Author: Worldcrew

President Donald Trump has proposed eliminating funding for social programs supporting laid-off coal miners and others in Appalachia, stirring fears in a region that supported him of another letdown on the heels of the coal industry’s collapse.

The 2018 budget proposal submitted to Congress by the White House on Thursday would cut funds to the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) and the U.S. Economic Development Administration. The Washington-based organizations are charged with diversifying the economies of states like West Virginia and Kentucky to help them recover from coal’s decline.

The proposed cuts would save the federal government $340 million and come as the Republican president seeks to slash a wide array of federal programs and regulations to make way for increased military spending.

Cuts would save $340 million

But they are perceived by some in Appalachia as a betrayal of his promises to help coal miners.

“Folks that live in Appalachia believe that the ARC belongs to them,” said federal ARC co-chair Earl Gohl, bemoaning the proposed cut. “It’s really their organization.”

Republican Congressman Hal Rogers, who represents eastern Kentucky’s coal counties, said he would fight to restore the funding when Congress negotiates the budget later this year.

“It’s true that the president won his election in rural country. I would really like to see him climb aboard the ARC vehicle as a way to help us help ourselves,” Rogers said.

Four hundred of the 420 counties ARC operates in voted for Trump in November’s election.

Obama supported the program

The 52-year-old agency has run more than 650 projects in Appalachia’s 13 states between 2011 and 2015 costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Its programs, some launched under Democratic former President Barack Obama, are expected to create or retain more than 23,670 jobs and train and educate over 49,000 students and workers, the organization said.

Trump vowed during his campaign that the White House would put American coal miners back to work, in part by cutting environmental regulations ushered in by Obama, mainly aimed at curbing climate change but characterized by Trump as hampering the industry.

However, many industry experts and coal miners doubt that rolling back regulation alone can revive the coal mining industry, which faces stiff competition from abundant and cheap natural gas in fueling U.S. power generation.

Technology future?

Rigel Preston, a 38-year old former surface miner, said ARC programs helped him land a job as a paid intern at technology company Interapt after he lost his benefits.

He said that, while he and many members of his family in eastern Kentucky hope Trump will deliver on his promise to revive the coal industry, he believed the region’s future lay elsewhere.

“From my experience from the coal field, I know that that is a finite job and coal will run out eventually,” Preston said.

Preston was among several former miners and other east Kentuckians at an event in Paintsville this week held by Interapt and ARC to announce Interapt’s plan to hire another hundred people from the region this summer.

Tech company expands training program

Interapt last year launched a program called TechHire Eastern Kentucky, supported by ARC, which provides 36 weeks of paid training in code and paid internships.

Interapt Chief Executive Ankur Gopal, a 37-year-old tech entrepreneur, expanded his Louisville-based company out to eastern Kentucky with the vision of lifting that part of his home state out of economic stagnation.

“There is a skilled workforce and opportunity that can be found here in eastern Kentucky,” Gopal said. “This is not just a bunch of people that are waiting for coal mines to reopen.”

ARC has worked on economic development in the region since 1965, but in recent years has focused on helping Appalachian states deal with the coal industry’s sharp decline and the loss of 33,000 coal mining jobs between 2011 and 2016.

Funds will have to come from state

So far, ARC has had no official contact from the president’s transition teams, said co-chair Gohl, an Obama appointee who remains in the job.

The cuts to its funding were recommended to the administration by the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based think tank. Nick Loris, an energy fellow at the foundation, said the work that ARC and the Economic Development Administration do should be devolved to state and local governments “to encourage transparency and reduce duplicative federal spending.”

States have said their budgets are already strapped.
…

The White House’s 2018 budget plan for the U.S. Department of Energy includes $120 million for nuclear waste programs, including the restart of licensing for Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, a project stalled for years by lawsuits and local opposition.

The move signals that President Donald Trump may consider that nuclear waste solutions could extend the lives of existing U.S. nuclear power plants and speed up innovations in next-generation nuclear plants that backers say are safer than previous reactors.

Congress will debate the budget, and it is uncertain whether funds for waste will remain in the plan.

While Yucca Mountain would store waste on a practically permanent basis, the budget money would also support programs for storing waste at interim sites before Yucca opens.

“These investments would accelerate progress on fulfilling the federal government’s obligations to address nuclear waste, enhance national security and reduce future taxpayer burden,” according to a summary of the budget.

Billions spent

Yucca has been studied by the U.S. government since the 1970s as a potential repository for the nation’s radioactive waste, and billions of dollars have been spent on it.

But Yucca has never opened because of legal challenges and widespread opposition from local politicians, environmentalists and Native American groups.

In 2010, then-President Barack Obama withdrew the license to store waste at Yucca amid opposition from then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a fellow Democrat from Nevada.

Maria Korsnick, the head of the Nuclear Energy Institute industry group, said the industry was encouraged by the plan for waste projects but that nuclear energy innovators were “nervous” about cuts to programs that have supported public-private partnerships to bring new nuclear technologies to market.

The budget eliminates funding for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy and an innovative technology loan guarantee program that have been popular with both Democrats and many Republicans.

Trump’s energy secretary, Rick Perry, told lawmakers at his confirmation hearing that restarting the Yucca Mountain project could not be ruled out, but that he would collaborate with states.

“I am very aware that this is an issue this country has been flummoxed by for 30 years. We have spent billions of dollars on this issue,” Perry told the hearing in January. “I’ll work closely with you and the members of this committee to find the answers to this issue.”

The White House proposal for the Department of Energy budget calls for an overall cut of 5.6 percent.
…

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will visit Turkey on March 30, Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday, in what is likely to be the most high-level meeting with Ankara since U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January.

Ties between the United States and Turkey – which has the second largest army in the NATO alliance and is key to the U.S.-led fight against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq – deteriorated sharply in the last year of the Barack Obama administration.

“Rex Tillerson has said that he would like to come to Turkey on March 30,” Cavusoglu said in an interview with broadcaster Haberturk. “I have told him that we will be in Ankara and available and would happily host him,” Cavusoglu said.

Tillerson was likely to also meet with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, he said.

Erdogan and the Turkish government want the United States to extradite Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based Islamic cleric who Ankara blames for orchestrating last year’s failed coup. Gulen denies involvement in the coup attempt.

Ankara has also been angered by U.S. support for the Kurdish YPG militia fighting Islamic State in Syria. It is adamant that Washington should switch support for the planned Raqqa offensive from the YPG militia to Syrian rebels that Turkey has trained.

For the U.S. administration, nervous about whether the Turkish-backed force is large enough and sufficiently trained, the decision sets Trump’s wish for quick battlefield victories against the need to maintain its strategic alliance with Turkey.

Ankara views the YPG as the Syrian extension of the Kurdish PKK militant group, which has fought an insurgency in Turkey’s southeast since 1984 and is considered a terrorist group by both the United States and European Union.

Erdogan believes ties will improve under Trump. A phone call between the two earlier last month was positive, sources in Erdogan’s office have said.
…

There was a rise in reports of sexual assault at U.S. Navy and Army military academies in the last year, the Department of Defense said on Wednesday.

An annual report, based on anonymous surveys, said reports of sexual assault in total across the military academies had decreased slightly in the last year, and the Air Force Academy specifically saw a decrease from 49 reports to 32.

But the Military Academy at West Point received 26 reports of sexual assault, up from 17 in the previous year, and the Naval Academy in Annapolis saw three more reports compared to last year.

“This year’s survey results underscore the unique challenges the academies face in sustaining long-term decreases in the occurrence of sexual assault,” an accompanying Pentagon statement said.

U.S. Senators grilled the Navy and Marine Corps’ top leaders on Tuesday about a scandal involving a Facebook group called “Marines United” for sharing explicit pictures of female members of the armed forces.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has opened an inquiry into the matter.
…

An angry President Donald Trump promised to fight all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary, after a federal judge in Hawaii put his revised travel ban on hold Wednesday, hours before it was to take effect.

Judge Derrick Watson wrote that lawyers representing the U.S. Pacific state showed “irreparable injury is likely if the requested relief is not issued.”

Watch: Trump Tells Tennessee Crowd of Court Ruling Against Revised Travel Ban

Trump told supporters in Nashville, Tennessee, hours after the judge’s ruling, that “the danger is clear, the law is clear, the need for my executive order is clear,” adding that he has the authority to control who is allowed into the country to keep the American people safe.

Trump accused the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, of which Hawaii is a part, of unprecedented judicial overreach, and said he would “take our case as far as it needs to go.”

Watch: Trump: Hawaii Judge’s Ruling Against Revised Travel Ban Was ‘Political’

​Hawaii argued that Trump’s temporary ban on travelers and migrants from six Muslim majority countries would harm tourism, on which the Hawaiian economy heavily depends. The state also contended that its Muslim residents would suffer because their relatives from the six affected countries — Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — would not be able to visit.

Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin said lawyers demonstrated that the Trump ban showed a hostility toward religion, which he called unconstitutional. Chin said the winners in this decision are children and the next generation.

At least six other states are suing to stop the travel ban.

Ruling fought in several states

The ruling came as opponents renewed their legal challenges Wednesday across the country, asking judges in Hawaii, Maryland and Washington state to block the executive order that targets people from six predominantly Muslim countries.

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson argued that the new order harms residents, universities and businesses, especially tech companies such as Washington state-based Microsoft and Amazon, which rely on foreign workers. California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Oregon have joined the claim.

Washington and Hawaii also say the order also violates the First Amendment, which bars the government from favoring or disfavoring any religion. On that point, they say, the new ban is no different than the old. The states’ First Amendment claim has not been resolved.

In Maryland, lawyers argued that the ban discriminates against Muslims. It also argues it is illegal for the Trump administration to reduce by half, from 110,000 to 50,000, the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. 

Justice Department disputes religious argument

Attorneys from the U.S. Justice Department countered that the revised travel ban “doesn’t say anything about religion. It doesn’t draw any religious distinctions.”

This is the second time a federal judge has put a hold on the Trump travel ban. U.S. District Judge James Robart was the first.

An appeals court in San Francisco questioned the constitutionality of the first version when it upheld Robart’s decision to put it on hold.

That court is also part of the Ninth Circuit, and Trump said his revised travel ban was a “watered down version of the first order … that never should have been blocked to start with.”

In Washington state, Robart heard arguments in a lawsuit brought by the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, which is making arguments similar to the ACLU’s in the Maryland case.

Robart said he is most interested in two questions presented by the group’s challenge to the ban: whether the ban violates federal immigration law, and whether the affected immigrants would be ‘irreparably harmed” should the ban go into effect.

He spent much of Wednesday afternoon’s hearing grilling the lawyers about two seeming conflicting federal laws on immigration, one which gives the president the authority to keep “any class of aliens” out of the country, and another that forbids the government from discriminating on the basis of nationality when it comes to issuing immigrant visas.

Robart said he would issue a written order, but he did not say when. He is also overseeing the challenge brought by Washington state.

Revised ban pared from original

Trump issued a revised ban that removed Iraq from the original list of affected countries and also exempts travelers who were issued visas before January 22.

The original travel ban created chaos in airports around the world as immigration officers struggled to figure out who was covered.

U.S. attorneys say the president of the United States has the authority to control who is allowed into the country in the name of national security.

The most recent travel related executive order, issued by the president March 6, barred visas to nationals of the six countries for 90 days and all refugee admissions for 120 days beginning Thursday, with the government citing “national security” concerns.

Opponents of the executive orders maintain that the second order is as religiously discriminatory and unconstitutional as the first.

“No matter how far President Trump tries to run away from his initial statements that this was a ban on Muslims and discrimination against Muslims, he can’t erase where this order originated — in an effort to discriminate against Muslims on the basis of their religion,” said Cecillia Wang, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, on a call with reporters Tuesday.

At various times while campaigning for president, Trump made sweeping statements calling for barring refugees and Muslims from entering the United States.

Victoria Macchi and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
…

President Donald Trump plans to re-examine federal fuel economy requirements for new cars and trucks.

The requirements were a centerpiece of president Barack Obama’s strategy to combat global warming. But Trump appears to be making good on a pledge to car company CEOs to reduce “unnecessary regulations.”

Here’s what’s happening:

What are CAFE and GHG standards?

CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards are mile-per-gallon targets for cars and trucks set by the U.S. government. The standards are based on size and are weighted by sales. Each manufacturer has a different requirement based on the models it sells.

Congress required the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to develop CAFE standards in 1975 after gasoline shortages during the Arab oil embargo. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began regulating greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles in 2007. The agencies work together to produce CAFE standards.

The standard for passenger cars stayed at 27.5 mpg from 1990 until 2007. In 2009, the government set a fuel economy standard of 34.1 mpg for cars and light trucks by 2016. In 2012, it set a new target of 54.5 mpg by 2025. The number can change depending on the mix of vehicles customers buy. Right now, it stands at 51.4 mpg because people are buying more SUVs and trucks.

Under the current standard, would my car get 54.5 mpg in 2025?

No. Manufacturers can apply credits for various fuel-saving technologies to arrive at that figure. Real-world mileage would be closer to 36 mpg.

What’s happening now?

In the last days of the Obama administration, the EPA completed a review of the standards for model years 2022-2025 and left them unchanged, saying the car companies have many affordable options to help them comply. The industry protested, saying the review was too hasty and didn’t consider the fact that gas prices have fallen and few consumers want the smallest, most fuel-efficient vehicles.

Trump is reopening the evaluation process, which could lead to weaker standards.

Why would the government consider changing the standards?

Trump wants automakers to expand production in the U.S. and hire more workers. In exchange, he has promised to cut regulations and taxes. Gasoline is more than $1 per gallon cheaper than it was in 2012, when the standards were issued. The low prices hurt demand for more fuel-efficient cars. If those cars don’t sell, their high mileage can’t be counted toward an automaker’s corporate average fuel economy.

But environmental groups say weakening the standards would increase pollution and require consumers to spend more on gas.

How are automakers improving their fuel economy?

Manufacturers have introduced all-electric cars like the Chevrolet Bolt and increased the use of lightweight materials like aluminum. Engine technologies, such as direct fuel injection, and more efficient transmissions are also contributing. The standards give manufacturers extra credit for new technologies, such as hybrid engines for pickup trucks and stop-start systems, which automatically shut off the engine when the vehicle stops in traffic.

Do those added technologies make my vehicle more expensive?

Yes. In its final ruling in January, the EPA estimated the fuel economy standards will cost $875 per vehicle. A study commissioned by the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers estimates the cost of compliance at $1,249 per vehicle. However, the EPA says the standards would save consumers up to $1,620 in gas over the life of their vehicle.

If the standards are weakened, will that affect what kinds of cars are available?

Maybe. Automakers might choose to offer fewer electric or hybrid cars in the U.S., since those are less profitable than trucks and SUVs. They also could scrap subcompact cars, which are unpopular with U.S. consumers but help meet fuel economy targets.

There are caveats. Automakers will still have to meet rising fuel economy standards in China and Europe, so they won’t stop making efficient vehicles. If gas prices rise, U.S. consumers might demand more fuel-efficient cars. Finally, California and other blue states have a history of passing stricter standards than the rest of the country. If that continues, automakers would have to keep their most fuel-efficient models in U.S. showrooms, since California is the biggest market in the U.S.
…

The White House has issued a statement saying President Donald Trump made more than $150 million of income in 2005 and paid $38 million in income taxes that year.

Its statement late Tuesday came ahead of a report by MSNBC-TV host Rachel Maddow revealing what she said is part of what was included on Trump’s 2005 tax forms. She said she got the tax return information from David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and tax analyst.

In its pre-emptive statement, the White House said, “You know you are desperate for ratings when you are willing to violate the law to push a story about two pages of tax returns from over a decade ago.”

It added, “Before being elected president, Mr. Trump was one of the most successful businessmen in the world. It is totally illegal to steal and publish tax returns. The dishonest media can continue to make this part of their agenda, while the president will focus on his.”

Trump has long insisted that the American public is not interested in his returns and has said little can be learned from them. But Trump’s full returns would contain key details about things like his charitable giving and how much he made each year.

This tax issue was a major point of attack from his campaign rival Hillary Clinton, who suggested Trump has something to hide.

The White House has not said whether the president plans to release his returns while he’s in office.
…

A renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement could benefit the United States, Mexico and Canada, enhancing the continent’s competitiveness in global markets, say several close observers of the trade deal with a keen interest in entrepreneurship.

Revising NAFTA with an eye toward increased protection of intellectual property rights would bring “a more collaborative environment … to get some real innovation going,” said Reva Goujon, a vice president at the global geopolitical analysis firm Stratfor. “Because that’s what this continent needs when you’re talking about aging demographics, technological adaptations.

“There’s so much that North America can do to be the most competitive [region] in the world,” she told VOA.

“The North America Free Trade Agreement in the Era of Trump” was the subject of a panel discussion Goujon participated in at the South by Southwest Conference & Festivals (SXSW), an annual gathering of innovators in music, movies and technology, as well as in political thinking and social activism. The annual 10-day festival opened Friday.

President Donald Trump wasn’t at SXSW, but his presence loomed over the discussion. He has talked about withdrawing the United States from NAFTA and imposing border tariffs on goods produced outside the country. That’s on top of repeatedly insisting that Mexicans will pay for a border wall they don’t want and after disinviting their president from a White House visit.

Collaboration anticipated

Yet Representative Will Hurd, a Texas Republican, said he trusted that all three signatories would collaborate on updating the deal to maintain a free-trade zone.

“NAFTA can be strengthened,” said Hurd, also a panelist, noting that Trump, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had made the same point.

“Folks in my district know that the U.S., Mexico and Canada, we build things together. And Mexico — we’re No. 1 trading partners,” said Hurd, whose constituents mostly are Latino. ” … That’s the issue I’m trying to articulate to my colleagues up in Washington, D.C., as we talk about border security, as we talk about strengthening NAFTA.”

Hurd is a former CIA officer who serves on the House Committee on Homeland Security and heads the House subcommittee on information technology.

Areas of concern

He added that any NAFTA revision must “focus on issues such as agriculture and energy, which today are very different from 30 years ago. We should think about creating a NAFTA 2.0 to boost U.S. competitiveness in the rest of the world.” That, Hurd added, also would “improve North American competitiveness in the rest of the world.”

Goujon agreed “there’s a lot to be updated within NAFTA when you talk about labor, environmental regulations, raising regional content so that all of North America benefits. … We just need to make sure there are no distractions related to the wall.”    

She acknowledged NAFTA had contributed to “some disadvantages for low-wage workers who have really been left in the lurch,” and who also were pummeled by automation in manufacturing and by China’s 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization.  

“But there are a lot of jobs that are created from a free-trade agreement like this,” Goujon said, estimating at least 4 million jobs “depend on U.S.-Mexico trade. And supply chains are so greatly integrated between the United States and Mexico that if you just untangled that — and I don’t think you can — you would be causing enormous economic disruption.”

Skeptics have said it would be hard for the United States to alter the deal and impose tariffs on Mexico without harming Canada, too.

“I can’t see how it is possible at all. It would be very complicated to do and I don’t think Mexico would … ever go along with it,” Mark Warner, a Toronto trade lawyer, told the Reuters news service last month.

Showcase for Mexico

The SXSW panel discussion took place at Casa Mexico, a public-private partnership hosting concerts, exhibitions and presentations that showcase the neighboring country’s sociocultural riches as well as its business ambitions.

“We’re a country of innovation, of technology development,” said Carlos Gonzalez Gutierrez, Mexico’s consul general in Austin. “We’re the 15th- or 14th-[largest] economy in the world. And that story’s often not told in the U.S. We need to rebrand Mexico and fight misperceptions.”

The World Bank ranked Mexico 15th globally in terms of gross domestic product in 2015.

The partnership brought roughly 100 young entrepreneurs to SXSW to meet investors “and benefit from this ecosystem, which is one of the most developed in the world in terms of venture capital and entrepreneurship,” Gonzalez said.

Conversely, Mexico wants to show off its own talent, he added.

“There’s an incredible push in terms of entrepreneurship in Mexico … and there’s a growing and increasingly consolidated market for venture capitalists and funds of venture capitalists in Mexico that we wanted to bring to SXSW to be better known.”

Gonzalez said his government also wanted clarity about the Trump administration’s trade goals so Mexico could “bring that certainty to people who might be asking themselves” about whether and how to deal with the United States.
…

The Congressional Budget Office report on a Republican health care bill set off an intense reaction in Washington, and some on both sides of the debate are playing loose with the facts.

Republicans are overlooking President Donald Trump’s promise to deliver “insurance for everybody,” which the CBO makes clear will not happen if the legislation becomes law. Democrats are assailing Republicans for “attacking the messenger,” seeming to forget all the times they assailed the budget office themselves.

The Congressional Budget Office is respected for nonpartisan rigor in its estimates of the costs and impacts of legislation. But no projection is infallible, particularly when it comes to large, complex programs. For example, the agency in 2010 overstated the number of people expected to buy insurance under President Barack Obama’s health care law, misjudging how many would join because of the threat of tax penalties.

Yet, CBO’s neutrality has been valued by both parties — though not always at the same time. It depends whose ox is being gored.

A look at statements in the debate and how they compare with the CBO’s estimates and the underlying facts:

TRUMP: “We’re going to have insurance for everybody. There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.” — to The Washington Post, Jan. 15.

CBO: It estimates the bill would leave 14 million fewer people insured in the first year, 24 million fewer by 2026.

In the first year, the biggest reason more people are uninsured would be repeal of penalties Barack Obama’s law imposes on those deemed able to afford insurance but who don’t buy it. Still others would decide to forgo coverage because of higher premiums or do without Medicaid.

In following years the main reason for a drop in the number of insured would be that the Republican bill scales back Medicaid for low-income Americans. Altogether, CBO estimates 52 million people would be uninsured by 2026, a vast distance from “insurance for everybody.”

SEAN SPICER, White House press secretary, Tuesday: “Having a card and having coverage that when you walk into a doctor’s office has a deductible of $15,000, $20,000 a year isn’t coverage. That’s a car. That doesn’t get you the care you need.”

THE FACTS: He’s wrong about deductibles under Obama’s law.

Out-of-pocket expenses for consumers are limited. Deductibles, copayments, and coinsurance together can’t exceed $7,150 this year for an individual plan sold through HealthCare.gov or similar state markets. For a family plan it’s $14,300. After that, the insurance plan pays the full cost of covered benefits.

In addition, more than half of customers in these plans get subsidies to help with their out-of-pocket costs.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER, Senate Democratic leader: “CBO is virtually unassailable. Everyone, Democrats and Republicans, whether it be George Bush, Barack Obama or anyone else has gone along with CBO. … CBO speaks the truth. They’ve been speaking the truth for decades and to try to attack CBO is simply attacking the messenger.” — Comments to reporters Monday.

REP. NANCY PELOSI, House Democratic leader, on Republican reaction to the CBO: “Some of them are trying to pin a rose on this report and make it sound like it’s a good thing and the others of them are trying to discredit the CBO, but it’s completely wrong, completely wrong. … Numbers are quite elegant things, you know. They speak very clearly.” — Comments to reporters Monday.

THE FACTS: Democrats have not hesitated to attack this messenger when its conclusions have not suited them.

“The Congressional Budget Office never gives us any credit,” President Obama said in 2009 when the CBO pointed to the expense of Democratic health overhaul proposals. Complained Pelosi at the time: “The CBO will always give you the worst-case scenario.”

Again in 2014, Pelosi did not consider CBO’s numbers “elegant,” or correct, when they forecast job losses from a Democratic effort to raise the minimum wage. She accused the CBO of making arguments that “contradict the consensus among hundreds of America’s top economists” and said it “ignored new perspectives in the wide array of analysis on the minimum wage.”

TRUMP: People covered under the law “can expect to have great health care. It will be in a much simplified form. Much less expensive and much better … lower numbers, much lower deductibles.”

CBO: It says cost-sharing payments in the individual market, including deductibles, “would tend to be higher than those anticipated under current law.’ Cost-sharing subsidies would be repealed in 2020, ‘significantly increasing out-of-pocket costs for nongroup (private) insurance for many lower-income enrollees.”

TRUMP, at a Cabinet meeting Monday: “Obamacare, all of a sudden, the last couple of weeks, is getting a false rep that maybe it’s OK. It’s not OK, it’s a disaster and people understand that it’s failed and it’s imploding. And if we let it go for another year, it’ll totally implode.”

CBO: Not in the view of the budget experts. They described the market for individual policies under Obama’s health care law as “stable.” They said it is likely to remain stable under the proposed GOP replacement legislation, too.

MICK MULVANEY, Trump’s budget director: “If you have coverage that doesn’t allow you to go to the doctor, what good is it in the first place? … Democrats took all of this credit for giving people coverage, but ignored the fact that they had created this large group of people that still could not go to the doctor.” — Tuesday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

THE FACTS: Republicans gloss over reality when they make this argument. While deductibles are high for the Affordable Care Act’s private insurance plans (averaging $3,000 last year for a standard silver plan), the law requires preventive care to be covered at no charge. And more than half of the people enrolled in the health law’s insurance markets get an extra subsidy when they go to seek care. It can reduce a deductible from several thousand dollars to a few hundred. The GOP bill would repeal those subsidies.

Other evidence points to tangible benefits from Obama’s coverage expansion. For example, government researchers have found fewer Americans struggling to pay medical bills. A 2015 report found that problems with medical bills had declined for the fourth year in a row. Most of the improvement was among low-income people and those with government coverage, and it coincided with the ACA’s big coverage expansion.

TOM PRICE, health and human services secretary: “I firmly believe that nobody will be worse off financially in the process that we’re going through.” — NBC’s Meet the Press, Sunday.

CBO: There are losers as well as winners, the analysts found. Generally, older people are bound to face higher costs because the legislation would let insurance companies charge them up to five times more for premiums than they charge young people. They can only be charged three times more now. The bottom line, the analysts say, would be “substantially reducing premiums for young adults and substantially raising premiums for older people.”

MULVANEY: “Actually I don’t think the costs will go up at all.” — ABC’s This Week, Sunday.

CBO: It estimates that some costs indeed will go up, at least for a few years. The analysts say average premiums in the private insurance market would rise in 2018 and 2019 by 15 percent to 20 percent, compared with current law, then start to come down. By 2026, average premiums could be 10 percent lower, compared with the existing law. One reason: insurers could eliminate a current requirement to offer plans that cover a set percentage of the cost of certain benefits.
…

A group of states renewed their effort on Monday to block President Donald Trump’s revised temporary ban on refugees and travelers from several Muslim-majority countries, arguing that his executive order is the  same as the first one that was halted by federal courts.

Court papers filed by the state of Washington and joined by California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Oregon asked a judge to stop the March 6 order from taking effect on Thursday.

An amended complaint said the order was similar to the original January 27 directive because it “will cause severe and immediate harms to the States, including our residents, our colleges and universities, our healthcare providers, and our businesses.”

A Department of Justice spokeswoman said it was reviewing the complaint and would respond to the court.​

January’s ban caused chaos

A more sweeping ban implemented hastily in January caused chaos and protests at airports. The March order by contrast gave 10 days’ notice to travelers and immigration officials.

Last month, U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle halted the first travel ban after Washington state sued, claiming the order was discriminatory and violated the U.S. Constitution. Robart’s order was upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Trump revised his order to overcome some of the legal  hurdles by including exemptions for legal permanent residents and existing visa holders and taking Iraq off the list of countries covered. The new order still halts citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from entering the United States for 90 days but has explicit waivers for various categories of immigrants with ties to the country.

Refugees are still barred for 120 days, but the new order removed an indefinite ban on all refugees from Syria.

Washington state has now gone back to Robart to ask him to apply his emergency halt to the new ban.

Robart said in a court order Monday that the government has until Tuesday to respond to the states’ motions. He said he would not hold a hearing before Wednesday and did not commit to a specific date to hear arguments from both sides.

Proving harm

Separately, Hawaii has also sued over the new ban. The island state, which is heavily dependent on tourism, said the executive order has had a “chilling effect” on travel revenues.

In response to Hawaii’s lawsuit, the Department of Justice in court papers filed on Monday said the president has broad authority to “restrict or suspend entry of any class of aliens when in the national interest.” The department said the temporary suspensions will allow a review of the current screening process in an effort to protect against terrorist attacks.

There is a hearing in the Hawaii case set for Wednesday, the day before the new ban is set to go into effect.

The first hurdle for the lawsuits will be proving “standing,” which means finding someone who has been harmed by the policy. With so many exemptions, legal experts have said it might be hard to find individuals who would have a right to sue, in the eyes of a court.

To overcome this challenge, the states filed more than 70 declarations of people affected by the order including tech businesses Amazon and Expedia, which said that restricting travel hurts their revenues and their ability to recruit employees.

Universities and medical centers that rely on foreign doctors also weighed in, as did religious organizations and individual residents, including U.S. citizens, with stories about separated families.

But the Trump administration in its filings in the Hawaii case on Monday said the carve-outs in the new order undercut the state’s standing claims.

‘No constitutional rights’

“The Order applies only to individuals outside the country who do not have a current visa, and even as to them, it sets forth robust waiver provisions,” the Department of Justice’s motion said.

The government cited Supreme Court precedent in arguing that people outside the United States and seeking admission for the first time have “no constitutional rights” regarding their applications.

If the courts do end up ruling the states have standing to sue, the next step will be to argue that both versions of the executive order discriminate against Muslims.

Change in text not enough

“The Trump administration may have changed the text of the now-discredited Muslim travel ban, but they didn’t change its unconstitutional intent and effect,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement on Monday.

While the text of the order does not mention Islam, the states claim that the motivation behind the policy is Trump’s campaign promise of “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” He later toned down that language and said he would implement a policy of “extreme vetting” of foreigners coming to the United States.

The government said the courts should only look at the text of the order and not at outside comments by Trump or his aides.
…

Poland plans to seek the extradition of an American on suspicion of committing crimes against humanity in the World War II deaths of 44 Polish villagers, Poland’s government-affiliated history institute said Monday.

The man, identified as Michael K., is suspected of ordering the killings in 1944 in eastern Poland when he was a commander in the Nazi’s SS-led Ukrainian Self Defense Legion, the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) said in a statement.

As a result of that order, several villages — including Chlaniow and Wladyslawin — were set on fire and buildings destroyed, the IPN said.

“In our investigation, Michael K. is the main suspect. We are convinced that this person, living in the United States, was the person who carried out the pacification of [the villages],” Robert Janicki, a prosecutor with the IPN, told Reuters. “All the evidence we have gathered, mainly the documents we have collected, give us this certainty.”

The IPN has asked a regional court in the Polish city of Lublin to issue an arrest warrant for Michael K. as the first step toward an extradition request.

Janicki would not reveal Michael K.’s last name, due to privacy laws, but he was identified by the Associated Press as Michael Karkoc, who lives in Minnesota.

An article by the news agency in 2013 detailing Karkoc’s connections to the Nazis and his move to the United States spurred investigations in Germany and Poland into Karkoc’s role during World War II.

Karkoc’s family had repeatedly denied that he was involved in any war crimes, the AP said. The news agency reported Monday that Karkoc, now 98, is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, according to his family.

Karkoc could not be reached for comment by Reuters.

Karkoc’s age would not stop investigators, Janicki said.
…

The U.S. has been relying on Pakistan as an ally in the war on terror in the region and has provided the country with billions of dollars in aid over the last 15 years.

But American military and diplomatic officials have time and again expressed concerns about Pakistan’s inability or unwillingness to crack down on terrorists and extremists that are based in the country.

As the new U.S. administration is positioning itself to address some of the pressing foreign policy challenges in the region, experts offer mixed recommendations as to what approach the new administration should pursue in its relations with Pakistan.

“People are much smarter about what the region needs, the challenges, where the policy works and where it doesn’t,” said Shamila Chaudhary, a senior South Asia fellow at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

“We actually have built a pretty significant infrastructure to address what the problems are. What we don’t have are any answers, and that’s what I think we need to focus on when we talk about a review,” she added while speaking at a panel discussion on U.S. policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

Last 10 years a failure?

Lisa Curtis, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, argued that U.S. policy toward Pakistan in the last 10 years has been a failure.

“I would propose that as a starting point, we do look at the failure of our Pakistan policy over the last 10 years,” Curtis said. “I would say that we need a clear eyed approach on just how detrimental Pakistan’s continued support has been to fundamental U.S. national security interests.”

She added, “15 years later we still have Taliban and the Haqqani network sanctuaries inside Pakistan.”

Former U.S. Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Daniel Feldman pushed back against Curtis’ analysis.

“I tend to disagree with Lisa’s analysis about it [U.S. policy] being purely a failure. What I believe is that there are many equities that we have with the U.S. Pakistan relationship, all of which we have tried to address in some way or another,” Feldman said. “Certainly over the tenure of the Obama administration we had highs of significant bilateral cooperation relationship with the strategic dialogue, with assistance and we also had lows.”

Cutting aid did not work

Feldman added that at times the U.S. has gone as far as cutting all assistance to Pakistan, and none of those measures necessarily produced a result in which the U.S. has been able to influence or change Pakistan’s core strategic calculus.

John Gill an associate professor at the National Defense University, argued that a review should not mean starting all over again.

“It makes a lot of sense to have a new review, but that does not necessarily mean that we have to change. If there are pieces of the strategy that seem to be on track or going in the right direction, we should not be afraid to stick with those even if they are holdovers from previous administrations,” Gill said.

US should take the risk

Some analysts propose that the U.S. should adopt a different approach to changing Pakistan’s behavior.

“I think in the past whenever we thought about imposing conditions or actually implementing conditions on Pakistan you bring up the fact that Pakistan is a nuclear weapon state and the conversation sort of ends,” Curtis of Heritage said. “I would argue that our counter-terrorism interests in the region are so fundamental that we need to be willing to take some degree of risk in evoking a different Pakistani response.”

Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States and director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute, thinks there is a two-way street when it comes to getting Pakistan to change its behavior.

“I think most people agree that Pakistan needs to change its behavior on terrorism, and in relation to Afghanistan and India, and that change is unlikely to come without the rest of the world changing its policies towards Pakistan,” Haqqani said.

Haqqani who co-authored a new policy paper on U.S.-Pakistan relations with Lisa Curtis, argues that American interests in the region are not in line with Pakistan’s strategic thinking, which is heavily influenced by its belief that India wants to weaken and break it.

“Continued U.S. assistance, offered in the hope of a gradual change in Pakistan’s terrorism policies, only provides Pakistan an economic cushion and better quality military equipment to persist with those policies,” argued Haqqani.

In their defense, Pakistan’s military and civilian leaders have argued that they have sacrificed in the war against terror and have paid with blood and treasure. The country’s State Bank published a report late last year, alleging a $110 billion loss to the country’s economy since 2002.

Pakistan could do more

U.S officials acknowledge Pakistan’s efforts and view U.S.-Pakistan relations as important.

“The Pak-U.S. relationship remains a very important one,” General Joseph Votel, head of the U.S. Central Command, said last week during testimony to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee.

However, U.S. officials continue to assert that Pakistan could do more.

“We have seen progress. We have seen them take some steps to address these safe havens, but clearly the problem persists and it is something, which is part of our ongoing conversation with Pakistan,” said U.S. State Department spokesperson Mark Toner.
…

With a little more than a week left before the start of spring, the northeastern U.S. is bracing for a major blizzard.

The National Weather Service is forecasting the bitter blast to roll up the coast Monday night and into Tuesday for most of the region.  A blizzard watch has been issued for parts of the Northeast, including New York City and Boston, with up to 30 to 45 centimeters of snow expected in some areas.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Sunday that the State Emergency Operations Center will be activated Monday evening, with stockpiles of sandbags, generators and pumps at the ready.

Washington, which often bogs down with even low levels of snow, is expecting 13 centimeters in the city and twice that in outlying areas.

The storm raised the potential for dangerous travel and power outages with damaging wind gusts up to 80 kilometers per hour possible across eastern Long Island and southeastern Connecticut, the National Weather Service said.

 
…