Category: USA

Republicans in the U.S. Congress are working to overhaul the nation’s health care laws in their effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, considered by some to be one of former President Barack Obama’s most significant legislative achievements.

U.S. media outlets reported details Friday of potential replacements for the health care law, frequently referred to as Obamacare. The details were obtained from draft legislation circulating among lobbyists and congressional staff.

One proposal would cap the amount of money the federal government gives to states for Medicaid, the government health insurance program for the poor, which was expanded under Obama. The Washington Post reported that another idea gaining traction would allow those who gained access to Medicaid when the program was expanded to keep their benefits, while additional enrollees would be excluded.  

End to subsidies

The Republicans’ draft would end income-based tax subsidies to help individuals purchase health insurance. It also calls for tax credits of up to $4,000 for people 60 years or older, but would allow insurers to increase the rates they charge older people.

The Associated Press reported that Republican governors from seven states want Medicaid to change from an open-ended federal entitlement to a program designed by each state, within a financial limit. Ohio Governor John Kasich leads the group, which is said to be concerned that a new law could shift high health care costs from Washington to the states.

Public opinion surveys indicate a broad majority of Americans oppose repealing the health care law unless lawmakers can come up with an acceptable substitute plan.

President Donald Trump, along with many Republicans in Congress, campaigned on a pledge to repeal Obamacare, but the party’s lawmakers have since faced complaints that simply abandoning Obamacare would leave millions of Americans without any protection against high-cost medical emergencies. Republicans say they expect to decide on a replacement for the present law in the coming weeks.

Vice President Mike Pence, painting the legislative situation in dramatic terms, said Friday that “America’s Obamacare nightmare is about to end.”

Pledge, but no details

“President Trump and I want every American to have access to quality and affordable health insurance,” Pence said, “which is why we’re designing a better law that lowers the cost of health insurance without growing the size of government.” He did not, however, give details of the “better law.”

Congressional committees are still working on the new bills under consideration, and the proposals will still face a period of debate in the full Congress.

Democratic lawmakers argue the existing law has helped slow the rise in Americans’ health care spending and brought coverage to the poor. They also note the current plan guarantees insurance for people with long-standing health problems, to whom insurers often had denied coverage in the past.

Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, when they had majority control of both houses of Congress. Republicans have opposed the law since its passage, and they tried more than 50 times unsuccessfully to repeal it during the Obama administration. Trump’s party argues that prices are too high for Affordable Care Act insurance coverage, and that individual states should have more control than the federal government over the issue.

The health care law has enabled 20 million previously uninsured Americans to obtain coverage, but it has been plagued by difficulties, including rising premiums and some large private insurers’ decisions to leave the system.
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U.S. companies led by tech firms Yahoo, Apple and Microsoft have criticized the Trump administration’s decision to revoke Obama administration guidance that allowed transgender public school students to use the bathroom of their choice.

Their statements evoked the opposition expressed by many businesses last year when North Carolina passed a law forcing transgenders to use public restrooms matching their gender assigned at birth.

The resulting boycotts have cost North Carolina more than $560 million in economic activity, according to the online magazine Facing South.

Role for business

Companies lacked the same opportunity to protest with their dollars in this instance, since the Trump administration action pertains to schools, but still signaled they stood with the Obama policy of using the federal government to expand transgender civil rights.

“It’s ultimately going to come down to the business community to stop it because it’s so bad for business,” said Christopher Gergen, chief executive of Forward Impact, an entrepreneurial organization in Raleigh, North Carolina.

In unveiling the new direction Wednesday, Trump administration officials argued that transgender policies should be an issue for the states to decide.

“The action taken by the administration is troubling and goes against all that we believe in,” Yahoo said in a statement.

Social conservatives have hailed the decision by the Justice and Education departments to defer transgender bathroom policies to the states, calling it a victory for privacy and traditional values.

But companies have tried to persuade state and local governments to side with transgender people.

“We support efforts toward greater acceptance, not less, and we strongly believe that transgender students should be treated as equals,” Apple said in a statement.

Microsoft President Brad Smith looked to history as a guide, referencing the date that the Emancipation Proclamation took effect, when President Abraham Lincoln declared freedom for slaves.

“Since Jan. 1, 1863, the federal government has played a vital role in protecting the rights of all Americans. Let’s not stop now,” Smith said on Twitter.

Rights rollback ‘is wrong’

Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey joined other tech firms criticizing the Trump administration’s position.

“Rolling back rights for transgender students is wrong,” Dorsey said in a tweet Thursday. “Twitter and Square stand with the LGBTQ community, always.”

In response to the North Carolina law, companies such as Deutsche Bank and PayPal canceled expansion plans, costing the state jobs.

By invoking states’ rights, the Trump administration is potentially emboldening legislatures in other states that are considering laws similar to North Carolina’s HB2.
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President Donald Trump has ordered the federal government to account for all U.S. assistance to Mexico over the past five years, as part of his effort to shore up security along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly were in Mexico on Thursday for meetings with top Mexican officials about immigration and other matters. 

Among points of tension is the possibility of Trump’s administration using U.S. aid to Mexico as leverage for his demands that Mexico pay for a border wall and do more to stem illegal migration.

Trump’s January 25 executive order gives the heads of government agencies 60 days to “identify and quantify all sources of direct and indirect federal aid or assistance to the government of Mexico” since 2012. It does not indicate what will be done with the information.

While it is difficult to quantify the indirect support the U.S. provides to Mexico through multilateral institutions, direct aid is readily available online.

The main sources of the assistance are the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which jointly operate the website www.foreignassistance.gov.

Its figures state:

The U.S. has given Mexico $234.79 million in assistance over the past five years, or roughly $46.9 million per year.
The U.S. plans to provide Mexico with $134.6 million in the current budget year, none of which has yet been spent.
The biggest chunk of the planned 2017 spending, $78.9 million, is devoted to democracy, human rights and governance programs, including supporting civic institutions.
An additional $43.8 million is devoted to promoting peace and security, including counter-narcotics operations and combating transnational crime.
The smallest piece of the 2017 package, $11.9 million, is for environmental and climate change programs.
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The Justice Department will step up enforcement of federal law against recreational marijuana, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Thursday, offering the Trump administration’s strongest indication to date of a looming crackdown on the drug, even as a solid majority of Americans believe it should be legal.

“I do believe you’ll see greater enforcement of it,’’ Spicer said in response to a question during a news conference. But he offered no details about what such enforcement would entail. President Donald Trump does not oppose medical marijuana, he added, but “that’s very different than recreational use, which is something the Department of Justice will be further looking into.’’

A renewed focus on recreational marijuana in states that have legalized pot would present a departure from the Trump administration’s statements in favor of states’ rights. A day earlier, the administration announced that the issue of transgender student bathroom access was best left to states and local communities to decide.

Enforcement would also shift away from marijuana policy under the Obama administration, which said in a 2013 memo that it would not intervene in state’s marijuana laws as long as they keep the drug from crossing state lines and away from children and drug cartels.

But the memo carried no force of law and could be rewritten by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has consistently said he opposes legal marijuana but has not indicated what he might do.

Legal in eight states, D.C.

Eight states and Washington, D.C., have legalized marijuana for recreational use. The Justice Department has several options available should it decide to enforce the law, including filing lawsuits on the grounds that state laws regulating pot are unconstitutional because they are pre-empted by federal law.

Pot advocates said they hoped Spicer’s prediction would not come to pass.

“This administration is claiming that it values states’ rights, so we hope they will respect the rights of states to determine their own marijuana policies,’’ said Mason Tvert, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project. “It is hard to imagine why anyone would want marijuana to be produced and sold by cartels and criminals rather than tightly regulated, taxpaying businesses.’’

Flouting law since 1996

States have been flouting the U.S. Controlled Substances Act since at least 1996, when California voters approved marijuana for sick people, a direct conflict with federal guidelines barring the use of marijuana for medical purposes.

And presidents since Bill Clinton have said the federal government unequivocally rejects a state’s ability to modify federal drug law.

However, three presidents over the last 20 years have each concluded that the limited resources of the U.S. Department of Justice are best spent pursuing large drug cartels, not individual users of marijuana.

Poll: Majority approves

Nevada state Senate Majority Leader Aaron Ford said in a statement Thursday that meddling in recreational pot laws would be federal overreach and harm state coffers.

“Not only did voters overwhelmingly vote to approve the legalization of recreational marijuana, the governor’s proposed education budget depends on tax revenue from recreational marijuana sales. Any action by the Trump administration would be an insult to Nevada voters and would pick the pockets of Nevada’s students,’’ Ford said.

Spicer’s comments come as a solid majority of Americans support legalization. A Quinnipiac poll released Thursday said 59 percent of Americans think marijuana should be legal and 71 percent would oppose a federal crackdown.
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The Trump administration’s move on Wednesday to rescind guidance allowing transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choice has raised the stakes for an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case that could deliver a landmark decision on the issue.

The court is due to hear oral arguments on March 28 on whether the Gloucester County School Board in Virginia can block Gavin Grimm, a female-born transgender high school student, from using the boys’ bathroom. A ruling is due by the end of June.

A key question in the case is whether a federal law, known as Title IX, which bars sex discrimination in education, covers transgender students. The Education Department under Democratic President Barack Obama said in guidance to public schools last May that it does, but the Republican Trump administration withdrew that finding Wednesday.

Lawyers for Grimm say that the definition of sex discrimination in Title IX is broad and includes gender identity. The school board maintains that the law was enacted purely to address “physiological distinctions between men and women.”

Power of Title IX

If the Supreme Court rules that Title IX protects transgender students, the decision would become the law of the land, binding the Trump administration and the states.

“This is an incredibly urgent issue for Gavin and these other kids across the country,” said Joshua Block, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) who represents Grimm.

The Trump administration’s announcement “only underscores the need for the Supreme Court to bring some clarity here,” he added.

The administration on Wednesday did not offer its own interpretation of Title IX, with the Justice Department telling the court only that it plans to “consider further and more completely the legal issues involved.”

The administration is not directly involved in the case.

Lawyers for both Grimm and the Gloucester County School Board have urged the court to decide whether Title IX applies to transgender students rather than taking a narrower approach by sending the case back to a lower court.

In a court filing Thursday, the ACLU said that, regardless of the administration’s position, the court “can — and should — resolve the underlying question of whether the Board’s policy violates Title IX.”

The school board’s lawyers made similar comments in their most recent court filing, saying that the meaning of the federal law is “plain and may be resolved as a matter of straightforward interpretation.”

But the court could take a more cautious approach and send the case back to the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That court’s April 2016 ruling in favor of Grimm relied on the Obama administration’s interpretation of the law.

Kyle Duncan, a lawyer representing the school board, said the court must at a minimum throw out the appeals court decision because “the entire basis for that opinion” was the no-longer extant Obama administration interpretation.

Justice Kennedy: Pivotal vote?

With the eight-justice court likely to be closely divided, Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, conservative appeals court judge Neil Gorsuch, could end up casting the deciding vote if he is confirmed by the U.S. Senate in time. Otherwise, the court, which is divided equally between liberals and conservatives, could split 4-4, which would set no nationwide legal precedent.

Clues as to how the high court could rule can be gleaned from its decision last August to temporarily block the appeals court decision in Grimm’s case from going into effect. That emergency request from the school board did not require the justices to decide the merits of the case.

The vote in favor of the school board was 5-3, with Justice Stephen Breyer, a liberal, joining the four conservative justices. Breyer made clear in a statement at the time that his vote would not dictate how he would approach the case if the court took up the issue.

That decision indicated that the court is likely to be closely divided at oral argument. Grimm’s hopes may rest in Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative who voted against Grimm last summer but has sometimes sided with liberals in major cases, including several on gay rights.

But even lawyers closely following the case are not sure which way Kennedy could go.

“If I could predict that, I would be down in the casino,” said Gary McCaleb, a lawyer with conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which backs the school board.
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Mexico reacted with anger Wednesday to what one official called “hostile” new U.S. immigration guidelines as senior Trump administration envoys began arriving in Mexico City for talks on the volatile issue.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security unveiled plans Tuesday to consider almost all illegal immigrants subject to deportation, and will seek to send many of them to Mexico if they entered the United States from there, regardless of nationality.

The tension over the timing of the rules mirrors an outcry when President Donald Trump tweeted that Mexico should pay for his planned border wall shortly before Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto was due at a Washington summit in January.

Trump, who took office last month, campaigned on a pledge to get tougher on the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States, playing on fears of violent crime while promising to build the wall and stop potential terrorists from entering the country.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson landed in Mexico City on Wednesday afternoon. He was due to be joined by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly later for talks the White House said would “walk through” the implementation of Trump’s immigration orders.

Kelly signed the guidelines issued by his department Monday.

Mexico’s lead negotiator with the Trump administration, Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray, said there was no way Mexico would accept the new rules, which among other things seek to deport non-Mexicans to Mexico.

“I want to say clearly and emphatically that the government of Mexico and the Mexican people do not have to accept provisions that one government unilaterally wants to impose on the other,” he told reporters at the Foreign Ministry.

He said the issue would dominate the talks, taking place Wednesday and Thursday. Mexico will insist that the United States proves the nationality of any person it wants to deport to Mexico, he said.

“We also have control of our borders and we will exercise it fully,” he said.

Roberto Campa, who heads the human rights department of the Interior Ministry, said the plan to deport non-Mexicans to Mexico was “hostile” and “unacceptable.”

‘Phenomenal’ relationship

White House spokesman Sean Spicer described U.S.-Mexico ties as healthy and robust and said he expected a “great discussion.”

“I think the relationship with Mexico is phenomenal right now,” Spicer told reporters.

Homeland Security’s guidance to immigration agents is part of a broader border security and immigration enforcement plan in executive orders that the Republican president signed on Jan. 25.

In Guatemala on Wednesday, Kelly told Guatemalans the immigration crackdown ordered by Trump meant undocumented immigrants would be caught and sent back quickly, advising them to stay at home.

He denied the administration was embarking on mass deportations.

Mexico’s agenda at the talks on Thursday includes border infrastructure, deportation strategies, Central American migration, narcotics, arms trafficking and terrorism, and the North American Free Trade Agreement, a senior official with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
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The White House has pushed back the release of a new executive order to replace its directive suspending travel to the United States by citizens of seven mostly Muslim countries, a White House official said Wednesday.

The order is now expected to be issued “sometime next week,” the official said. President Donald Trump said last week he expected to release the new order this week.

Trump said the new directive will address legal concerns raised in Washington state, San Francisco and elsewhere about the original order, which was issued on Jan. 27.

The order, which was quickly implemented, caused chaos at airports around the world as visa holders heading to the United States were pulled off planes or turned around upon arrival at U.S. airports.

Americans were deeply divided over the order, which was condemned by prominent U.S. companies and allies before being temporarily blocked by federal courts.

Trump criticized the court’s action in a series of tweets, including one that read: “The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!”
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The mucky water flooding a section of San Jose in Northern California forced officials on Wednesday to widen the area under mandatory evacuation orders, with about 14,000 people barred from returning to their homes following drenching rains.

San Jose, a hub of high-tech Silicon Valley, suffered major flooding on Tuesday triggering evacuation orders when Coyote Creek overran its banks, swamping the Rock Springs neighborhood.

Water at some sites engulfed the entire first floor of residences while in other places it reached waist-high.

Worst flooding since 1997

Officials said the city of about 1 million residents has not seen a flood approaching this magnitude since 1997.

The gush of water inundating San Jose flowed down from the Anderson Reservoir, which was pushed to overflowing by a rainstorm that pounded Northern California from Sunday to Tuesday, officials said.

The reservoir’s operators have been releasing water at maximum levels since January 9 but it was not enough to avoid a spillover because of recent storms, Rachael Gibson, a spokeswoman for the Santa Clara Valley Water District, said at a news conference.

Trash-strewn floodwaters inundated city blocks in California’s third-largest city, as firefighters in inflatable boats on Tuesday ferried stranded residents to dry ground.

Thousand face mandatory evacuation

Aside from 14,000 people whom officials said were placed under mandatory evacuation orders, with many taking up residence in emergency shelters, the city has issued a less severe evacuation advisory to 22,000 people, urging them to leave their homes as well.

“This is nothing you ever want to see in your community,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo told a news conference.

Residents of the flooded area, which is near downtown and is made up of apartment buildings and townhomes, would not be allowed to return to their properties on Wednesday, Liccardo said. “We’re not out of this yet,” he said.

The Weather Service forecasts light rain to resume this weekend in the area.

It was not immediately clear how many homes suffered flood damage.

Freeway closed by flooding

A section of the 101 Freeway in San Jose and another strip of the thoroughfare south of the city were closed by flooding, according to the California Highway Patrol.

Coyote Creek crested at a record-breaking 14.4 feet (4.4 meters) on Tuesday evening, said National Weather Service forecaster Bob Benjamin.

The previous record was in 1922, at 12.8 feet (3.9 meters), Benjamin said.

“Quite possibly we won’t see a return to a flood this weekend because the (weather) system does not look terribly imposing,” Benjamin said.
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A Missouri native who said he wanted to participate in a terrorist attack that would cause many deaths and injuries is charged with helping plan a Presidents Day attack on buses, trains and a train station in Kansas City, federal officials said Tuesday.

Robert Lorenzo Hester Jr., 25, a Missouri-born U.S. citizen from Columbia, was charged in federal court in Kansas City with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

He was arrested Friday when he arrived at a meeting with what he thought was an Islamic State sympathizer who was an undercover FBI agent. The arrest was made public Tuesday after Hester made his first court appearance, during which a judge ordered him to remain in custody. A detention hearing was scheduled for Friday.

Online court records didn’t list an attorney for Hester on Tuesday.

Suspect a married father

A criminal complaint said federal officials began investigating Hester in August 2016 after receiving tips about social media posts in which he said he had converted to Islam and expressed hatred for the United States and a tendency toward violence. Undercover FBI agents contacted Hester first online and then in several face-to-face meetings to discuss whether he wanted to participate in a terrorist attack.

During those contacts, Hester “expressed his interest in and exhibited his willingness to commit violence in support of a foreign terrorist organization,” according to the complaint.

Hester, a married father of two children who served less than a year in the U.S. Army, also provided materials such as roofing nails, batteries and other items that he was told would be used to build bombs for the attack, the complaint said. He also was shown weapons and was told several backpacks containing explosives would be placed in different locations in Kansas City.

The undercover agent told Hester the supposed terrorist organization was planning on “killing a lot of people” in an attack “10 times more” severe than the Boston Marathon attack, according to the complaint. Hester approved of the plans and rejected the undercover agent’s offer to walk away if he didn’t want to participate, the complaint said.

Used encrypted messaging app

Hester communicated five times in early February with an undercover employee via an encrypted messaging app, saying he was “happy to be part” of the plan and predicting the day of the attack would be “a good day for Muslims,” according to the complaint.

On February 17, Hester met with another undercover employee and provided more nails before they went to a storage facility, where Hester believed the components would be stored, the complaint said. He was arrested shortly thereafter.

On October 3, 2016, Hester was arrested in Columbia in an unrelated case after he allegedly threw a knife through a store window and threatened an employee during an argument with his wife. He pleaded guilty to one count of felony property damage and one count of unlawful use of a weapon and was released on his own recognizance awaiting sentencing, which was scheduled for March.
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Assertions from the White House that immigration enforcement agents had their hands tied in the last administration are difficult to square with the massive deportations of Barack Obama’s presidency.

President Donald Trump’s press secretary made a claim about two agencies, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection:

SEAN SPICER: “For so long, the people at ICE and CBP had their hands cuffed behind them.” The Obama administration, he said, had so many exceptions for who could be adjudicated “that it made it very difficult for the customs and enforcement people to do their job and enforce the laws of this country.”

THE FACTS: Whatever constraints agents might have faced, they deported more than 2 million immigrants during the eight years Obama was in office, more than in previous administrations. They sent back 409,000 in 2012 alone, a record.

Republican lawmakers and some ICE officials did complain that they were directed to ignore some immigrants found living in the country illegally if they didn’t have serious criminal histories or otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety.

Spicer outlined a similar priority, saying enforcement would focus “first and foremost” on those who have criminal records or pose risks to the public. Still, there’s little question that enforcement will be broadened.

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has signed a pair of memos that eliminate the Obama-era enforcement rules and has made clear that nearly any immigrant caught living in the country illegally — not just those with  criminal records — will now be a target for deportation.
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Millions of people living in the United States illegally could be targeted for deportation — including people simply arrested for traffic violations — under a sweeping rewrite of immigration enforcement policies announced Tuesday by the Trump administration.

Any immigrant who is in the country illegally and is charged with or convicted of any offense, or even suspected of a crime, will now be an enforcement priority, according to Homeland Security Department memos signed by Secretary John Kelly. That could include people arrested for shoplifting or minor offenses, or simply having crossed the border illegally.

The Trump administration memos replace more narrow guidance focusing on immigrants who have been convicted of serious crimes, are considered threats to national security or are recent border crossers.

Under the Obama administration guidance, immigrants whose only violation was being in the country illegally were generally left alone. Those immigrants fall into two categories: those who crossed the border without permission and those who overstayed their visas.

Crossing the border illegally is a criminal offense, and the new memos make clear that those who have done so are included in the broad list of enforcement priorities.

Overstaying a visa is a civil, not criminal, offense. Those who do so are not specifically included in the priority list but, under the memos, they are still more likely to face deportation than they were before.

More opposition expected

The new enforcement documents are the latest efforts by President Donald Trump to follow through on campaign promises to strictly enforce immigration laws. He’s also promised to build a wall at the Mexican border — he insists Mexico will eventually foot the bill — and Kelly’s memos reiterate calls for Homeland Security to start planning for the costs and construction.

Trump’s earlier immigration orders, which banned all refugees as well as foreigners from seven Muslim-majority countries, have faced widespread criticism and legal action. A federal appeals court has upheld a temporary halt.

Kelly’s enforcement plans call for enforcing a long-standing but obscure provision of immigration law that allows the government to send some people caught illegally crossing the Mexican border back to Mexico, regardless of where they are from. Those foreigners would wait in that country for U.S. deportation proceedings to be complete. This would be used for people who aren’t considered a threat to cross the border illegally again, the memo says.

That provision is almost certain to face opposition from civil libertarians and Mexican officials, and it’s unclear whether the United States has the authority to force Mexico to accept third-country nationals. But the memo also calls for Homeland Security to provide an account of U.S. aid to Mexico, a possible signal that Trump plans to use that funding to get Mexico to accept the foreigners.

Historically, the U.S. has quickly repatriated Mexican nationals caught at the border but has detained immigrants from other countries pending deportation proceedings that could take years.

Tougher enforcement

The memos do not change U.S. immigration laws, but take a far harder line toward enforcement.

One example involves broader use of a program that fast-tracks deportations. It will now be applied to immigrants who cannot prove they have been in the United States longer than two years. It’s unclear how many immigrants that could include.

WATCH: California Senator Harris on expanded immigration policies

Since at least 2002 that fast deportation effort — which does not require a judge’s order — has been used only for immigrants caught within 100 miles of the border, within two weeks of crossing illegally.

The administration also plans to expand immigration jail capacity. Currently, Homeland Security has money and space to jail 34,000 immigrants at a time. It’s unclear how much an increase would cost, but Congress would have to approve any new spending.

The American Civil Liberties Union said it would challenge the directives.

“These memos confirm that the Trump administration is willing to trample on due process, human decency, the well-being of our communities, and even protections for vulnerable children, in pursuit of a hyper-aggressive mass deportation policy,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project.

However, Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who sits on the House Homeland Security Committee, applauded the Trump effort, saying the memos “overturn dangerous” policies from the Obama administration.

Young people

The directives do not affect former President Barack Obama’s program that has protected more than 750,000 young immigrants from deportation. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals remains in place, though participants could be deported if they commit crimes or otherwise are deemed to be threats to public safety or national security, according to the department.

During the campaign, Trump vowed to immediately end that program, which he described as illegal amnesty.

The directives indicate that some young people caught crossing the border illegally by themselves may not be eligible for special legal protections if they are reunited with parents in the United States. And those parents or other relatives that the government believes helped the children would face criminal and immigration investigations.

Under the Obama administration, more than 100,000 children, mostly from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, were caught at the border. Most were reunited with parents or relatives living in the United States, regardless of the adults’ immigration status.

The enforcement memos also call for the hiring of 5,000 new Border Patrol agents and 10,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, but it’s unclear how quickly that could take place. Currently, two of every three applicants for Customs and Border Protection jobs fail polygraph exams, and there are about 2,000 vacancies.

The government also plans to review a program that allows local police and jailers to act as immigration agents and a program that used fingerprint records from local jails to identify immigrants who had been arrested.
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As dawn breaks over an encampment that was once home to thousands of people protesting the Dakota Access oil pipeline, a few hundred holdouts rise for another day of resistance.

They aren’t deterred by the threat of flooding, nor by declarations from state and federal authorities that they must leave by Wednesday or face possible arrest. They’re determined to remain and fight a pipeline they maintain threatens the very sanctity of the land.

“If we don’t stand now, when will we?” said Tiffanie Pieper of San Diego, who has been in the camp most of the winter.

Protest started in August

Protesters have been at the campsite since August to fight the $3.8 billion pipeline that will carry oil from North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa to a shipping point in Illinois. Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners began work on the last big section of the pipeline this month after the Army gave it permission to lay pipe under a reservoir on the Missouri River. The protest camp is on Army Corp of Engineers land nearby.

The protests have been led by Native American tribes, particularly the Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux, whose reservation is downstream. They say the pipeline threatens drinking water and cultural sites. ETP disputes that.

Faced with the prospect of spring flooding, some protesters are considering moving to higher ground, though not necessarily off the federal land. Some may move to the Standing Rock Reservation, where the Cheyenne River Sioux is leasing land to provide camping space even though Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault has urged protesters to leave.

“We have the same goals,” Cheyenne River Chairman Harold Frazier said of himself and Archambault. “We don’t agree on whether or not the water protectors should be on the ground.”

No camp re-entry after Wednesday

On Monday, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum talked with Archambault on the telephone about efforts to clean up and vacate the protest camp, Burgum’s office said. Burgum and Archambault both stressed the importance of keeping lines of communication open, including a one-page flyer that the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs will distribute in the camp, reminding protesters that the main camp will be evacuated at 2 p.m. Wednesday and re-entry will not be allowed, Burgum’s office said.

More than 230 truckloads of debris have been hauled out as of Monday, according to the governor’s office.

Those urging the protesters to leave say they’re concerned about possible flooding in the area as snow melts.

“The purpose of this is to close the land to ensure no one gets harmed,” said Corps Capt. Ryan Hignight.

Debris from camp a concern

One concern is that floodwaters could wash tons of trash and debris at the encampment into the nearby rivers.

“One of the biggest environmental threats to the Missouri is the camp itself,” Burgum said.

Many in camp think authorities are exaggerating the flood threat and trying to turn public sentiment against them.

“They’re talking like it will be a flood that will wipe out all of existence,” said Luke Black Elk, a Cheyenne River Sioux from South Dakota. Some flooding is likely, he said, but “most of it won’t be that bad.”

The camp has been the site of numerous and sometimes violent clashes between police and protesters who call themselves “water protectors,” with more than 700 arrests. The camp’s population has dwindled as the pipeline battle has largely moved into the courts.

Protesters won’t make it easy

Protesters who remain say they’re prepared to be arrested, but will remain peaceful.

“We’ll make it difficult for them to handcuff us, but there will be no forceful opposition,” said Bryce Peppard of Oregon.

The Corps and the governor say they would rather there were no arrests.

“The ideal situation is zero arrests are made because everybody figures out that it’s not a place where you want to be when the flood starts to happen,” Burgum said.
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Right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos has been disinvited to this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference after his attempt to clarify past comments on relationships between boys and older men fell flat with organizers. Hours later, his publisher cancelled his book Dangerous, which had been scheduled to come out in June.

The American Conservative Union founded and hosts CPAC, which is being held Wednesday through Saturday outside Washington. In a tweet on Monday, ACU chairman Matt Schlapp said that “due to the revelation of an offensive video in the past 24 hours condoning pedophilia, the American Conservative Union has decided to rescind the invitation of Milo Yiannopoulos to speak.”

After the polarizing Breitbart News editor was invited, his invitation sparked a backlash. The conservative Reagan Battalion blog tweeted video clips Sunday in which Yiannopoulos discussed Jews, sexual consent, statutory rape, child abuse and homosexuality.

Later Monday, Simon & Schuster and its Threshold Editions imprint announced that “after careful consideration” they had pulled the book, for which pre-orders placed it high on Amazon.com’s best-seller lists. The subject of intense controversy, Dangerous was originally scheduled to come out in March. But Yiannopoulos pushed back the release to June so he could write about the protests during his recent campus tour, including a cancelled appearance at the University of California, Berkeley.

At the time of his publisher’s decision Monday, Dangerous ranked No. 83 on Amazon’s overall list and No. 1 in the subcategory of “Censorship & Politics.”

More than 100 Simon & Schuster authors had objected to his book deal, which was announced last December, and Roxane Gay withdrew a planned book. Some bookstores had said they would not sell it, although the National Coalition Against Censorship and other free speech organizations had defended the publisher. Threshold is a conservative imprint that has published books by President Donald Trump, who has defended Yiannopoulos, and former Vice President Dick Cheney among others.

On Facebook, Yiannopoulos blamed deceptive editing and his own “sloppy phrasing” for any indication he supported pedophilia. The British author said he spoke of his own relationship when he was 17 with a man who was 29. The age of consent in the U.K. is 16.

It’s unclear who edited the videos.

“We realize that Mr. Yiannopoulos has responded on Facebook, but it is insufficient,” Schlapp said. “We urge him to immediately further address these disturbing comments.”

Schlapp said the invitation was initially extended knowing that free speech on college campuses is a “battlefield where we need brave, conservative standard-bearers.”

But he added: “There is no disagreement among our attendees on the evils of sexual abuse of children.”

Yiannopoulos writes for Breitbart News, considered by many a platform for the so-called alt-right movement, an offshoot of conservatism that mixes racism, white nationalism and populism.
…

They both call themselves the Taliban. They regularly carry out deadly suicide bombings, kill civilians with impunity and, in many respects, behave like brutish terrorist groups. So why is one — the Tehrik-I Taliban of Pakistan — on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, while the other — Afghanistan’s Taliban — is not?

To the U.S., the Afghan Taliban is largely an insurgency with control over vast swaths of territory and aspirations to govern the country, while its Pakistani offspring is considered nothing but a terrorist organization. But the real reason the Afghan Taliban is not on the list has more to do with political considerations than whether or not it meets the statutory criteria for a terrorist designation.

To be declared a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department, a foreign group must engage in terrorism and threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security of the United States. The Afghan Taliban meet both criteria.

Yet political expedience has obligated keeping the group off the list of 61 organizations ranging from the Afghanistan branch of the Islamic State group to the Palestinian group Hamas. In the case of the Taliban, the deterring factor has long been a concern that applying the terror label to the group would restrict U.S. and Afghan government diplomatic contacts with the Taliban, making peace talks more difficult.

“There is no doubt that the Taliban occasionally attacks civilians intentionally, not accidentally, and that’s the definition of terrorism,” said James Dobbins, a former U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. “And, thus, the designation would be accurate enough. The question is whether or not it would serve the U.S. and Afghan government purposes for that step to be taken.”

‘Call the enemy by its name’

With the Trump administration scaling up its war on Islamic terrorist groups with a vow to “call the enemy by its name,” the question has entered into discussions over a new Afghan war strategy.

Gen. John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, told VOA’s Afghan service earlier this month that the question of whether the Taliban should be designated as a terrorist organization “is an important one for the [new] administration to consider and it will be part of our conversation with them as the weeks unfold.”

Nicholson did not say whether he favored a terrorist designation, but he left little doubt how he viewed the Taliban, calling the group “an enabler of terrorists” with links to many terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida and the Haqqani network.

Nicholson told the U.S. Senate’s Armed Services Committee earlier that 20 of the 98 U.S.-designated terrorist groups in the world operate in Afghanistan and Pakistan and that the U.S. was seeking to set up an “enduring counterterrorism platform” in Afghanistan.

Asked whether the administration is considering designating the Taliban as a terror group, a State Department spokesperson referred to a 2002 executive order labeling the Taliban a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist Entity” and a 2008 Congressional law mandating that the Taliban be considered a terrorist organization for immigration purposes.

While the Global Terrorist Entity sanctions are focused on financial transactions, a foreign terrorist organization designation prohibits “material support,” such as training, and carries greater weight, according to Oliver Krischik, a trade law attorney specializing in U.S. economic sanctions.

“Just the act of designating an organization on the Foreign Terrorist Organization list itself is a powerful move just in name, and that is something which can have a severe impact on the way other people around the world will or will not engage in business with you,” Krischik said.

Long eager to reach a political settlement with the Taliban, successive Afghan governments have stopped short of calling for the group to be designated as a terrorist organization, said Dobbins, who led the 2001 Bonn negotiations that created the first post-Taliban government in Afghanistan.

“If the U.S. was seriously proposing to do it, my guess is it would lead some Afghan officials to counsel against it precisely because they’d still hope eventually to be able to launch some process of reconciliation,” Dobbins said.  “If [the Trump administration] really wants to create an obstacle to communications with the Taliban, then this probably could have that effect.”

A spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said he was unaware of any proposal to designate the Taliban as a terrorist organization.

Advantages of the label

With the U.S. military enjoying broad authority to target the Taliban, a terrorist designation would have little impact on the battlefield. But declaring the Taliban a terror group could have one advantage, according to Michael Ryan, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington: It would make it politically easier for the Trump administration to pressure foreign governments backing the Taliban. The U.S. has long accused Pakistan of sheltering the Taliban, a charge denied by Islamabad.

In labeling the Taliban a terror group, the administration could also argue that “we’re just tidying up the list,” Ryan said, noting that the Taliban-allied Haqqani network and IS branch of Afghanistan and Pakistan are on the list. “Or they could say, as some Republicans said in the last administration, President [Barack] Obama was too weak on this issue and they’re going to strengthen it up.”

Gianni Koskinas, a former military officer now with the New America think tank in Washington, argued that merely excluding the Taliban from the terror list is unlikely to encourage the group to enter into peace talks.

“Ultimately, if the Afghan government chooses to reconcile with the Taliban, that is irrelevant as far as I’m concerned to the designation of terrorist or not,” Koskinas said. “The notion that you can tie and bind reconciliation with something that is a very black-and-white fact that they’re a terrorist organization, that they’re behaving as one, is illogical to me.”

Designating the Taliban as a terrorist organization would bring clarity to the U.S. position in Afghanistan, Koskinas said. “The message should be clear: If you behave like this, then you’re a terrorist organization. Period,” he said.

VOA State Department correspondent Nike Ching and VOA’s Afghanistan Service contributed to this report.
…

More than a thousand people of various faiths rallied in New York City in support of Muslim Americans and to protest President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

The “I Am A Muslim Too” rally was held in Times Square on Sunday and was organized by several groups, including the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding.

The protesters waved American flags, held signs saying “No Muslim Ban,” and chanted “We are One.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio spoke at the peaceful rally, saying “we have to dispel the stereotypes” and that America is “a country founded to protect all faiths and all beliefs.”

Hip-Hop mogul Russell Simmons headlined the rally. He said the Muslim community was being used as a scapegoat, but that “diversity will prevail.”
…

A senior Trump administration official was fired following criticism in a private speech of President Donald Trump’s policies and his inner circle of advisers.

Craig Deare, whom Trump appointed a month ago to head the National Security Council’s Western Hemisphere division, was on Friday escorted out of the Executive Office Building, where he worked in Washington.

A senior White House official confirmed that Deare is no longer working at the NSC and has returned to the position he previously held at the National Defense University. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an incident not otherwise made public, and provided no further details.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Sunday that Deare “was sent back to his original position.” Asked if government employees should be concerned that they could be fired for criticizing the president, she said: “I don’t think any person that is there in order to carry out the president’s agenda should be against the president’s agenda.”

Current and former administration officials say Deare’s termination was linked to remarks he made Thursday at a private talk at the Wilson Center, a Washington think tank. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

According to one person who attended the discussion, Deare slammed the Trump administration for its policies on Latin America, specifically its rocky start to relations with Mexico. That person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a private event.

Trump signed an order in the first week of his presidency to build a border wall with Mexico, jumpstarting a campaign promise. The move prompted Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto to cancel his trip to Washington in late January.

The person who attended the Wilson Center discussion also said that Deare openly expressed frustration over being cut out of most of the policy discussions about Mexico, saying that members of Trump’s inner circle, including chief strategist Steve Bannon and Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, have not consulted with NSC directorates as the White House formulates policy.

Deare has been on the faculty of National Defense University in Washington since 2001. He joined the university’s College of International Security Affairs in 2010 and most recently served as dean of administration.

The person who attended the Wilson Center talk also noted that Deare made several remarks about how attractive Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, appeared, remarks that person described as “awkward.”

Deare did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Officials with the Wilson Center also declined a request for information, saying the discussion was off the record.

Deare is the second senior NSC official to leave in under a week. On Monday, Trump’s national security adviser, retired Gen. Michael Flynn, resigned after revelations that he discussed sanctions with a Russian diplomat before Trump was sworn in, then misled Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of those conversations.
…

Home to countless journalists and defenders of a free press, Washington is abuzz over President Donald Trump’s increasingly ferocious attacks on America’s news media. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, U.S. lawmakers are weighing in, with Republican Senator John McCain telling a television network that cracking down on press freedom is ‘how dictators get started.’
…

An explosion and fire at an oil refinery in Torrance, California, on Saturday forced the partial shutdown of the plant, leading oil traders to expect a spike this week in West Coast gasoline prices.

Police and the plant owner said no one was hurt in the fire, which was extinguished by local firefighters.

Two years ago, a fire at the same plant led to its closure for several months and a sustained increase in West Coast gasoline prices for more than a year. After the fire on Saturday, a group of local residents worried about pollution and accidents protested at the refinery. The event had been planned to mark the anniversary of the Feb. 18, 2015 incident.

Catherine Leys, one of the protesters, lives 1.4 miles from the plant and said industrial ash drifted down on the playground near her home after the 2015 blast.

The plant supplies 10 percent of California’s gasoline.

Traders said they expected local gasoline prices to jump this week.

“I expect prices will be firming on Tuesday, maybe 5 cents or 15 cents a gallon,” a West Coast refined products trader said. He was talking about wholesale gasoline prices in the Los Angeles market. In California, pump prices normally follow wholesale price movements within hours.

PBF Energy owns and operates the refinery in the city of Torrance, just outside Los Angeles. PBF purchased it from Exxon Mobil Corp in 2016.

PBF shuttered the plant’s crude distillation unit after the pre-dawn blaze, energy industry intelligence service Genscape reported.

The unit refines 155,000 barrels of oil per day, turning it into gasoline and diesel among other products.

PBF told state regulators it was forced to use its safety flare system on an emergency basis after the incident. The crude distillation unit, which produces motor fuel, is the workhorse of the refinery. Within 24 hours of the Feb. 18, 2015 explosion, wholesale gasoline prices initially jumped 10 cents a gallon.

A RAND study found drivers ultimately paid an extra $2.4 billion for gasoline because of the 2015 Torrance refinery outage.

The Torrance refinery had at least two outages in 2016 after a power outage at a local utility knocked the facility offline.

In October, PBF received a violation notice from the California’s air regulator for excessive flaring following one of the outages.

California gasoline prices are frequently among the highest in the United States. Only Hawaii residents pay more.

California requires cleaner-burning fuel than most other U.S. states do. The state is geographically isolated with no pipeline connections to major refining centers on the Gulf Coast and Midwest, leaving the market tightly balanced between what West Coast refineries can produce and what can be shipped in.
…

A United States aircraft carrier strike group has begun patrols in the South China Sea, the U.S. navy said on Saturday, amid renewed tension over the disputed waterway.

China’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday warned Washington against challenging its sovereignty, responding to reports the United States was planning fresh naval patrols in the South China Sea.

The navy said the force, including Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, began routine operations in the South China Sea on Saturday. The announcement was posted on the Vinson’s Facebook page.
…

Satsuki Ina was born behind barbed wire in a prison camp during World War Two, the daughter of U.S. citizens forced from their home without due process and locked up for years following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

Roughly 120,000 Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans were sent to desolate camps that dotted the West because the government claimed they might plot against the U.S. Thousands were elderly, disabled, children or infants too young to know the meaning of treason. Two-thirds were citizens.

And now, as survivors commemorate the 75th anniversary of the executive order that authorized their incarceration, they’re also speaking out to make sure that what happened to them doesn’t happen to Muslims, Latinos or other groups.

Executive orders

They’re alarmed by recent executive orders from President Donald Trump that limit travel and single out immigrants.

In January, Trump banned travelers from seven majority Muslim nations from entering the U.S., saying he wanted to thwart potential attackers from slipping into the country. A federal court halted the ban. Trump said at a news conference Thursday that he would issue a replacement order next week.

“We know what it sounds like. We know what the mood of the country can be. We know a president who is going to see people in a way that could victimize us,” said Ina, a 72-year-old psychotherapist who lives in Oakland, California.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, to protect against espionage and sabotage. Notices appeared ordering people of Japanese descent to report to civil stations for transport.

Desperate families sold off belongings for cheap and packed what they could. The luckier ones had white friends who agreed to care for houses, farms and businesses in their absence.

“Others who couldn’t pay their mortgage, couldn’t pay their bills, they lost everything. So they had to pretty much start from scratch,” said Rosalyn Tonai, 56, executive director of the National Japanese American Historical Society in San Francisco.

Tonai was shocked to learn in middle school that the U.S. government had incarcerated her mother, aunts and grandparents. Her family hadn’t talked about it. Her mother, a teenager at the time, said she didn’t remember details.

‘Internment’

Her organization, the Japanese American Citizens League and others oppose the use of the word “internment.” They say the government used euphemisms such as “internment,” “evacuation,” and “non-alien” to hide the fact that U.S. citizens were incarcerated and the Constitution violated.

The groups say this White House has what they see as the same dangerous and flippant attitude toward the Constitution. Japanese-American lawmakers expressed horror when a Donald Trump supporter cited the camps as precedent for a Muslim registry.

The Japanese American Citizens League “vehemently” objected to executive orders signed by Trump last month, to build a wall along the Mexican border, punish “sanctuary” cities that protect people living in the country illegally, and limit refugees and immigrants from entering the country.

“Although the threat of terrorism is real, we must learn from our history and not allow our fears to overwhelm our values,” the statement read in part.

Hiroshi Kashiwagi was 19 when his family was ordered from their home in Northern California’s Placer County and to a temporary detention center.

He remembers slaughtering his prized chickens — New Hampshire Reds — for his mother to cook with soy sauce and sugar. She stored the bottled birds in sturdy sacks to take on the trip. The family ate the chickens at night to supplement meals. The birds didn’t last long.

Today, Kashiwagi, 94, is a poet and writer in San Francisco who speaks to the public about life at Tule Lake, a maximum security camp near the Oregon border. Winters were cold, the summers hot. They were helpless against dust storms that seeped inside.

“I feel obligated to speak out, although it’s not a favorite subject,” he said. “Who knows what can happen? The way this president is, he does not go by the rules. I’m hoping that he would be impeached.”

Orders against Japanese-Americans were revoked after the war ended in 1945. They returned to hostility and discrimination in finding work or places to live.

‘Race prejudice’

A congressional commission formed in 1980 blamed the incarceration on “race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.” In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill to compensate every survivor with a tax-free check for $20,000 and a formal apology from the U.S. government.

Ina said that only then did her mother, Shizuko, feel she got her face back, her dignity returned. By then her father, Itaru, had died.

“This is a burden we’ve been carrying, and if we can make that burden into something meaningful that could help and protect other people, then it becomes not so much an obligation but more as a responsibility,” Ina said.

After Trump’s election, Ina vowed to reach out to the Muslim community and protest and tell everyone about what happened to her family. She brought her message to a gathering of camp survivors in the Los Angeles area.

“And this old woman, she had a cane, she said, ‘OK. I’m going to tell everybody about what happened. This is very bad. It’s happening again,’ ” she said. “It’s that kind of spirit.”
…

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.
…

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.
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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.
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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.
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