Author: Worldcrew

U.S. President Donald Trump seems to relish an occasional fight, and that was evident during his first solo news conference as president, which he dedicated almost entirely to chastising the news media.

For nearly 80 minutes, Trump scolded individual reporters for being “unfair,” dismissed specific media outlets as purveyors of “fake news” and generally attacked the American press as being “out of control.”

Addressing reporters arrayed in front of him at the White House, Trump told them: “You’re dishonest people.” The crowded news conference was arranged on short notice, but it was broadcast live by every major U.S. television network.

The president anticipated he might be criticized in headlines around the country. “But I’m not ranting and raving,” he said with a smile. “I love this. I’m having a good time doing it.”

Trump vs media: love/hate

Thursday’s angry outburst may have been unusual compared with the public behavior of past U.S. presidents, but for Trump, it was a continuation of his lifelong love/hate relationship with the news media.

The billionaire real estate developer and former reality television star has for decades benefited from, and even bragged about, his ability to cultivate media attention. But more recently, since he entered politics and won the presidency, Trump’s relationship with the media has turned sour.

Since announcing his candidacy in 2015, Trump has been the target of a barrage of negative news stories. Since entering the White House, the bull’s-eye on his back has only gotten larger.

In response, Trump has called reporters members of an “opposition party,” in contrast to the image most White House journalists have of themselves — nonpartisan observers who chronicle the activities of the nation’s chief executive — and he often seems to view the press as his political rivals.

Just as he referred to his political opponents last year, Trump has adopted a nickname for the reporters who cover his every move — the “dishonest media” — and he regularly dismisses news coverage he does not like as “fake news.”

Obsessed by news, even if ‘fake’

But as much as Trump quarrels with the media, he can’t stop obsessing over it. The president is said to spend most of his mornings and evenings watching cable news, often responding to what he sees and hears in real time, on  Twitter. The interaction has left longtime political observers stunned.

“I’ve covered politics off and on in Washington since 1964, and I have never seen a public figure this obsessed with media coverage,” said veteran journalist Steven Roberts, a longtime correspondent for The New York Times and other news outlets who now teaches media and public affairs at George Washington University.

Trump says he’s just “counterpunching” — going after the media only when it attacks him first. But it would be a mistake to view the exchange in that way, says Gwenda Blair, a Trump family biographer who has been following Trump for decades.

“It’s easy to forget that he loves combat. He loves confrontation. He loves this aggressive, charged, conflict-filled environment,” Blair said in an interview with VOA. “That’s normal. That’s his comfort zone.”

Sensational = a good story

Trump has explicitly suggested that he sometimes engages in provocative behavior simply to attract media attention.

In his 1987 book The Art of the Deal, Trump said: “One thing I’ve learned about the press is that they’re always hungry for a good story, and the more sensational the better. … The point is that if you are a little different, a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you.”

Blair chalks up that kind of behavior to Trump’s natural ability as an entertainer.

“The number-one rule as a performer is to do something unexpected, so people won’t look away,” she said. “And he’s aces at that. He’s constantly doing something unexpected, contradicting himself, lashing out at somebody.”

It’s exactly the kind of behavior that plays perfectly into the media’s need to have fresh news all the time, Blair pointed out.

Approval ratings suffer

So far, that strategy has worked well for Trump. He is, after all, the most powerful leader in the world. But it’s not clear the plan will work as well for him in the White House as it has in the real estate business or the world of entertainment.

Since taking office, Trump’s approval rating has suffered. Generally trusted public-opinion surveys show his popularity ratings are much lower than those his predecessors enjoyed at this early stage of their presidencies.

However, there also is reason to think Trump’s efforts to undermine the news media may be working. A recent poll by Emerson College found Americans trust the Trump administration more than they do the news media.

Trump’s team has repeatedly pointed to the poll as evidence he is winning his battle with the media, suggesting he won’t change tactics anytime soon.

Michael D’Antonio, another Trump biographer, agrees, saying anyone who expects Trump to change at this point will be disappointed.

“He’s 70 years old. He believes that his impulses and perspective are the source of his success,” D’Antonio said. “So there’s not a real sense in his mind that he should change.”
…

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday raised the need to “create a level playing field for trade and investment” in his first meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, according to the State Department.

In the readout by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, both had agreed to “strengthen cooperation in the fields of economy, finance and security,” seen by some as much diluted wording.

Both met for about an hour on the sidelines of a meeting of foreign ministers of the G-20 top economies in Bonn, Germany.

“So nice to see you,” Tillerson said as he shook Wang’s hand, while apologizing for keeping Wang waiting. The top diplomat for the U.S. was late because of another sideline meeting about Syria.

China criticized as a ‘cheater’

While in many ways this seems typical of prior meetings of foreign ministers between Washington and Beijing, it is “unusual” for a secretary of state to advocate the need for a fair playing field in commerce, according to Bonnie Glaser, the director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“That signals the priority this set of issues is accorded by President Trump,” Glaser told VOA on Friday.  

President Donald Trump has bluntly criticized China as a “cheater” and a currency manipulator, accusing it of unfair practices that have blocked many U.S. exports, and producing a trade imbalance that has killed American jobs.  

Trump also has threatened to impose a comprehensive tax on Chinese imports.

‘One-China policy’

In the Chinese readout, Beijing said, “The U.S. side made it clear that it would continue to adhere to the one-China policy,” which is absent in the State Department’s readout.  

“There is the classic testing of intentions on big issues, to get a quick read where the other stands,” said Center for the National Interest Director of Defense Studies Harry Kazianis.

“They set the foundation for the future and are critically important,” Kazianis added.

China pressed over North Korea

Notably, North Korea’s threats are both highlighted by Tillerson and his Chinese counterpart. Washington pressed Beijing to help assert more control over North Korea after a series of nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

Acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Friday in Bonn that Tillerson “urged China to use all available tools to moderate North Korea’s destabilizing behavior.”

North Korea fired a ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan on February 12, followed by strong international condemnation, including that of the U.N. Security Council.  

Wang told Tillerson the U.S. and China have joint responsibilities to maintain global stability, adding common interests between the two countries far outweigh their differences.

One of the channels to manage U.S.-China relations is the bilateral Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED), an annual high-level gathering for two countries to discuss a wide range of regional and global issues.

It started under the George W. Bush administration as the Strategic Economic Dialogue and was later upgraded by former President Barack Obama after he took office.

A different approach

Some regional scholars expect the Trump administration to veer from the long-standing U.S. approach, though, and downsize such a mechanism, or even end it.

“I would be somewhat surprised if the S&ED has any future,” Atlantic Council resident senior fellow Robert Manning told VOA.

“It has become a somewhat hollow bureaucratic ritual, a checklist for the vast sweep of U.S.-China bilateral issues,” said Manning, adding the “structure and content” of relations between Washington and Beijing is “at a tipping point.”

Manning said the key is to identify a few core issues that can define the character of the relationship. “Finding a formula for reciprocity is key to a sustainable economic relationship,” he said.  

A change in S&ED

Proponents of continuing the S&ED said it mobilizes bureaucracies on both sides, promotes interagency coordination, and helps to increase cooperation in areas where the U.S. and China have shared interests.  

“My guess is that it will continue in some form, but will be much smaller and policy-focused,” said Glaser.  

“This administration wants to see progress on a much more fair trade relationship,” said Kazianis, adding “if Beijing is willing to work toward a more equitable and fair trade relationship, I would assume this would continue. If not, it could very well be downsized or disregarded all together.”

The first year will be rocky and it may be until June before there is a functioning policy process, given the chaos in the White House and State Department, according to Manning.  

Tillerson’s deputy and many senior positions at the State Department have yet to be filled.
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The mayor of Miami-Dade County, Florida, is an immigrant, and more than half its residents are foreign born.

But unlike many other areas with large numbers of immigrants, there’s no sanctuary for people living illegally in this county. A recent decision by Mayor Carlos Gimenez requires local authorities to cooperate with federal officials to enforce immigration law.

The decree by Cuban-born Gimenez has roiled the area, drawing criticism from the mayors of the cities of Miami and Miami Beach. The county’s commissioners called for a special meeting Friday to confront the mayor on the issue.

They’re not the only ones who are unhappy with the mayor. Immigration advocates and others opposed to the shift have filled the streets in protest, and a long-standing divide between Cuban-Americans and other Latinos has reappeared. Meanwhile, farmworkers who have lived in the area for years to plant and harvest vegetables on vast commercial farms fear they’ll be deported

‘I would be lost in Mexico’

“I have four children. To get picked up like that would break me,” said Itzel, 23, who arrived as a baby from Mexico, works in nurseries near the city of Homestead and whose children were born in this country. She spoke on condition that her surname not be used because she feared deportation.

“I would be lost in Mexico. I’ve never been there. I’ve never traveled out of here,” she said.

Gimenez said his order to end Miami-Dade’s status as a sanctuary city, where policy forbids local police from enforcing federal immigration laws, was a financial decision. President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order that would cut federal funds to local governments that did not fully cooperate on immigration enforcement. But immigration advocates said Gimenez’s decision sent the wrong message at a delicate time.

“To be fair, in a community where 50 percent were not born here, it sends an erroneous and a somewhat negative image of our community,” said County Commissioner Xavier Suarez, who was born in Cuba.

The divide, however, is also rooted in immigration policy that gave preferential treatment to Cubans fleeing the island’s communist government. For more than 50 years, Cubans arrived to open arms in the U.S. and were able to become citizens much more easily than people from other countries.

“Cuban families, in a general way, haven’t been as aware of what it means to be undocumented in this country,” said Michael Bustamante, a Florida International University expert on contemporary Cuban history. “They have had a different process to achieve legal status. Not to say that they haven’t faced other difficulties.”

Majority born abroad

Miami-Dade is the only U.S. county where a majority of residents — 51.7 percent — were born abroad. But the share of immigrants living there illegally is lower than it is in places like Houston or Atlanta, precisely because Cuban immigrants could quickly get employment authorization cards and a Social Security number and become legal residents.

But that’s changed. Former President Barack Obama in January announced that Cubans without residency or visas would be treated as any other immigrant with similar status.

Many of Miami’s Cubans have openly embraced Trump’s ideas on immigration. Hillary Clinton may have won 63 percent of the vote in Miami-Dade County, but Trump drew more votes than Clinton in the three heaviest Cuban-American neighborhoods.

Ibrahim Reyes, a retired furniture salesman who was having coffee and reading a newspaper in Miami’s Little Havana recently, said he supported the president’s efforts to deport criminals and his actions toward Mexico, noting the country supported Fidel Castro after Cuba’s revolution.

“It’s bad, what is happening in Mexico,” Reyes said. “But they didn’t show solidarity toward us when we were refugees.”

In 2013, Miami-Dade commissioners passed a resolution saying local law enforcement officers would comply with federal immigration officials only in cases of serious charges or convictions and only when the federal government agreed to reimburse the county for holding an offender in jail for more than two days. Longer detention while awaiting deportation was costing local taxpayers, Miami-Dade officials said.

The move put the county on a list of sanctuaries in a 2016 Justice Department report. Gimenez contested the designation, and then on January 26, a day after Trump announced he would strip federal funding from sanctuary cities, Gimenez sent a memo instructing the corrections director to honor all immigration detainer requests.

No active pursuit

Gimenez defended his decision on local TV and said the county’s police were not actively chasing suspects in the U.S. illegally or asking for their immigration status — they were only agreeing to hold people flagged by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“I’m an immigrant. I believe in comprehensive immigration reform. I believe that the vast majority of undocumented immigrants in our county are law-abiding citizens — never had a run-in with Miami-Dade police,” Gimenez said.

He acknowledged that immigration authorities had already requested 27 people be held during the first week of the order, and, reading from his smartphone, said they were wanted on charges including murder, domestic violence, petty theft and drug trafficking. County officials later said an additional seven immigrants had been arrested as of February 9, bringing the total to 34.

Marina, a 34-year-old Mexican woman who arrived in Homestead in 1999, said she wished the mayor would recognize the contribution migrants make to the region’s agriculture and construction industries and protect families like hers.

“All of us,” she said, “We are Latinos.”
…

An extraordinary 77 minutes. That’s how long President Donald Trump stood at the lectern Thursday for a contentious marathon news conference like no other.

But was it?

Veterans of encounters between presidents and the press who tuned in Thursday to Trump’s angry defense of his four-week-old administration remembered March 19, 1974, and the performance of President Richard Nixon, then embroiled in the Watergate scandal.

Held at the National Association of Broadcasters’ convention in Houston, CBS White House correspondent Dan Rather drew cheers and jeers when he stood to ask a question, prompting Nixon to ask him: “Are you running for something?”

Rather replied, “No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?”

Nixon glared, not appreciating being upstaged by what was, at the time, considered an insolent quip at the president of the United States.

Nixon’s fate just months away

Quizzed about withholding information from congressional investigators, Nixon concluded that media encounter by telling NBC’s Tom Brokaw: “I will not participate in the destruction of the office of the president of the United States while I am in this office.”

Facing impeachment, Nixon resigned less than six months later.

Nixon’s performance that day in Houston left “a sense he was more than a little unhinged,” said David Greenberg, a professor of history and journalism at Rutgers University.

While Nixon clearly dreaded his encounters with the media, however, Trump appears to relish them.

Trump predicted his latest bout with the media would be summarized with wild headlines. But “I’m not ranting and raving. I love this!” he said, and professed he was “having a good time.”

Thursday’s news conference in the East Room of the White House was hastily arranged; reporters were given about 90 minutes’ advance warning. Ostensibly, it was to announce the president had selected law school dean Alexander Acosta as his nominee for secretary of labor after fast-food chain executive Andrew Puzder withdrew amid a barrage of criticism.

Warnings to ‘fake news media’

The new Cabinet nominee was not present, so the announcement was brief. Then the president launched into a long, sometimes rambling monologue touting his campaign promises and making bold assertions that reporters (from what Trump repeatedly referred to as the “fake news media”) would soon challenge for veracity.

Unfettered and unbridled, which has endeared him to his political base, Trump “has certainly not won over anybody new, which is what you are supposed to do at this stage of the presidency,” Greenberg told VOA.

The Trump performance on Thursday “was unhinged, it was wild,” CNN’s Jake Tapper declared on air after it was over.

Media critics and political scientists across the spectrum credit Trump for taking to a new level the simplicity of communicating with constituencies — a trait also seen in one of his Republican predecessors, George W. Bush.

“There is a talent in being able to put things in pithy, memorable phrasing,” said Greenberg, author of Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency.

Trump, in that context, “deserves credit in addition to astonishment,” Greenberg said.

Memories of Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt

Historians who seek further presidential comparisons are reaching back to the era way before White House news conferences, recalling the mercurial personalities of Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt.

The latter, said Greenberg, “could be blind to his own contradictions. But it was couched in a warm, almost ebullient style.”  

Roosevelt termed the White House his “bully pulpit,” which was a platform Trump clearly mounted on Thursday.

“The press, honestly, is out of control,” Trump declared, shortly after accusing reporters of “not telling the truth” because they speak for “special interests.”

Since televised presidential news conferences began in the era of Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s (the first ones were not aired live, however), there has been no event surpassed by Thursday’s blended stream of consciousness, combativeness and pointed attacks on judges, leakers and reporters.  

A veteran reporter: ‘Utterly fascinating’

“It was utterly fascinating, so out of the mold,” Charles Bierbauer, dean of the College of Information and Communications at the University of South Carolina, told VOA.

The performance was a reflection of the Trump presidency, which “is in a state of constant flux, highly unpredictable,” said Bierbauer, a former president of the White House Correspondents’ Association who covered the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations for CNN. “It’s very much in Trump’s nature to be spontaneous, confrontational.”

Presidential news conferences, usually lasting 45 minutes or less, generally are meant to get across a particular point. Under Reagan, Bierbauer recalled, they were heavily choreographed.

“We would have never had an event like that” seen Thursday, he said.

However, Bierbauer said, George H.W. Bush was “much more freewheeling,” and when it came to planning which reporters would be called on to ask the first questions, he was sometimes impromptu.

‘Still acting out the play’

Presidential news conferences usually wind down with a verbal signal from the press secretary: “Last question.”   

Nowadays, though, “I don’t think you can ‘last question’ Donald Trump,” Bierbauer said. He suspects the president sees his public role as an extension of his performance on The Apprentice TV show, but with no set time for ending the program.  

“He’s still acting out the play,” the former CNN correspondent said. “But now we’re seeing it in the role of the president, whom we expect to be presidential.”

The current White House occupant, according to Bierbauer, appears to have concluded “being presidential means being Donald Trump, not the other way around.”

At the end of the day, “this is Trump being Trump, and we will have to get used to it,” concluded presidential historian Greenberg.
…

Vice Admiral Robert Harward has turned down an offer to be President Donald Trump’s new national security adviser.

Harward would have replaced retired Gen. Michael Flynn, who resigned at Trump’s request Monday after revelations that he misled Vice President Mike Pence about discussions he held with a Russian diplomat.

A senior White House official says Harward turned down the offer due to financial and family commitments. Harward is a senior executive at Lockheed Martin.

Two sources familiar with the decision said Harward had wanted to bring in his own team.

That put him at odds with Trump, who had told Flynn’s deputy, K.T. McFarland, that she could stay.

The sources spoke anonymously because Harward’s decision has not been publicly announced.

Some information for this report was provided by Reuters.

Officials said this week that there were two other contenders: acting national security adviser Keith Kellogg, and retired Gen. David Petraeus.
…

The president of CNN said Thursday that neither the network’s journalism nor its business had been hurt as a result of President Donald Trump’s attacks.

Jeff Zucker, president of CNN Worldwide, spoke at the same time Trump was holding a news conference in Washington in which he continued his barrage against media coverage of the administration.

Zucker said he was worried enough about Trump’s labeling of CNN as “fake news” through the campaign that he ordered a study last month to see whether it had damaged the network’s reputation with viewers. He said it hadn’t, although CNN did not immediately release details of the survey.

“The CNN brand has been as strong as it has ever been,” Zucker said. Network executives said CNN had its most profitable year in 2016 and was on pace to do even better this year.

The administration has reportedly banned its officials from appearing on CNN, although there have been sporadic exceptions. The dispute has been most apparent on Sundays, where on two weekends Vice President Mike Pence and presidential aide Stephen Miller were guests on other network political affairs shows but not on Jake Tapper’s CNN show, “State of the Union.”

Zucker, who said he had not spoken with Trump since December about this or other issues, said the administration’s ban hadn’t affected CNN’s ability to tell the political story.

“We don’t feel it’s hurt us in any way,” he said.

Angered by the Pence snub, CNN said that it declined an administration offer to instead have aide Kellyanne Conway on Tapper’s show, saying she had credibility issues. Conway has said she wasn’t available that day. But Tapper interviewed her two days later. “Saying that we have questions about her credibility does not mean that we would never interview her,” Zucker said.

Like its rivals, particularly Fox News Channel, CNN has benefited from extraordinary interest in the new administration. CNN’s ratings are up 51 percent this year compared with last, he said. That’s unusual, because news network ratings usually tumble after a presidential election.

Trump’s lengthy news conference on Thursday was filled with media criticism, but he took questions from a range of reporters. Many White House reporters, including CNN’s Jim Acosta, had been concerned over the past week when Trump bypassed the mainstream media in three separate news conferences connected to visits by foreign leaders, instead calling on representatives from more friendly news outlets. On Thursday, Trump even took questions from Acosta, but also specifically criticized some of CNN’s coverage of him.

The president said that CNN’s 10 p.m. EST news show, hosted by Don Lemon, “is almost exclusive anti-Trump.”

“I would be your biggest fan in the world if you treated me right,” Trump said. “I sort of understand there’s a certain bias, maybe by Jeff or somebody, you know, whatever reason. And I understand that. But you’ve got to be at least a little bit fair and that’s why the public sees it. They see it. They see it’s not fair. You take a look at some of your shows and you see the bias and the hatred.”

Acosta told the president that “just for the record, we don’t hate you. I don’t hate you.”

After the news conference, CNN’s Tapper said the president was “unhinged.” He said that Trump’s performance might play well among people who voted for him, but “a lot of people are going to say, ‘That guy isn’t focused on me. I don’t know what he’s focused on.’ ”

A few minutes later on Fox, Bret Baier said that Trump’s “mesmerizing” performance was an illustration of why people had supported him.

“There are people who are going to say that it was unhinged, or their heads are going to explode at something he said, but this is Trump being Trump,” Baier said.
…

President Nicolas Maduro’s government ordered the suspension of CNN’s Spanish-language service from Venezuela’s airwaves Wednesday, accusing it of distorting the truth in coverage.

U.S.-based CNN en Espanol became unavailable on Venezuela’s major cable providers minutes after a statement by telecommunications regulator Conatel announcing the suspension. The network had irked the socialist government with various reports, including one alleging passports and visas were being sold illegally at Venezuela’s embassy in Iraq.

Maduro at the weekend told CNN to “get out” of Venezuela after accusing it of manipulating comments by a girl who told him on live TV some school students were fainting from hunger.

“They defame and distort the truth … inciting aggression against the sovereignty of Venezuela and its institutions,” regulator Conatel said in its statement.

Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez also lambasted CNN, saying the whistle-blower in the passports’ story was an opposition-linked Venezuelan working for “imperialist” agencies.

CNN said the Maduro government was unfairly denying Venezuelans a 20-year news service they had enjoyed, but added that its signal would be available for free on YouTube.

“At CNN en Espanol we believe in the vital role that freedom of press plays in a healthy democracy,” it added.

Flare-up with U.S.

The spat with the network has come at a delicate time in U.S.-Venezuelan ties after Washington this week blacklisted Maduro’s Vice President Tareck El Aissami on drug charges in the first bilateral flare-up under new U.S. President Donald Trump.

Venezuelan officials have reacted furiously to that, though they appear to be trying to avoid provoking Trump.

“I don’t want problems with Trump,” Maduro said on TV on Wednesday, adding that CNN had become “an instrument of war.” About an hour later, Trump called for the release of prominent jailed Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez in a tweet, posing in a photo with Lopez’s wife, Lilian Tintori.

In various calls with Latin American leaders, Trump has expressed concern about the Maduro government, yet it remains to be seen whether Trump will prioritize Venezuela.

OPEC member Venezuela is immersed in a deep economic crisis, with inflation in triple digits, shortages of basic goods and many people going hungry.

Maduro, whose popularity has plunged during the crisis, blames the problems on an “economic war” waged by the United States and local opponents with the complicity of foreign media.

Opponents say he has become a dictator, jailing opponents, sidelining the opposition-led congress and delaying local elections. Officials say opponents are seeking a coup.

Foreign journalists are finding it increasingly hard to obtain visas to operate in Venezuela, and two Brazilian reporters said they were expelled at the weekend while trying to investigate unfinished works by construction giant Odebrecht. 

VOA Editor’s Note:  CNN statement on the suspension

At CNN en Español we believe in the vital role that freedom of press plays in a healthy democracy. Today the government of Venezuela pulled our television signal, denying Venezuelans news and information from our television network, which they have relied upon for 20 years.  CNN en Español will continue to fulfill its responsibility to the Venezuelan public by offering our live signal on YouTube free of charge and news links on CNNEspanol.com, so they may have access to information not available to them in any other way.  This happens days after we aired our investigation “Passports in the Shadows” which revealed that Venezuelan authorities may have issued passports and visas to people with ties to terrorism. CNN stands by our network’s reporting and our commitment to truth and transparency.
…

Organizers in cities across the U.S. are telling immigrants to miss class, miss work and not shop Thursday as a way to show the country how important they are to America’s economy and way of life.

“A Day Without Immigrants” actions are planned in cities including Philadelphia, Washington, Boston and Austin, Texas.

The protest comes in response to President Donald Trump and his 1-month-old administration. The Republican president has pledged to increase deportation of immigrants living in the country illegally, build a wall along the Mexican border, and ban people from certain majority-Muslim countries from coming into the U.S. He also has blamed high unemployment on immigration.

Employers in solidarity

Employers and institutions in some cities were expressing solidarity Wednesday with immigrant workers. Washington restaurateur John Andrade said he would close his businesses Thursday, and David Suro, owner of Tequilas Restaurant in Philadelphia and himself a Mexican immigrant, said he also planned to participate.

The Davis Museum at Wellesley College in Massachusetts said it would remove or shroud all artwork created or given by immigrants to the museum through February 21.

In New Mexico, the state with the largest percentage of Hispanic residents in the nation, school officials worried that hundreds of students may stay home Thursday.

“We respectfully ask all parents to acknowledge that students need to be in class every day to benefit from the education they are guaranteed and to avoid falling behind in school and life,” principals with the Albuquerque Public Schools wrote in a letter to parents.

Students who take part in the protest will receive an unexcused absence, Albuquerque school officials said.

Organizers in Philadelphia said they expect hundreds of workers and families to participate.

What would US look like?

“Our goal is to highlight the need for Philadelphia to expand policies that stop criminalizing communities of color,’’ said Erika Almiron, executive director of Juntos, a nonprofit group that works with the Latino immigrant community. “What would happen if massive raids did happen? What would the city look like?”

Almiron said that while community groups have not seen an uptick in immigration raids in the city, residents are concerned about the possibility.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney is among leaders in several cities nationwide who have vowed to maintain their “sanctuary city’’ status and decline to help federal law enforcement with deportation efforts.

Many people who make the choice to skip work Thursday will not be paid in their absence, but social media posts encouraging participation stressed that the cause is worth the sacrifice.
…

A full-length animated film depicting an armed confrontation between Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the U.S. Navy is soon to open in Iranian cinemas, amid rising tensions over President Donald Trump’s hardening rhetoric against Tehran.

The director of the Battle of Persian Gulf II, Farhad Azima, said that it was a remarkable coincidence that the release of the film — four years in the making — coincided with a “warmongering” president sitting in the White House.

“I hope that the film shows Trump how American soldiers will face a humiliating defeat if they attack Iran,” Azima told Reuters in a telephone interview from the city of Mashhad in eastern Iran.

The 88-minute animation opens with the U.S. Army attacking an Iranian nuclear reactor, and the U.S. Navy in the Gulf hitting strategic locations across the country.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a powerful branch of the Iranian military, retaliates with full force, raining ballistic missiles on the U.S. warships.

“They all sink and the film ends as the American ships have turned into an aquarium for fishes at the bottom of the sea,” Azima said.

Trump has said he will not be as “kind” as his predecessor Barack Obama was to Iran, warning that military options are not off the table in response to Tehran.

He has called into doubt Western powers’ nuclear deal with Iran and, responding to an IRGC missile test last month, imposed fresh sanctions on Iranian individuals and entities, some of them linked to the Guards.

Commander Qassem

The main Iranian commander in the film has been intentionally depicted as Qassem Soleimani, the IRGC commander who is overseeing Iran’s military operations in Syria and Iraq against Islamist militants.

Azima said he sought to contact Soleimani to ensure he was not against his appearance in the film, but did not receive a reply. However, senior figures close to Soleimani asked the director to keep the character but drop the name Qassem in the final edit.

“Hollywood has created many films against Iran; there are many computer games in which U.S. soldiers conquer our country. We made this film as an answer to that propaganda,” the 35-year old director said.

But unlike the massive resources available in Hollywood, he said, Fatima Zahra Animation Studios has a small team and a limited budget. He said they have received no funds from the government and are not linked to the IRGC.

“Our animators are not working for money, but for their beliefs and their love of the country. Thank God, everyone is surprised that we’ve managed to create such high-quality production under this poor condition,” he said.

He said screenings will begin as soon as the film gets the necessary permissions from the cultural authorities.

The film trailer has already created a buzz on social media, shared by thousands of people. The director believes young Iranians have shown interest to the film as “they want someone to show them power of their country.”
…

Michelle Obama’s garden stays.

First lady Melania Trump says through a spokeswoman that she is committed to preserving gardens at the White House, including the bountiful one planted by her immediate predecessor.

“As a mother and as the first lady of this country, Mrs. Trump is committed to the preservation and continuation of the White House gardens, specifically First Lady’s Kitchen Garden and the Rose Garden,” Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a senior adviser to the current first lady, said in a statement. The first lady and President Donald Trump have a 10-year-old son, Barron.

Obama planted the garden on the South Lawn in 2009 as one of her first big projects and as the foundation for her signature initiative, “Let’s Move.” She sought through the program to reduce childhood obesity by emphasizing good eating habits and exercise. Several times a year during her tenure as first lady, Obama ventured down to the garden to help with plantings and harvests.

Garden’s produce was shared

The garden produced hundreds of pounds of fruit and vegetables yearly. Some of it was used to feed the Obama family, as well as guests attending White House events, such as state dinners. Some of the sweet potatoes, carrots, broccoli, lettuce, herbs and other crops were given to neighborhood food kitchens.

Obama said at the eighth and final planting last spring that the garden had exceeded expectations by sparking a national conversation about people’s eating habits and stoking renewed interest in community gardening. She referred to the 2,800-square-foot plot as “my baby” and expressed hope for its continued presence at the White House.

“Hopefully, there will be other administrations who come in and they take up this project and continue to make this a part of the White House tradition,” she said last April.

Garden expanded

A month before Donald Trump won the November 8 election, Michelle Obama dedicated an expanded and improved garden with hopes of cementing it as her legacy.

The additions include a wooden arbor for an entrance, wider bluestone walkways, wooden tables and benches. An inscribed stone at the entrance says: “White House Kitchen Garden, established in 2009 by First Lady Michelle Obama with the hope of growing a healthier nation for our children.”

She also announced $2.5 million in private donations to maintain and preserve the garden.
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The dramatic departure of President Donald Trump’s hard-hitting national security adviser creates a vacuum of power and raises a key question about U.S. foreign policy: Will the pragmatists in the administration now gain clout?

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, both known as levelheaded technocrats, stand to fill some of the void. It would be a shift that would mollify anxious U.S. allies and even Republicans who worry Trump is veering too far from traditional U.S. positions. But the duo will be contending with Steve Bannon, Trump’s influential senior adviser, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law.

Trump hasn’t named a replacement for Michael Flynn. Trump asked the former Army lieutenant general to resign Monday night amid revelations he misled Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russia while President Barack Obama was still in office. Trump has tasked retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg with filling the role temporarily, but is also considering two other retired military leaders to permanently replace Flynn.

“It’s dysfunctional as far as national security is concerned,” Republican Sen. John McCain said. “Who is in charge? I don’t know of anyone outside of the White House who knows.”

U.S.-Russia relations

Critics of Trump’s foreign policy plans are hoping the shakeup leads to a rethink of his desire to seek closer U.S.-Russian relations and a less hostile administration stance on Islam — a tone Flynn helped to set through often inflammatory statements about the religion.

Many lawmakers from both parties were appalled to learn that Flynn, in the weeks before Trump’s inauguration, discussed with Russia’s ambassador sanctions that the Obama administration was enacting as punishment for Russia’s alleged interference in the presidential election.

Flynn, who in 2015 was paid to appear at a gala for Russian state-controlled television network RT, was the face of Trump’s potential Russia reboot, designed around working with Russia to fight the Islamic State group. In Moscow, Russian lawmakers bitterly mused that American paranoia had forced Flynn out, while analysts there surmised that the Kremlin’s honeymoon with Trump was ending.

With Flynn out, it could fall to Tillerson to step into the role of chief envoy to Russia. Tillerson, who heads to Bonn, Germany, on Wednesday on his first official trip, is widely expected to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during the trip. He has long experience with Russian leaders and was awarded a friendship honor by President Vladimir Putin when he was ExxonMobil CEO.

Much depends on who replaces Flynn. It’s unclear if Trump will go with someone having a similar world view and willingness to upset the status quo.

In his brief three-week tenure, Flynn stepped up U.S. rhetoric toward Iran and helped spearhead Trump’s controversial immigration order that sparked consternation and threats of retaliation in the Muslim world.

“I don’t think it will slow the White House down too much,” said Jim Carafano, a Heritage Foundation scholar who advised Trump’s transition team on foreign policy. Carafano said Flynn’s departure “takes away a trusted voice of the president,” but that Trump would turn to other valued national security hands.

Filling the gap

That could also mean an expanded role for Bannon, the conservative media executive with outspoken views about Islam who has consolidated immense influence over Trump’s foreign policy. Kushner, the husband of Trump’s daughter, also could broaden his portfolio, which already has him as a prime Trump emissary to key regions like the Middle East and Latin America despite his dearth of diplomatic or government experience.

Tillerson, too, has elicited concerns about his ties to Putin. But he portrayed himself in a Senate confirmation hearing as well within mainstream U.S. thinking on Russia. And that view is prevailing on policy, at least for now, as the White House said Tuesday it is upholding the sanctions Obama imposed on Russia over Ukraine and the election meddling.

Tillerson, who has kept a low public profile since being sworn in, hasn’t commented on Flynn’s departure or on Trump’s early handling of foreign policy.

But Mattis, speaking to reporters while traveling to a NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels, said Flynn’s departure “has no effect at all” on him.

“It doesn’t change my message,” he said.

Like Tillerson, Mattis has emerged as part of the global reassurance team — Cabinet members familiar to foreign leaders who are easing concerns that Trump will follow through on combative rhetoric about upending U.S. foreign policy. On his first official trip abroad, to South Korea and Japan, Mattis insisted the U.S. wouldn’t abandon its treaty allies despite Trump’s suggestions that Washington would no longer bear the burden of other nations’ defenses.

“The key question is what is the connective tissue between the president and the actual policy,” said Derek Chollett, who held various national security posts under Obama. “Every president reaches a point where they stop getting listened to. With Trump, it may happen sooner if there’s a sense what he says isn’t actually translated into policy.”
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Cindy and her three children live in a tiny bedroom in an apartment shared with two other unrelated adults outside a major U.S. city.

Born in Guatemala, Cindy — who does not want her last name used — was brought to the U.S. when she was 5 years old. Yet she still has no legal status.

“Even though I don’t have papers, I feel that I’m from here,” Cindy says. She has been working at various jobs since she was 17.

Now 29, she has a baby on the way and wants to stay in the only country she knows, so she can make a better life for herself and her American-born children.

“Of course I’m proud of having been born in Guatemala, but I wasn’t raised there. I don’t know the culture, and I don’t know what it’s like to live there,” she says. Her biggest dream, she adds, is to get residency status in the U.S.

But now, more than ever, she is scared of being caught and deported.

Collateral arrests

Cindy is among an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., more than half from Mexico and other Latin American countries.

Some of them were targeted last week by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which launched enforcement actions that rounded up 680 undocumented immigrants in cities around the country.

ICE said the recent operation was no different than ones it conducted during the administration of former President Barack Obama. Those also targeted individuals with criminal records, the agency said.

“President [Donald] Trump has been clear in affirming the critical mission of DHS [the Department of Homeland Security] in protecting the nation, and directed our department to focus on removing illegal aliens who have violated our immigration laws,” Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said in a news release Monday.

Kelly’s statement also said the specific focus is on those posing a “threat to public safety and those charged with criminal offenses.”

One of Trump’s signature campaign promises was to crack down on illegal immigration, promising to deport up to 3 million people involved in criminal activity.

On January 25, he signed an executive order to protect public safety that expanded the government’s reach in rounding up those involved in criminal activity or with criminal records.

On Sunday, Trump, in a tweet contradicting ICE’s assertion that is operation was routine, tweeted: “The crackdown on illegal criminals is merely the keeping of my campaign promise. Gang members, drug dealers & others are being removed!”

Those were not the only people netted in last week’s operation, however.

Homeland Security said that 25 percent of the undocumented people rounded up last week were not criminals, and they will be “evaluated on a case-by-case basis and, when appropriate, arrested by ICE.”

Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), told reporters Friday that she has had 30 years’ experience working with ICE and that last week’s operations were “not normal.”

Salas said her organization received an unusual number of calls while the operation was ongoing in Los Angeles, including reports of people being seized in their homes and on their way to work.

Near panic

The immigrant community is full of fear. Rumors of ICE checkpoints and sudden detentions are rife.

At a Catholic Charities center in Washington’s Columbia Heights neighborhood, long a Latin American immigrant community, people standing in line waiting for food assistance spoke openly of their fears of being deported.

Catholic Charities staffer Rodrigo Aguirre says he has noticed a difference from a year ago.

“We’re seeing people more afraid of asking for help because they are fearful of the consequences,” Aguirre said. “Fear that their name might be given to immigration and that they will eventually be deported.”

Such is the case of a Salvadoran woman waiting for food assistance who gave her name only as Hemelina.

She said she came across the border illegally last year, fleeing a husband who beat her, as well as gang violence.

Catholic Charities immigration lawyer Smita Dazzo said Hemelina could qualify for asylum, if she provides credible proof before an immigration judge.

Dazzo said that in her experience, most of the undocumented immigrants she sees have a well-founded fear of persecution.

“The majority of people who are coming here are really fleeing for their lives,” she said. “And I don’t think it gets the amount of coverage it merits. It’s really, really scary for these people and some of them really, honestly feel like they have no choice” but to flee.

Dazzo added she is now consulting with undocumented immigrants who have been in the U.S. for years and only now, after Trump’s inauguration, are trying to fix their status.

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But with so many seeking to stay, supporters of Trump’s immigration policy say the U.S. must impose limits.

Dan Stein, who heads the Federation for American Immigration Reform, notes that in the past 40 years, the United States has had its highest sustained level of immigration in its history, a level he considers unsustainable.

“There are simply far more people who would like to move to a country like the United States than we can possibly handle and still provide a good quality of life and a shot at the American dream for people who are here today,” Stein says.

Yet the question remains over what happens to the millions of law-abiding undocumented immigrants in the U.S., with families and jobs.

Immigration activists say an immigration reform law that allows them to stay and obtain some kind of legal status is the answer.

As Dazzo, the Catholic Charities lawyer, put it: “There are a lot of people who come here as children that are really upstanding citizens. They work hard, they’re family oriented — they’re exactly what you hope that Americans are.” 
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