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Updated 2:01 PM ET, Sun January 20, 2019
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Atlanta (CNN)Tiffany Friesen is still getting used to her new address. Out of habit, she sometimes says she lives on Confederate Avenue, where she and her husband Atiba Mbiwan have been for years.
Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/20/us/atlanta-confederate-united-avenue/index.html
The mother of a boy filmed harassing a Native American man along with his friends at a rally in Washington DC has blamed “black Muslims” for the confrontation, without providing any evidence for the claim.
The teenager was among a group of students wearing Make America Great Again (Maga) hats who were criticised for taunting the musician Nathan Phillips, surrounding him and jeering and chanting “build the wall, build the wall”.
But his mother claimed “black Muslims” had been harassing the group of Donald Trump supporters from the private, all-male Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky.
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In an email to the news website heavy.com the mother of a Covington Catholic student, believed to be the boy prominently featured in footage of the incident, wrote: “Did you hear the names of the people were calling these boys? It was shameful. Did you witness the black Muslims yelling profanities and video taping to get something to further your narrative of hatred??
“Did you know that this ‘man’ came up to this one boy and drummed in his face?”
The encounter took place following an anti-abortion March for Life rally in the capital on Friday.
Footage of the confrontation involving Mr Phillips, reportedly a veteran of the Vietnam war and an elder of Nebraska’s Omaha tribe, was shared online by organisers of an indigenous peoples’ march that also took place on the same day.
A separate video showed a group of black men standing near the scene of the confrontation, arguing aggressively with the Maga hat-wearing students. It is unclear to which religious group the men belonged, but they could be heard quoting passages from the Old Testament.
Extended footage also depicts the apparent leader of the religious group hurling homophobic slurs at the students. “That’s Make America Great Again, a bunch of child-molesting f****ts”, he is heard to say. Another member of the group – who seems to be the one filming – is recorded calling the children “dirty-ass crackers” and “racist bastards”. Approaching the students, he continues loudly: “Look at all these dusty-ass crackers with that racist garbage on.”
Amid claims online that Mr Phillips had himself participated in harassing the boys, the same video shows the moment he arrived at the scene of the confrontation. The 64-year-old can be seen interposing himself between the two groups, apparently ending a few yards away from both, before the students approach him and begin chanting.
Another separate clip appears to show further abuse directed at the boys. A man – not Mr Phillips – can be heard to say: “You white people go back to Europe, this is not your land.”
The apparent intimidation of Mr Phillips, meanwhile, has prompted a torrent of outrage. Actress and activist Alyssa Milano tweeted that the footage “brought me to tears”, while actor Chris Evans said the students’ actions were “appalling” and “shameful”.
Democratic congresswoman Deb Haaland, a member of New Mexico’s Laguna Pueblo tribe, tweeted that the students had shown “blatant hate, disrespect, and intolerance”.
Ruth Buffalo, a North Dakota state lawmaker and member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation tribe, said she was saddened to see students showing disrespect to an elder who is also a military veteran.
“The behaviour shown in that video is just a snapshot of what indigenous people have faced and are continuing to face,” said Ms Buffalo.
Both the Catholic high school and the Diocese of Covington have apologised and condemned the actions of the students.
“We extend our deepest apologies to Mr Phillips. This behaviour is opposed to the church’s teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person.
“The matter is being investigated and we will take appropriate action, up to and including expulsion,” the statement said.
Covington Catholic High School has since closed its Facebook page.
“When I was there singing, I heard them saying, ‘Build that wall, build that wall,’” Mr Phillips said, as he wiped away tears in a video later posted on Instagram. “This is indigenous lands. We’re not supposed to have walls here. We never did.”
In an interview with the Detroit Free Press, Mr Phillips said he believed the Covington students were “in the process of attacking” the religious group, but video footage does not appear to bear out that claim.
Additional reporting by agencies
Source Article from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/maga-hat-donald-trump-native-american-covington-catholic-nathan-phillips-black-muslims-a8737186.html
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Updated 2:01 PM ET, Sun January 20, 2019
Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what’s happening in the world as it unfolds.
Atlanta (CNN)Tiffany Friesen is still getting used to her new address. Out of habit, she sometimes says she lives on Confederate Avenue, where she and her husband Atiba Mbiwan have been for years.
Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/20/us/atlanta-confederate-united-avenue/index.html
The mother of a boy filmed harassing a Native American man along with his friends at a rally in Washington DC has blamed “black Muslims” for the confrontation, without providing any evidence for the claim.
The teenager was among a group of students wearing Make America Great Again (Maga) hats who were criticised for taunting the musician Nathan Phillips, surrounding him and jeering and chanting “build the wall, build the wall”.
But his mother claimed “black Muslims” had been harassing the group of Donald Trump supporters from the private, all-male Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky.
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In an email to the news website heavy.com the mother of a Covington Catholic student, believed to be the boy prominently featured in footage of the incident, wrote: “Did you hear the names of the people were calling these boys? It was shameful. Did you witness the black Muslims yelling profanities and video taping to get something to further your narrative of hatred??
“Did you know that this ‘man’ came up to this one boy and drummed in his face?”
The encounter took place following an anti-abortion March for Life rally in the capital on Friday.
Footage of the confrontation involving Mr Phillips, reportedly a veteran of the Vietnam war and an elder of Nebraska’s Omaha tribe, was shared online by organisers of an indigenous peoples’ march that also took place on the same day.
A separate video showed a group of black men standing near the scene of the confrontation, arguing aggressively with the Maga hat-wearing students. It is unclear to which religious group the men belonged, but they could be heard quoting passages from the Old Testament.
Extended footage also depicts the apparent leader of the religious group hurling homophobic slurs at the students. “That’s Make America Great Again, a bunch of child-molesting f****ts”, he is heard to say. Another member of the group – who seems to be the one filming – is recorded calling the children “dirty-ass crackers” and “racist bastards”. Approaching the students, he continues loudly: “Look at all these dusty-ass crackers with that racist garbage on.”
Amid claims online that Mr Phillips had himself participated in harassing the boys, the same video shows the moment he arrived at the scene of the confrontation. The 64-year-old can be seen interposing himself between the two groups, apparently ending a few yards away from both, before the students approach him and begin chanting.
Another separate clip appears to show further abuse directed at the boys. A man – not Mr Phillips – can be heard to say: “You white people go back to Europe, this is not your land.”
The apparent intimidation of Mr Phillips, meanwhile, has prompted a torrent of outrage. Actress and activist Alyssa Milano tweeted that the footage “brought me to tears”, while actor Chris Evans said the students’ actions were “appalling” and “shameful”.
Democratic congresswoman Deb Haaland, a member of New Mexico’s Laguna Pueblo tribe, tweeted that the students had shown “blatant hate, disrespect, and intolerance”.
Ruth Buffalo, a North Dakota state lawmaker and member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation tribe, said she was saddened to see students showing disrespect to an elder who is also a military veteran.
“The behaviour shown in that video is just a snapshot of what indigenous people have faced and are continuing to face,” said Ms Buffalo.
Both the Catholic high school and the Diocese of Covington have apologised and condemned the actions of the students.
“We extend our deepest apologies to Mr Phillips. This behaviour is opposed to the church’s teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person.
“The matter is being investigated and we will take appropriate action, up to and including expulsion,” the statement said.
Covington Catholic High School has since closed its Facebook page.
“When I was there singing, I heard them saying, ‘Build that wall, build that wall,’” Mr Phillips said, as he wiped away tears in a video later posted on Instagram. “This is indigenous lands. We’re not supposed to have walls here. We never did.”
In an interview with the Detroit Free Press, Mr Phillips said he believed the Covington students were “in the process of attacking” the religious group, but video footage does not appear to bear out that claim.
Additional reporting by agencies
Source Article from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/maga-hat-donald-trump-native-american-covington-catholic-nathan-phillips-black-muslims-a8737186.html
A man who allegedly killed four members of his family, including a 9-month-old girl, in their home in Oregon, was shot dead by police while he was attempting to kill another young girl, authorities said.
The Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office said deputies responded to 911 calls of multiple-homicide and domestic violence at approximately 10:15 p.m. PT (1:15 a.m. ET) Saturday at the residence in Woodburn, about 20 miles south of Portland.
Police arrived at the scene and found four people — who range in age from 9 months to 66 years old — dead inside the home and the suspect, Mark Leo Gregory Gago, 42, attempting to kill an 8-year-old girl. Deputies shot and killed Gago, the sheriff’s office said in a tweet.
The 8-year-old girl and a woman, who were not identified, survived the incident and were taken to the hospital to be treated for injuries that were not life-threatening, the sheriff’s office said.
The victims were identified by police as 9-month-old Olivia Lynn Rose Gago; Shaina E. Sweitzer, 31; Jerry William Bremer, 66 and Pamela Denise Bremer, 64.
All of the victims were related to Gago, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office told NBC News on Sunday, but he declined to disclose how.
It is unclear how the four people were killed.
“They were not shot,” Sgt. Brian Jensen told NBC News. “We’re not sure what was used at this time.”
There were numerous weapons in the home and the investigation is ongoing, he said.
One of the deceased victims was found outside the home, Jensen said. The others were inside.
No deputies were injured in the incident.
Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/four-people-murdered-oregon-home-suspect-killed-police-n960781
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Updated 2:01 PM ET, Sun January 20, 2019
Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what’s happening in the world as it unfolds.
Atlanta (CNN)Tiffany Friesen is still getting used to her new address. Out of habit, she sometimes says she lives on Confederate Avenue, where she and her husband Atiba Mbiwan have been for years.
Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/20/us/atlanta-confederate-united-avenue/index.html
Many teachers responded to my call for suggestions on how to enhance the profession so we can draw more people to the field and keep them in the classroom.
Now, half the state’s teachers leave the profession within the first five years of employment.
The responses from teachers fell into three major themes, pay, power and prestige. You can read the first post with teacher comments on pay here.
Now, I am sharing comments that reflect the broad issue of prestige. Teachers offered a range of ideas for improving the status, image and conditions of teaching. Later, I will share teacher comments on power.
Here are some of them:
-I am an 8th grade teacher. I have one quick thought on a simple step to take to professionalize teaching. Most schools require teachers sign in and/or out. As I quit doing this awhile back and no one seems to notice, this is a practice that doesn’t serve any purpose except to make teachers feel like hourly employees.
Another small step that has no cost attached to it, I hang my diplomas in my classroom. Seeing this, some of my peers have joined in. As educators, we should be emphasizing our higher education achievements.
-One key thing Georgia could do to professionalize teaching is to reduce class sizes in nonacademic classes. I am an elementary art teacher of 20 years. While I love what I do, “special’s teachers” are often thought of as a “planning period for academic teachers” or entertainment for students and not a respected subject to develop the whole child.
State-mandated academic class sizes vary according to age. The state mandate for fine arts is a maximum of 33 students. However, my county has a waiver allowing 39 students per teacher in the fine arts classes. Just imagine a 45-minute class with 39 second graders painting with no paraprofessional support.
Over the years, academic class sizes have fluctuated due to budgets. We all know the studies and validity to having smaller class sizes and, luckily for academic teachers, this number has been reduced again over the years. I don’t understand why this is not translated over to other classes such as art.
While elementary art teachers may not have the rigor of testing students and collecting data, we do try to build relations with our students and provide them with lessons that make connections to their academics, along with lifelong learning skills. It is a challenging yet rewarding career as we get to be part of and watch students develop from K-5th grade.
I could go on about all the benefits of art education and cross curricular lessons, but that is another subject. I just wish art students, art teachers and art were respected. This is an issue that weighs on me daily, and I feel I need to advocate for the students.
-While I am encouraged by the current state level attention to elevating the professional profile of teachers, I’m unsure of how this would look in terms of meaningful day-to-day change. I am honored and proud to teach for the City Schools of Decatur, where I do feel that I am treated as a professional by the parents and citizens of our highly educated little city.
I do think, however, there is a lingering stigma toward educators, especially early childhood educators, that we’re just babysitting. This has even come from a former parent of one of my colleagues.
This father was also a teacher, albeit in higher education. He sent his very ill first grader to school with the flu, telling the child to let the teacher know that he had to go teach his master’s level education course and couldn’t leave his own students without an instructor.
Instead, the professor/father chose to send his ill and contagious child to school to infect 24 classmates and numerous teachers. This exemplifies the depth of the lack of professionalism that we often garner, even from our higher education colleagues. Let’s all respect each other, parents, teachers, and private sector workers alike. We must support each other through our words but most importantly through real action.
-To answer the question posed, I believe we must do something different, maybe even something counterintuitive to elevate the teaching profession. At a time when more and more teachers are leaving, a time when it’s becoming harder to fill positions, Georgia’s — and I would argue, America’s — teaching programs must become more selective, rigorous, and attractive to potential teachers to recruit the best and brightest and elevate the status of the teachers.
I will never forget a story a professor told my school reform class on a fall day at Harvard in 2010. At one time, Brown University had a prestige problem to the point that students were turning Brown down for almost all other Ivy League schools. Brown did something radical. When students explained they were also applying (or had been accepted) to Harvard, Brown would automatically turn them down. All of a sudden, students were getting into other prestigious schools, but not Brown. It made everyone think, “Hey! Brown must have something Harvard doesn’t, I’ll go there instead!”
And, just like that, their problem was fixed. They just needed to create a better image of their university.
I think teaching has a similar image problem. Our image and the way we are perceived is one of the few things we can control; we certainly can’t fix the poverty of our students, the laws that are passed, lack of equitable funding, or the fact many of our schools today are more segregated than in the 1940s. While it’s important those things are addressed, let’s focus our energy on what is within our realm of influence, and that will directly impact how we are perceived by the public, including our lawmakers, taxpayers, students, and other stakeholders.
How?
We must tighten up and tidy up the gates to our profession, which are our university teaching programs that directly feed our schools. Having a “gate,” so to speak, is one of the things that makes a profession just that. Lawyers have the bar, doctors have a license, and both have a rigorous process to get to those steps so that when doctors and lawyers pass through their big shiny profession gates, they’ve earned the respect of our society. In the equally vital profession of teaching, shouldn’t our gate be just as nice, and shouldn’t the people getting through be the best at what they do?
Right now, it’s not difficult to obtain a teaching license, and, while top quality programs do exist, there are probably five not so great ones for every excellent one.
Make teacher ed programs more selective (ACT/SAT scores, maybe require some kind of practical tutoring job component while in high school, etc.) and offer major financial incentives if you can get into one of these programs. Some ideas for these incentives are free education, housing, and some kind of a paid stipend for actually getting into a classroom to student teach early in the college experience, and a bonus if you can stick with the profession for five years.
Now, in my 10th year of teaching, it does get easier in a lot of ways, and I think a lot more people would stick around if they knew there was a bonus coming.
– While teachers do deserve more compensation, it is not the single most important factor for me. For me, more important factors would include a class size amendment. Class sizes are out of control, and teacher allotments are on the decline in some areas. Class size is an integral part of our industry’s best practices.
It is impossible to meet the needs of 30 children, all at differing readiness levels, every day. Add into the mix the need for specialized instruction for special education students, and it’s guaranteed someone will leave the room without adequate mastery and opportunity for remediation.
Another important factor would include yet another industry standard — an appropriate percentage of special education students in a co-taught classroom environment. Best practice says special education students should be capped at 20 to 30 percent of the classroom population. Yet, daily I hear of classrooms with sometimes up to 50 percent special education population.
Source Article from https://www.ajc.com/blog/get-schooled/the-shine-off-teaching-how-can-restore-the-luster/PBNqCXlzscmZcrSwGcifIO/
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Updated 2:01 PM ET, Sun January 20, 2019
Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what’s happening in the world as it unfolds.
Atlanta (CNN)Tiffany Friesen is still getting used to her new address. Out of habit, she sometimes says she lives on Confederate Avenue, where she and her husband Atiba Mbiwan have been for years.
Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/20/us/atlanta-confederate-united-avenue/index.html
The office of Mayor Eric Garcetti, which is mediating the talks, has been sending out the news of when they start and stop. With both sides honoring a new confidentiality agreement, that is just about the only information being released.
Source Article from https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-lausd-teachers-strike-negotiations-20190120-story.html
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Updated 2:01 PM ET, Sun January 20, 2019
Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what’s happening in the world as it unfolds.
Atlanta (CNN)Tiffany Friesen is still getting used to her new address. Out of habit, she sometimes says she lives on Confederate Avenue, where she and her husband Atiba Mbiwan have been for years.
Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/20/us/atlanta-confederate-united-avenue/index.html
A video was posted online showing students of the Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky, in confrontation with a Native American.
A Roman Catholic diocese and a Catholic high school in Kentucky issued a joint apology Saturday after videos posted online showed a confrontation Friday between some of the school’s students and some Native American adults after rallies near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
However, one unedited video circulated on social media Sunday appeared to show that a Native American adult approached the students and instigated the interaction, leading some commentators to retract their previous criticisms of the students.
Both the March for Life, a demonstration against abortion, and the Indigenous Peoples March, in support of Native Americans, were being held not far from one another.
ANCIENT NATIVE AMERICAN VILLAGE IN LOUISIANA REVEALS ITS SECRETS
Footage posted to Instagram showed one student standing face-to-face with Nathan Phillips, a 64-year-old Omaha elder and Vietnam War veteran. Phillips was singing and playing the drum while the unidentified student stared him in the face.
Other students, some wearing Covington Catholic High School clothing, surrounded them, chanting, laughing and jeering.
“We condemn the actions of the Covington Catholic High School students towards Nathan Phillips specifically, and Native Americans in general, Jan. 18, after the March for Life, in Washington, D.C. We extend our deepest apologies to Mr. Phillips. This behavior is opposed to the Church’s teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person,” read the joint statement from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington and Covington Catholic High School.
NAVAJO COMMISSION AIMS TO RAISE AWARENESS OF HATE CRIMES
In a separate Instagram video, Phillips is heard saying that he heard the students chanting “Build that wall, build that wall.”
“This is indigenous lands,” Phillips says. “We’re not supposed to have walls here. We never did.”
Phillips was involved in a similar incident in 2015 where he said he was harassed by another group of students a Native American themed party, Detroit’s Fox 2 reported at the time.
“They had little feathers on, I was just going to walk by,” Phillips said. He said he was trying to teach the students about respecting Native Americans when the conversation became heated.
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Phillips alleges that the students threw a beer can at him and hurled racial slurs. When asked why he engaged with the group to begin with, he said he felt an obligation.
“For me just to walk by and have a blind eye to it,” he said, “something just didn’t allow me to do it.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/video-shows-students-allegedly-mocking-native-american-elder-veteran
Source Article from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbDimQaJD8w
President Trump offers temporary protection for people brought to U.S. illegally as children in bid to secure border wall funding; Vice President Mike Pence breaks down the proposal on ‘Fox News Sunday.’
Vice President Mike Pence, speaking to “Fox News Sunday,” said Republicans “of course” remain willing to negotiate further on the border funding compromise proposed by President Trump on Saturday, even as Pence charged that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has committed to a “disappointing” strategy of “soundbites” for nearly a month.
Pence’s comments came as Fox News has learned that Senate Republicans were scrambling on Saturday evening and Sunday morning to put together a bill tracking Trump’s proposal to end the ongoing partial federal government shutdown. Democratic leaders, including Pelosi, preemptively rejected Trump’s proposal before he formally announced it.
Pence also took aim at an explosive, discredited BuzzFeed News report implicating Trump in a scheme to lie to Congress — and the breathless media coverage that followed it for nearly 24 hours, until Special Counsel Robert Mueller issued his first public statement in more than a year to repudiate it. The Washington Post later reported that Mueller intended his rare denial to mean that the story was “almost entirely incorrect.”
Decrying the “obsession of many in the national media to attack this president for any reason, for any allegation,” Pence asserted that the problem was bigger than BuzzFeed, which has stood by its reporting, without offering additional justification, despite Mueller’s extraordinary rebuke.
Speaking to CNN later on Sunday, BuzzFeed reporter Anthony Cormier refused to explain why his co-writer on the bombshell story, Jason Leopold, had claimed in an interview to have seen documents verifying the story’s claims — even though Cormier, separately, said BuzzFeed had not seen the documents. “We can’t get into, like, the details there,” Cormier said Sunday, when pressed about the discrepancy.
“It was remarkable what we saw happening for 24 hours in the media, on the basis of the report that appeared in BuzzFeed,” Pence told anchor Chris Wallace. “It’s one of the reasons why people are so frustrated with many in the national media.”
But, speaking later to “Fox News Sunday,” South Carolina Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn defended Democrats’ response to the BuzzFeed report, including some who called for Trump’s impeachment if the story proved accurate.
“I don’t think that my Democratic friends are in any way rushing to judgment because they qualified right up front [by saying], ‘If this is true,'” Clyburn argued. “When you preface your statement with ‘If this is true,’ that, to me, gives you all the cover you need.”
SENATORS SCRAMBLE SATURDAY NIGHT TO WORK ON SHUTDOWN BILL — WHAT ARE THE KEY PROVISIONS?
Despite the brouhaha, Pence said, the White House remains focused on ending the ongoing partial federal government shutdown, now entering its 30th day.
“There’s a legislative process that is going to begin on Tuesday in the United States Senate” to craft a bill implementing Trump’s proposal, Pence told Wallace.
What Trump offered on Wednesday is not necessarily Trump’s final offer, Pence said.
“It was disappointing to see Speaker Pelosi reject the offer before the president gave his speech” on Saturday,” Pence said. “The president is offering a solution. And what we have from Democrats’ leadership is just soundbites.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., center, speaks to reporters as she leaves an event with furloughed federal workers amid the partial government shutdown, Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2019, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
The text of a bill — which is slated to include protections for 700,000 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, $5.7 billion Trump has been seeking for a barrier along the nation’s southern border with Mexico, and extended protections for 300,000 recipients of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program — should be ready on Monday, Fox News has learned.
WILL SUPER BOWL BE IMPACTED BY ONGOING SHUTDOWN?
Asked whether Republicans can garner 60 votes in the Senate to defeat a possible Democratic filibuster of the bill, though, Pence was noncommittal.
“As the president often says, ‘We’ll see,'” Pence said, noting that Republicans have 53 votes in the chamber.
The vice president then sharply rejected suggestions by some conservative commentators, including Ann Coulter, that the plan amounted to “amnesty” — a line of attack that suggested some Republicans in the House and Senate may not back the proposed legislation.
“This is not amnesty. There’s no pathway to citizenship, there’s no permanent status here at all, which is what amnesty contemplates,” Pence told Wallace. “What this is, is a good-faith effort to address the issue.”
In a series of tweets early Sunday, Trump also specifically denied that his compromise plan amounted to amnesty for illegal immigrants — although he seemingly left open the door to offering amnesty as part of a “much bigger deal.”
But Clyburn told Wallace that something more akin to a blanket, permanent protection for DACA recipients — which some conservatives consider a form of amnesty — might bring Democrats to the table.
“I think it’s a nonstarter for him to ask for a permanent wall and for us to have a temporary fix,” Clyburn said. “We want to sit down and put some stability in people’s lives and have some permanent solutions to this immigration problem. And the president’s team is the one who continues to play games with us.”
Nevertheless, Pelosi and the Democratic leadership is needlessly prolonging the shutdown, Pence charged.
“I was sitting right next to the president [in the White House Situation Room] when speaker Pelosi said, if we re-open the government and took 30 days to negotiate, that she would not give the president funding for border security or a wall.,” Pence said. “The most important thing is for the American people to let their voice be heard.”
Separately, Pence touted the news that a second summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will take place next month.
But in December, North Korea vowed that it will never unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons unless the United States removes its nuclear threat first, and U.S. intelligence officials have said the country is not denuclearizing as promised.
“The president will be announcing details in the days ahead,” Pence said. “There will be a second summit. And at that summit, we’ll be laying out our expectation for North Korea to take concrete steps to begin to make real the denuclearization that Kim Jong Un committed to. The president’s very optimistic.”
Pence concluded by extending prayers to the “four American heroes” killed in a suicide bombing Wednesday at a restaurant in Syria, inclduing two U.S. servicemembers, one Department of Defense civilian and one contractor. Another three Americans were injured in the blast.
President Donald Trump salutes as a U.S. Navy carry team moves a transfer case containing the remains of Scott A. Wirtz, Saturday, Jan. 19, 2019, at Dover Air Force Base, Del. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Pressed by Wallace as to whether ISIS had truly been defeated in Syria, as Pence and Trump have repeatedly claimed, Pence said the “progress” made by the administration against ISIS has been “remarkable.”
The White House, citing what the president has called an unnecessary loss of U.S. life, announced in December that the approximately 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria will depart soon.
“After President Obama withdrew American forces from Iraq in 2011, we literally saw this ISIS caliphate rise up and overrun vast areas of Syria and Iraq that had been won by the American soldiers,” Pence said. “President Obama began the process of a bombing campaign two years later. But President Trump changed the rules of engagement. He told our military, his commander in chief, to go after them, and our soldiers and the Americans in the fight, along with our allies, have literally crushed the ISIS state.”
Pence continued: “The president made the decision as commander-in-chief to hand off the fight against ISIS in Syria to our coalition partners. We are working, in the process of doing that. The president wants to bring our troops home, but recognize there are remnants, there are ISIS fighters still in the region. But we’ve taken back 99 percent of the territory that the caliphate had claimed. In a very real sense, the ISIS state has been defeated, but we will not rest or relent until we drive ISIS not only from the region, but from the face of the earth.”
Fox News’ Chris Wallace and Chad Pergram contributed to this report.
Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pence-slams-disappointing-pelosi-rejection-of-trump-border-funding-compromise
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Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani argued Sunday he did not know for sure if Trump spoke with Michael Cohen about his congressional testimony, but that it would not have been significant if Trump did.
Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/20/politics/rudy-giuliani-trump-cohen-cnntv/index.html
In two years as president, Donald Trump has done more to crack down on immigrants — both those seeking to come and those already here — than most presidents have done in four or eight.
Trump’s bombastic rhetoric on immigration and his stubborn insistence on building barriers along the US-Mexico border has distinguished him from his predecessors and led to a political realignment.
But the Trump administration’s impact on immigrants’ lives goes far beyond rhetoric and political fights.
Under Trump, the departments of Homeland Security (which oversees Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement), Justice, and State have all taken steps to reduce the number of immigrants coming to the US — and make the lives of those who are already here more precarious.
Refugee admissions have plummeted, while rejections of asylum applications have increased. Arrests of immigrants without criminal records have returned to the levels of the first term of the Obama administration, while Trump works to make hundreds of thousands more immigrants vulnerable to deportation, by stripping them of protections under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program or Temporary Protected Status. And the travel ban quietly churns on.
We can’t do a full accounting of the lives that have been touched by Trump’s immigration crackdown. But here’s an attempt to start.
“If you’re here illegally,” Trump’s first head of ICE, Tom Homan, told Congress in 2017, “you should be afraid.”
The Trump administration hasn’t engaged in the mass deportations Trump recklessly promised as a presidential candidate. It’s still working to reverse the de-escalation of the last two years of the Obama administration, and return to the “deporter-in-chief” levels of President Obama’s first term. But its policy of arresting and detaining as many unauthorized immigrants as possible is making its mark. Any way you slice it, more immigrants are more at risk than they were the day before Trump arrived.
America has never had a generation of unauthorized immigrants as socially integrated into the nation as the immigrants protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, instituted by Obama in 2012 to protect people who’d come to the US as children from deportation and allow them to work legally in the US.
Trump is seeking to strip them of those protections, putting families and communities in limbo. Trump’s third year could see the end of DACA, as the Supreme Court is widely expected to take up a lawsuit over Trump’s actions and to side with the president. The question for Congress and the executive branch will be what happens next.
“Temporary means temporary,” former Trump Homeland Security Secretary (and chief of staff) John Kelly used to say. And Temporary Protected Status, in theory, is supposed to be temporary too — a way to allow people whose home countries are suffering from war or natural disaster to stay safe and work in the US until the disaster has subsided.
But when Trump came into office, hundreds of thousands of immigrants had held TPS protections for years or decades, bought houses, and raised US citizen children. The Trump administration’s efforts to put the “Temporary” back in Temporary Protected Status have been put on hold by another lawsuit — but TPS holders’ precariousness and anxiety remain.
It’s hard to see the Trump administration’s impact on legal immigration to the United States, because you can’t see an absence.
Under Trump — the rare Republican who’s often expressed as much skepticism of legal immigration as unauthorized immigration — applications for visas or green cards have often been held up or denied under tighter standards, while rejected applications from immigrants currently in the US are now automatically referred to ICE for potential deportation.
Thanks to a 2018 Supreme Court decision, the administration continues to bar nearly all people from several (mostly Muslim-majority) countries from coming to the US. And the resettlement of refugees — something that America has been a global leader in for decades — has been all but dismantled, with official resettlement targets slashed to under half of 2016 levels and actual resettlements far below that.
Beyond each one of the immigrant lives counted here is a ripple effect of fear — to family members, community peers, or simply people who look like that person and wonder if they could be next. We’ll never be able to quantify the effects of the Trump administration on making immigrants (and Latinos, Asian-Americans, and Muslims who are citizens) feel more afraid and less American than they did before Donald Trump arrived in office. But it’s difficult to deny that they are.
78%: Share of Hispanics who are not citizens or legal permanent residents who worry (up from 67 percent in January 2017).
Source Article from https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/19/18123891/trump-immigration-statistics
Source Article from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPoMnlMLGJc
WASHINGTON — Less than three weeks after being sworn in as the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez already has more Twitter followers than Speaker Nancy Pelosi, more interactions than Barack Obama, one of C-SPAN’s most-watched congressional floor speeches of all time and a ubiquitous nickname that doubles as her Twitter handle — “AOC.”
Democrats want to learn from her, Republicans want to destroy her and many in Washington fear being “dunked on” by her. The 29-year-old House freshman from New York is showing her older peers what the future of politics might look like once the digital natives like her take over, for better or worse.
“We’ve just never had someone who matches both our demographics and our politics,” said Waleed Shahid, who worked on her campaign and is the communications director of the left-wing group Justice Democrats. “Bernie (Sanders) matches our politics, but he doesn’t match our demographics.”
Democrats were not exactly thrilled when Ocasio-Cortez ousted the veteran lawmaker in line to be their next speaker in a Democratic primary last year and marked her first day on Capitol Hill by joining a sit-in in Pelosi’s office. But increasingly, if begrudgingly, they seem to have concluded, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”
Party leaders tapped Ocasio-Cortez to lead a social media training for her House colleagues last week, and presidential candidates seem to be cribbing from her cooking-while-Instagraming playbook, broadcasting themselves cracking beers in their kitchens, getting a dental cleaning and other vignettes of their daily lives.
“This shift is exciting to us as it demonstrates an understanding by these campaigns that the more authentic and native their digital content feels, the more online audiences are likely to engage with it,” the Democratic digital firm ACRONYM wrote in a newsletter alerting subscribers to the trend of “the ‘casual’ campaign video.”
After all, politicians are in a sales business. Their product is themselves and their ideas but many voters aren’t buying it because of the carefully controlled way they’ve been pitched for years.
“People have exquisitely well-developed bullshit meters,” said Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., who helped led the social media seminar with Ocasio-Cortez last week. “Almost every real tweet is going to involve a little bit of risk. It’s going to be a little bit of opening the kimono into a member’s private life, because a little bit of risk is authentic.”
Himes, a white 52-year-old Goldman Sachs alum who chairs the centrist New Democrat coalition, looks and sounds very different from Ocasio-Cortez, a Bronx-born Latina Democratic Socialist.
But Himes said he and Ocasio-Cortez, who did not respond to an interview request, both offered similar social media advice to their colleagues, whom he acknowledged have a lot of catching up to do.
“We were both trying to hammer home this message of, ‘Speak like yourself, be a human,'” said Himes. “Anything you can do to close the gap between the blow-dried, poll-tested, bullet-pointed politician and the people.”
That doesn’t mean mimicking Ocasio-Cortez — “You don’t need be hip, in fact it’s probably disastrous to be hip,” Himes quipped — but rather, as the age-old dating advice goes, being yourself.
So while Ocasio-Cortez posts videos of herself dancing and switching from flats to heels on the subway, Himes shares photos of him tapping maple trees for their syrup and sampling his home brewed mead.
John Dingell, the 92-year-old former Michigan congressman, and Chuck Grassley, the 85-year-old current Republican senator from Iowa, have both built followings on Twitter by leaning into their get-off-my-lawn personas. Grassley once declared to the world, “I now h v an iphone,” while Dingell pondered the Kardashians.
Politics is increasingly an exercise in digital marketing and creating content that has to compete for eyeballs with everyone from teenage influencers to major news outlets.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has his own talk show and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke starred in what was essentially a low-budget reality show about his Senate campaign last year, broadcast live to fans by his staff on Facebook.
Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton’s former 2016 campaign manager, said he counsels 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls to modernize their thinking beyond old-style retail politicking in Iowa or New Hampshire.
“This is a national campaign, and its headquarters is in cyberspace,” he said. “You have to build ground operations in those early states, but Bernie Sanders had almost no organization in Iowa, Donald Trump had no operation — both came in second.”
Ocasio-Cortez is hardly the first politician to “get” social media.
Almost a decade ago, when he was the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Democratic Sen. Cory Booker was famous for showing up at his constituents’ doors with a snow plow or diapers or whatever else people told him on Twitter they needed.
“If Cory Booker is pretty good at Instagram as far as politicians go, the vibe’s still sometimes like your Bible study leader is giving you a college campus tour,” wrote Katherine Miller of Buzzfeed. “Ocasio-Cortez uses Instagram like the rest of us do — reflexively, incidentally.”
And there will be many more where she came from.
Before the new Congress was sworn in this month, the average age of its members was about 60. That made the 115th Congress one of the oldest in history and, on average, 20 years older than the American public at large.
The 101 new members of the 116th Congress, however, include 26 millennials (up from six in the last Congress), and 18 more GenXers. Baby Boomers still make up a majority of lawmakers overall, around 54 percent, but their ranks are thinning quickly, according to Pew.
Meanwhile, millennials are projected to overtake Baby Boomers sometime this year as a share of the overall U.S. population, and 85 percent of them use social media, compared to 57 percent of Boomers.
Lawmakers’ bungled questions to tech executives at recent hearings have shown just how many in Congress remain woefully ignorant about even the basics of technology that is now integral to the lives and political reality of tens of millions of Americans.
So it’s not surprising that Democrats turned to their youngest new member for some advice, just as grandparents might ask their grandson for help setting up Facebook.
But if this is the future, even proponents worry about some pitfalls.
Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., built a huge social media following during the rise of the anti-Trump “resistance” with acerbic and timely tweets about the scandal du jour that have earned him close to 1 million followers.
But it’s not always possible to know whether a joke will land effectively on Twitter, even for Lieu, who cited a recent tweet he sent mocking Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., where the sarcasm didn’t quite come through to some followers.
“Elected officials are just people, like everyone else,” Lieu said. “We have our strengths and weaknesses and we’re just people.”
Others have argued that politicians who are superficially charming on social media are given a pass on the substance of their job.
That’s a point conservative critics, along with some mainstream journalists and fact checkers, have made about Ocasio-Cortez, noting she has whiffed on some facts and figures, like when the Washington Post fact checker gave her four “Pinocchios” for tweeting a mangled comparison of the cost of Pentagon waste with that of a Medicare for All health plan.
Some on the left, meanwhile, make that same case against O’Rourke, worrying that progressive voters are blind to the vein of centrism that has run through his political career because they think he’s cool.
Ocasio-Cortez distilled her formula best in a tweet from the early days of her campaign: “Bernie + Cardi = @Ocasio2018.” Cardi is Cardi B, the rapper who went viral last week for explaining the government shutdown in a decidedly NSFC (Not Safe For Congress) video.
Should politics on social media be more like Cardi B? Many are likely uncomfortable with that.
“It’s a little bit like love,” said Himes. “You want to be real, you want to be honest, but you always want to leave a little bit of mystery there. I’m not sure that photographs of dentists drilling into my mouth leave quite enough mystery.”
Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/democrats-it-secret-ocasio-cortez-s-social-media-success-n960561
The mother of a boy filmed harassing a Native American man along with his friends at a rally in Washington DC has blamed “black Muslims” for the confrontation, without providing any evidence for the claim.
The teenager was among a group of students wearing Make America Great Again (Maga) hats who were criticised for taunting the musician Nathan Phillips, surrounding him and jeering and chanting “build the wall, build the wall”.
But his mother claimed “black Muslims” had been harassing the group of Donald Trump supporters from the private, all-male Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky.
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In an email to the news website heavy.com, she wrote: “Did you hear the names of the people were calling these boys? It was shameful. Did you witness the black Muslims yelling profanities and video taping to get something to further your narrative of hatred??
“Did you know that this ‘man’ came up to this one boy and drummed in his face?”
The encounter took place at an anti-abortion March for Life rally in the capital on Friday.
Footage of the confrontation involving Mr Phillips, a veteran of the Vietnam war and an elder of Nebraska’s Omaha tribe, was shared online by organisers of an indigenous peoples’ march that also took place on Friday.
Separate video shared online showed a group of black men standing near the scene of the confrontation, arguing with the Maga hat-wearing Trump supporters. It is unclear to which religious group the men belonged, but they could be heard quoting passages from the Old Testament.
Amid claims online that Mr Phillips had himself participated in harassing the boys, another video shows the moment he arrived at the scene of the confrontation. The 64-year-old can be seen interposing himself between the two groups, ending a few yards away from both, before the students approach him and begin chanting.
The intimidation of Mr Phillips, meanwhile, has prompted a torrent of outrage. Actress and activist Alyssa Milano tweeted that the footage “brought me to tears”, while actor Chris Evans said the students’ actions were “appalling” and “shameful”.
Democratic congresswoman Deb Haaland, a member of New Mexico’s Laguna Pueblo tribe, tweeted that the students had shown “blatant hate, disrespect, and intolerance”.
Ruth Buffalo, a North Dakota state lawmaker and member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation tribe, said she was saddened to see students showing disrespect to an elder who is also a military veteran.
“The behaviour shown in that video is just a snapshot of what indigenous people have faced and are continuing to face,” said Ms Buffalo.
Both the Catholic high school and the Diocese of Covington have apologised and condemned the actions of the students.
“We extend our deepest apologies to Mr Phillips. This behaviour is opposed to the church’s teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person.
“The matter is being investigated and we will take appropriate action, up to and including expulsion,” the statement said.
Covington Catholic High School has since closed its Facebook page.
“When I was there singing, I heard them saying, ‘Build that wall, build that wall,’” Mr Phillips said, as he wiped away tears in a video later posted on Instagram. “This is indigenous lands. We’re not supposed to have walls here. We never did.”
Additional reporting by agencies
Source Article from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/maga-hat-donald-trump-native-american-covington-catholic-nathan-phillips-black-muslims-a8737186.html
Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said Democrats have backed themselves into a corner in negotiations to end a record-long partial government shutdown, suggesting any compromise with President TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump defends immigration proposal against ‘amnesty’ criticism from conservatives Trump cites massive winter storm to mock global warming Kerry rips Trump’s ‘pull-out, walk-away presidency’ MORE would anger the party’s base.
“Any compromise with President Trump Is going to look like a surrender. And Nancy PelosiNancy Patricia D’Alesandro PelosiSunday shows preview: Shutdown negotiations continue after White House immigration proposal Rove warns Senate GOP: Don’t put only focus on base Senate to take up Trump’s border-immigration plan next week MORE made it very difficult when she said that a wall is amoral. Because once you say something is a moral, how can you possibly compromise?” King said on John Catsimatidis’ radio show.
“The fear is, among the Democratic leadership, if they make any agreement with President Trump it’s like compromising with the devil. They are the most extreme, left-wing progressive element now in their party. And it has a disproportionate influence on the party. And it’s really at a time to say no to the progressive left wing.”
The White House and congressional Democrats are currently at an impasse in negotiations to end a partial government shutdown that entered its 30th day Sunday.
Democrats Saturday rejected a proposal from the president that would temporarily extend protections for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program recipients and introduce legislation extending the legal status of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders in exchange for his requested $5.7 billion for a border wall.
“[H]is proposal is a compilation of several previously rejected initiatives, each of which is unacceptable and in total, do not represent a good faith effort to restore certainty to people’s lives. It is unlikely that any one of these provisions alone would pass the House, and taken together, they are a non-starter,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement Saturday.
King urged Democrats and the White House to continue negotiating, suggesting meeting in the middle on border wall funding while including a DACA fix.
“The easiest [compromise] would be for the Democrats to give President Trump $3 to $4 billion for the wall… Republicans give the Democrats the Dreamers,” he said. “It should all be on the table.”
Source Article from https://thehill.com/homenews/house/426175-gop-rep-dems-think-negotiating-with-trump-like-compromising-with-the-devil
A US diocese has apologised and vowed to take action after videos emerged showing boys from a Catholic private school mocking an elderly Native American man at a rally in the capital, Washington, prompting widespread criticism.
The Indigenous Peoples March in Washington on Friday coincided with the March for Life, which drew thousands of anti-abortion protesters, including a group from Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Kentucky.
Videos circulating online show a youth staring at and standing extremely close to Nathan Phillips, a 64-year-old Native American man singing and playing the drum.
Other students, some wearing Covington clothing and many wearing “Make America Great Again” hats and sweatshirts, surrounded them, chanting, laughing and jeering. A student wearing clothing from Owensboro Catholic High School was also present.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington apologized after videos emerged showing students from an all-male Catholic high school mocking Native Americans outside the Lincoln Memorial.
STORY: https://t.co/9Va3ubd4m9 pic.twitter.com/QuYEQ5RLbz
— KSAT 12 (@ksatnews) January 19, 2019
In a joint statement, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington and Covington Catholic High School apologised to Phillips. Officials said they are investigating and will take “appropriate action, up to and including expulsion”.
“We extend our deepest apologies to Mr Phillips,” the statement read. “This behaviour is opposed to the Church’s teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person.”
According to the “Indian Country Today” website, Phillips is an Omaha elder and Vietnam veteran who holds an annual ceremony honouring Native American veterans at Arlington National Cemetery.
Marcus Frejo, a member of the Pawnee and Seminole tribes who is also known as Chief Quese Imc, said he had been a part of the march and was among a small group of people remaining after the rally when the boisterous students began chanting slogans such as “Make America great” and then began doing the haka, a traditional Maori dance.
Frejo told the AP news agency that he felt they were mocking the dance and also heckling a couple of black men nearby.
“When I was there singing, I heard them saying, ‘Build that wall, build that wall’,” Phillips said, as he wiped away tears in a video posted on Instagram. “This is indigenous lands. We’re not supposed to have walls here. We never did.”
#ipmdc #ipmdc19 #indigenousunited #indigenouspeoplesmarch #indigenouspeoplesmarch2019
A post shared by KC🇬🇺🌴🌴 (@ka_ya11) onJan 18, 2019 at 4:42pm PST
In another video posted on Twitter, an Indigenous Peoples March protester shouts: “Just because you stole the land don’t make it yours,” to which a student wearing an Owensboro Catholic High School logo responds, “Land gets stolen, it’s how it works. That’s the way of the world.”
Frejo said he joined Phillips to defuse the situation, singing the anthem from the American Indian Movement with both men beating out the tempo on hand drums.
Although he feared a mob mentality that could turn ugly, Frejo said he was at peace singing despite the scorn. He briefly felt something special happened as they repeatedly sang the tune.
“They went from mocking us and laughing at us to singing with us. I heard it three times,” Frejo said. “That spirit moved through us, that drum, and it slowly started to move through some of those youths.”
Eventually, a calm fell over the group of students and they broke up and walked away.
State Rep Ruth Buffalo, a North Dakota politician and member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, said she was saddened to see students showing disrespect to an elder who is also a US military veteran at what was supposed to be a celebration of all cultures.
“The behaviour shown in that video is just a snapshot of what indigenous people have faced and are continuing to face,” Buffalo said.
Here’s another video of these kids harassing this Native American protestor. The ignorance, the bigotry, is infuriating. This is not the future of this nation.
— Simar (@sahluwal) January 19, 2019
She said she hoped it would lead to some kind of meeting with the students to provide education on issues facing Native Americans.
US Rep Deb Haaland, of New Mexico, who is a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and had been at the rally earlier in the day, used Twitter to criticise what she called a “heartbreaking” display of “blatant hate, disrespect, and intolerance”.
Haaland, who is also Catholic, told AP she was particularly saddened to see the boys mocking an elder, who is revered in Native American culture. She placed some of the blame on President Donald Trump, who has used Native American names such as Pocahontas as an insult.
“It is sad that we have a president who uses Native American women’s names as racial slurs, and that’s an example that these kids are clearly following considering the fact that they had their ‘Make America Great Again’ hats on,” Haaland said. “He’s really brought out the worst in people.”
Source Article from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/01/school-apologises-students-mock-elderly-native-american-190120091709053.html