1. Shutdown talks break down as Trump heads to Texas for border visit
President Trump walked out of a White House meeting with congressional Democratic leaders on Wednesday, calling the talks on ending a partial government shutdown “a total waste of time” after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Democrats would not fund Trump’s promised wall on the southern border.
Trump tweeted that when Pelosi said she would oppose the wall even if Trump backed a deal to reopen the government, “I said bye-bye, nothing else works!” Democrats said Trump had thrown a “temper tantrum.” Trump on Thursday will visit the border in Texas, where he faces skepticism about the wall, even from some Republicans. Trump said in a Tuesday address the wall is “absolutely critical;” Democrats say he is manufacturing a crisis and should reopen the government. [The New York Times, The Washington Post]
2. House Democrats pass bill seeking to open Treasury Department
The Democrat-led House late Wednesday passed a bill seeking to reopen the Treasury Department and keep the Internal Revenue Service and Small Business Administration funded. The bill passed 240 to 188, with eight Republicans joining the Democrats and breaking with President Trump and GOP congressional leadership.
The legislation is considered to have no chance in the Republican-controlled Senate; Trump has said he won’t sign any deal to end a partial government shutdown that doesn’t include the $5.7 billion he has demanded to build a wall on the Mexican border. The Republican defections in the House came on the same day Trump emerged from a meeting with Republicans on Capitol Hill declaring that his party is “totally unified” behind his demand for wall funding. [The Washington Post, Axios]
3. Trump says he ordered FEMA to cut fire aid to California
President Trump tweeted Wednesday that he had “ordered FEMA to send no more money” to help California deal with devastation from wildfires. Trump said he was cutting off the money because “billions of dollars are sent to the State of California for Forrest (sic) fires that, with proper Forrest Management, would never happen.”
The president’s remark drew swift rebukes from both Democrats and Republicans as well as residents and public officials who lost homes and loved ones in November’s Camp Fire, the deadliest and most destructive in state history.
“I almost died in this fire,” said Butte County Supervisor Doug Teeter, who lost his home as did several of his family members. “I just want some help for my people — and I don’t appreciate being a political pawn over that.”
Newly elected Gov. Gavin Newsom, who a day earlier joined other Western governors in seeking federal help preventing wildfires, responded to Trump on Twitter that “disasters and recovery are no time for politics.”
Even Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa, who represents the Paradise area destroyed by the Camp Fire, criticized the president.
“Threats to FEMA funding are not helpful and will not solve the longer term forest management regulatory problems,” LaMalfa wrote in a statement on Twitter, adding that Trump “made the promise to help, and I expect him to keep it.”
LaMalfa did, however, say he shared Trump’s frustrations with “choking regulations from the stranglehold environmental groups have on the state.”
It was not the first time Trump has threatened to pull federal funding for California over forest management and other matters ranging from immigration law enforcement to free speech policies at state universities.
And it was unclear Wednesday whether the president had actually ordered funding to be cut, or if he even had the authority to do so. A court in August blocked Trump’s order withholding federal funds to “sanctuary cities” that frustrate federal immigration enforcement efforts.
The White House press office had no statement and did not respond to questions Wednesday morning about the FEMA funding. FEMA’s external affairs adviser based in Sacramento, Brad Pierce, said Wednesday that “we here at this office are waiting for additional guidance, same as everyone else.”
Last year’s Camp Fire ravaged an entire Northern California town, and the Woolsey Fire scorched the southern part of the state. Together, the fires destroyed at least 19,000 homes and killed 86 people. State officials disputed Trump’s suggestion the state was to blame, saying a warming climate is making wildfires worse and noting that the deadly Camp Fire is believed to have started in or near a federally managed forest. More than half of California’s forest land is federally owned. [The Mercury News]
4. Chinese media: Kim Jong Un affirmed commitment to second summit, denuclearization
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un committed during his visit to China this week to pursuing a second summit with President Trump “to achieve results that will be welcomed by the international community,” China’s Xinhua News Agency reported Thursday.
“[North Korea] will continue sticking to the stance of denuclearization and resolving the Korean Peninsula issue through dialogue and consultation,” Xinhua quoted Kim as saying after his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump said last weekend that the two sides were negotiating where to hold a second summit, and that there would be an announcement about the plans “in the not-too-distant future.” Kim’s just-completed trip to Beijing this week was widely interpreted as a sign the summit plans are nearly finished. [USA Today]
5. Rod Rosenstein expected to depart Justice Department soon
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller and oversaw his Russia election-meddling investigation for more than a year, has told President Trump he’s stepping down in the coming weeks, according ABC News and other news organizations.
NBC reported that Rosenstein plans to step down after Mueller finishes his work, which legal sources expected to happen by late February. Rosenstein and Trump have had an at-times contentious relationship, and acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker has taken oversight of the Mueller investigation despite publicly questioning it earlier. Trump has nominated fellow Mueller skeptic William Barr as attorney general, and Rosenstein has reportedly told White House officials he is leaving after Barr is confirmed by the Senate and takes office. [ABC News, NBC News]
6. Democrats pass resolution affirming right to defend ObamaCare in court
The Democrat-controlled House on Wednesday passed a resolution affirming the chamber’s authority to defend the Affordable Care Act in federal court. After Democrats took control of the House in the new Congress, lawmakers last week approved a rules package letting the House intervene in a lawsuit threatening to unravel the landmark health-care law, directing the House’s Office of General Counsel to defend the law against any litigation.
House Republicans voted in 2017 to repeal the law. A federal judge in Texas last month ruled that the law, typically referred to as ObamaCare, is unconstitutional because Congress eliminated the individual mandate penalty, although the law remains in effect pending an appeal of the ruling. [CNN]
7. Congo provisionally declares opposition candidate winner of election after delay
Election officials in the Democratic Republican of Congo “provisionally” declared opposition candidate Felix Tshisekedi winner of a long-delayed presidential election Thursday, setting up the first democratic transfer of power since Congo’s independence in 1960. According to the national election commission, Tshisekedi narrowly beat another opposition candidate, Martin Fayulu, with Emmanuel Shadary, the hand-picked successor of outgoing President Joseph Kabila, a distant third.
Polls before the Dec. 30 election showed Fayulu with a commanding lead, and outside observers and institutions — notably the Catholic Church, which deployed 40,000 election observers — considered him the true victor. Just before the electoral commission named him the runner-up, Fayulu claimed it’s an “open secret” that Tshisekedi had entered a power-sharing agreement with Shadary and the Kabila government. [BBC News, The New York Times]
8. U.S.-supported militia reports capture of U.S. teen fighting for ISIS
A U.S.-backed force battling the Islamic State in Syria said Wednesday a 16-year-old American boy had been captured fighting for the Islamist extremist group. If the teen’s status is confirmed, he will be the first American minor caught fighting for ISIS. The arrest followed the announcement on Sunday that another American, former Texas substitute teacher Warren Christopher Clark, had been seized in the same area. The two are among as few as five American citizens captured so far during the war against ISIS. The militia that captured the boy, the Syrian Democratic Forces, said it had captured a total of eight foreign fighters this week in ISIS’s last stronghold in northern Syria, including citizens of Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan.
United States officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and over the weekend the same militia announced the capture of what they said was another American citizen. There were indications, however, that that person might be from Trinidad, according to Simon Cottee, a senior lecturer in criminology at the University of Kent. Mr. Cottee also said that he had a name very similar to that of the teenager said to be American in a database kept to track Islamic State fighters from Trinidad.
The captures were announced three weeks after President Trump declared “We have won against ISIS,” another name for the Islamic State, and ordered the withdrawal of 2,000 American troops from Syria.
While United States officials have estimated that 295 Americans either have joined or tried to join militant groups in Iraq and Syria, they have not said how many of those recruits successfully made it to the battle zone, nor which group they joined.
The database maintained by the Program on Extremism has identified just 55 American nationals who joined the Islamic State. That is a small fraction of the number from countries like France, from where at least 1,400 people are believed to have joined, according to the Paris-based Center for the Analysis of Terrorism.
While the 16-year-old would be the only American minor caught on the battlefield, other American teenagers have been found in Islamic State-controlled territory.
A 15-year-old girl from Kansas was repatriated from Syria, after being forced to travel to the war zone by her father. She was forcibly married to an ISIS fighter and was pregnant at the time of her capture.
And several other American teenagers have been arrested for trying to carry out attacks on behalf of the militants in the United States. Prosecuting them has proved difficult because of their age, said Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of the George Washington University Program on Extremism.
In South Carolina, for instance, Zakaryia Abdin was accused of plotting an attack against soldiers on behalf of the Islamic State at age 16. He initially pleaded guilty to a firearms offense and was sentenced to one year in a juvenile facility. Only when he tried to travel to Syria following his parole, then age 18, did the Justice Department chargehim with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.
In New Jersey, Santos Colon, 17, pleaded guilty in 2017 to participating in a plot to kill Pope Francis during a Mass in Philadelphia two years earlier. He was released to a halfway house pending sentencing; he faces up to 15 years in prison.
“Here’s the concern with this case,” Mr. Hughes said, referring to the teenager apprehended in Syria. “How long has this young man been in Syria? Did he go early on with family? Or is it a more recent case of traveling? And he is purported to have been fighting for ISIS. It’s one thing to say it and another to prove it in a court of law, and authorities may well decide not to prosecute him given his age.”
[The New York Times]
9. Government shutdown forces IPO delays
The government shutdown has forced companies to postpone initial public offerings of stock they had hoped to hold in January, due to the partial closure of the Securities and Exchange Commission, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, citing sources that included bankers and lawyers. The firms that have held off on listing shares include biotechnology firms Gossamer Bio, Alector, and Blackstone Group LP’s Alight Solutions.
It now appears that no major company will hold an IPO this month. Since 1995, Dealogic data indicate that there have been IPOs in every January but three, in 2003, 2009, and 2016. Those years have been among the weakest on record for IPOs. This year is supposed to be a strong one. [The Wall Street Journal]
10. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and wife are getting divorced
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, are divorcing after 25 years of marriage following a trial separation, vowing to remain “cherished friends,” according to a statement posted Wednesday on Jeff Bezos’ Twitter account. “If we had known we would separate after 25 years, we would do it all again,” they said. The Bezoses, who have four children, met in New York while they worked at hedge fund D.E. Shaw, and married after dating for six months.
Jeff Bezos then quit and started the online bookstore that would become an online retail giant, with Mackenzie Bezos contributing during Amazon’s early days operating from a Seattle garage. Jeff Bezos is now the world’s wealthiest person, with a fortune estimated at $137 billion. [The Associated Press]
From : The White House <info@mail.whitehouse.gov>To : <redaksi@mediahukumindonesia.com> Date : Fri, 11 Jan 2019 06:53:56 +0700 Subject : An update on President Trump’s fight for border security
Millions of Americans, both Republican and Democrat, voted for President Donald J. Trump to reverse decades of failure by Washington and fix America’s broken immigration system.
With that election, the American people sent a message that they are tired of politicians talking one way about our border and then acting another.
President Trump will keep his promise. He has offered a strong, common-sense proposal to stop gang members, drug smugglers, and human traffickers from exploiting our Southern border. It’s a goal most Democrats claim to share. But when the Administration requested $5.7 billion—about .01 percent of the 2018 Federal budget—for construction of a border wall, Democrats walked away.
No more political games. It’s time to come together and make a deal.
Watch: “CBP and DHS are committed to both our border security mission, as well as our humanitarian mission. Mr. President, Senators, we couldn’t do it without your support.”
Democrats say they want border security
This week, Democratic leaders exposed their indifference and denial when they called the humanitarian and security crisis at our border “a manufactured crisis.” It turns out many Democrats, including President Obama, don’t agree.
The stories of suffering are real, as President Trump told Americans on Tuesday night. Each week, 300 of our citizens are killed by heroin alone—90 percent of which floods across our Southern border. The gaps in our security leave a pathway for drug cartels and human traffickers, who prey on vulnerable migrants and their children.
Open borders empower criminals, too. In California, an Air Force veteran was raped and brutally murdered by an illegal alien with a long criminal history. In Maryland, MS-13 gang members who arrived in our country as unaccompanied minors were charged with viciously stabbing a 16-year-old girl last year.
These aren’t isolated crimes. In the last two years, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have arrested more than a quarter-million aliens with criminal records—including those charged with or convicted of 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes, and 4,000 murders.
To their credit, rank-and-file Democrats have started breaking with their leaders, admitting that physical barriers are needed. “I don’t understand [Speaker Nancy Pelosi] saying it’s ‘immoral,’” Sen. Angus King (I-ME) says. “Certainly you need barriers and we support barriers,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) explains.
Your voice matters. Washington is starting to listen. “If I am getting comments and contact from my constituents expressing concern that the Democrats are not prioritizing security, then I think we can do better,” Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) says.
With the mainstream media often acting like Democratic surrogates instead of objective watchdogs, a lot of misinformation is spreading about border security and the current Government shutdown. Senior Administration officials have been working hard to correct the record:
Criminals and terrorists can and do exploit our porous border. “The threat is real,” Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen says—the number of individuals on the terror watchlist encountered at our Southern border has increased over the last two years.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says using a physical barrier to protect our border is “immoral.” Press Secretary Sarah Sanders is pushing for clarity: “So does Pelosi want to tear down the hundreds of miles of barrier that already exist and many Democrats voted for?”
Mark Morgan, a Border Patrol chief under former President Obama, “said he’s most frustrated by how children are brought into the country illegally under perilous conditions because coyotes exploit vulnerabilities at the border . . . ‘I don’t understand why anyone would be against developing a process that stops that from happening.’”
During his address, Trump said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats supported a barrier along the border until he took over the Oval Office. The change in opinion was also highlighted by the Republican National Convention and Senator Marco Rubio, who respectively posted Obama’s and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s words on a webpage and Twitter.
Morgan called the issue of a border wall “political” but said in 2006, the Secure Fence Act passed because it “was needed.” The measure directed the Department of Homeland Security to build stretches of fencing along the southern border and was approved on a bipartisan front.
“What changed is that at one point it was wanted and needed, and now, because we call it a wall, it’s immoral,” Morgan told The Washington Post. “Really? That’s what we’re talking about now? The size and width of the barrier is the delineation of what is moral or not?”
Trump attempted to compromise with Democrats, changing the proposed wall from concrete to steel, but it seemed to make little difference. House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Trump would not be getting the wall and Democrats offered a solution of their own.
In a bill that passed in the House of Representatives on Thursday, Democrats didn’t give Trump the $5.7 billion he requested for a border wall but did offer $1.3 billion for fencing and additional border security. Allocated in the $1.3 billion was new fencing for the Rio Grande Valley in Texas and replacing secondary fencing in San Diego, according to USA Today.
Also included in the bill with regard to border security was $366.5 million for technology, $7.7 million to hire additional U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers, $224.6 million for inspection equipment at ports of entry and $7.08 billion for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Politicians “are not the ones that are investigating the crimes. They are not the ones out here when it’s 120 degrees, processing a crime scene where 14 people were left to die in the desert,” says Leon Wilmot, Sheriff in Yuma County, Arizona.
Wilmot has witnessed it all in his 30-plus years with the sheriff’s department. He knows a vulture will peck a human body down to nothing but bone, because he has seen it. He knows bandits follow the smugglers over the border and rape the women before running back to Mexico, because he is left with the victims. He knows the cartels will commit any crime to get drugs and humans across the border.
Yuma County is 5,522 square miles—larger than the state of Connecticut—and it shares 126 miles of border with Mexico. California and its Imperial Sand Dunes are just a mirage away on the western border beyond the Colorado River.
The Yuma Border Patrol Sector used to be the worst in the country for illegal crossings, until it became a poster-child for the effectiveness of a border fence.
In 2005, before the fence, more than 2,700 vehicles crossed the Colorado River and open deserts, loaded with illegal immigrants and drugs, according to Border Patrol numbers.
Apprehensions steadily increased to more than 138,000 in fiscal 2005.
“Yuma battled entrenched smuggling groups for control of the border,” said Border Patrol in a video. “Mass incursions often left agents outnumbered 50 to 1. Agents were assaulted with rocks and weapons daily.”
Following the Secure Fence Act of 2006, Yuma tripled manpower and added mobile surveillance, as well as fencing and vehicle barriers.
Yuma went from having 5.2 miles of fencing to 63 miles, and subsequently saw an almost 95 percent decrease in border apprehensions by 2009, when Border Patrol made about 7,000 arrests.
Political Agenda
Border Patrol in Yuma apprehended more than 26,000 illegal aliens in fiscal 2018.
Although the numbers pale in comparison to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas (more than 162,000 apprehensions for the same period), it is still “maddening” to Bratcher that his community suffered due to Obama-era policies.
“When they put their own political agenda above the quality of life of American citizens and Yuma citizens, what is their motivation? It makes you question that,” he said.
During the Obama era, Wilmot was forced to take matters into his own hands.
“It got to the point where, because the feds would not prosecute those drug smugglers backpacking marijuana across, I had to deputize federal officers so they could actually take those cases to our County attorney and charge them with a state crime—and it was a 100 percent prosecutable case,” Wilmot said.
Wilmot said the U.S. attorney would refuse those cases, so prior to being deputized by the sheriff, the federal officers had no choice but to release the smugglers.
“That’s when we saw an uptick in drug smuggling, especially marijuana,” he said. “The individuals would come across, the U.S. attorney’s office would not charge them, the dope was seized, they would cut them loose, and it was a revolving door. They just kept coming back, coming back, coming back.”
“Most important, Pelosi and Schumer failed to use the one word that millions of Americans were longing to hear — compromise. But Trump did. That is why the president won the night,” Marc Thiessen of the American Enterprise Institute writes.
Speaking from the Oval Office for the first time during his presidency, Trump embraced our country’s tradition as a nation of immigrants, declaring “America proudly welcomes millions of lawful immigrants who enrich our society and contribute to our nation.” He then offered a cogent explanation why he believes we face what he called “a humanitarian crisis — a crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul” along our southern border.
He pointed out the human cost of our broken system to illegal migrants themselves, expressing compassion for the “children [who] are used as human pawns by vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs” and the “women [who] are sexually assaulted on the dangerous trek up through Mexico.” He shared heartbreaking stories of Americans killed by criminal aliens who had no right to be here — including a police officer in California who was murdered, a 16-year-old girl who was brutally stabbed in Maryland, and an Air Force veteran who was raped and beaten to death.
“I’ve held the hands of the weeping mothers and embraced the grief-stricken fathers,” Trump declared. “I will never forget the pain in their eyes, the tremble in their voices, or the sadness gripping their souls.”
And he laid out his solution, which he explained was “developed by law enforcement professionals and border agents” and includes funds for cutting-edge technology, more border agents, more immigration judges, more bed space and medical support — and $5.7 billion for a “physical barrier” that he called “just common sense.” Without naming her, Trump responded to the absurd charge from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that a wall is “immoral.” Democrats voted repeatedly for physical barriers until he was elected president, he noted. If a wall is immoral, Trump asked, “why do wealthy politicians build walls, fences and gates around their homes? They don’t build walls because they hate the people on the outside, but because they love the people on the inside.”
The president did not unilaterally declare a national emergency. Instead, he called for compromise and said, “To those who refuse to compromise in the name of border security, I would ask: imagine if it was your child, your husband, or your wife, whose life was so cruelly shattered and totally broken?”
He was, in short, presidential.
Democrats insisted on equal time, which is highly unusual for presidential addresses other than the State of the Union. It was a mistake. In contrast to Trump, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) came across as small and intransigent.
While Trump spoke calmly and rationally from behind the Resolute Desk, the Democratic leaders accused him of “pounding the table” and having a “temper tantrum.” While Trump told human stories, they complained about process. They accused him of arguing that the women and children at the border were “a security threat” when he had just explained to the American people that they were victims, too. They charged him with using the “backdrop of the Oval Office to manufacture a crisis, stoke fear and divert attention from the turmoil in his administration.” They were partisan and petty, while Trump came across as reasonable and even compassionate.
To normal Americans watching in the heartland, and who are not steeped in Trump hatred, the president must have seemed like the adult in the room.
And, most important, Pelosi and Schumer failed to use the one word that millions of Americans were longing to hear — compromise. But Trump did. That is why the president won the night. Schumer and Pelosi appealed to their base, while Trump made an effective appeal to persuadable Americans.
Until now, Trump has owned the 18-day government shutdown that prompted this address, because he’s the one who started it. But if Democrats continue to attack him, and won’t entertain any compromise, soon the shutdown will be all theirs — because they’re the ones who have refused to end it.
From : The White House <info@mail.whitehouse.gov>To : <redaksi@mediahukumindonesia.com> Date : Fri, 11 Jan 2019 06:53:56 +0700 Subject : An update on President Trump’s fight for border security
MHI
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