U.S. orders Russia to close diplomatic offices in three cities

(Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press)

President Trump’s granting of a full pardon to former Sheriff Joe Arpaio was seen by many legal experts as a sign of what may come in the special counsel’s inquiry into Russia’s meddling in last year’s presidential race and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.

Trump has insisted the investigation led by former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III is a “witch hunt” and should be shut down, the sooner the better. Some predict that the president will use his power to pardon anyone at any time for nearly any reason to make the investigation moot.

“Kim Jong Un was not the only leader testing his weapons” last week, said Bill Yeomans, a veteran Justice Department lawyer now working with the liberal Alliance for Justice, referring to the North Korean leader’s missile launch a day after Trump pardoned Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona.

“Trump launched a warning pardon that announced the weaponization of the pardon power,” Yeomans said.

Trump insiders who might benefit include Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and anyone else targeted by Mueller.

Read More

(Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press)

President Trump is still reviewing whether to end the Obama-era program that has protected from deportation more than 750,000 people brought to the country illegally as children, senior White House officials said on Thursday.

The officials denied the president had decided to end it, in response to press reports that Trump would announce the decision perhaps Friday.

“My position here today is that the administration is still reviewing the policy,” Trump’s homeland security advisor, Tom Bossert, told reporters.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said a decision to end the program “has not been finalized,” adding that it is being reviewed “from a legal perspective.”

Administration lawyers are studying whether the program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, could withstand an expected legal challenge from conservative state attorneys general that could be filed in court as soon as Sept. 5.

Senior officials from the departments of Justice and Homeland Security met last week to discuss ways to end the program — whether to do so immediately, phase it out or decline to defend it in court.

Trump said repeatedly on the campaign trail he would end the program and called it “unconstitutional.” But as president, he has said in interviews that he is sympathetic to people who were underage when they came into the country illegally and had nothing to do with the decision to come.

When Trump took office in January, aides had written an executive order that would have phased out the program by halting the renewal of two-year work permits issued to those who had submitted to a federal background check. Trump balked at signing the order.

But pressure on the president to act against DACA has continued to mount from hard-line supporters who see it as part of his promise to crack down on illegal immigration.

Congress will likely need to address Tropical Storm Harvey relief aid as soon as next week, with the Federal Emergency Management Agency quickly spending down its main disaster account.

Lawmakers already face a full September agenda when Congress resumes. But the fallout from Harvey and the need to swiftly provide assistance to disaster victims now tops the agenda.

“FEMA will likely run out of money before there’s a comprehensive number to address the entirety of the disaster response, so immediate action is needed,” said a senior Democratic aide.

As of early Wednesday, FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund had $2.3 billion, including $1.4 billion in the major disaster account, which was projected to fall to $830 million with outlays for temporary housing and other pending obligations, according to internal reports.

A FEMA spokesman declined to say how quickly funding would be depleted.

But Tom Bossert, the White House Homeland Security advisor, said an initial request for funding from Congress was coming soon.

“We’re going to go up and ask for a disaster supplemental shortly,” Bossert said.

Bossert said he expected a multi-phase process, with a first request for supplemental funds coming quickly. A second, more substantial funding request would likely come later.

“I will make that request shortly,” he said. “What we’ll do is come back later for a second supplemental request.”

President Trump is set to convene congressional leaders at the White House on Sept. 6, but already House and Senate leaders are talking among themselves about what will be expected.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi reached out to Speaker Paul D. Ryan on Monday and spoke with White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly on Tuesday, pressing for emergency funds.

Congress has tangled over disaster funds in recent years, most markedly when Republicans voted in large numbers against relief for Hurricane Sandy victims, saying it should be paid for with funding cuts elsewhere. Even though Republicans held the majority in Congress, GOP leaders relied on Democrats for passage of that measure.

Both parties, though, appear poised to quickly approve disaster funds after Harvey swept through Texas and Louisiana, leaving more than 30 dead. Rain and floodwaters continue to menace the region.

The first tranche of funding may likely be proposed as a separate stand-alone bill, unclouded by other issues, to help ensure quick passage, despite the other must-pass measures requiring attention this fall.

Congress will have a dozen working days in session as it races to meet a Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government, averting a federal shutdown, and raise the debt limit to prevent a financial crisis, among other issues.

Conservatives, who have been reluctant to allow additional spending, warned against linking the relief to other measures.

Both the House and Senate appropriations committees have vowed to quickly address the needs.

“The Senate Appropriations Committee continues to monitor the situation in Texas and Louisiana and remains in contact with FEMA and other relevant authorities,” said Stephen Worley, a spokesman for the panel chaired by Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.). “Chairman Cochran is prepared to respond quickly to any requests for supplemental appropriations for Hurricane Harvey response and recovery.”

Defense Secretary James N. Mattis.

(Cliff Owen / Associated Press)

Defense Secretary James N. Mattis moved Thursday to knock down speculation that he was at odds with the White House, less than a week after a video of him talking to troops about American values led to widespread speculation that he was criticizing President Trump.

In the impromptu speech to U.S. forces deployed in Jordan, which was surreptitiously recorded on cellphone video, Mattis talked about political divisiveness in the wake of the racially inspired violence in Charlottesville, Va.

“Our country, right now, it’s got problems that we don’t have in the military,” Mattis said. “You just hold the line until our country gets back to understanding and respecting each other and showing it.”

When the video became public and circulated widely on social media, many interpreted the remarks as a slight against Trump’s leadership.

Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday, Mattis called that interpretation “ludicrous.” He was reiterating what the president had said about the need for unity, he said.

“If I say ‘six’ and the president says ‘half a dozen,’ they’re going to say I disagreed with him,” Mattis said during the unscheduled appearance at the Pentagon press room.

The video, however, was not the only instance in which Mattis appeared to be saying something different from the president.

On Wednesday, Mattis publicly emphasized diplomacy as the path forward in the increasingly tense situation with North Korea. The statement came just hours after Trump tweeted that “talking is not the answer” to the problems with the defiant communist country.

Pyongyang has fired 21 missiles during 14 tests since February. The latest missile test, which flew over northern Japan on Monday, had triggered Trump’s tweet.

Even though Mattis said the “solutions” to the North Korea problem were likely to be found through diplomatic channels, he emphasized Thursday that he did not disagree with the president.

“There was no contradiction,” he said. “I agree with the president that we should not be talking to a nation that’s firing missiles over the top of Japan, an ally.”

Mattis acknowledged, however, that there are issues on which he and Trump disagreed.

In one example that was widely publicized, Trump reconsidered his calls for resuming the practice of waterboarding of terrorism suspects after talking to Mattis. The president also warmed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance, which he had previously called “obsolete,” following consultation with Mattis.

“First time I met with President Trump, we disagreed on three things in the first 40 minutes I met with him — on NATO, no torture and something else — and he hired me,” Mattis said. “This is not a man who is immune to being persuaded if he thinks you’ve got an argument.”

Despite the initial disagreements with Trump, Mattis agreed to serve as Defense secretary even though that meant coming out of retirement and back into the public spotlight.

“When a president of the United States asks you to do something ... I don’t think it’s old-fashioned or anything, I don’t care if it’s a Republican or Democrat, we all have an obligation to serve,” he said Thursday. “That’s all there is to it. And so, you serve.”

More recently, Trump settled on a new military strategy in Afghanistan, largely shaped by Mattis’ advice, after months of bitter internal debates within his national security team.

Trump said in announcing the strategy that his initial instinct had ben to “pull out.”

Ultimately, he was persuaded by his generals — Mattis, national security advisor Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — to provide U.S. commanders with additional troops and broader authority to pursue militant forces in Afghanistan.

Mattis confirmed that he has signed the first deployment orders to send additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, but would not specify how many were being sent.

A highly respected four-star Marine general before his retirement, Mattis is a hard-charging but scholarly figure who issued heavy reading lists to subordinates and who carried “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius on his deployments.

Trump likes to call him by the nickname “Mad Dog,” even though Mattis dislikes the moniker, dismissing it as something a “reporter came up with years ago on a slow news day.”

(J Pat Carter / Associated Press)

The Trump administration announced Thursday that a former official at for-profit DeVry University has been picked to head an Education Department unit that polices colleges for student aid fraud.

Last year, DeVry paid $100 million to settle federal claims it misled students.

Julian Schmoke Jr., who was an associate dean at DeVry from 2008 to 2012, will lead federal student aid enforcement activities, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said.

“In addition to a track record of successfully advocating for students for more than 20 years, he brings experience in higher education leadership, instruction and accreditation, including serving in an academic capacity at DeVry University, where he ensured the delivery of a quality education to students,” the Education Department said in a news release.

“Dr. Schmoke will lead a team focused on identifying, investigating and adjudicating statutory and regulatory violations of the federal student aid programs and on resolving borrower defense claims,” the release said.

The move drew criticism given DeVry’s troubles and the Trump administration’s efforts to reverse an Obama administration crackdown on for-profit colleges.

Read More

Responding to a Russian government demand to drastically slash its diplomatic staff in Russia, the Trump administration Thursday ordered Moscow to close three of its consular offices in the United States.

Russia will be required to close its Consulate General in San Francisco, the chancery annex in Washington and the consular annex in New York, the State Department announced.

The move was the latest tit-for-tat action in worsening relations between Washington and Moscow, despite President Trump’s expressions of friendliness toward President Vladimir Putin.

Angered over a package of congressionally mandated economic sanctions, Russia had ordered the U.S. to cut its staff in Russia by around two-thirds, to 455.

On the day that changed his life, Gregory Cheadle almost stayed in bed.

He was tired — he traveled a lot in his long-shot bid for Congress — but asked himself: How often does a candidate for president come to the far reaches of Northern California? And why pass up a crowd and the chance to hand out more fliers?

So Cheadle roused himself that June 2016 morning and secured a spot up close when Donald Trump swooped in for a rally at Redding’s municipal airport.

It was hot, the atmosphere was loose and Trump’s patter seemed more stand-up comedy than campaign spiel. He went into one of those sidelong digressions, about protesters and an African American — “great fan, great guy” — and, by the way, whatever happened to him?

It was then, Cheadle said, he raised his hand and jokingly shouted, “I’m here.”

Trump looked and pointed, his voice a throaty rumble. “Look at my African American over here!” he exclaimed. “Are you the greatest?”

In the days and weeks that followed Cheadle was attacked on social media and harassed by people who dug up his phone number and email address. For a time he stayed home, too nervous to venture outside.

All, he said, because the media portrayed him as something he was not and never has been: a Trump sycophant.

Read More

A grand jury used by Special Counsel Robert Mueller has heard secret testimony from a Russian-American lobbyist who attended a June 2016 meeting with President Trump’s eldest son, the Associated Press has learned.

A person familiar with the matter confirmed to the AP that Rinat Akhmetshin had appeared before Mueller’s grand jury in recent weeks. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the secret proceedings.

The revelation is the clearest indication yet that Mueller and his team of investigators view the meeting, which came weeks after Trump had secured the Republican presidential nomination, as a relevant inquiry point in their broader probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The meeting included Donald Trump Jr.; the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner; and his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. Emails released by Trump Jr. show he took the meeting expecting that he would be receiving damaging information about Hillary Clinton as part of what was described to him as a Russian government effort to aid the Trump campaign.

The Financial Times first reported Akhmetshin’s grand jury appearance. Reached by the AP, Akhmetshin declined comment. Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, also declined comment Wednesday night.

The confirmation of Akhmetshin’s grand jury testimony comes after he spoke at length about his involvement in the Trump Tower meeting in an interview with the AP last month.

Akhmetshin, a former Soviet military officer who served in a counterintelligence unit, is also a well-known Washington lobbyist. He has been representing Russian interests trying to undermine the story of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Russian prison and is the namesake of a U.S. sanctions law.

Akhmetshin has been reported to have ties to Russian intelligence but he has denied that, calling the allegations a “smear campaign.”

Mueller and his team first signaled their interest in the Trump Tower gathering last month by contacting an attorney for at least some of the Russians who attended.

The meeting at issue was disclosed earlier this year to Congress and first revealed by the New York Times.

Trump Jr. has offered evolving explanations for the circumstances of the meeting, initially saying that the purpose was to discuss adoption and later acknowledging that he anticipated receiving information that he thought could be damaging to Clinton.

In addition to Akhmetshin, other attendees at the meeting included Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, music publicist Rob Goldstone — who helped arrange the gathering — and a translator. Ike Kaveladze, who also goes by the name Irakly Kaveladze, also attended the meeting. Kaveladze works for a Russian developer who once partnered with Trump to bring the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow.

An email exchange posted to Twitter by Trump Jr. showed him conversing with Goldstone, who wanted him to meet with someone he described as a “Russian government attorney,” who supposedly had dirt on Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

“If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer,” Trump Jr. wrote in one email response.

An Afghan soldier mans a checkpoint in Jalalabad on June 10, 2017.

(Ghulamullah Habibi / EPA)

The Pentagon revealed Wednesday that roughly 11,000 U.S. troops are currently deployed in Afghanistan, 2,600 more than the U.S. military had previously disclosed to the public.

Pentagon spokeswoman Dana W. White and Lt. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., director of the U.S. military’s Joint Staff, blamed the significant undercount on head-counting rules the Obama administration had devised.

The Obama-era policies did not include troops deployed for less than six-months -- a stint the military considers a “temporary basis” -- as part of the military’s total for Afghanistan. Because the Obama administration had set caps on the number of troops allowed to be deployed to active war zones in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, U.S. commanders found ways to supplement their forces by “temporarily” adding additional troops who would not be counted.

Defense Secretary James N. Mattis expressed frustration with the approach and ordered a comprehensive review to give a more accurate picture of the U.S. military footprint, following last week’s announcement by President Trump of a new military strategy in Afghanistan.

“The secretary has been clear about his commitment to transparency in our public reporting procedures and increasing commanders’ ability to adapt to battlefield conditions in countering emergent threats,” White told reporters at the Pentagon.

“Following a comprehensive review of our South Asia strategy, the secretary has determined we must simplify our accounting methodology and improve ... the public’s understanding of America’s military commitment in Afghanistan.”

The new policies “will balance informing the American people, maintaining operational security and denying the enemy any advantage,” White said, adding that the Pentagon is also reviewing its practices for disclosing troop numbers in Iraq and Syria.

“The fight is different in Iraq and Syria than it is in Afghanistan,” McKenzie said. “But in both theaters, eventually we’ll apply the same two pillars: balancing transparency of reporting with a requirement to protect the forces on the ground”

The Pentagon is still examining how many additional troops to deploy to join the 11,000 U.S. and 5,000 North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops now in Afghanistan. The U.S. and allied militaries train and advise Afghan security forces as they seek to quell a resurgent Taliban, Islamic State militants and other militias that have kept much of the country at war.

Trump has given Mattis the authority to send up to 4,000 more troops to the battlefield. U.S. warplanes already have stepped up the Afghan war, dropping 1,984 bombs and missiles so far this year -- more than twice as many as in the same period a year ago, according to Air Force statistics.

1:55 p.m.: This post was updated with additional Pentagon comments.

Defense Secretary James N. Mattis says the Pentagon won’t change its policy of allowing transgender people to serve in the U.S. military until he receives recommendations from a panel that is supposed to report back on the impact of a ban.

The panel will be drawn from the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, but its members have yet to be named. They will examine how the Pentagon can implement President Trump’s directive banning transgender individuals from entering the armed forces.

Mattis’ statement Tuesday night came in response to Trump’s memo last Friday that directed Mattis, in consultation with secretary of Homeland Security, to submit a plan to him by Feb. 21. Trump has yet to appoint a new Homeland Security chief to replace John Kelly, who became White House chief of staff.

“As directed, we will develop a study and implementation plan, which will contain the steps that will promote military readiness, lethality, and unit cohesion, with due regard for budgetary constraints and consistent with applicable law,” Mattis said.

He said the panel will be made up of people with “mature experience, most notably in combat and deployed operations, and seasoned judgment to this task.”

In the interim, currently serving transgender troops will remain in the armed forces under existing policy, he said.

That policy, which was begun by President Obama last year after a lengthy Pentagon review, placed protection of gender rights in the military on par with race, religion, color, sex and sexual orientation. The move was part of a broader initiative to bring the military in line with shifts with social attitudes.

For the first time, transgender service members could serve openly, and several thousand people in the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard did so. The services had to provide medical and training plans, and arrange full implementation by July 1, 2017.

Mattis had pushed that deadline back six months before Trump unexpectedly announced on Twitter on July 26 that he planned to reverse Obama’s policy entirely, saying the military would neither accept nor allow transgender people to serve.

U.S. Defense Secretary James N. Mattis.

(Cliff Owen / Associated Press)

Hours after President Trump tweeted that “talking is not the answer” in regards to the increasingly tense situation with North Korea, Defense Secretary James N. Mattis emphasized diplomacy as the path forward.

“We’re never out of diplomatic solutions,” he told reporters Wednesday while greeting South Korea’s defense minister, Song Young-moo, at the Pentagon

“We continue to work together, and the minister and I share responsibility to provide for the protection of our nation, our populations and our interests, which is what we are here to discuss today,” he said.

Trump had taken to Twitter less than three hours earlier to respond to North Korea’s latest missile test, which flew over northern Japan on Monday, and to subsequent threats from the isolated nation’s leader, Kim Jong Un.

“The U.S. has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money, for 25 years. Talking is not the answer!” Trump tweeted Wednesday morning.

The statement raised questions about what the president meant, if diplomacy was not the way forward. Trump’s Cabinet members, including Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, have repeatedly advocated for dialogue to ease tensions with the defiant communist country.

North Korean state media quoted Kim saying that Monday’s test of a Hwasong-12 intermediate-range missile was “the first step of the military operation” to target Guam, a U.S. territory that’s home to U.S. Navy and Air Force bases.

North Korea has fired 21 missiles during 14 tests since February, including three on Saturday, with many landing in the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea.

Last month, North Korea successfully test launched two intercontinental ballistic missiles — weapons in theory capable of striking the U.S. mainland, including California.

In this Dec. 16, 2016 file photo, Michael Cohen, an attorney for Donald Trump, arrives in Trump Tower in New York.

(Richard Drew / Associated Press)

The Kremlin on Wednesday confirmed it received an email from President Trump’s personal lawyer during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign in which the lawyer asked for help with a potential skyscraper project in Moscow.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said he did not respond to lawyer Michael Cohen’s email because the Kremlin does not address “such business requests.”

“It is not our job,” Peskov told reporters in a conference call Wednesday.

The Washington Post reported Monday that a Cohen statement to a House Intelligence Committee indicated that the president’s company pursued a project in Moscow during the Republican primary. The company later abandoned the project for unspecified reasons. The committee is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

The email specifically asked for help with plans to build a Trump Tower skyscraper in Moscow, a plan which Cohen said he was working on with Felix Sater, a Russian-born New York businessman who claimed to have deep connections in Russia. The New York Times reported that Sater told Cohen Russian government approval was required for the project to move forward and suggested that Cohen reach out to Peskov directly for assistance.

“Buddy our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it,” Sater wrote in an email to Cohen. “I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”

Peskov said his office had located a copy of Cohen’s 2016 email, which was sent to a general address for the Kremlin press office. The address can be easily found online, he told reporters.

Cohen’s email said “the business had been stalled and they were asking for help or some kind of recommendation about how to advance the issue,” Peskov said.

“We left it unanswered,” Peskov said.

The issue was never discussed with the Russian president, because it would be “impossible to discuss with President Putin the hundreds and thousands of requests of all kinds from a variety of countries” that are received in that general Kremlin address, Peskov said.

The Kremlin spokesman said he did not know Cohen personally.

“No, we never met, sadly … or thankfully,” Peskov said.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka

(Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press)

The nation’s most powerful labor union chief, still reeling from Democrats’ big losses in 2016, has a message for them as they work to win back working people.

“Calling the president names, even if they’re accurate, gets you nowhere,” Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, told reporters Wednesday at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.

Trumka, reared in one of the Pennsylvania coal towns that Trump swept in the election, said that telling voters who supported him that they were stupid to do so is also a strategy for failure. Instead, he said, Democrats need to make the case to those who gave him the benefit of the doubt that Trump has not done what he promised.

“He hasn’t done any of these ‘do this and do that,” Trumka said.

Even as the labor chieftain cautioned against name-calling, he was not averse to criticizing Trump’s administration as he recounted his struggle to find common ground with the populists in the White House.

“The difficulty that you had was you had two factions in the White House,” Trumka said. “You had one faction that actually had some of the policies that we would have supported on trade and infrastructure but they turned out to be racist. On the other, you had people that weren’t racist. But they were Wall Street.”

Trumka, who was a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton, faulted the Democratic nominee for not delivering a “kitchen table message” to win over working-class voters. He also distanced organized labor from her defeat: “I wasn’t running. The union wasn’t running. It was him and Hillary.”

After the election, Trumka met several times with administration officials and was named to a White House advisory council on manufacturing. But he recently left the council, along with its corporate members, in protest of Trump’s handling of the racial violence in Charlottesville, Va., and the president dissolved it.

( Frederic J. Brown / AFP/Getty Images)

For decades, the home mortgage interest deduction has been one of the most sacred of cows in the U.S. tax code.

It is particularly revered in Los Angeles and other areas with high real estate prices, where the annual tax savings can be the difference between being able to afford a house or continuing to rent.

Now, Republicans crafting legislation to overhaul the federal tax system and cut rates are considering placing new limits on the home mortgage interest deduction.

And thousands of Californians could feel the pain.

Read More

With each crisis of the young Trump administration, reporters and pollsters have documented the steady support he continues to get from his most ardent backers, the roughly one-in-four Americans who consistently tell pollsters that they approve of his performance in office, agree with him on most issues and like his personality.

Tuesday night at a focus group in Pittsburgh, a group of reporters heard from a different slice of Trump voters — ones he’s lost for now.

“Outrageous,” “disappointed,” “not ready” were among the adjectives that focus group members who had voted for Trump tossed out when asked for a single word to describe the president.

“He has got to be his own worst enemy,” said Tony Sciullo, a lifelong Pittsburgh resident and a registered independent who works for an insurance agency and described Trump as an “abject disappointment.”

Brian Rush, a registered Republican who works as a sales representative, voiced a slightly more supportive view.

“I’m still going to hold off judgment,” he said. “I’m hoping things can turn around.”

Trump “does want this country to be great,” Rush said. But he likened the administration to a recently bought car that now has several dents and is “not running the way it should” while the mechanics “don’t know exactly why.”

Their disappointment, the Trump voters present made clear, focused mostly on the president’s behavior and personality as opposed to his positions on particular issues.

Polls have documented Trump’s slide among voters like this — those who backed him with reluctance, not fervor, generally favoring other candidates in the GOP primaries and voting for Trump in the end largely as a reaction against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. The focus group, conducted by veteran pollster Peter D. Hart, provided an opportunity to hear their views in more detail.

The session was not originally designed to elicit such views: It’s part of a project Hart is conducting for Emory University in Atlanta to probe voter attitudes on major issues. Tuesday night’s group was primarily intended to look at views toward immigration. The 12 Pittsburgh-area residents who took part were divided roughly equally between Trump and Clinton voters.

The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency says it has successfully completed a missile defense flight test -- intercepting a medium-range ballistic missile target from a warship off the coast of Hawaii.

The agency said the John Paul Jones detected and tracked a target missile launched from Kauai with its onboard AN/SPY-1 radar. The destroyer fired SM-6 missiles to intercept the test missile.

“We are working closely with the fleet to develop this important new capability, and this was a key milestone in giving our ... ships an enhanced capability to defeat ballistic missiles in their terminal phase,” Lt. Gen. Sam Greaves, who heads the missile defense agency, said in a statement. “We will continue developing ballistic missile defense technologies to stay ahead of the threat as it evolves.”

The test marks the second time an SM-6 missile has successfully intercepted a medium-range ballistic missile target, the agency said

It comes a day after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s government flew a medium-range ballistic missile over northern Japan, sparking alarms there. The missile was unarmed but officials said it was designed to carry a nuclear warhead

Read More

President Trump will kick off a weeks-long effort to sell Americans on tax cuts with a speech on Wednesday in Missouri that aides said will not contain any details on a Republican plan that is still being drafted.

Trump will use the event at the Loren Cook Co. manufacturing plant in Springfield, Mo., to explain why Congress should cut corporate rates and make other changes to the federal tax code, said senior White House officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide a preview of the president’s remarks.

“This is not a ‘how’ speech,” said one official.

Trump will talk about the need to make America more globally competitive and the tax code more equitable, by cutting the rates paid by businesses and individuals as well as by eliminating special interest loopholes that benefit the wealthy, the officials said.

The goal is to relieve what Trump will call “the crushing tax burden on American industry,” they said, adding that he will describe a new “American model” of taxes that puts workers and their families first and calls for business to grow domestically and hire U.S. employees.

Read More

Ben Falcon, 17, born and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas, protests President Trump’s arrival in his hometown Tuesday.

(Hailey Branson-Potts / Los Angeles Times)

As President Trump arrived in Texas on Tuesday to witness the damage from Tropical Storm Harvey, he was greeted in Corpus Christi by a microcosm of a divided nation: a mix of well-wishers and protesters, both thrilled and furious he was here.

Dozens of people stood along Agnes Street, a quiet stretch of road just across a cotton field from the city’s airport. Some held up protest signs. Some held giant American flags. Some just held up their hands, waving hello.

Read More

Pentagon officials said Tuesday that National Guard assets are at full readiness to assist in the unfolding disaster in Texas wrought by Tropical Storm Harvey.

Maj. Gen. James C. Witham, director of domestic operations for the National Guard, told Pentagon reporters that up to 30,000 guardsmen as well as a U.S. naval amphibious assault ship could be called upon to help out in rescue efforts on the ground.

There are 30 National Guard helicopters flying in Texas in support of relief efforts surrounding the hurricane and subsequent tropical storm, with 24 more requested, he said.

Witham said that could increase to 100 helicopters in the days ahead as the Guard prepares for a sustained, phased response -- a departure from what the Guard has done in the past.

“This will be a long-term effort,” Witham said. “When the Guard responds to hurricane-type events, normally we talk about that first 72 to 96 hours for the lifesaving and life-sustainment that takes place. Then, we’re into the recovery effort.

“Due to the nature of this storm as it spun across southwest Texas for days and dumped historic levels of rainfall, our response has been very different than what we’ve looked at before,” he said. “And the planning associated had to be different because of the nature of it.”

The Guard has alerted thousands of forces across the nation for possible deployment. It has already sent elite special operations para-rescuers from California and New York to aid in the effort, he said.

“We are leaning as far forward as we possibly can to ensure that military assets are postured to support the needs of Texas and potentially Louisiana,” Witham said.

Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott has ordered the entire Texas National Guard, which numbers around 12,000 troops, to assist those affected by the storm. Only about 3,500 Texas guardsmen are now involved, which raised questions as to whether U.S. commanders in Washington had identified a bigger demand than Texas officials were willing to request.

Witham said, “Texas has been given everything that they’ve asked for” and that the Pentagon expects “more forces will be requested.”

“If you look at the magnitude and duration of this storm, we are just trying to anticipate additional needs on behalf of Texas,” he said.

The California Air National Guard from the 129th Rescue Wing in Mountain View had deployed about 90 guardsmen on Monday night.

The wing sent a team of Guardian Angel para-rescuers, a U.S. special operations search-and-rescue unit. The wing also sent two HH-60G Pave Hawk rescue helicopters and an MC-130 transport aircraft.

“This is their wheelhouse,” said Capt. Will Martin, a California National Guard spokesman. “They carry out over-water rescue throughout the year and they have been in Texas before.”

The Bay Area wing was deployed to Texas in disaster response to Hurricane Rita in 2005, Hurricane Ike and Hurricane Gustav in 2008.

(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)

President Trump landed in Texas late Tuesday morning with plans to tour the state’s emergency operations center and get briefed on the state’s worsening flooding crisis while rescuers are still pulling people from submerged homes.

The trip to Corpus Christi and Austin comes a day after Trump promised to bring swift financial help for a “long and difficult” recovery from the storm’s devastation, which he said would cost billions.

“We think you’re going to have what you need, and it’s going to go fast,” he said.

Congress has not outlined a plan to tackle the needs of Texas and Louisiana, the two states that took the brunt of Harvey, a hurricane now downgraded to a tropical storm.

State and local officials are still responding to the immediate safety threat and have not begun to fully assess the long-term costs of the epic storm, which has turned large parts of Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, into a lake.

Read More

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was among a group of Republicans who voted against a $50.5-billion relief package for victims of 2012’s Superstorm Sandy when it came before them in January 2013. The measure passed anyway.

Now that his own state is likely to need a federal relief package totaling $40 billion or more due to a storm still pummeling the Gulf Coast around Houston, critics are calling out Cruz for what they say is hypocrisy for his decision to oppose Sandy relief while presumably supporting it now for Texas.

In an interview with NBC’s Katy Tur, Cruz defended his vote, saying the Sandy relief bill was filled with “unrelated pork.”

“Two-thirds of that bill had nothing to do with Sandy. And what I said then, and still believe now, is that it’s not right for politicians to exploit a disaster when people are hurting to pay for their own political wishlist,” he said.

Lawmakers from the New York-New Jersey region, which sustained the heaviest damage from Sandy, have signaled that they won’t let their anger over Cruz’s and other Republicans’ opposition to Sandy aid cloud their decision on Harvey relief.

Read More

President Trump said Tuesday that “all options are on the table” in terms of a U.S. response to North Korea’s launch of a missile over Japan.

In a terse, written statement, Trump said that with the missile launch North Korea has “signaled its contempt for its neighbors, for all members of the United Nations, and for minimum standards of acceptable international behavior.”

“Threatening and destabilizing actions only increase the North Korean regime’s isolation in the region and among all nations of the world,” Trump said. “All options are on the table.”

Trump later told reporters, “We’ll see, we’ll see” when asked what he would do about North Korea. Trump, accompanied by First Lady Melania Trump, was departing the White House for a trip to survey storm damage in southeastern Texas.

In a first, North Korea on Tuesday fired a midrange ballistic missile designed to carry a nuclear payload that flew over U.S. ally Japan and splashed into the northern Pacific Ocean, officials said. The aggressive launch over the territory of a close U.S. ally sent a clear message of defiance as Washington and South Korea conduct war games nearby.

Trump’s statement implies that military action remains an option in resolving the standoff over North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons that could threaten the United States. But a U.S. military strike against North Korea is considered highly unlikely. Even Trump’s own strategic adviser, Steve Bannon, dismissed the threat as a bluff shortly before he was dismissed earlier this month.

North Korea has the world’s largest standing army and a massive conventional weapons arsenal that can easily target the South Korean capital of Seoul and its metropolitan area of about 25 million people.

While Democrat and Republican presidents have routinely offered the “all options on the table” formulation, U.S. officials have long assessed that the North would likely respond to any U.S. strike by attacking its neighbor or nearby Japan. The result could be a war with the risk of mass casualties on both sides. Hundreds of thousands of Americans in northeastern Asia, military and civilians, would be endangered.

In recent weeks the administration has been emphasizing it wants to use economic and diplomatic pressure to achieve a negotiated solution.

Trump and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan conferred by telephone over the latest missile test.

The White House said the leaders agreed that North Korea poses “a grave and growing direct threat” to the United States, Japan, South Korea and countries around the world.

“President Trump and Prime Minister Abe committed to increasing pressure on North Korea, and doing their utmost to convince the international community to do the same,” the White House said.

Abe said in a statement that “Japan’s and the U.S. positions are totally at one.”

The prime minister added that both nations were in “total agreement” that an emergency meeting was needed at the U.N. Security Council to step up pressure on North Korea after what he called an unprecedented threat. He also said Trump expressed his “strong commitment” to defending Japan.

Read MoreUPDATES

6:40 a.m.: This article has been updated throughout with additional details and background.

President Trump seemed eager to field questions during a Monday news conference, defending his decision to pardon former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, still insisting Mexico will pay for his promised border wall and again refusing to criticize Russia.

The defense of Arpaio came amid a longer than expected news conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinistö in which Trump took more questions than either man planned.

Trump pushed back against accusations that he had tried to hide the controversial pardon of Arpaio by releasing it on a Friday night as Hurricane Harvey headed toward Texas. Instead, Trump asserted that he believed the television ratings would be higher than normal because so many people were monitoring the storm.

“Sheriff Joe is a patriot,” Trump said. “Sheriff Joe loves our country. Sheriff Joe protected our borders.”

The president said his pardon was no more controversial than other presidents. He pulled out a list of notes from his pocket, reading the names of figures pardoned by his past two Democratic predecessors, Presidents Clinton and Obama.

Apraio was convicted of violating a federal court order to stop his practice of racial profiling Latinos.

The pardon was criticized by Arizona Sen. John McCain among other Republicans, but Trump pointed to a boisterous rally in Arizona last week as evidence that the people of Arizona stand with him.

In fact, Arpaio, a high profile Trump campaign supporter, lost a popular election in Maricopa County in November, which Trump attributed to “unbelievably” unfair treatment

In a moment of levity, as Trump continued to take questions, he good-naturedly chided the Finnish president for calling upon the same female Finnish reporter twice. In fact, Niinistö had called upon different women.

“We have a lot of blond women in Finland,” the reporter joked.

Trump also remained defiant on two other issues that have come up frequently in his presidency — the proposal to build a larger border wall with Mexico and his relationship with Russia.

“I say it loud and clear, I’ve been saying for years,” Trump said. “I think it’s a good thing if we have great relationships, or at least good relationships, with Russia. That’s very important and I believe some day that will happen.”

Asked if he viewed Russia as a security threat, Trump demurred, saying he views many nations as security threats, but declining to mention Russia by name.

The comments came amid new revelations about his campaign’s ties to Russia, the subject of a federal investigation into election meddling.

On the wall, Trump declined to back down from recent threats that he would allow the government to shut down if Congress refuses to provide more money for the wall. During the campaign, Trump said that Mexico would pay for the wall, something Mexican officials have repeatedly dismissed as a nonstarter.

“We may fund it through the United States but ultimately Mexico will pay for the wall,” Trump said.

California will be among the first stops for Hillary Clinton’s upcoming tour touting her new book, “What Happened,” a memoir about her loss to Donald Trump.

Clinton’s only scheduled appearance in California is at UC Davis on Oct. 9, although more stops could be added during her swing through the U.S. and Canada.

The book tour map at the moment looks a lot different from, say, Clinton’s campaign trail schedule one year ago, when she was hopscotching between swing states. She didn’t visit Wisconsin, one factor her aides have admitted probably contributed to her loss in the state after 32 years of Democratic presidential victories there. She lost reliably Democratic Michigan to Trump, too, in the first win for Republicans there since 1988. It’s a safe bet she’ll express regret in both states when she speaks in the college town of Ann Arbor on Oct. 24 and in Milwaukee on Nov. 9, one year and one day after the 2016 election.

The remaining U.S. stops are almost entirely in states she won. Clinton’s California victory was her largest — she beat Trump here by more than 4.2 million votes.

Clinton’s tour kicks off at the Warner Theater in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 18. Other stops include Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Portland, Ore., and Montreal and Vancouver in Canada.

A book tour website states that other cities will be added once they are confirmed.

To attend one of Clinton’s book tour events, it’ll cost. Ticket prices range from a low of $55 for the event in Washington, which includes a ticket and a book, to $3,000 for a “VIP Platinum ticket” for the stops in Canada.

The platinum ticket includes front-row seating, admission for two, a backstage meet-and-greet with a photo and a copy of “What Happened.” Tickets prices for some of the events, including the one at UC Davis, have not been released.

Publisher Simon & Schuster told the Associated Press in July that Clinton’s book will be a personal memoir of her campaign as well as a “cautionary tale” about Russian interference in the election. The book’s publication date is Sept. 12.

“In the past, for reasons I try to explain, I’ve often felt I had to be careful in public, like I was up on a wire without a net,” Clinton writes in the introduction, according to Simon & Schuster. “Now I’m letting my guard down.”

3:45 p.m.: This post was updated with details about the cost of the tour.

Donald Trump, Bayrock Group founder Tevfik Arif and Felix Sater, right, in New York in 2007.

(Mark Von Holden / WireImage)

On Monday, the New York Times and Washington Post reported about Felix Sater, one of Donald Trump’s business associates, and the role he allegedly played during the presidential campaign in connecting Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, to Russian government officials to facilitate approval of a proposed Trump Tower to be built in Moscow.

The Times spoke to Sater earlier this year about his work with the Trump organization and his claim to also be working with the FBI.

Working from a 24th-floor office in Manhattan’s Trump Tower, Felix Sater spent years trying to line up lucrative deals in the United States, Russia and elsewhere in Europe with Donald Trump’s real estate organization.

For much of that time, according to court records and U.S. officials, Sater also worked as a confidential informant for the FBI, and — he says — U.S. intelligence.

“I was building Trump Towers by day and hunting Bin Laden by night,” Sater, now 50, told the Los Angeles Times in a phone interview from New York.

As managing director of Bayrock Group LLC, a real estate development firm, the Russian-born businessman met Trump in 2003, court records show, when Trump was looking to expand his business and branding organization around the globe.

Although few projects were built, Sater worked on hotel and condominium deals with the Trump Organization through 2010 in New York, Florida, Arizona, London, Moscow and elsewhere even as he secretly helped the FBI infiltrate and take down organized crime figures, according to court records.

Trump has denied they were close, but Sater had access to Trump’s inner circle as recently as this year.

In January, Sater and Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, met in a New York hotel with a Ukrainian lawmaker who asked them to bring the White House a pro-Russian peace deal for Ukraine.

“I was only trying to stop a war,” Sater said of his role linking the lawmaker, Andrei Artemenko, with Cohen.

Read More

Volunteers help evacuate residents in Spring, Texas.

(David J. Phillip / Associated Press)

President Trump predicted that federal aid would be delivered quickly to those affected by Tropical Storm Harvey.

“You’re going to see very rapid action from Congress, certainly from the president.... We think you’re going to have what you need and it’s going to go fast,” Trump said at a news conference with the Finnish president in Washington today.

But he cautioned that the extent of the disaster is still unknown.

“It’s a long road. Still pouring. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. I’ve heard the word epic. I’ve heard historic. That’s what it is,” he said.

Read More

President Trump with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7.

(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)

President Trump’s personal lawyer is acknowledging that the president’s company considered building a Trump Tower in Moscow during the Republican primary, but the plan was abandoned “for a variety of business reasons.”

The attorney, Michael Cohen, disclosed the details Monday to the House Intelligence Committee. The committee is looking into potential Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The statement was subsequently obtained by the Associated Press.

Cohen says he worked on the proposal with Felix Sater, a Russia-born associate who claimed to have deep connections in Moscow.

The story was first reported Monday by the Washington Post. The New York Times reported on emails in which Sater boasted to Cohen that the real estate deal could help get Trump elected.

UPDATES

12:05 p.m.: This post has been updated with a response from President Trump’s lawyer.

This post originally published at 5:58 a.m.

Protesters oppose President Trump’s ban on transgender individuals joining the military during a demonstration in front of the Army career center in New York’s Times Square on July 26.

(Jewel Samad / AFP/Getty Images)

The American Civil Liberties Union on Monday filed a lawsuit challenging President Trump’s ban on transgender individuals joining the military.

The federal lawsuit was filed in Maryland by the ACLU of Maryland on behalf of several service members who are transgender.

Trump directed the Pentagon on Friday to implement the ban on transgender individuals joining the military, which he first announced in a tweet. He also gave the Pentagon the authority to decide the future of openly transgender people already serving.

The lawsuit says Trump’s policy violates the equal-protection rights of transgender service members who now have “grave reason to fear for their careers.”

The White House said Sunday that President Trump would travel to storm-battered Texas on Tuesday – although the president said earlier his travel would be planned so as not to disrupt rescue efforts.

The updated travel plan was announced by White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders as Trump returned to the White House by helicopter from Camp David, in Maryland, with his wife, Melania, and son Barron.

Daughter Ivanka Trump, her husband, Jared Kushner, and their three children had also traveled to the presidential retreat and returned with the first family on the short helicopter flight.

“We are coordinating logistics with state and local officials, and once details are finalized, we will let you know,” the White House statement said of Trump’s upcoming trip to Texas. “We continue to keep all of those affected in our thoughts and prayers.”

As Houston was hit by catastrophic flooding, Trump repeatedly tweeted praise for rescue workers and others trying to help those who were stranded by high waters.

The president also raised some eyebrows, though, with Twitter commentary on Sunday that had little to do with the onging disaster. One took aim at Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), predicting Republican gains in the state and calling attention to his own margin of victory in the state in last year’s election.

Another tweet castigated Mexico as crime-infested and renewed Trump’s vow that Mexico would pay for his border wall. The Mexican government has said it will not.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan became one of a few top Republicans to publicly disagree with President Trump’s pardon of former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, as lawmakers in Congress have become more willing to distance themselves from the White House, especially on issues of race.

“The speaker does not agree with this decision,” said Ryan spokesman Doug Andres. “Law enforcement officials have a special responsibility to respect the rights of everyone in the United States. We should not allow anyone to believe that responsibility is diminished by this pardon.”

Republicans tread carefully when leveling criticism of Trump or his administration’s approach to issues, fearful of turning off their supporters who back the president. Few Republicans in Congress spoke publicly after Trump’s pardon Friday of Arpaio, the former sheriff convicted of defying a court order to stop his department’s racial profiling of Latino residents suspected of illegally immigrating to Arizona.

The state’s two senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, both expressed their disapproval. But they both have already endured Trump’s high-profile rebukes for their differences with the administration.

Only after Trump’s handling of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., did larger numbers of Republicans in Congress publicly break from their party’s president. Lawmakers could not withstand having their party linked to any equivocation over the neo-Nazi groups.

Ryan spoke up against Trump last week, stating the president “messed up” in responding to Charlottesville.

But criticizing Trump carries risks as evident in Ryan’s statement on the Arpaio pardon. It was not disseminated broadly, through a press release or on social media or Twitter, but only given upon request.

(Mary Altaffer / Associated Press)

To President Trump and many of his supporters, Joe Arpaio is a national hero whose aggressive pursuit of people in the country illegally and cooperation with federal immigration authorities should be a model for cities and counties around the country.

“Was Sheriff Joe convicted for doing his job?” Trump asked at a raucous campaign-style rally in Phoenix last week, three days before pardoning the 85-year-old former Arizona sheriff.

The pardon of Arpaio — who was convicted of criminal contempt in July for flouting a court order to stop racial profiling of Latinos while he was sheriff — has galvanized Trump’s political base around an issue that was at the center of his presidential campaign.

But for civil rights advocates, who believe that local authorities should not enforce federal immigration laws, the pardon was an endorsement of illegal tactics and will only serve to deepen racial tensions.

“Arpaio built his work on terror and fear,” said Alejandra Gomez, co-executive director of the Arizona-based Living United for Change in Arizona, or LUCHA, an immigrant rights group. “Arpaio targeted the immigrant community, separating thousands of families. Arpaio built the foundation for Trump’s agenda.”

Read More

As criticism of President Trump’s views on race has continued to mount, his secretary of State appeared – unusually -- to distance himself from “values” expressed by the chief executive in the aftermath of a white-supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va., earlier this month.

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Rex Tillerson was asked about a U.N. panel’s recent criticism over failure at “the highest political level” of the U.S. to “unequivocally reject and condemn…racist violent events.” The panel, which normally confines its expressions of concern to the actions of dictatorial regimes or groups like Islamic State, did not mention Trump by name.

A 32-year-old paralegal, Heather Heyer, was killed when one of the Charlottesville marchers plowed a car into a crowd of counter-protesters. An Ohio man described as a Nazi sympathizer has been charged in the killing.

Asked about the statement earlier this month by the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, TIllerson told interviewer Chris Wallace that he did not believe “anyone doubts the American people’s values” with respect to combating racism.

Pressed by Wallace whether Trump shared those values, Tillerson replied: “The president speaks for himself, Chris.”

When his interviewer followed up by asking the secretary whether he was separating himself from Trump’s views, Tillerson once again offered distancing language, saying “I have made my own comments” as to American values on racism.

Trump places a premium on personal loyalty, and in general, aides staunchly defend him even under the most controversial circumstances. But his homeland security advisor, Tom Bossert, declined Sunday to directly support the president’s contention that there had been “very fine people” among the white supremacist marchers.

Asked about that characterization, Bossert said: “I think you’ll have to ask the president how he wanted to parse” characteristics of march participants.

“I’d ask you to ask the president for clarification,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Asked for his own views about those marching with Confederate banners and Nazi symbols while hurling racial invective, Bossert said: “I don’t think anyone chanting those things is a ‘very fine person’ – period.”

He did defend the overall tenor of Trump’s remarks condemning racism, however.

“I can’t be clearer,” he said after repeatedly attempting to return the conversation to the White House response to the hurricane that hit Texas. “I think the administration’s been clear.”

After Charlottesville, Trump drew fire when he initially failed to specifically denounce white supremacists and neo-Nazis as instigators of the violence, saying that the blame lay with “many sides.” Under pressure, he named the groups days later, but then made a series of statements appearing to walk back his initial response and slamming the unfairness of critics and the news media.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who has accused the president of fomenting disunity in response to the Charlottesville violence, criticized him anew on Sunday. Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” the Democratic governor was asked about Trump’s contention that his initial response had been “perfect.”

“Those people came to do harm; they brought their hatred here,” he said of the white supremacists and their allies. “There is no moral equivalence…he needs to call that out for what it is.”