to pay.”Bright apparently tried to warn the White House and HHS earlier this year that the country was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic. He also balked at pushing hydroxychloroquine –- the drug Trump has touted as an effective treatment for COVID-19, but which could have deadly side effects.Trump called Bright an “angry, disgruntled employee.”  
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The Colorado governor on Thursday ordered prosecutors to reopen the investigation into the death of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man put into a chokehold by police who stopped him on the street in suburban Denver last year because he was “being suspicious.”Gov. Jared Polis signed an executive order directing state Attorney General Phil Weiser to investigate and possibly prosecute the three white officers previously cleared in McClain’s death. McClain’s name has become a rallying cry during the national reckoning over racism and police brutality following the deaths of George Floyd and others.“Elijah McClain should be alive today, and we owe it to his family to take this step and elevate the pursuit of justice in his name to a statewide concern,” Polis said in a statement.He said he had spoken with McClain’s mother and was moved by her description of her son as a “responsible and curious child … who could inspire the darkest soul.”Police in Aurora responded to a call about a suspicious person wearing a ski mask and waving his arms as he walked down a street on August 24. Police body-camera video shows an officer getting out of his car, approaching McClain and saying, “Stop right there. Stop. Stop. … I have a right to stop you because you’re being suspicious.”Police say McClain refused to stop walking and fought back when officers confronted him and tried to take him into custody.In the video, the officer turns McClain around and repeats, “Stop tensing up.” As McClain tries to escape the officer’s grip, the officer says, “Relax, or I’m going to have to change this situation.”As other officers join to restrain McClain, he begs them to let go and says, “You guys started to arrest me, and I was stopping my music to listen.”One of the officers put him in a chokehold that cuts off blood to the brain, something that has been banned in several places in the wake of Floyd’s death May 25 while in the custody of Minneapolis police and the global protests that followed.In the video, McClain tells officers: “Let go of me. I am an introvert. Please respect the boundaries that I am speaking.” Those words have appeared on scores of social media posts demanding justice for McClain.He was on the ground for 15 minutes as several officers and paramedics stood by. Paramedics gave him 500 milligrams of the sedative ketamine to calm him down, and he suffered cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital. McClain was declared brain dead August 27 and was taken off life support three days later.A forensic pathologist could not determine what exactly led to his death but said physical exertion during the confrontation likely contributed.McClain’s younger sister, Samara McClain, told The Denver Post shortly after his death that her brother was walking to a corner store to get tea for a cousin and often wore masks when he was outside because he had a blood condition that caused him to get cold easily.In the video, Elijah McClain sobs as he repeatedly tells officers, “I’m just different.” Samara McClain said her brother was a massage therapist who planned to go to college.The Police Department put the three officers on leave, but they returned to the force when District Attorney Dave Young said there was insufficient evidence to support charging them.“Ultimately, while I may share the vast public opinion that Elijah McClain’s death could have been avoided, it is not my role to file criminal charges based on opinion, but rather, on the evidence revealed from the investigation and applicable Colorado law,” Young said shortly before Polis ordered the investigation reopened.Aurora police said interim Police Chief Vanessa Wilson won’t comment to avoid interfering with the investigation.Mari Newman, the McClain family’s attorney, said she was pleased with the governor’s decision.“Clearly, Aurora has no intention of taking responsibility for murdering an innocent young man,” she said. “Its entire effort is to defend its brutality at all costs, and to lie to the public it is supposed to serve. It is time for a responsible adult to step in.”Colorado’s attorney general said in a statement that the investigation will be thorough and “worthy of public trust and confidence in the criminal justice system.” 
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In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration on Thursday urged the Supreme Court to overturn the Affordable Care Act.The administration’s latest high court filing came the same day the government reported that close to half a million people who lost their health insurance amid the economic shutdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus have gotten coverage through HealthCare.gov.The administration’s legal brief makes no mention of the virus.Some 20 million Americans could lose their health coverage and protections for people with preexisting health conditions also would be put at risk if the court agrees with the administration in a case that won’t be heard before the fall.In the case before the Supreme Court, Texas and other conservative-led states argue that the ACA was essentially rendered unconstitutional after Congress passed tax legislation in 2017 that eliminated the law’s unpopular fines for not having health insurance, but left in place its requirement that virtually all Americans have coverage.After failing to repeal “Obamacare” in 2017 when Republicans fully controlled Congress, President Donald Trump has put the weight of his administration behind the legal challenge.If the health insurance requirement is invalidated, “then it necessarily follows that the rest of the ACA must also fall,” Solicitor General Noel Francisco wrote Thursday.The Trump administration’s views on what parts of the ACA might be kept or replaced if the law is overturned have shifted over time. But in legal arguments, it has always supported getting rid of “Obamacare” provisions that prohibit insurance companies from discriminating against people on account of their medical history.Nonetheless, Trump has repeatedly assured Americans that people with preexisting conditions would still be protected. Neither the White House nor congressional Republicans have specified how.The new sign-ups for health coverage come from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The figures are partial because they don’t include sign-ups from states that run their own health insurance marketplaces. Major states like California and New York are not counted in the federal statistics.An estimated 27 million people may have lost job-based coverage due to layoffs, and it’s unclear what — if anything — they’re turning to as a fallback. People who lose employer health care are eligible for a special sign-up period for subsidized plans under the Obama-era law. Many may also qualify for Medicaid.The Trump administration has been criticized for not doing as much as states like California to publicize these readily available backups. In response, administration officials say they have updated the HealthCare.gov website to make it easier for consumers to find information on special sign-up periods.Thursday’s report from the government showed that about 487,000 people signed up with HealthCare.gov after losing their workplace coverage this year. That’s an increase of 46 percent from the same time period last year.  
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The Pentagon will put up to 4,000 troops at the U.S. southern border with Mexico from this October through September 2021, a move that will decrease the overall number of troops there while extending the mission another year.“Secretary [Mark] Esper has approved a request for assistance from the Department of Homeland Security and authorized the deployment of up to 4,000 DOD personnel to the southern border,” Pentagon spokesman Army Lieutenant Colonel Christian Mitchell said Thursday.As of late April, the total number of U.S. military forces deployed to the border was about 5,000, according to the U.S. Northern Command. The military is running more than 200 mobile surveillance sites along the southern U.S. border, in addition to assisting U.S. Border Patrol agents with logistics and transportation.“Military personnel will not directly participate in civilian law enforcement activities,” Mitchell said, adding that the bulk of the troops deployed would be National Guard members rather than active-duty troops.FILE – U.S. Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott gives President Donald Trump a tour of a section of the border wall, June 23, 2020, in San Luis, Ariz.On Wednesday, President Donald Trump commemorated the 200th mile of border wall during a visit to the southwestern state of Arizona, describing the wall as “powerful and comprehensive.””Our border has never been more secure,” Trump said.White House correspondent Steve Herman contributed to this report.
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The U.S. Federal Reserve announced Thursday it will cap big bank dividend payments and bar share repurchases until at least the fourth quarter after finding lenders faced significant capital losses when tested against an economic slump caused by the coronavirus pandemic.In its analysis, the Fed found that the country’s largest lenders have struggled to model the unprecedented downturn and ensuing rescue programs, adding to already unprecedented uncertainty about how banks and the economy overall would perform in the coming months.The Fed did not say how each bank fared under the pandemic analysis but found the 34 tested firms could suffer as much as $700 billion in aggregate loan losses under the most severe, “W-shaped” economic recovery.Shares of banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co, Bank of America Corp, Citigroup Inc, Wells Fargo & Co and Goldman Sachs Group Inc tumbled in after-hours trading on the news, having risen earlier in the day.The Fed determined that although banks could weather a severe, tumultuous and prolonged economic downturn, several would cut close to their minimum capital requirements.With that in mind, the regulator placed a new limit on how much capital banks could pay to investors in dividends in the third quarter. They cannot pay more than they did in the second quarter, and payments cannot exceed average net income over the last four quarters.The Fed also said it was barring share repurchases for at least the third quarter. The biggest banks had voluntarily suspended buybacks as the pandemic took hold, but it was not clear how long that would last.The Fed’s actions were unprecedented. It was the first time since the central bank implemented stress tests during the 2007-09 financial crisis that it had to fundamentally alter its annual exam for a dramatic economic swing.After releasing some details in February, the Fed had to add last-minute “sensitivity analyzes” in May to account for actual economic turmoil that exceeded the worst-case officials envisioned in the original test.The Fed’s analysis suggested that some banks are more vulnerable than others. In aggregate, banks saw capital levels fall to 7.7 percent under the toughest scenario, but some came dangerously close to the 4.5 percent minimum they are required to hold to be considered well-capitalized.Without naming any particular bank, the Fed said some relied on “more optimistic than appropriate” outlooks and that their capital planning “has not been thoughtful.”The biggest banks either declined to comment or did not immediately respond to Reuters on Thursday evening.The Financial Services Forum, an industry trade group, said the results underscored the industry’s strength. The group also highlighted steps banks have taken to support the economy and urged the Fed to be transparent in its process.Banks privately received their specific results from the Fed on Thursday. They can adjust original plans to get a better assessment and release those details after the market closes on Monday.Analysts and investors suggested the Fed’s capital limitations — though surprising — were not necessarily a bad thing. Although banks had voluntarily suspended buybacks, they were more reticent to limit dividends, and the Fed’s restrictions are forcing them to be cautious.”It is worth being punished a little bit to ensure the long-term viability of your investments,” said Bill Smead, chief investment officer of Smead Capital Management, whose fund owns JPMorgan, Bank of America and Wells Fargo. “I’m not mad at (the Fed).” 
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Texas on Thursday halted steps to reopen its economy after a sharp rise in coronavirus cases, as the United States hits infection rates not seen since the start of the pandemic.Twenty-nine states are now experiencing new surges, with more than 35,900 cases recorded in the past 24 hours, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University — a level approaching a new record.Texas was among the most aggressive states in reopening in early June after months of lockdown, its leadership confident it had escaped the worst of the pandemic that has claimed almost 122,000 lives in the U.S., by far the highest number in the world.”The State of Texas will pause any further phases to open Texas as the state responds to the recent increase in positive COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations,” Governor Greg Abbott’s office announced in a statement.”The last thing we want to do as a state is go backwards and close down businesses. This temporary pause will help our state corral the spread,” Abbott said, asking residents to wear masks and respect social distancing guidelines.Abbott is an ally of Donald Trump, but his latest announcement was in stark contrast to the president, who has tried to signal that the virus crisis is largely over.In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now estimates that the 2.4 million recorded cases may represent only a tenth the total number of people who have been infected at some point, according to estimates from nationally representative antibody surveys.It “looks like it’s somewhere between five and eight percent of the American public” that have antibodies, said CDC director Robert Redfield, a range of between 16.5 and 26.4 million people.Three northeastern states that made significant progress beating back the pandemic — New York, New Jersey and Connecticut — on Wednesday urged visitors arriving from U.S. hotspots such as Texas, Florida and Alabama to quarantine themselves.Several states in the South and West are suffering what White House advisor and top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci described as “disturbing” new surges in infections.Politicization of masksExperts blame a patchwork of responses at the official level, the politicization of masks and physical distancing, and the widespread onset of complacency.Unlike Europe and parts of East Asia, the United States never climbed down from its peak, and is still in the midst of its first wave.Wearing a mask and maintaining an appropriate physical distance are urged in federal guidelines, but that hasn’t been made mandatory in many of the regions now seeing surges.On the other hand, in cities like the capital Washington, mask-wearing is the norm, with people voluntarily wearing them outside too, especially in places where it is hard to maintain distance at all times.These differences reflect the country’s polarized politics, with many Republicans casting face coverings as an assault on their liberty and a liberal conspiracy to stoke fear.Leading the charge is Trump, who last week held a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma against the advice of top health officials and now plans to travel to New Jersey to visit a golf club he owns, overriding a quarantine order that asks outsiders to self-isolate for two weeks upon arrival.Pregnancy warningThe CDC, meanwhile, has also revised its list of conditions that might increase a person’s susceptibility to the virus.According to its research, “Pregnant women were significantly more likely to be hospitalized, admitted to the intensive care unit, and receive mechanical ventilation than nonpregnant women; however, pregnant women were not at greater risk for death from COVID-19.”The CDC has also removed the age-specific warning for severe COVID-19 disease, saying that risk rises steadily as you increase in age and it’s not just those over 65 who are at increased risk. 
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VOA Contributor Greta Van Susteren interviewed former White House National Security Advisor John Bolton. This is a transcript of the interview.Greta Van Susteren: “Ambassador, nice to see you sir.”Former National Security Advisor John Bolton: “Glad to be with you.”Susteren: “It’s like old times. We’ve done many of these interviews over the last 10 or 15 years.”Bolton: “Indeed. For an international audience, though, I think it’s particularly important this time. So I appreciate your doing it.”Susteren: “Let’s start first with — you were a U.N. Ambassador. What is that?”Bolton: “Well that’s a job that requires protecting American interest in the United Nations which is sometimes not entirely friendly to the U.S. but mostly it involves trying to make the Security Council of the U.N. work. When I was there, we had some success on sanctions against North Korea for its nuclear weapons program, sanctions against Iran for its nuclear weapons program but the U.N. isn’t what it was conceived to be in 1945. It’s been largely ineffective in its political arms, many of its humanitarian agencies do very good work but on the political side, it has not functioned as it was expected to.”Susteren: “Now you did that under President George Bush, number 43?”Bolton: “Right, that’s correct.”Susteren: “And then we had President Obama for eight years and now we’re into a new president, President Trump and you had a job in the Trump administration. What was that?”Bolton: “I was the national security adviser. I worked in the White House directly for the President, and my job was to help the President coordinate the development of policy, to provide him with options, and then to oversee the implementation of policy. And part of the story I tell in my book is how that job was very different under Donald Trump than it was under any other American president I’ve worked for since the National Security Council was created after World War II.”Susteren:  “You were the National Security Adviser, not the national security decider, fair?”Bolton: “That’s correct, exactly.”Susteren: “The decider would be the president who was elected.”Bolton: “Precisely.”Susteren: “When did you become the national security adviser?”Bolton: “In April of 2018, and I lasted seven, 17 months until September of 2019.”Susteren: “You were not the first national security adviser under this president?”Bolton: “I was the third. There’s now a fourth.”Susteren: “Why did you take that job?”Bolton: “You know, I felt that despite what people had heard about President Trump, that nonetheless it would be possible to work to implement what I considered to be a mainstream Republican foreign policy. I’d had experience in several different Republican administrations. Every president has his own style and his own priorities. But I felt this would be another opportunity to advance American national interests.  And because of the way the Trump presidency works, that proved very, very hard to do.”Susteren: “Now, historically, people think, and tell me this is fair or not, is that you are hawkish, that you’re much more muscular in diplomacy and more likely to want to use force than diplomacy. Is that fair or not fair description of you?”Bolton: “Well, I think it’s not fair in the sense that that I don’t look at 193 countries around the world and think that force is going to be used with respect to a lot of them. I think the credible threat of force provides both an important deterrent against American adversaries, and also the requisite strength from which to bargain advantageously to the United States. So, it’s like Sun Tzu, the great Chinese philosopher of war once said, you can get your objective without war. That’s the best outcome of all.” Susteren: “And President Trump, how would you describe him in terms of his overall ideology in terms of looking at the world?”Bolton: “Well I don’t think the President has a world view.  I don’t think he has a philosophy or a grand strategy. And he doesn’t follow policy. It’s, it’s about his personal instincts at any given moment, always focused on his re-election. But I’ve never seen a president, never read about a president, never experienced a president who didn’t have some kind of guiding strategy other than his own political fortunes. Every president, every political leader in a democracy takes politics into account, no secret there.”Susteren: “So other presidents were also interested in reelection?”Bolton: “Absolutely. This is the only president, to my knowledge, that has had almost no other interest than his re-election.”Susteren: “When you first became National Security Adviser, was the first big issue on your plate?”Bolton: “Well literally the day I began, we were within 48 hours of a use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime in Syria against opposition forces there. And that use of chemical weapons occurred almost one year to the day after Assad’s last use of chemical weapons against his own people.  In the year before, the United States had retaliated, but obviously the lesson had not sunk in. So, in my first five days in the White House, we had to decide what response we would give to this horrible use of chemical weapons. Could we get the British and the French to come along with us, which we were successful in doing, had not occurred the year before. And would the response to Assad’s brutality be sufficient? So, I lay all that out in the book, but it was certainly an interesting baptism by fire for the first five or six days. That’s basically all I did.”Susteren: “Now, at that time, the Secretary of Defense was General Mattis, is that correct?”Bolton: “That’s correct.”Susteren: “Did you and General Mattis agree on the advice to give to the President about Syria?”Bolton: “No, we did not, and it was disturbing to me because I thought the President needed to get coherent options, a strong option, medium option, light option if you will. And General Mattis just didn’t come up with that in a way I felt satisfactory. So, that was part of my challenge while national security advisor and I think ultimately, the Defense Department came through under General Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pat Shanahan, who was Acting Secretary of Defense and Mark Esper, to providing options that were more clearly understandable by the President and didn’t try and box him in.”Susteren:  “All right. So, but at the very beginning, the first few days, you and the Secretary of Defensive are at odds as to how to proceed against Syria and both giving advice to the President.”Bolton: “That’s correct. The president ultimately picked the decision he did, which was a retaliation against Syria’s chemical weapons program itself. Unfortunately, in the time since that attack in April of 2018, Syria has used chemical weapons again. So, I think the conclusion you have to draw is we did not establish deterrence – violence, civil war in Syria, extremely destructive to the country continues as we speak.”Susteren:  “Why do you think President Trump followed General Mattis, his secretary of defense and not your advice?”Bolton: “The way the options were struct, were structured almost didn’t leave him any choice. And that’s a classic bureaucratic ploy – that you lay out what appear to be a range of choices, but they’re ordered in a way that really leaves no choice at all. And one of the things I determined was I didn’t want to let that happen in the future. I thought the President needed a real range of options and that’s what I tried to give him.”Susteren: “Second issue on your plate pretty much was that North Korea and the summit in Singapore?”  Bolton:  “Well the second issue was getting out of the Iran nuclear deal. So, after finishing with Syria for one week, the next three weeks were very heavily engaged in the decision announced in early May of 2018 that the United States was withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal. Now you’re quite right. During that same period, I was also trying to get ready for the Singapore summit with Kim Jong Un.”Susteren: “Let me ask you about Iran. You and the President both agreed on getting out of the deal. You were in agreement then.”Bolton: “That’s right. And this was, ironically, for the first 14 months in office, I think Trump had wanted to get out of the Iran deal, but his advisors wouldn’t let him, in effect.”Susteren: “In fact, he ran on that originally in 2016.”Bolton:  “He did.”Susteren: “And leading up to the 2016 race, he was always saying it was a lousy deal. And he was very aggressive towards President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry for engaging in it, for signing it.”Bolton: “Right. And to those who have said, well the two, Bolton and Trump were a mismatch, they didn’t agree on anything. This, I thought was one of the most important decisions that Trump has made in his term so far and we were in complete agreement on the need to get out of that deal.”Susteren: “And now it’s interesting – in the book you write about Secretary of Treasury Mnuchin, who is involved in this whole Iran deal because of sanctions that the U.S. government was obligated or was considering imposing, re-imposing on Iran. You didn’t agree with Secretary Mnuchin’s decision to sort of, in your opinion, correct me if I’m wrong, to slow walk the sanctions.”Bolton: “Right. I did not agree with that. I’ve had a lot of experience with economic sanctions in a variety of different contexts. I think the lesson of history is that sanctions are effective when they’re massively applied very quickly, and strictly enforced. When you roll out sanctions over a period of time, countries have a chance to mitigate the downside effects from them so they escape the full weight of the sanctions. Now, all that said, I do think that, contrary to the predictions of many opponents of our getting out of the deal, the unilateral weight of American sanctions have had a crushing effect on the Tehran regime. My point is we could have been even more effective had we rolled the sanctions out more effectively.”Susteren: “Okay. So now we get to North Korea. And we’ve had Syria, where you disagree with Secretary of Defense Mattis and the President went basically with what the Secretary of Defense Mattis said. Then we have Iran, and you and the President agree on Iran and you objected to the way Secretary Treasury Mnuchin is not moving fast enough on reimposing sanctions. We now get to North Korea and the summit in Singapore. Did you think that was a good idea?” Bolton: “No, and in fact, I had qualms before joining the administration. The decision was clearly moving in that direction. When I heard of the decision the President had made to hold a summit with Kim Jong Un before I joined the White House, I didn’t think anything would come of it, because through my experience with North Korea over the years, I became convinced that they would never give up nuclear weapons voluntarily, and that the idea of a summit wasn’t going to change that. North Korea has been very successful for a long time in extracting tangible economic benefits from the U.S., Japan, and others in exchange for promising to give up its nuclear weapons, which it never gets around to doing. And I thought we were just going to see another go-round of that scenario, which is exactly what happened.”Susteren: “I actually went to that summit as a reporter and covered it. Did you think the summit meeting with Kim Jong Un, I mean nothing’s, they didn’t get rid of the nuclear weapons after the summit, but did it hurt to have the summit? Or is there any sort of value in at least talking to your opponent?”Bolton: “Well, I think you can talk to your opponent without having a summit. I think it’s fruitless in the case of the North Korean regime. There’s not been a single significant agreement they’ve made with the United States since they were created after World War Two that they’ve ever adhered to. But I think it’s particularly poorly advised to have the American president meet with the head of North Korea. People I’ve talked to around the world, particularly in Asia, have all said it was a big get for Kim Jong Un to get that photo opportunity with Donald Trump. I think that’s right, it’s a legitimized step. The United States got nothing for it. And so, it was a real giveaway. It was a great …”Susteren: “Did it hurt the U.S.?”Bolton: “Well, think it did, because we were at the same time trying to maintain very strict sanctions against North Korea, and yet … “Susteren: “Did we change the sanctions after that?”Bolton: “They didn’t go in as quickly and as strongly as they should have in the following months.”Susteren: “Is that Secretary Mnuchin slow or is that President Trump slow?”Bolton: “Well, I think Mnuchin’s overall inclination is to go slow and not impose them. The President could be hot one day and cold the next, or he could be hot in the morning and cold in the afternoon. That was part of the difficulty of sustaining a coherent policy, not just on North Korea.”Susteren: “What, besides a photo op — and maybe I don’t fully appreciate the advantage of a photo op for Kim Jong Un — what did he get out of this summit?”Bolton: “Well, I think within North Korea, where there’s always, for any dictatorial authority, you’ve always got to be taking steps to maintain that authority, this was a huge win internally. He had done something by being on the world stage like that, that no North Korean leader and contemporary since, since the existence of North Korea had been able to do. So, I think it strengthened his hand inside the country as well, and it allowed him to appear on a stage that just was incomparable for any other North Korean.”Susteren: “So, North Korea still has its nuclear weapons program, but it had it during President Obama, before that President Bush, 43, and before that, President Clinton. So, several presidents have struggled with how to keep a weapons program out of the hands of Kim Jong Un or his predecessor, his father. Is that an insurmountable problem?”Bolton: “Well, I point out in the book a speech that Winston Churchill gave in the House of Commons in the 1930s. It’s not a well-known speech, but he talks about the importance of acting early when a threat is not fully mature…”Susteren:  “We’re not very early if, I mean, if it started back in 1992ish.”Bolton: “It gets, it gets worse every day. But the point is, the earlier you act, the lower the risk. And Churchill talks about what he describes as the confirmed unteachability of mankind, not being able to learn this lesson. I still think there’s time with North Korea. It’s very short. There’s more time with Iran. But time is always on the side of the proliferator. Every day that goes by, they get a little bit closer to the nuclear capability, and that’s what we need to try and avoid.”Susteren: “Right. So, President Clinton couldn’t do it, President Bush 43, couldn’t do it. President Obama couldn’t do it. President Trump hasn’t been able to do it. What would you do differently?”Bolton: “Well, I think you need to focus, in the case of North Korea, on what the ultimate U.S. objective should be, and that objective should be the reunification of the Korean Peninsula.”Susteren: “Well, that’s actually what North Korea wants, only they want it, reunification for DPRK, North Korea.”Bolton: “Exactly. And if they get a nuclear weapons capability, their hand in getting their kind of reunification will be enhanced. People justify taking a low-key approach to North Korea because they say it’s only for defensive purposes. I think that’s clearly not true. But here’s where, if you want an example of creative diplomacy — had we gone to China earlier, and I think it might be past the point where we can do this now, and said, ‘Look, you don’t want American troops on the Korean Peninsula, neither of us want nuclear weapons in North Korea. There is a way to handle that.’”Susteren: “Are you saying it’s too late, or is there something you would do today about North Korea?”Bolton: “Well, I think the steps that China has taken on a range of other fronts, its substantial increase in its nuclear and other armaments capabilities in cyberspace and anti-satellite weaponry; its misuse of the entire international trade system is precipitating what could be the existential clash of the 21st century so that that diplomatic effort with China over North Korea may be impossible. But I still think the objective of U.S. policy in 1945 was correct: the division of Korea is temporary, it’s unnatural, and ultimately it will be resolved. There will be reunification. The question will be, is it going to be on Kim Jong Un’s terms, or on the terms that I think the people of South Korea want, which is an open, free society.”Susteren: “So, I go back to the question again: what would you do? You say unification of the Korean Peninsula, but reunification with South Korea essentially being the entire Korean peninsula. But, in recognition of where we are today, what would you do?”Bolton:  “Well, I would tighten the sanctions even further than they are. We don’t know exactly what the impact of the Coronavirus has been inside North Korea, but I think the fact that Kim Jong Un was foiled in his efforts to get economic assistance from the United States has potentially weakened his hold over the country. And I think …”Susteren: “Do you credit President Trump with that? because he didn’t lift any of the sanctions.”Bolton:  “No, that’s right. But we haven’t enforced them as strictly as we could either. And I think the President was much too trusting of Xi Jinping and his assurances that China was enforcing the sanctions. Look, historically, China gives North Korea 90% of its oil. If you turn that tap off entirely, the country’s pitifully small economy would collapse. The Chinese have never done that.”Susteren:“Well, President Trump doesn’t seem to have a great relationship with China, either. I mean, so how would you get China to do basically the heavy lifting for the United States and the rest of the world vis-a-vis North Korea and a nuclear weapons program?”Bolton:  “Right. Well, I think Trump’s relationship with Xi Jinping goes up and down depending on the prospects for Election Day. And if Trump wins reelection, I think Xi Jinping will be his big buddy once again. But that also exposes another real problem, I think, in the Trump presidency, which is his confusion of the state of personal relations between two countries’ leaders and the fundamental relations between the two countries. He equates one with the other when it’s clearly not the case.”Susteren: “During this time, or about this time, there were military exercises planned with the United States and South Korea in that region. They were canceled. You objected to that.”Bolton: “Right. This was something that happened as we were sitting in the first summit in Singapore, where the President just, unprompted by anybody, said to Kim Jong Un that he would cancel what he called the war games. And Mike Pompeo, John Kelly and I were sitting at the table, and that was the first we had heard of it. This is the kind of unstructured, giveaway kind of bargaining that unfortunately marked too much of President Trump’s international diplomatic efforts. It was a freebie for the North Koreans. They didn’t restrain their war games in North Korea. In fact, they continued and even increased them, as they continued to work on their nuclear and ballistic missile programs. So, I think it was a real mistake by the United States.” Susteren: “Aside from the fact of how the President did it, sort of sua sponte, or doing it himself without talking perhaps to you and others. Why does the U.S. need those military exercises when the U.S. is so sophisticated from a military standpoint and we can do so much even from our own soil? Why do we need those exercises in the sea there?”Bolton:  “Well, it’s, and on land. These are coordinated exercises between South Korea and U.S. forces.”Susteren: “And they’re expensive.”Bolton:  “Yes, but any military that doesn’t train won’t be prepared if war breaks out. It’s like saying baseball doesn’t need spring training. You know the motto of U.S. forces in South Korea and in the Pacific is ‘fight tonight’ because they don’t know when an attack will come. And if your motto is ‘fight next month’, you’re in deep trouble.”Susteren: “But what does it—I mean, is it really necessary to fight to prepare then, there, in light of what’s going on in terms of the tenuous relationship that the United States has in that region?”Bolton:  “It’s absolutely necessary to continue both, and my authority for that is Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong’s number two, who once explained to reporters during World War II about the continuing civil war between the communist and the nationalist, even while they were negotiating. Zhou Enlai said, ‘This is simply fighting while talking. You can fight as if you’re not talking, and you can talk as if you’re not fighting.’ What we did was talk but not prepare for war. And that, perhaps President Trump didn’t understand that, but a decline of readiness of forces both by the United States and South Korea is an incentive to North Korea to engage in more provocative behavior.”Susteren: “One of things you write about in your book is a note that you said that Secretary of State Pompeo passed to you that was derogatory about the President. Do you have that note?”Bolton  “No. He had written it down on his own notepad. We were both sitting there taking notes and he sort of slid it over to me and I nodded my head and he, he took it back.”Susteren: “So it’ll be his note. If it exists, if it still exists, he has the note.”Bolton:  “He has the note.”Susteren: “And what did he say?”Bolton: “He said the President was full of shit.”Susteren:“Was it about one specific statement the President said?”Bolton: “It was in response to a particular statement. But I took it to mean a response to the discussion we had had for perhaps 15, 20 minutes or so at that point.”Susteren: “What did Secretary of State Pompeo, at about that time, what was he saying about the President to you? I mean, what was his general view of the President?”Bolton:“Well, we had a lot of discussions about the President on many substantive issues, I’d say Iran, for example, was a good, a good case study of that. Substantively, Mike Pompeo and I saw things much the same way. I think the difference is that he was less willing to disagree with the President and to try and guide him in a different direction. Look, the President makes the decisions. There’s no doubt about that. There’s nobody in the White House or the administration who didn’t understand that. The question is, do you simply acquiesce in a policy that you think is misguided, or do you continue to try and press the President to appreciate the broader significance of his decisions? Look, ultimately, if you’re not having success and you’re not able in good faith to defend the President publicly, then you should, then you should resign, which is ultimately what I did. But I thought Mike didn’t like the policies, but wouldn’t, wouldn’t challenge him.”Susteren: “Well he’s come out very hard against you and your book, Secretary of State Pompeo has. I mean, he’s basically said that you’re making things up.”Bolton: “Right. Well, I have a very clear recollection of these events. I did the best I could to put them down on paper. I think that Mike sees his political future and he has higher ambitions. I think he sees his future is tied to President Trump, and I feel sorry for him for that.”Susteren: “Would you suggest he’s for sale?”Bolton:  “No, but I think politicians make judgments like that. And I just think it’s too bad from his own perspective.”Susteren: “During the course of the summit or anytime, did you get any information about what happened to the college student, Otto Warmbier? I mean he went over there on some sort of tour years ago as a student, and I think he swiped a flag or something like that. And he was taken into custody, tried in North Korea, held for a long time, returned essentially dead, in a comatose state, and we never got any more information about what happened to that young man.”Bolton: “And I’m not aware of any further information that’s come out. This was an act of brutality, of just senseless violence, that I’m afraid shows a lot about the character of the North Korean regime, including some of the people who were involved in our nuclear negotiations, who are believed responsible for what happened to Otto Warmbier. So, I think when Americans look at the idea of sitting down with Kim Jong Un and exchanging love letters with him about how wonderful things are, think of Otto Warmbier and what really goes on inside North Korea.”Susteren: “Which then brings me back to what do you do? You say just tighten the sanctions on North Korea? You would not take any military action against North Korea?”Bolton:  “I don’t think that’s appropriate. But I do think in South Korea, there are many people with a lot of excellent ideas of things they could do inside North Korea to destabilize the regime. I think when you’re running a 25-million-person prison camp, which is what Kim Jong Un is doing, you make a lot of enemies. And I think there are probably ways to fracture the North Korean leadership. It would be helpful if we could get China involved in that, I think it’s unlikely at the moment. But that regime is weaker than you think. When totalitarian regimes collapse, it’s often remarkable how weak they turn out to be.”Susteren:: “It seems to me in your book that the President of South Korea was very much involved in trying to coordinate a summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un. So, it sounds like he wanted to talk.”Bolton:  “Well I think he wanted to be in the summit. I described in the book how he would have liked it to have been three-way discussions. You know, public opinion in South Korea is very divided too. There are the advocates of the so-called Sunshine policy approach, like President Moon Jae In. That’s about 50% of the population. The other 50% holds views–I won’t say they’re exactly the same as mine but are much more hard line. So, they face the same debate, for them it’s obviously much more important, as we do.”Susteren: “One of the things President Trump has raised when he ran for President and he’s even said since is, the U.S. has about 29,000 American troops in South Korea, an enormous expense to the American people, and he has made- he has mentioned about the cost of it. Would you advocate, or do you advocate with him any more, keeping it the same, or less American troops in South Korea?”Bolton:  “Well I think the number can vary. I mean there’s no one fixed number that’s right every given time. What we were trying to do during the Bush administration was move American forces back from the 38th parallel, to position them down around the southern tip of the peninsula so they would be less vulnerable at the opening of a North Korean attack, but would also be available for deployment around East Asia in response to aggression or belligerency by the Chinese. I think that’s still a strategy to pursue. I think it’s important for America to have troops and assets forward deployed in Asia, particularly as we see China’s increased belligerence in a number of fields. It’s why I think the U.S.-South Korean alliance remains very important today, and the U.S.-Japanese alliance. All of them, including NATO, have come under enormous strain during the Trump presidency, and I think that’s very troubling.”Susteren: “What’s a bigger threat? Maybe this is not a fair question. What’s the biggest threat to the United States, Iran’s nuclear program or North Korea’s nuclear program?”Bolton: “Well, I think right at the moment you’d have to say North Korea’s because it’s much further advanced. But Iran, at least when oil prices internationally are at acceptable levels, is potentially a much wealthier country, a much larger country, and it’s centered in in the world’s most trouble-ridden region, the Middle East. So, Iran’s not far behind in that sense. It’s a technological matter of catching up. And we haven’t, despite the pressure we’ve put on Iran, we haven’t put enough on yet to get what I think is the only way their behavior is going to change, is to get regime change in Tehran. As the people, dissatisfied as they are in Iran, and they are very dissatisfied, are able to get a new government installed.”Susteren: “Do you agree or disagree with the President’s policies towards Iran?”Bolton: “Well, I think I agree certainly as far as they’ve gone, they just haven’t gone far enough. And as I lay out in the book, he is constantly on the verge of succumbing to the temptation to sit down with the Ayatollahs, just as he wanted to sit down with Kim Jong Un. It’s tough to match the photo opportunities that the Singapore, and Hanoi, and DMZ summits gave to the President. And he’d have a great photo opportunity of him sitting across from the supreme leader of Iran. So great photo opportunities for the President, not a good idea for the United States.”Susteren: “You know, lot of the book talks about your disagreements with the President, disagreements in policies, but I don’t have a sense of what to the do is. With the exception of– that he went to– he had the summit with Kim Jong Un, and he has a photo op in it. I don’t– I’m not quite sure I agree that photo op has, you know, set the United States back. But I’ll set that aside. But what has the President actually done that has, in your opinion, made him unfit for office? Because you’ve said he’s unfit for office.”Bolton: “Right well, I think the way he makes decisions is dangerous. I think when you’re inconsistent, erratic, when you don’t study the material, when you don’t know about the facts, when your priorities change erratically, when you’re giving mixed signals to friends and allies alike. What that does is embolden your adversaries, who think that he can be taken advantage of, and it chills your allies, who don’t see the strength and stability that they expect from American leadership. Now, don’t get me wrong…”Susteren: “So he’s unpopular in the world?”Bolton: “Well, I don’t care whether he’s popular or not …”Susteren: “But I mean, what’s he actually — I’m trying to think like what’s been the actual effect? And what’s he actually done?”Bolton: “Well, let’s take the allies first. His inconsistent and erratic behavior has made them worried about the continuity of American leadership, and what it says to them is we better look out for ourselves, which in turn creates a cycle of weakening whether it’s the NATO alliance, or the series of bilateral alliances we have in other parts of the world. Look, our allies also complain about strong American leadership, because they think we’re trying to order them around, but what they really fear is American weakness. And I think they see in some of the President’s policies a withdrawal, a kind of isolationism, but more than anything they fear inconsistency, unpredictability, and lack of willpower and persistence.”Susteren: “The President has been very critical of the NATO family because they haven’t– the NATO family has not met its commitments financially. Do you disagree with that?”Bolton: “No. I strongly believe the NATO alliance should live up to the commitment its member countries made to have 2% of their GDP in defense spending. We didn’t force them to do that, they took that on voluntarily. Trump’s complaints really are no different than Obama’s, in the sense that Obama in a famous interview called the other NATO allies deadbeats. The issue is whether you want to get those expenditures up to strengthen the NATO alliance, which I think should be the objective, or whether, as I lay out in the book in one particular example at a NATO summit, I think the President was close to withdrawing from NATO, and I very much fear if he does win a second term, he’ll withdraw.”Susteren: “But that’s again, a do, meaning he hasn’t done these things. I mean, he says things, and he tweets things and you know, that’s sometimes electrifying to people. But I’m trying to figure out what’s he actually done except, you know, brought people up to the line and wondered what he’s going to do?”Bolton: “Well, I think his failure in North Korea has given them two more years to make progress toward deliverable nuclear weapons.”Susteren: “Failure in not strengthening sanctions?”Bolton: “Failure to do anything that puts more pressure on the regime so that they can’t continue the nuclear weapons program. And let me let me come to a point, and I think this is important. You say, ‘Well he came close to it, but he didn’t do it.”Susteren: “Well I didn’t say close to it, ‘he says things’, is what’s repeated.”Bolton: “Right, but the pattern is frequently that he may not do it the first three or four times he says it, but he finally does do it. Let’s take the example of withdrawal from Syria. I lay out in the book how at one point at the end of 2018, as he had said before, he said it again. That’s why when Jim Mattis resigned, I stayed in, I didn’t think it was a good idea. I finally persuaded him, or actually, I think it was Trump’s visit to our troops in Iraq who he could hear from them, what we were doing in Syria that persuaded him. But ultimately the decision was made to keep American forces in northeast Syria. And that lasted until the spring of 2020, when he decided to pull them out again. This is the kind of activity…”Susteren: “What’s been the impact of that?”Bolton: “Well, I think what it does is strengthen the hand of Russia and Iran and Syria. Let me give you another example, is Afghanistan. Where he increased forces in the first year of the administration, gave Mattis and the military more leeway, then decided he wanted to pull out, decided he wanted to cease plans.”Susteren: “Which sort of mirrored a little bit what the Obama administration did. They, you know, President Obama said we’re getting out, then he adds more forces. I mean, so it mirrors that a little bit.”Bolton: “Right, so we could be equally critical of the Obama and the Trump approach. Now we’ve got a, quote unquote, peace deal with the Taliban that’s failing day by day.”Susteren: “A lot of people are dying in Afghanistan right now.”Bolton: “And the strength of the Taliban and other terrorist extremist groups continues to increase. We narrowly averted bringing the Taliban to Camp David, which I viewed almost as sacrilege and that was.”Susteren: “Not a do, but I mean but a talk, but a say.”Bolton: “Yea, it’s only a matter of time. This herky jerky, back and forth, on and off kind of behavior, does undercut American security, whatever the ultimate action taken is because eventually people don’t know what you think, and they can’t rely on your word. And, you know there’s a famous story from the Cuban Missile Crisis where Kennedy wants to explain to Charles de Gaulle why the Russian missiles are a threat in Cuba. And he sends former Secretary of State Dean Acheson to explain to de Gaulle what’s there, and de Gaulle says, ‘If the President says that, I simply accept the word of the American President.’ There’s not a leader in the world today that would say that about Donald Trump.”Susteren: “Let me go back to Afghanistan. The President ran on getting out of Afghanistan and we’ve been there a long time, the United States has been there a long time. Do you oppose getting the U.S. out of Afghanistan?”Bolton: “Well, there’s getting out, and there’s getting out. And that’s been part of the irregularity of the decision-making process there. Everybody also says that we don’t want to see another attack on the United States based on units that are in, terrorist activities that originate in Afghanistan. And under any version of a peace deal with the Taliban that’s been seriously considered, an American presence is going to remain in Afghanistan to prevent that. So, when you say total withdrawal or withdrawal from Afghanistan, it’s a little bit, you have to know exactly what the meaning is. I would argue that the best insurance for the United States against another terrorist attack is to keep a very strong forward presence in Afghanistan and other places. It’s much better to have the capability to deal with the terrorists there than simply try and defend against attacks in the U.S.”Susteren: “There are a lot of Americans that are really war weary, especially with Afghanistan and Iraq. Many thinking that it was one thing to go in for a short period of time back in 2001 after 9/11 and when the United States was attacked, but we’ve been in there now I mean, 18, 19 years. And, you know, was it a mistake just to go in beyond a short period time?”Bolton: “Well, you know, we’ve been in Europe 75 years, are we war weary of being in Europe? The president apparently is, as he begins to withdraw forces from Germany. I think you have to evaluate on a continuous basis what the threats to the United States are and how best to deal with them. If that means keeping troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan for a long period of time, if that makes us and the innocent civilians here in America safer, then yes, I am in favor of it. Am I in favor of keeping troops based in Japan and South Korea for a long time to help stabilize Northeast Asia? Absolutely, if the alternative is a more unstable world where America’s more threatened. We the United States live around the world. We’re really the only country that is every place in the world to a significant extent. So, we have interests everywhere. We also have allies and potential allies everywhere. And I think the strengthening of America’s alliances is something that does benefit international peace and security, and that in turn, that stability that we alone can help bring enhances American economic growth.”Susteren: “Let me go to another continent, South America. Is it any of the U.S. business or should we be in the business of what’s going on in Venezuela with Maduro?”Bolton: “It is absolutely of concern to the United States. This threat of a totalitarian regime in the Western Hemisphere threatens all of us. And I said we had a troika of tyranny in a number of speeches, Ortega in Nicaragua, and the remaining Castro regime, let’s call it what it is, in Cuba. But it’s not just those regimes alone, it’s the Russian influence in all three of those countries. It’s the Chinese influence in Venezuela, the Iranian influence, the influence of countries outside the Western Hemisphere using weaknesses in countries, and in this part of the world to exploit their own interests and to threaten the United States. That to me is really what the Monroe Doctrine is about, is about keeping non-Western Hemisphere influences out.”Susteren: “Well you bring Russia, but right now, Angela Merkel in Germany has a huge business deal with Russia. One of the things the President’s very upset about and has mentioned to her at different summits. You know, so a lot of these countries are dealing with each other who are our friends, like Germany, at the same time you know they’re dealing with Russia, and you’ve got Russia and Venezuela.”Bolton: “Right. Look, Ronald Reagan warned Margaret Thatcher very clearly, ‘Don’t get involved in getting your oil and natural gas from Russia. Not Britain, not the rest of Europe.’ They chose not to follow his advice and this deal Nord Stream 2, the pipeline that’s under construction that will come to Germany from Russia, I think is a huge mistake. I think that’s the sort of thing…”Susteren: “But isn’t the President tough on Angela Merkel about that at the same time, saying, ‘Look, you know, we’re going to bring U.S. troops out of Germany because it costs a lot of Americans money, and Germany has a lot of money, or has money,’ and at the same time you’re not making your NATO commitment?”Bolton: “Yeah, look, then you might ask Steve Mnuchin why we haven’t imposed sanctions on the Russians for the Nord Stream pipeline.”Susteren: “And the answer would be?”Bolton: “The President didn’t want to do that. So how tough was he really? Look, I think Germany is a key example of a country that’s not met its obligations financially to NATO and yet is one of the principal beneficiaries of stability in Europe. Trump inherited a very serious problem from decades of American presidents that didn’t do what they should do. So, any efforts to make them live up to their commitment and spend what they should spend are correct. But that’s to strengthen the alliance, not to weaken it, not to end it.”Susteren: “Your book talks about the present, and we’ve gone through all these countries but the book, I think your thesis in part is that the President’s unfit to be president. Fair, it that fair?”Bolton: “That’s one leg of it. The other leg of it is his lack of philosophy, to me demonstrates he’s not a conservative Republican, he’s not a liberal Democrat, he’s just not anything. And I think that lack of grounding and the lack of mooring is especially troubling given the competence questions.”Susteren: “Which is different though. It’s one thing to say you don’t agree with it, another thing to say you think someone is dangerous for a job.”Bolton: “Well, they’re two different things but they have a combined effect.”Susteren: “Would you say that he should not be president because he’s a threat to the country? Would you go that far?”Bolton: “I think it’s dangerous, yes. And I’m not gonna vote for him. I did vote for him in 2016, I’m not going to vote for Joe Biden, either because I don’t agree with his policies. I’m going to write in a conservative Republican in Maryland where I live. I’m very unhappy about the election choices at the presidential level this November, very unhappy.”Susteren: “Would you vote for, so I can understand, cause in your book, you’re critical of a lot of peoples, if Secretary Pompeo were a candidate, would he be fit?”Bolton: “I would not vote for him, no.”Susteren: “Secretary Mnuchin?”Bolton: “Well I don’t think he’s going to run, and, you know, if Joe Biden wins, he won’t need a new Secretary of the Treasury.”Susteren:“But would he be, I’m trying to figure out who you think is competent.”Bolton: “Well, I think there are a lot of people out there in the Republican Party who could be President. I think Mike Pence could be. But this, for me, I think the country is going to have to have a discussion about where it wants to go once Trump’s gone. And I think in the Republican Party, that conversation is especially important.”Susteren: “Ambassador Nikki Haley is mentioned in your book, not favorably, and this suggests that she might run in 2024. Could you ever support her?”Bolton: “Well, look, Mike Pompeo described Nikki Haley as light as a feather, which I repeat in the book. I put many of these anecdotes in because I think it’s important for people to see how others react, and they’ll draw their own conclusions from that. I’ve been criticized for a number of these things. You know, truth is always unhappy for some people, but the American voters don’t have the advantage of sitting in and watching how decisions are made in the federal government. And so, I wrote in a book review of Secretary of Defense Bob Gates’ memoir in 2014, I thought Gates was right to publish, even though the Obama administration was still in office. I thought it was a service to the country. I’m just, just trying to follow that precedent.”Susteren: “Why are so many people in the administration – even former press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, as well. They’re coming at you pretty harshly, saying that you were disagreeable and not easy to get along with. That you weren’t a good person to work with. And so, how do you sort of defend that you’re not just a malcontent writing a book?”Bolton: “Well, I’ve been in every Republican administration since, since Nixon, with the exception of the Ford administration. I’ve worked for a lot of different people, have a lot of friends from all those administrations and still in this administration. And I think it’s just a question of waiting until Donald Trump leaves the White House. And I think we’ll hear a lot about what happened during his tenure.”Susteren:“In terms of Ambassador Haley, that when she, when she resigned as ambassador, there was about a two month notice that she would be leaving, and she had this Oval Office meeting with the President. Is there a story behind that? Because I thought – I mean, I watched the press conference, or the conference between the two of them in the Oval Office and it seemed, it seemed unusual.”Bolton: “Yeah, well, I recount a conversation I had with President Trump in the book about whether or not he should replace Vice President Mike Pence on the ticket in 2020. And it was common speculation in the West Wing that there were those who were advocating making Nikki Haley vice president. I thought that was a bad idea. I lay out in the book my explanation to the President. Certainly, I’m not taking credit for, for affecting his decision. He is going to keep the Vice President on the ticket, I think that’s a positive thing. And ultimately, I think it became clear that’s what was going to happen, and Nikki Haley said ‘Well, actually, I was never interested in being the vice-presidential nominee either.’ Look, whether Trump wins or loses in November, the Republican Party is going to nominate somebody else in 2024, and the 2024 race for the Republican nomination is already underway.”Susteren: “Do you regret taking the job as national security adviser?”Bolton: “No, no I don’t. I don’t. I don’t look back retrospectively. You can’t change anything anyway so why, why worry about it? I believed, perhaps incorrectly, that the reports about how Donald Trump behaved were inaccurate. I figured there must be a way to make this work. The United States faces a significant range of threats and challenges around the world. I thought I could help deal with those. I’ve spent a lot of my career in government service for the reason of trying to advance American national security interests. I thought it was worth the effort, and I thought writing the book to explain why I did it – if not helpful to me – would be helpful to many other Americans that want to know what exactly happens in the government.”Susteren: “You know, in reading your book and reading his tweets and following all this, you know, he has rattled cages without any doubt. But I go back to that – I keep going back this this with you – what has he actually done that – you know, whether I agree with it or not – that puts the United States in a lesser position? That’s what I’m trying to focus on.”Bolton: “Well, I’ve given you a range of specifics where I think he’s made mistakes. I think you also have to look at what the economists call opportunity cost, the missed opportunities that he didn’t take advantage of. And I think there are a range of those, particularly dealing with Russia and China. The most recent example of missed opportunities is dealing effectively with the coronavirus, which came out of China. The Chinese covered it up, they lied about the effect inside China. They wouldn’t give access to people who could have understood the disease more. And in January and February, when people were sounding the warning about the potential consequences of a pandemic, Trump just didn’t want to hear about it, didn’t want to hear anything bad about China, and he didn’t want to hear anything that might affect the U.S. economy.”Susteren: “And I have to bring up Ukraine, because that’s obviously, I haven’t gotten to Ukraine, is that you were there through the bulk of the Ukraine discussion. Can you recount for me, you know, what was Giuliani’s job? The president’s lawyer, what, what was he supposed to be doing?”Bolton: “I don’t know the full extent of what Rudy was doing because he wasn’t part of the government …”Susteren: “So, he’s like a satellite for the President?”Bolton: “It’s like an alternative, off the shelf foreign policy that none of us in the government really fully understood. But I think what emerged over a period of time – it didn’t come in some blinding revelation – but what emerged over a period of time was that the focus on the Ukraine had everything to do with damaging Trump’s political opponents, both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. It had nothing to do with the issue of corruption in the Ukraine. It was …”Susteren: “So you, so you totally dismiss that there was – that the President had any issue in trying to stop corruption in Ukraine?”Bolton: “Look, there are reasons and there are pretexts. The Ukraine corruption mantra was a pretext. The real issue was the President’s re-election.”Susteren:: “And was, was – and Giuliani was communicating with the President? I mean, presumably about this, sort of, outside, sort of, the White House?”Bolton: “I don’t know how often he communicated with him, but my impression was frequently. Sometimes I was brought into those communications and that’s how I learned over a period of time, as I described in the book, how this was, how this was playing out.”Susteren: “You know, it’s – the money for Ukraine had to be delivered by the end of the fiscal year, which was September 30. That ultimately happened. Right?”Bolton: “Right.”Susteren: “Why did that happen? If the President was trying to leverage that money to get a political advantage,  why do you think that he finally did release the money?”Bolton: “Because I think there was a case where on a bipartisan basis, members of Congress were saying, ‘What’s going on here? We authorized this money. You signed the legislation that does that. And everybody believes it’s in American national security interest to provide that security assistance. And you need to do it.’ Within the White House, there was only one person who ever had doubts about sending that assistance to the Ukraine, and it was Donald Trump. And I think finally, just the force, the political pressure, required him to do it.”Susteren: “I assume you know Rudy Giuliani prior to your job.”Bolton: “I’ve known him for a long time.”Susteren: “Everybody’s known him – and for the life of me, I can’t figure out – and I’ve interviewed him many times. I can’t figure out what his job or role was in this Ukraine thing, because he didn’t work in the White House.”Bolton: “Well, I don’t myself know everything that he was doing. My guess is only he and Donald Trump knew everything he was doing. And I consider that another danger, when people are acting on behalf of a President for political purposes but seeming to act on behalf of the country. And there is a clear divergence between the President’s political interest and the national interest.”Susteren: “But the interesting thing is, as unusual as that whole thing was, and I use word unusual lightly, is that ultimately Ukraine got the money. It was one of those situations where it looks like a very, it looks very unusual from, you know from my perspective, what was going on, things that I have since learned. Yet in the end, the money was given to Ukraine.”Bolton: “But that was just the issue at the moment. The more strategic effect is that it’s hopelessly complicated U.S.-Ukrainian bilateral relations, number one. And number two, it gave Russia any number of opportunities to continue to cause mischief inside Ukraine. Because the attention of the Ukrainian, and American, and much of Western European leadership was devoted to solving the Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton problem there. That’s the kind of missed opportunity that is very hard to calculate, but it’s no less real.”Susteren: “One last question. Vladimir Putin. What’s the President’s relationship with Vladimir Putin?”Bolton:  “Well, I think Putin thinks he can play Trump like a fiddle. I think he thinks…”Susteren:: “Has he?”Bolton: “He sees right through him. Well, I think he has made it almost impossible for Donald Trump to admit that the Russians interfered in the 2016 election, tried to interfere in the 2018 election, and undoubtedly are going to try and interfere in the 2020 election. Because Trump believes if he acknowledges that, he’s undercutting the legitimacy of his victory in 2016. I happen to think that’s wrong. But as the Helsinki Summit press conference demonstrated when it appeared the President took the word of Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agencies, this has just caused enormous concern, especially among our allies. And I just have to believe – I can watch Putin across the table, and I just think he thinks he’s got exactly what he wants on the opposite side when he sits across from Trump.”Susteren:: “I’ve been to North Korea three times, never met Kim Jong Un, would like to. What was your impression of him?”Bolton: “This is a man who is in control, felt very sure about being in control, and thought clearly he could get the kind of deal he wanted from Donald Trump. A partial concession on the nuclear program in exchange for significant economic benefits that would give him an economic lifeline and allow him to continue the nuclear program. He thought he could get that deal. They had gotten it from other American presidents. It didn’t happen this time.”Susteren: “Is he smart?”Bolton: “I think he’s smart in a very limited way. I mean, if you live in that bubble in North Korea, you’re living in a bunker mentality. He has lived in the West, he does have other experiences, there’s no doubt about that. He certainly sees more than almost anybody else in his country. But this is a – this is the strangest regime in the world. Think about it. It’s a hereditary communist dictatorship. So that is not a normal country.”Susteren: “Ambassador, thank you sir.”Bolton:  “Thank you.
…

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration can deport some people seeking asylum without allowing them to make their case to a federal judge.
The high court’s 7-2 ruling applies to people who are picked up at or near the border and who fail their initial asylum screenings, making them eligible for quick deportation, or expedited removal.
 
The justices ruled in the case of man who said he fled persecution as a member of Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority, but failed to persuade immigration officials that he faced harm if he returned to Sri Lanka. The man was arrested soon after he slipped across the U.S. border from Mexico.  
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the high-court opinion that reversed a lower-court ruling in favor of the man, Vijayakumar Thuraissigiam, who was placed in expedited removal proceedings that prohibit people who fail initial interviews from asking federal courts for much help.  
Immigration officials handled Thuraissigiam’s case as a part of process Congress created “for weeding out patently meritless claims and expeditiously removing the aliens making such claims from the country,” Alito wrote.
He noted that more than three-quarters of people who sought to claim asylum in the past five years passed their initial screening and qualified for full-blown review.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer agreed with the outcome in this case, but did not join Alito’s opinion.
In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “Today’s decision handcuffs the Judiciary’s ability to perform its constitutional duty to safeguard individual liberty.” She was joined by Justice Elena Kagan.
Lee Gelernt, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who argued the case in the Supreme Court, said the outcome will make it hard to question the actions of immigration officials at the U.S. border. “This decision will impact potentially tens of thousands of people at the border who will not be able to seek review of erroneous denials of asylum,” Gelernt said.
Since 2004, immigration officials have targeted for quick deportation undocumented immigrants who are picked up within 100 miles of the U.S. border and within 14 days of entering the country. The Trump administration is seeking to expand that authority so that people detained anywhere in the U.S. and up to two years after they got here could be quickly deported.  
On Tuesday, a federal appeals court threw out a trial judge’s ruling that had blocked the expanded policy. Other legal issues remain to be resolved in the case.
The administration has made dismantling the asylum system a centerpiece of its immigration agenda, saying it is rife with abuse and overwhelmed by meritless claims. Changes include making asylum-seekers wait in Mexico while their cases wind through U.S. immigration court, denying asylum to anyone on the Mexican border who passes through another country without first seeking protection there, and flying Hondurans and El Salvadorans to Guatemala with an opportunity to seek asylum there instead of the U.S.
On Monday, the Trump administration published sweeping new procedural and substantive rules that would make it much more difficult to get asylum, triggering a 30-day period for public comment before they can take effect.
The United States became the world’s top destination for asylum-seekers in 2017, according to UN figures, many of them Mexican and Central American families fleeing endemic violence.
…

The U.S. Postal Service’s famous motto — “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers” — is being tested like never before, by challenges that go well beyond the weather.  
The coronavirus has devastated its finances. The Trump administration may attach big strings to bailouts.
The agency’s responsibilities, meanwhile, are mounting. A dramatic shift in many states to voting by mail is intended to protect voters from spreading the virus at polling places. But it’s also making more work for post offices and contributing to delays in determining election winners.Election results have been delayed this week in Kentucky and New York because both states were overwhelmed by huge increases in mail ballots.  
“What we don’t need is more chaos in the chaos,” said Wendy Fields, executive director of the voting rights advocacy group The Democracy Initiative.
President Donald Trump opposes expanding voting by mail, asserting it will trigger fraud, even though there’s no evidence that will happen. Trump and many of his administration’s leading voices frequently vote absentee themselves.  
The president has also called the Postal Service “a joke” and says package shipping rates should be at least four times higher for heavy users such as Amazon. But shipping packages is a main revenue generator, and critics say Trump is merely looking to punish Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in retaliation for unflattering coverage in The Washington Post, which the billionaire owns.  
Trump has acknowledged larger political calculations are at work, tweeting that expanding vote by mail will “LEAD TO THE END OF OUR GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY.” His Democratic rival, Joe Biden, has suggested that Trump’s opposition to absentee voting and criticism of the Postal Service may help the incumbent “steal” the election.  
Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, which represents 200,000-plus employees, said the administration is “shamefully trying to use the crisis to carry out an agenda” of privatization, which would ultimately “break up the Postal Service and sell it.”  
Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos, a Democrat, said “our democracy depends on a reliable post office.”
“Midelection year is not the time to see changes in the dependability of the Postal Service, especially during a year when our country is experiencing a pandemic and health crisis, which will dramatically increase the necessity of voting by mail,” he said.  
The Postal Service predates the United States. It was created by the Second Continental Congress in July 1775, and Benjamin Franklin was the first postmaster general.  
Unlike its private competitors, the Postal Service cannot refuse to make costly deliveries to especially hard-to-reach addresses. Still, much of its budgetary concerns stem from a 2006 law requiring the agency to fully fund retiree health benefits for the next 75 years.  
It normally operates without taxpayer funds. During the pandemic, however, it lost $4.5 billion in the 2020 budget year’s second quarter. Congress approved a $10 billion line of credit for the agency as part of an economic rescue package in March. Since then, though, the Postal Service and the Treasury Department have had discussions about requirements to extend those loans.  
Neither side will say publicly what’s being negotiated, but Trump has made his feelings clear. A 2018 Treasury task force also recommended the Postal Service increase package rates and cut labor costs. A second coronavirus aid package passed in May by the Democratic-controlled House includes $25 billion in direct aid for the Postal Service, but the GOP-majority Senate hasn’t approved its own version.  
More than 3,420 of the Postal Service’s 630,00-plus employees have tested positive for COVID-19, and some have died. While package deliveries have increased as Americans stay home, mail volumes plummeted — as much as 30%, according to the American Postal Workers Union.  
In April, then-Postmaster General Megan Brennan said the agency could be out of money by Sept. 30. Louis DeJoy, a North Carolina businessman and GOP fundraiser who’s donated to Trump, recently succeeded Brennan.
Postal Service spokesperson David Partenheimer said more recent trends “indicate that our 2020 financial performance will be better than our early scenarios predicted,” though he said much remains uncertain.  
“Our current financial condition is not going to impact our ability to deliver election and political mail this year,” Partenheimer said.  
But Condos, who was president of the National Association of Secretaries of State from July 2018 to July 2019, fears keeping such a promise could force the Postal Service to cut back on routine services, which may see voting materials prioritized over regular mail. The pressure is also on because absentee ballots for overseas military members are sent 45 days before Election Day — or Sept. 18, which is less than three months away.  
“This whole idea that we have until November to decide, we really don’t,” Condos said.  
The Postal Service consistently ranks as the nation’s favorite federal agency. Pew Research Center polling in March found that 91% of Americans said they had a favorable view of it. Congressional Democrats are clamoring to “save the post office,” and Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., are among those proposing boosting Postal Service profits by having it expand into banking services, which it provided for decades until the 1960s.  
Rural Republicans such as Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, have also called for defending the agency. Still, some conservatives say tying its funding to Election Day jitters is a partisan ploy.  
“It’s just casting seeds of doubt on the legitimacy of the outcome,” said Republican Tom Ridge, a former Pennsylvania governor who heads VoteSafe, a bipartisan group working with state and local officials to expand and strengthen vote-by-mail options. “It’s very sad, it’s very disappointing, it’s very troubling.” 
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Supported by the United States, Syrian Kurdish groups last week announced the first step toward uniting efforts to run the northeastern part of Syria. Since 2012, the Kurdish-majority region has largely been controlled by the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and its political wing, the Democratic Union Party (PYD). The YPG is the main element within the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SDF has been a major U.S. partner in the fight against Islamic State (IS) in Syria. In addition to these groups, the Kurdish National Council in Syria (ENKS) is another major bloc that includes several political parties. The ENKS has opposed the PYD and its autonomous administration in northeast Syria. ‘Significant progress’ U.S. officials hope the two sides put their differences aside and focus on improving the local administration in the war-torn country.   “We are here tonight to celebrate the progress that has been made, which is significant,” Ambassador William Roebuck, deputy special envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, told reporters last Wednesday in the northeastern Syrian city of Hasaka.  For months, the U.S. has been mediating negotiations between the two Kurdish sides to obtain agreement on a political framework that will allow them to participate in a joint administration for northeast Syria. Following the announcement, the U.S. Embassy in Syria issued a statement, saying the initial agreement will cover governance, administrative cooperation and protection. “The United States welcomes this as an important step towards greater understanding and practical cooperation, which will benefit the Syrian Kurdish people, as well as Syrians of all components,” the embassy said in a statement last week. The U.S. Embassy in Damascus suspended its operations in 2012 following a Syrian government crackdown on protesters during the early days of the country’s civil war. But the embassy maintains contact with the Syrian public through social media.   Stabilizing NE Syria Nicholas Heras, a Middle East expert at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, says the U.S. wants to align the Syrian Kurdish parties in order to stabilize northeast Syria, as Washington continues its campaign against IS. “A major U.S. goal is to diversify the political actors in northeast Syria and to provide a Turkish-approved Syrian Kurdish party with the opportunity to participate in governance and security in northeast Syria,” he told VOA. “Uniting the Syrian Kurdish factions is a local move with geopolitical implications for U.S. policy on Syria and the U.S.-led effort to execute counter-ISIS operations,” Heras said, using another acronym for Islamic State. Considered close to Turkey, the ENKS has expressed willingness to participate in the local administration established by the PYD. “The success of this agreement depends on how much the U.S. can support it while investing in our region politically,” said Sulaiman Oso, an ENKS leader.  Other Kurdish officials say such unity efforts are important to protect the gains they have made against IS and other militant groups throughout the Syrian civil war. “Turkey and the Syrian regime are trying to damage our gains, but we have been able to create a consensus amongst ourselves, which will prevent these actors from exploiting our divisions,” Mazloum Abdi, general commander of SDF, told VOA.  Turkish objection Heras says the push by the U.S. for Syrian Kurdish unity “could also assuage Turkey’s concerns about a PYD-dominated order in northeast Syria sufficiently to forestall future Turkish military action against the SDF.” Turkey views the YPG and PYD as extensions of the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been engaged in a decades long war with Turkish armed forces for greater Kurdish rights. The PKK is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara and Washington. In the past two years, Turkey and its allied Syrian militias have seized several Kurdish towns in northern Syria that were previously held by the YPG. In what appeared to be a response to the recent Syrian Kurdish talks, Turkish officials said that any organizations that work with the PKK will be considered legitimate targets, including the ENKS. “Whatever their names are, those who are with the YPG-PKK are not different in our eyes from the YPG-PKK, and they are legitimate targets,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with CNN Turk television last week. Two days after the Syrian Kurdish unity announcement, the Turkish military launched a campaign against what Turkey calls elements of the PKK militant group in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. Ilhan Tanir, an editor with the Turkish website Ahval News, believes Turkey will focus its efforts on spoiling the unity talks.  “We have already seen that Ankara, both by threatening ENKS and bombing Iraqi Kurdistan, has shown it is unhappy with the talks and will do more to halt such a joint administration,” Tanir told VOA. But Kurdish officials believe a solid partnership between the different factions in Syria would strengthen their political status at the regional level.   “It will ultimately protect our region from threats by other states who accuse the PYD of being a PKK affiliate,” Oso said of the ENKS.   VOA’s Namo Abdulla contributed to this report from Washington. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security adviser says China is trying to “remake the world’ in its image.Speaking Wednesday before a group of business leaders in Phoenix, Arizona, Robert O’Brien said U.S. policymakers had naively believed for decades that the Chinese Commnunist Party would move steadily towards democracy as it grew economically, while at the same time downplaying Beijing’s numerous human rights abuses.O’Brien said China has launched a massive effort to influence opinion within the United States, claiming that people in more than a dozen American cities listen to FM radio stations that broadcast “subtle pro-Beijing propaganda.”  One example he cited was a false assertion that the novel coronavirus that was first detected in Wuhan late last year was brought into the country by a U.S. soldier.O’Brien also cited China’s efforts to collect personal data on millions of Americans through cyberhacking of credit bureaus, health insurers, hotel chains and even dating websites.“The Chinese Communist Party wants to know just about everything about you,” he said.O’Brien said the Trump administration has imposed restrictions on Chinese companies that are closely allied with the Chinese Communist Party’s intelligence and security apparatus from accessing U.S. data, including tech giant Huawei, which the administration contends will use its new 5G network to spy on Americans.O’Brien’s speech is part of the administration’s increasingly hardline stance towards China over economic and diplomatic issues, including trade, restrictions on tech giant Huawei from accessing U.S. semiconductor technology, and Beijing’s tightening grip on semiautonomous Hong Kong.Other high-ranking senior administration officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray, are expected to deliver similar speeches challenging China in the immediate future.O’Brien’s harsh criticism towards China stands in sharp contrast to recent allegations made in a new book by his predecessor, John Bolton, that Trump directly asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to increase China’s purchase of American agricultural products to help Trump secure votes in farm states in the November 2020 U.S. election, in return for a more favorable tariff rate on Chinese goods.Bolton also alleges that Trump approved of Xi’s explanation for building internment camps for as many as one million Uighur Muslims, an ethnic minority in Xinjiang 
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Major victories against terror groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaida have so far failed to stem their spread across the world, part of a worrisome trend identified in a new U.S. government report on terrorism. The State Department’s annual terror assessment, released Wednesday, hailed “major strides” in Washington’s ongoing effort to curb terrorism, pointing to the defeat of the Islamic State (IS) caliphate in Iraq and Syria, the killing of former IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and the killing of Hamza bin Laden, the son of al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden. Only the report found none of that was enough. “Despite these successes, dangerous terrorist threats persisted,” it concluded. Top U.S. officials argue part of the challenge is the wide array of threats — what the report describes as a “diverse and dynamic threat landscape,” from jihadist groups to white supremacists — and the world’s reliance on Washington to take the lead. “This administration has taken on terrorist threats that other administration simply downplayed,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters Wednesday. “But we’re undaunted in our pursuit of bringing terrorists to justice.” Other officials warn another problem is that terror groups are adapting, finding ways to persist and expand despite efforts to root them out, especially in the case of IS. “We have to be mindful of the need to keep up the pressure,” State Department Counterterrorism Coordinator Nathan Sales told reporters. “We’re seeing a continued evolution in ISIS from an entity that purported to control territory to one that is instead a network, a global network that reaches every inhabited continent,” he said, using an acronym for the terror group. As part of its effort, the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program Wednesday doubled the reward for current IS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi (aka Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla) to $10 million. NEW: @StateDept poster advertising new $10 million reward for #ISIS leader bu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al #Qurashi, aka Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla pic.twitter.com/xyCoU3Wgq2
— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) June 24, 2020Critics of Washington’s counterterrorism strategy worry that doing more of the same — going after key leaders like al-Qurashi — is not likely to yield better results. “I don’t think taking him off the battlefield ends the Islamic State threat at all, especially when a lot of that threat now is based outside of Iraq and Syria,” American Enterprise Institute Resident Fellow Katherine Zimmerman said. “If [former IS leader] Baghdadi were still alive today, would the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, would the Islamic State branches globally look significantly different? I don’t think so,” she added. And some experts and former officials caution there is a temptation to rely too heavily on military action as a quick fix. “Terrorist groups are very easy to degrade. Once you get the intel and once you get the military assets in the right place, they’re extraordinarily easy to degrade,” former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell told lawmakers Wednesday. “But they are also very easy to rebuild.” According to some, the U.S. must address the conditions that give rise to terrorism in the first place — factors like poverty, ineffective governance and long-standing local grievances that make people feel disaffected. “We need to think about how do we play a role in getting at the disease rather than just dealing with the symptoms,” Morell said. Perhaps nowhere, of late, have terror groups been more successful at taking advantage of conditions that allow terrorism to thrive than in Africa’s Sahel region, where according to State Department data, terrorist attacks have increased 250% since 2018. French-led efforts there have made a dent, most recently with a strike that killed the leader of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), but sustained success has been harder to come by. The G5 Sahel Joint Force, which formed in 2017 and includes Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, “is not yet capable of disrupting the growing terrorist footprint,” the State Department report said. The report also said efforts by Nigeria and neighboring countries has so far “proved unable to stop ISIS-WA’s [Islamic State-West Africa’s] advance in the region.” Al-Qaida-aligned al-Shabab has also further entrenched itself in Somalia, retaining “de facto control over significant portions of the country, particularly in south-central Somalia,” the State Department found. There is also growing fear about the spread of remnants of the IS caliphate across Asia, and in Southeast Asia in particular. “Southeast Asian governments remained concerned about foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) returning from Iraq or Syria and using their operational skills, connections, and experience to launch domestic attacks,” the report said. Despite a series of losses, IS’s affiliate in the Philippines continued to draw both foreign fighters and new recruits, some from as far away as Europe, often transiting through Malaysia and Indonesia. There is also mounting evidence that both IS and al-Qaida continue to reach out to the Americas, with State Department officials taking note of connections to Trinidad and Tobago, and of attempts by both “to exploit the region.” At the same time, the report cites indications that both terror groups seem to be solidifying their presence in Syria, Iraq and even Afghanistan, while still finding ways to inspire attacks in Europe. “There’s still counterterrorism work to do,” Pompeo said.
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A prosecutor on Wednesday announced that three men have been indicted on murder charges in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in coastal Georgia.Speaking to reporters outside the Glynn County courthouse, prosecutor Joyette Holmes said a grand jury had indicted Travis McMichael, Greg McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan Jr. on charges including malice and felony murder in the death of the African American man.”This is another positive step, another great step for finding justice for Ahmaud, for finding justice for this family and the community beyond,” Holmes said.Lawyers for the McMichaels have cautioned against a rush to judgment and have said the full story will come out in court. A lawyer for Bryan has maintained that his client was merely a witness.Arbery was killed February 23 when the Greg and Travis McMichael, a white father and son, armed themselves and pursued the 25-year-old Black man running in their neighborhood. Greg McMichael told police he suspected Arbery was a burglar and that Arbery attacked his son before being shot.Bryan lives in the same subdivision. Bryan said he saw the McMichaels driving by and joined the chase, a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent testified earlier this month.It wasn’t until May 7 — two days after Bryan’s cellphone video leaked online and stirred a national outcry — that the McMichaels were arrested. Bryan was arrested on May 22, and an arrest warrant said he tried “to confine and detain” Arbery without legal authority by “utilizing his vehicle on multiple occasions” before Arbery was shot.In addition to malice murder and felony murder charges, the McMichaels and Bryan each are charged with two counts of aggravated assault and one count each of false imprisonment and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.Court functions in Georgia have been severely limited in recent months because of a statewide judicial emergency declared by the chief justice of the state Supreme Court in response to the coronavirus pandemic.Holmes said they were able to call in a grand jury that had been impaneled prior to the judicial emergency. They followed public guidelines, providing hand sanitizer to the grand jurors and allowing them to sit far apart, she said.Because of the uncertainty caused by the virus, the Arbery family didn’t know when the next steps would be taken after a probable cause hearing held earlier this month, Holmes said. But they were notified as soon as the grand jury returned an indictment, she said.”The family was ecstatic to hear that it had happened this morning,” she said.Bob Rubin, a lawyer for Travis McMichael, said in an email that prosecutors choose the facts they want to present to a grand jury when seeking an indictment. The defense team has found other facts “that are an integral part of the case,” he wrote.”To this indictment, Travis McMichael will plead not guilty, and we look forward to presenting all of the facts regarding this tragic death in a court of law,” Rubin wrote.Attorney Kevin Gough, who represents Bryan, spoke to reporters at the county courthouse right after Holmes announced the indictment.”We welcome the action of the grand jury today,” Gough said. “While we disagree with it, it’s an important step in the process to moving this case closer to the speedy trial that Roddie has demanded.”He said his client has committed no crime and has cooperated with law enforcement officers from the beginning.Lawyers for Greg McMichael did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Wednesday afternoon.
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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday that the state is facing a “massive outbreak” in the coronavirus pandemic and that some new local restrictions may be needed to protect hospital space for new patients. In a series of midday interviews with television stations, Abbott said Texas would again pass 5,000 new coronavirus cases and more than 4,000 hospital patients with COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. Texas passed both thresholds for the first time Tuesday. “There is a massive outbreak of COVID-19 across the state of Texas,” Abbott said in an interview with KFDA-TV in Amarillo. FILE – Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks at a news conference at city hall in Dallas, June 20, 2020.Abbott, who aggressively pushed to reopen the state in May, acknowledged state officials are closely watching hospital space. One of the first measures Abbott took in March when the pandemic emerged in the state was to order hospitals to suspend nonessential surgeries to help ensure they weren’t overwhelmed. That ban was later rescinded. With new cases and the number of COVID-19 patients rising rapidly, “We are looking at greater restrictions and some could be localized,” Abbott said Wednesday without detailing what those would be or where.  “There are some regions in the state of Texas that are running tight on hospital capacity that may necessitate a localized strategy to make sure that hospital beds will be available,” he said. Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, the largest pediatric hospital in the U.S., said Tuesday that it was admitting adult patients across its campuses to free up more hospital bed space in the Houston area. The number of COVID-19-positive hospital patients in Harris County, which encompasses Houston, has nearly tripled since May 31. Even with the hint of new restrictions to protect hospital space, Abbott said in a separate interview with KDFM-TV in Beaumont that hospital executives have assured him that they will be able to handle the rising numbers of patients. “If there are more people coming in with COVID-19, they will ensure that beds are available,” Abbott said. 
 
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A U.S. Justice Department spokesman said Wednesday U.S. Attorney General William Barr has agreed to testify before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee next month as the panel probes the alleged politicization of the department. The Democratic-led panel has been conducting hearings regarding how Barr and his Justice department have interfered with investigations into possible wrongdoing by U.S. President Donald Trump or issued rulings favorable to the president. House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) speaks during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Policing Practices and Law Enforcement Accountability on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 10, 2020.In his opening remarks, Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler said Barr’s “work at the Department of Justice has nothing to do with correcting injustice. He is the president’s fixer. He has shown us that there is one set of rules for the president’s friends, and another set of rules for the rest of us.” Republicans on the Committee spoke out in defense of Barr. When Barr testifies, one case the committee will no doubt question him about concerns Former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.   Last month, Barr issued a decision to drop charges against Flynn, who had been convicted of lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador. Earlier Wednesday a U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the justice department’s decision after a judge chose not to immediately act on the decision. Barr was named attorney general last year, replacing Jeff Sessions. 
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When he first ran for office in 1994, they scrawled the N-word on his lawn signs. By the time he came to Congress, he had to unplug the phone lines because callers brought the staff to tears. Even after he became a U.S. senator, the Capitol quickly became just another place where he would be stopped by the police.
Initially reluctant to focus on race, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina  is now a leading Republican voice, teaching his party what it’s like to be a Black man in America when the police lights are flashing in the rearview mirror.
He has been pulled over by law enforcement “more than 18 times,” Scott said in an interview with The Associated Press.  
“I’m thinking to myself how blessed and lucky I am to have 18 different encounters and to have walked away from each encounter.”
As the only Black Republican in the Senate, Scott’s role is heavy with a certain weight. He is leading a task force of GOP senators drafting the Justice Act, law enforcement changes set for a test vote this week. But it’s also a historic opportunity to speak to Republicans about race — as a conservative, a Christian and a Southerner from the state where the Civil War began.
He rejects the concept of systemic racism, which puts him at odds with many Black Democrats who demand a broader police overhaul than his proposed bill. Instead, he places his faith where he says he has seen the change, in people’s hearts. He shares his experience as a Black American in the 21st century, including this year when he was pulled over for failing to signal early enough for a lane change — or, as he called it, stopped for “driving while Black.”
“I just can’t imagine the pressure he must be under, though, as the only African American Republican,” Rep. Karen Bass, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said in an interview.  
“That he has to sit there with those senators and go through his experiences and hope that they have some measure of empathy,” said Bass, who is leading Democrats’ policing bill  and working with Scott, whom she has known for years.  
“It’s exhausting,” she said. “Racism is exhausting.”
As massive demonstrations over the May 25 killing of George Floyd  in Minnesota spilled into a worldwide reckoning over police tactics and racial injustice, Scott quietly approached Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at the GOP senators’ weekly private luncheon.  
Scott whispered in McConnell’s ear that he wanted a seat at the table drafting legislation.
“I’m the guy that actually has the experience,” he told McConnell. The leader agreed.  
Broaching law enforcement changes is a new priority for the GOP, which proudly calls itself the party of Lincoln but has wrestled with race in the modern era, becoming more aligned with the “law and order” approach now embraced by President Donald Trump than a civil rights platform.  
“He’s been working for this moment his whole life,” said House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy of California.
Scott’s family — the grandfather who picked cotton as a child and grandmother who cleaned homes, and his own parents who separated when he was young, his father in the military, his mother working double shifts as a nursing assistant to provide for him and his brother — taught him to stay steady amid hardship. He acknowledges in his memoir that he almost flunked his freshman year of high school, before going on to become senior class president and attend college.
He is among a generation of Capitol Hill Republicans — along with McCarthy and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., both of whom he counts as friends — who came of age during the Reagan years, carrying a conservative’s belief in the wellspring of opportunity awaiting hard work. Elected to the House on the 2010 Tea Party wave, Scott was tapped for a vacant Senate seat in 2012 and went on to win it outright in 2014.  
“He found his political legs and political wings at a unique time in this country,” said Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist in South Carolina. “He was able to tap into something that was not known, so he made the unknown known, a Black Republican.”
And yet, Scott can speak with authenticity about experiences of racism that transcend party. “I am going to be black for the rest of my life,” he writes in his biography.
With the 2014 Missouri death of Michael Brown, and the 2015 South Carolina killing of Walter Scott, no relation, he wrote, “It was becoming harder and harder not to speak out.”
What started as a series of Senate speeches about his experiences has led to this defining moment, drafting legislation at a time of history.
“He’s been able to diversify the conversation in America about the African American community … and how we fit into this larger pulse of what we call America,” said Stephen Gilchrist, the chairman and CEO of the South Carolina African American Chamber of Commerce. “And yeah, that does draw criticism because, in many respects, it does not toe the line.”
If anything, Scott objects not to those in his party learning the toll of racism, but critics from the left who question his policy decisions as a Black man. He publicly spoke out against Trump’s 2017 comments of fine people on “both sides” of the neo-Nazi protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, and has since blocked some of the president’s judicial nominees over their views. He notes there are only two Black Democratic senators.
During an interview at his Washington office, Scott explained that he believes there’s value in having the person who has “gone through the pain and the misery” of bias writing the policing bills that could become law.
“Esther 4:14 says, ‘For such a time as this,'” he told the AP.  
“I think it is important that, in the history of eternity, that I had the good fortune of being born in the place where the Civil War started, being elected in the seat that Strom Thurmond used to hold, to be in a position to have this serious conversation that confronts racial outcomes in this nation,” he said.  
“I think it’s a blessing from God.” 
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A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered the dismissal of the criminal case against President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn.The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said in a 2-1 ruling that the Justice Department’s decision to abandon the case against Flynn settles the matter, even though Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to prosecutors in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan had declined to immediately dismiss the case, seeking instead to evaluate on his own the department’s unusual dismissal request. He appointed a retired federal judge to argue against the Justice Department’s position and to consider whether Flynn could be held in criminal contempt for perjury.Flynn was the only White House official charged in Mueller’s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI days after the president’s January 2017 inauguration about conversations he had had during the presidential transition period with the Russian ambassador.The Justice Department moved to dismiss the case in May as part of a broader effort by Attorney General William Barr to scrutinize, and even undo, some of the decisions reached during the Russia investigation, which he has increasingly disparaged.In its motion, the department argued that Flynn’s calls with the Russian ambassador — in which they discussed sanctions the Obama administration imposed on Russia for election interference — were appropriate and not material to the underlying counterintelligence investigation. The department also noted that weeks before the interview, the FBI had prepared to close its investigation into Flynn after not finding evidence of a crime.But the retired judge appointed by Sullivan, John Gleeson, called the Justice Department’s request a “gross abuse” of prosecutorial power and accused the government of creating a pretext to benefit an ally of the president.Wednesday’s 2-1 opinion was authored by Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, and joined by Karen LeCraft Henderson, who had asked skeptical questions of lawyers for Flynn and the Justice Department during arguments earlier this month. 
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 The federal office that led the prosecution of President Donald Trump’s friend Roger Stone received “heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice” to ease its sentencing recommendation, career prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky plans to tell Congress, according to his prepared remarks.Zelinsky, who withdrew from the Roger Stone case in protest, will testify on Wednesday before the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives Judiciary Committee about political pressures that he said the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia faced.He will add that Tim Shea, the acting U.S. attorney at the time who was appointed by Attorney General William Barr, ultimately caved into the pressure because he was “afraid of the President.”Zelinsky’s testimony never explicitly says who pressured Shea, but he said he was told that Shea “was receiving heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice to cut Stone a break.””I was explicitly told that the motivation for changing the sentencing memo was political, and because the U.S. Attorney was ‘afraid of the President,'” Zelinsky said.Republicans are expected to push back on his testimony, saying he is confusing politicization with policy disagreements.Zelinsky said career prosecutors never got to see the draft of the revised memo, which Shea filed after Trump blasted the office on Twitter for its original recommendation of a seven-to-nine-year term.The Republican president called the recommendation “horrible” and a “miscarriage of justice.” Stone’s friendshipwith Trump dates back decades.Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement that Zelinsky had not had any discussion about the sentencing with Barr or other members of the department’s political leadership and his allegations were based on his own interpretation and hearsay.Barr had not discussed Stone’s sentencing with Trump or anyone else at the White House, and had made the decision to revise the filing before Trump’s tweet, Kupec said.Stone, 67, who was convicted of obstruction, witness tampering and lying to Congress during its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, is due to report to prison later this month to begin serving his three years-and-four-month sentence. He is seeking an extension due to concerns about contracting COVID-19.
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