“);var a = g[r.size_id].split(“x”).map((function(e) {return Number(e)})), s = u(a, 2);o.width = s[0],o.height = s[1]}o.rubiconTargeting = (Array.isArray(r.targeting) ? r.targeting : []).reduce((function(e, r) {return e[r.key] = r.values[0],e}), {rpfl_elemid: n.adUnitCode}),e.push(o)} else l.logError(“Rubicon bid adapter Error: bidRequest undefined at index position:” + t, c, d);return e}), []).sort((function(e, r) {return (r.cpm || 0) – (e.cpm || 0)}))},getUserSyncs: function(e, r, t) {if (!A && e.iframeEnabled) {var i = “”;return t && “string” == typeof t.consentString && (“boolean” == typeof t.gdprApplies ? i += “?gdpr=” + Number(t.gdprApplies) + “&gdpr_consent=” + t.consentString : i += “?gdpr_consent=” + t.consentString),A = !0,{type: “iframe”,url: n + i}}},transformBidParams: function(e, r) {return l.convertTypes({accountId: “number”,siteId: “number”,zoneId: “number”}, e)}};function m() {return [window.screen.width, window.screen.height].join(“x”)}function b(e, r) {var t = f.config.getConfig(“pageUrl”);return e.params.referrer ? t = e.params.referrer : t || (t = r.refererInfo.referer),e.params.secure ? t.replace(/^http:/i, “https:”) : t}function _(e, r) {var t = e.params;if (“video” === r) {var i = [];return t.video && t.video.playerWidth && t.video.playerHeight ? i = [t.video.playerWidth, t.video.playerHeight] : Array.isArray(l.deepAccess(e, “mediaTypes.video.playerSize”)) && 1 === e.mediaTypes.video.playerSize.length ? i = e.mediaTypes.video.playerSize[0] : Array.isArray(e.sizes) && 0

(CNN)It’s getting very hot in the hot tub for Senate Republicans at the moment.

a>*{vertical-align: top; display: inline-block;}
.duval-3>a>div{display: inline-block; font-size:1.0666667rem;width: 80%; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 2%;}
.duval-3>a>img{width: 18%; height: auto;}
@media screen and (max-width:640px){
.duval-3>a>*{display:block; margin: auto;}
.duval-3>a>div{width: 100%;}
.duval-3>a>img{width: 50%;}
}
]]>

    Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/26/politics/senate-resolution-border-wall/index.html

    If recent history is any indication, and of course it is, Michael Cohen’s testimony this week in front of Congress is about to make any lunatic ramblings by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., look like the musings of a wise sage.

    Cohen, President Trump’s former gofer, will on Tuesday deliver what is expected to be three days of testimony implicating his ex-boss in a series of crimes Cohen has already pleaded guilty to, including campaign finance violations (Zzz…), lying to Congress, and lying to the FBI.

    Cohen has admitted that he lied about the timeline of a real estate venture that the Trump Organization has pursued for decades, including into the 2016 election. Cohen also claimed that he acted on behalf of Trump during the election when he paid hush money to women who claimed they had separate affairs with Trump years before.

    [Read more: Here’s what Congress wants to hear from Michael Cohen this week]

    A federal judge sentenced Cohen to three years in prison for those crimes, which have some relation to Trump, and others, which don’t, including Cohen’s extensive history of tax evasion and bank fraud.

    So far, there is no strong evidence that Trump himself was engaged in any legal wrongdoing. The president denies he ever told Cohen to lie about the pursuit of a Trump Tower in Moscow, a project Trump has dreamed about since the 1980s, and he denies that the payments to his alleged mistresses from roughly 12 years ago were made to influence the 2016 election.

    And there’s no reason why Cohen’s testimony should carry any weight. He most recently embarrassed himself in a nationally televised interview by insisting over and over again that he was “taking responsibility” for his crimes.

    Cohen is “taking responsibility” by going to prison the same way a deadbeat drunk is “taking responsibility” for being unemployed. When you’re fired from your job, “taking responsibility” is your only option.

    There has never been a time that Cohen didn’t look like a delusional mess.

    On Election Day 2016, after it was clear that Trump had won the presidency, Cohen reportedly told a group of friends, “Nobody’s going to be able to fuck with us. I think I’m going to run for mayor.”

    I imagine Cohen’s grandmother nearby offering an encouraging, “Some day you will, baby! You will!”

    In March of last year, Cohen referred to himself as Trump’s “Ray Donovan,” a TV character who made the problems of celebrities go away. If that was Cohen’s paid responsibility for Trump as a “fixer,” the president should ask for a full refund.

    But classic Cohen is his interview in 2015 with the Daily Beast, which sought comment from him for a story on Trump’s divorce from Ivana. Apparently unaware that Ray Donovan is not real, Cohen nonetheless channeled his fictional persona, telling the reporter, “So I’m warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me?”

    Now that Cohen’s going to prison, though, he’s supposedly gone from Ray Donovan to repentant deacon.

    No one took him seriously before, and they shouldn’t take him seriously now.

    Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/michael-cohens-testimony-cant-be-taken-seriously-because-hes-always-been-a-sad-joke

    The White House press corps was kicked out of its filing center in Hanoi, site of the two-day summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un, when the North Korean leader’s security detail realized on Tuesday they were sharing the same hotel.

    “KJU’s security flipped out,” tweeted Bloomberg White House correspondent Jennifer Jacobs, taking in the dramatic scene prior to Kim’s appearance at the Meliá Hanoi.

    Kim arrived in Vietnam by train hours ahead of Trump, who landed after a journey that took 20 hours and 20 minutes aboard Air Force One.

    “North Koreans yelling, demanding journalists in lobby not take pictures or even look at the scene,” Jacobs said.

    Another Bloomberg reporter, Margaret Talev, reported that she was pushed from the lobby into the adjacent restaurant, where the window shades were pulled down and journalists were told not to take photos.

    NBC’s Peter Alexander said he was told to delete a photo he had taken in the lobby. He and a group of reporters were forced from the hotel’s lobby upstairs, and told to take the stairs because “the elevator was not an option … because that would require our stepping on the red carpet that had been rolled out minutes earlier.”

    Alexander said he then learned that the American press corps’ filing center would be relocated to another venue entirely.

    The announcement came via tweet by the Vietnamese government, which featured three megaphone emojis and the message “FYI: the American Media Center will be relocated from Melia hotel to International Media Center,” sharing the new address.

    NBC’s Alexander also said he missed Kim’s arrival and was forced to watch it from the emptying filing center on rival network CNN.

    “In nearly 10 years covering the White House, having been on Presidential trips to more than 100 countries, I have never seen the White House Press Corps kicked out of our unilateral press/broadcast center by request of a foreign leader,” tweeted a miffed Fox News chief White House correspondent John Roberts.

    In a follow-up tweet, Roberts pointed out that the White House press corps shared a hotel in Buenos Aires with French President Emmanuel Macron and there was “zero problem.”

    “Kim comes to Hanoi and we get evicted from space we had bought and paid for just because he is in the same hotel,” Roberts added.

    Alexander also noted that he had been bumped to a smaller room thanks to the North Korean leader.

    “The moment I checked in Monday night, the receptionist apologized that while the White House had booked me a larger room, she would not be able to accommodate the reservation ‘because of the visit of a head of state,’” he said, noting that the hotel worker wouldn’t confirm if that guest was Kim.

    In hotel-heavy Singapore, where the first Trump-Kim summit was held, the North Korean leader and his delegation were kept three miles away from the American press corps, with Kim staying at the St. Regis and reporters based in a downtown Marriott.

    Source Article from https://nypost.com/2019/02/26/us-press-booted-from-vietnam-hotel-after-north-korean-officials-flipped-out/

    Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., left, and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, right, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, asked drug company CEOs some tough questions about drug prices on Tuesday during a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee.

    Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP


    hide caption

    toggle caption

    Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

    Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., left, and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, right, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, asked drug company CEOs some tough questions about drug prices on Tuesday during a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee.

    Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

    The leaders of seven drug industry giants were forced to defend their industry’s prices and business practices on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, as lawmakers criticized them for failing to put patients before profits.

    “Prescription drugs did not become outrageously expensive by accident,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. “Drug prices are astronomically high because that’s where pharmaceutical companies and their investors want them.”

    The pharmaceutical company leaders, testifying at a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, acknowledged that their prices are high for many patients, but they deflected blame onto the insurance industry, government and middlemen known as pharmacy benefit managers.

    They each acknowledged briefly that they have some role to play in helping lower drug prices. But they defended their industry by touting their multibillion-dollar investments in research and development and praising advances in treatments for cancer, hepatitis C, schizophrenia and autoimmune diseases.

    “Last year, Janssen invested $8.4 billion globally in research and development, making Janssen one of the top research and development investors in any industry anywhere in the world,” said Jennifer Taubert, worldwide chairman of pharmaceuticals for Johnson & Johnson, which owns Janssen.

    The drug industry leaders also pointed out that the list prices they set for drugs are not what they are actually paid by insurance companies or pharmacy benefit managers, the middlemen that negotiate discounts and rebates on behalf of employers or insurers, which include companies like CVS Caremark and Express Scripts.

    “We want these rebates, which lower net prices, to benefit patients,” said Olivier Brandicourt, CEO of Sanofi, which makes Lantus, one of the highest priced brands of insulin, whose list price has risen from $244 to $431 since 2013, according to the committee.

    “Unfortunately, under the current system, savings from rebates are not consistently passed through to patients in the form of lower deductibles, co-payments or coinsurance amounts,” Brandicourt said in testimony prepared for the hearing.

    According to investment research firm SSR Health, the net price of Lantus has declined 28 percent over the last two years because of those discounts and rebates.

    “Addressing list prices alone will not be sufficient for solving the problem of patients’ out-of-pocket costs,” Brandicourt said.

    But the Senators had little patience for those arguments.

    “For a patient taking a drug that has no competition, the list price becomes very important,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the committee’s chairman. “I’ve heard about people skipping doses of their prescription drugs to make them last until the next paycheck.”

    Wyden piled on.

    “I think you and others in the industry are stonewalling on the key issue, which is actually lowering list prices,” he said. “Lowering those list prices is the easiest way for consumers to pay less at the pharmacy counter.”

    Many patients have to pay the full price for a prescription drug until they meet their deductible, and others have payments that are calculated as a percentage of the list price. So higher list prices often translate to higher costs at the pharmacy counter, even when pharmacy benefit managers and insurers have negotiated discounts.

    Several of the drug company leaders said they support a Trump administration proposal to change the current system in which drug prices are set using secret rebates negotiated by pharmacy benefit managers.

    The change would make those rebates illegal and force pharmacy benefit managers to instead negotiate discounts upfront so that people will get the discounts at the pharmacy counter even if they haven’t yet met their deductible.

    Several of the CEOs, under pressure from Grassley, said they would lower their list prices if that proposal is finalized and the rule applied to both government and commercial prescription drug plans.

    “It is our very clear intention that we will not keep a single dollar from these rebates. We will try to move every single penny to the patients,” said Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer.

    Taubert of Johnson & Johnson said the company’s final price would depend on whether additional fees were imposed by pharmacy benefit managers.

    However, they said they don’t want to see the government negotiating drug prices directly through Medicare, a proposal that has been brought forward by Democrats and was originally embraced by President Trump.

    “The government should not directly control the price of medicines either through federal government price controls or worse, outsourcing prices to other countries,” Brandicourt said.

    Even as the companies protest that the high list prices of their products don’t reflect what they actually make on those products, drugmakers have consistently enjoyed some of the highest profit margins of any industry.

    Pharmaceutical manufacturers’ profit margins have exceeded 26 percent for the last three years and 22 percent for the past 10 years, according to a presentation by CVS Health that cited Macrotrends.net as its source.

    The company executives were not supportive of another Trump proposal to tie the price that Medicare pays for drugs to the prices paid in other developed countries.

    “We need an American solution to this American challenge,” said Taubert of Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen unit.

    Wyden grilled Richard Gonzalez, CEO of AbbVie, about why his company’s drugs cost on average 40 percent less in Germany and France than in the United States. (AbbVie makes the drug Humira, which generates about $18 billion in revenue for the company each year.)

    “You’ve got a double standard,” Wyden said. “You’re willing to sit by and hose the American consumer and give the breaks to people overseas.”

    Gonzalez acknowledged that the company makes a profit in those countries, even with the lower prices, but warned of dire consequence if U.S. prices fell to those levels.

    “If a market the size of the U.S. were to collapse to the lower end of that pricing model, I can just tell you that AbbVie would not be able to invest in the level of R & D that it invests in today,” Gonzalez said.

    In response to a question from Grassley, all the CEOs said they consider the risk of negative public opinion when they decide on their list prices. The Trump administration has proposed requiring companies to include their drugs’ list prices in all their direct-to-consumer advertising, a plan the companies have resisted.

    They also said they consider the reaction of federal officials to their price announcements.

    “The federal government is a very key aspect of our deliberations,” said Pascal Soriot of AstraZeneca, an answer echoed by all seven industry leaders.

    Source Article from https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/02/26/698136259/pharmaceutical-company-ceos-face-grilling-in-senate-over-high-drug-prices

    “);var a = g[r.size_id].split(“x”).map((function(e) {return Number(e)})), s = u(a, 2);o.width = s[0],o.height = s[1]}o.rubiconTargeting = (Array.isArray(r.targeting) ? r.targeting : []).reduce((function(e, r) {return e[r.key] = r.values[0],e}), {rpfl_elemid: n.adUnitCode}),e.push(o)} else l.logError(“Rubicon bid adapter Error: bidRequest undefined at index position:” + t, c, d);return e}), []).sort((function(e, r) {return (r.cpm || 0) – (e.cpm || 0)}))},getUserSyncs: function(e, r, t) {if (!A && e.iframeEnabled) {var i = “”;return t && “string” == typeof t.consentString && (“boolean” == typeof t.gdprApplies ? i += “?gdpr=” + Number(t.gdprApplies) + “&gdpr_consent=” + t.consentString : i += “?gdpr_consent=” + t.consentString),A = !0,{type: “iframe”,url: n + i}}},transformBidParams: function(e, r) {return l.convertTypes({accountId: “number”,siteId: “number”,zoneId: “number”}, e)}};function m() {return [window.screen.width, window.screen.height].join(“x”)}function b(e, r) {var t = f.config.getConfig(“pageUrl”);return e.params.referrer ? t = e.params.referrer : t || (t = r.refererInfo.referer),e.params.secure ? t.replace(/^http:/i, “https:”) : t}function _(e, r) {var t = e.params;if (“video” === r) {var i = [];return t.video && t.video.playerWidth && t.video.playerHeight ? i = [t.video.playerWidth, t.video.playerHeight] : Array.isArray(l.deepAccess(e, “mediaTypes.video.playerSize”)) && 1 === e.mediaTypes.video.playerSize.length ? i = e.mediaTypes.video.playerSize[0] : Array.isArray(e.sizes) && 0

    Washington (CNN)The Department of Health and Human Services received more than 4,500 complaints of sexual abuse against unaccompanied minors from 2014-2018, according to internal agency documents released Tuesday by Florida Democratic Rep. Ted Deutch.

    Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/26/politics/hhs-documents-minors-sexual-abuse/index.html

    February 26 at 11:44 AM

    The U.S. military blocked Internet access to an infamous Russian entity seeking to sow discord among Americans during the 2018 midterms, several U.S. officials said, a warning that the Kremlin’s operations against the United States are not cost-free.

    The strike on the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, a company underwritten by an oligarch close to President Vladi­mir Putin, was part of the first offensive cyber campaign against Russia designed to thwart attempts to interfere with a U.S. election, the officials said.

    “They basically took the IRA offline,” according to one individual familiar with the matter who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified information. “They shut ‘em down.”

    The operation marked the first muscle-flexing by U.S. Cyber Command, with intelligence from the National Security Agency, under new authorities it was granted by President Trump and Congress last year to bolster offensive capabilities.

    Whether the impact of the St. Petersburg action will be long-lasting remains to be seen. Russia’s tactics are evolving, and some analysts were skeptical of the deterrent value on either the Russian troll factory or on Putin, who, according to U.S. intelligence officials, ordered an “influence” campaign in 2016 to undermine faith in U.S. democracy. U.S. officials have also assessed that the Internet Research Agency works on behalf of the Kremlin.

    “Such an operation would be more of a pinprick that is more annoying than deterring in the long run,” said Thomas Rid, a strategic studies professor at Johns Hopkins University, who was not briefed on the details.

    But some U.S. officials argued that “grand strategic deterrence” is not always the goal. “Part of our objective is to throw a little curve ball, inject a little friction, sow confusion,” said one defense official. “There’s value in that. We showed what’s in the realm of the possible. It’s not the old way of doing business anymore.”

    The action has been hailed as a success by Pentagon officials, and some U.S. senators credited CyberCom with averting Russian interference in the midterms.

    “The fact that the 2018 election process moved forward without successful Russian intervention was not a coincidence,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who did not discuss the specific details of the operation targeting the St. Petersburg group. Without CyberCom’s efforts, there “would have been some very serious cyber incursions.”

    Cyber Command and the NSA declined to comment.

    The disruption to the Internet Research Agency’s networks took place as Americans went to the polls and a day or so afterward — as the votes were tallied, to prevent the Russians from mounting a disinformation campaign that casts doubt on the results, according to officials.

    The blockage was so frustrating to the trolls that they complained to their system administrators about the disruption, the officials said.

    The Internet Research Agency as early as 2014 and continuing through the 2016 presidential election sought to undermine the U.S. political system, according to the Justice Department. Posing as Americans and operating social media pages and groups, Russian trolls sought to exacerbate tensions over issues such as race, sexual identity and guns.

    The agency, according to federal prosecutors, is financed by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a tycoon from St. Petersburg and an ally of Putin. Prigozhin, the Internet Research Agency and a company Prigozhin runs called Concord Management and Consulting, were among 16 Russian individuals and companies that a grand jury indicted a year ago as part of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

    In a response to questions from The Washington Post, Prigozhin said in a statement on the Russian version of Facebook, “I cannot comment on the work of the Internet Research Agency in any way because I have no relation to it.” Concord Management declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation in the United States.

    Another element of the Cyber Command campaign, first reported by the New York Times, involved “direct messaging” that targeted the trolls and as well as hackers who work for the Russian military intelligence agency, the GRU. Using emails, pop-ups, text or direct messages, U.S. operatives beginning last October let the Russians know that their real names and online handles were known and they should not interfere in other nations’ affairs, defense officials said.

    Some Internet Research Agency officials were so perturbed by the messaging that they launched an internal investigation to root out what they thought were insiders leaking personnel information, according to two individuals.

    The operation was part of a broader government effort to safeguard the 2018 elections, involving the departments of Homeland Security, State and Justice, as well as the FBI. It was led by Gen. Paul Nakasone, who in July formed the Russia Small Group, made up of 75 to 80 personnel from CyberCom and NSA, which are part of the Defense Department.

    When Nakasone took up the helm at the NSA and CyberCom in May, the White House and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told him his priority needed to be the defense of the midterm elections, officials said. No one wanted a repeat of the 2016 campaign, when the GRU hacked Democratic Party computers and released troves of emails and the Internet Research Agency mounted its social media campaign to exploit social divisions.

    In August, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats said Russia was continuing “a pervasive messaging campaign” to try to weaken and divide the United States, though officials also concluded it was not as aggressive as the 2016 operation by Russia.

    Two new U.S. authorities facilitated the move against the Internet Research Agency. A presidential order last August gave CyberCom greater latitude to undertake offensive operations below the level of armed conflict — actions that don’t result in death, significant damage or destruction. And a provision in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act also cleared the way for clandestine cyber operations that fall below that same threshold, categorizing them as “traditional military activity.”

    “The calculus for us here was that you’re just pushing back in the same way that the adversary has for years,” a second defense official said. “It’s not escalatory. In fact, we’re finally in the game.”

    But other officials are more circumspect.

    “Causing consternation or throwing sand in the gears may raise the cost of engaging in nefarious activities, but it is not going to cause a nation state to just drop their election interference or their malign influence in general,” said a third official. “It’s not going to convince the decision-maker at the top.”

    The operation also was the first real test of CyberCom’s new strategy of “persistent engagement” issued in April, which involved continually confronting the adversary and information sharing with partners. CyberCom in fall 2018 sent troops to Monte­negro, Macedonia and Ukraine to help shore up their network defenses, and the Americans were able to obtain unfamiliar malware samples that private security researchers traced to the GRU, according to officials

    The Cyber Command campaign also was part of what Nakasone has described in an interview with Joint Force Quarterly as “acting outside our borders, being outside our networks, to ensure that we understand what our adversaries are doing.”

    Joseph Marks contributed to this report.

    Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-cyber-command-operation-disrupted-internet-access-of-russian-troll-factory-on-day-of-2018-midterms/2019/02/26/1827fc9e-36d6-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html

    If recent history is any indication, and of course it is, Michael Cohen’s testimony this week in front of Congress is about to make any lunatic ramblings by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., look like the musings of a wise sage.

    Cohen, President Trump’s former gofer, will on Tuesday deliver what is expected to be three days of testimony implicating his ex-boss in a series of crimes Cohen has already pleaded guilty to, including campaign finance violations (Zzz…), lying to Congress, and lying to the FBI.

    Cohen has admitted that he lied about the timeline of a real estate venture that the Trump Organization has pursued for decades, including into the 2016 election. Cohen also claimed that he acted on behalf of Trump during the election when he paid hush money to women who claimed they had separate affairs with Trump years before.

    [Read more: Here’s what Congress wants to hear from Michael Cohen this week]

    A federal judge sentenced Cohen to three years in prison for those crimes, which have some relation to Trump, and others, which don’t, including Cohen’s extensive history of tax evasion and bank fraud.

    So far, there is no strong evidence that Trump himself was engaged in any legal wrongdoing. The president denies he ever told Cohen to lie about the pursuit of a Trump Tower in Moscow, a project Trump has dreamed about since the 1980s, and he denies that the payments to his alleged mistresses from roughly 12 years ago were made to influence the 2016 election.

    And there’s no reason why Cohen’s testimony should carry any weight. He most recently embarrassed himself in a nationally televised interview by insisting over and over again that he was “taking responsibility” for his crimes.

    Cohen is “taking responsibility” by going to prison the same way a deadbeat drunk is “taking responsibility” for being unemployed. When you’re fired from your job, “taking responsibility” is your only option.

    There has never been a time that Cohen didn’t look like a delusional mess.

    On Election Day 2016, after it was clear that Trump had won the presidency, Cohen reportedly told a group of friends, “Nobody’s going to be able to fuck with us. I think I’m going to run for mayor.”

    I imagine Cohen’s grandmother nearby offering an encouraging, “Some day you will, baby! You will!”

    In March of last year, Cohen referred to himself as Trump’s “Ray Donovan,” a TV character who made the problems of celebrities go away. If that was Cohen’s paid responsibility for Trump as a “fixer,” the president should ask for a full refund.

    But classic Cohen is his interview in 2015 with the Daily Beast, which sought comment from him for a story on Trump’s divorce from Ivana. Apparently unaware that Ray Donovan is not real, Cohen nonetheless channeled his fictional persona, telling the reporter, “So I’m warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me?”

    Now that Cohen’s going to prison, though, he’s supposedly gone from Ray Donovan to repentant deacon.

    No one took him seriously before, and they shouldn’t take him seriously now.

    Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/michael-cohens-testimony-cant-be-taken-seriously-because-hes-always-been-a-sad-joke

    What is “denuclearization”?

    The United States and North Korea have yet to agree on what “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” entails.

    Washington wants the “final, fully verifiable” dismantlement of all of North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction, their delivery systems, fissile materials and production facilities. But North Korea has indicated, at times, that it will not give up its nuclear deterrent until the United States removes its 28,500 troops from South Korea and keeps its long-range bombers, aircraft carriers and other nuclear-capable military assets away from the peninsula.

    How quickly would the deal take effect?

    The Singapore agreement was not the first time North Korea had committed to denuclearization and then dragged its feet. This time, Washington wants the North to commit to a specific timeline so that it won’t string out the process indefinitely.

    What comes first, American concessions or the North’s disarmament?

    Both sides have exchanged lists of what they expect the other to do to implement the Singapore deal. The North’s list is long. It wants the United States to lift sanctions; replace the 1953 armistice that halted the Korean War with a peace treaty; normalize diplomatic ties; provide economic aid; and, possibly, withdraw its troops from South Korea.

    The real difficulty comes in figuring out what actions and rewards are mutually acceptable and the order in which they should be deployed. North Korea insists on moving “in phases” toward complete denuclearization to ensure that Washington delivers “action-for-action” steps to keep its end of the bargain.

    How would the North be kept honest?

    Washington has demanded that North Korea declare the locations and other details of its entire nuclear inventory and allow for international inspections. North Korea has said it will not do that until it knows it can trust the Americans. Past talks between the two sides collapsed over this difference.

    Analysts say North Korea would never give up its nuclear arsenal in a quick, one-shot deal, but would instead insist on a series of concessions.

    Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/world/asia/trump-kim-vietnam-summit.html

    <!– –>

    The Senate Finance Committee’s probe into high drug prices won’t stop at pharmaceutical companies, Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley told CNBC on Tuesday.

    The Iowa Republican spoke hours before his committee members get a chance to grill executives from seven drugmakers — AbbVie, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer and Sanofi. Grassley said there needs to be more transparency about how drug prices are set.

    “I think there is not enough information available about how prices are arrived at,” Grassley said on “Squawk Box.” “There seems to be a great deal of secrecy. For me, on a lot of legislative issues, particularly my oversight works, transparency brings accountability, so we need to get some transparency into it.”

    He wants explanations on how list prices are set for drugs and what’s actually being paid for the drugs. Pharmaceutical companies negotiate discounts, called rebates, with pharmacy benefit managers. Rebates are a favorite target of the pharmaceutical industry, which blames PBMs on hoarding the savings instead of passing them on to patients.

    Grassley said the committee’s investigation won’t stop with drugmakers and will include PBMs, as well as other players in the supply chain.

    On Tuesday, six CEOs and one top executive will appear before the committee: AbbVie CEO Richard Gonzalez, AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot, Bristol-Myers Squibb CEO Giovanni Caforio, Johnson & Johnson‘s Janssen unit Executive Vice President Jennifer Taubert, Merck CEO Ken Frazier, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and Sanofi CEO Olivier Brandicourt.

    Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb shares Grassley’s concerns about rebates, telling “Squawk Box the “wacky” system keeps prices high for patients at the pharmacy counter.

    Grassley and ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., earlier this month invited seven of the largest pharmaceutical companies to testify about drug prices. Grassley stepped down as chairman of the judiciary committee after the 2018 election in order to head the finance committee with the stated goal of tackling drug prices.

    Last week, the chairman and Wyden launched a bipartisan probe into insulin prices. The pair sent letters to the three leading insulin manufacturers, Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi, asking their executives to explain why prices for diabetes drug prices have soared dramatically in recent years.

    “He is somebody who has been as a Republican the go-to guy on prescription drug reform,” said former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D. “He has been willing in the past to sit down and actually introduce bipartisan legislation.”

    Earlier this month, Grassley joined with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to reintroduce the Creating and Restoring Equal Access to Equivalent Samples (CREATES) Act, which would allow generic drug makers to go to court to obtain samples for developing biosimilar drugs, or copycat versions of complex biologic treatments. Last fall, he also co-sponsored drug pricing bills with Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill. Klobuchar is among those running for president in a crowded Democratic field.

    “Republicans are angry. Democrats are angry — it’s really everyone at this point,” said Ipsita Smolinski, managing director at Capitol Street, a health policy consultancy. She added that pharmaceutical companies “are very aware of the environment.”

    Health care was the top issue for voters in the 2018 election. While Democrats and Republicans remain divided when it comes to the Affordable Care Act, Medicare for All and other health insurance policies, analysts say drug prices are one area where there is increasing bipartisanship.

    Wells Fargo analyst David Maris sees a possibility of bipartisan regulatory and legislative action on drug prices this year as a real threat for the drug industry.

    “The Republican Party is really interested in this topic, more so than they’ve been in previous cycles,” Maris said. “There’s a new openness on both sides. A lot of that has to do with the president and his administration trying to attack root causes.”

    Correction: This story was revised to correct that the Senate hearing is Tuesday.

    Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/26/senate-investigation-will-look-at-drug-middlemen-sen-chuck-grassley.html

    Liberals have been wanting to get their hands on Donald Trump’s tax returns for years. Now, with Democrats holding a House majority with subpoena power, they have a real possibility of getting them.

    But they have to be careful about how they go about it.

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters this month that she’s aware of the “impatience” on the matter but wants to do it right. “It’s not a question of just sending a letter. You have to do it in a very careful way,” she said, according to NPR.

    Democrats are looking into an obscure 1924 law that would allow them to request Trump’s returns from the Treasury Department. Republicans and the White House are preparing for a fight, and even Democrats appear split on how aggressively to proceed.

    There are plenty of reasons for Congress to want to take a look at a president’s or candidate’s tax returns: The documents can help lawmakers to identify potential conflicts of interest, suggest ways to reform current tax law, and conduct oversight of the IRS, which is supposed to audit the president’s and vice president’s taxes. And in Trump’s case, the argument for reviewing his tax returns is even clearer. He has refused to separate himself from his vast business empire, and questions about whether he is profiting from the presidency have dogged him his entire tenure in the White House.

    “The really clear argument is in favor of simply requiring [releasing tax returns] of everyone,” Joe Thorndike, a tax historian and director of the Tax History Project, told me. “The issue is clearly bigger than Donald Trump, although he is the current problem.”

    How Democrats could get Trump’s tax returns, explained

    Democrats are looking to invoke Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code, a statute dating back to 1924. It authorizes the Ways and Means Committee to get the tax return information (personal or business) of any taxpayer — including the president — from the Treasury Department.

    Essentially, that means Ways and Means Committee Chair Richard Neal (D-MA) would request Trump’s returns from Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, and Mnuchin would, theoretically, have to comply. If he doesn’t, a court battle would likely ensue. The committee then could vote to have some or all of the tax returns released to the rest of the House, so all members would have access to it — increasing the odds they would get out to the public. There’s a debate as to whether that could then be made public; I’ll get to that later.

    University of Virginia law professor and former Joint Committee on Taxation chief of staff George Yin laid out how the process would work in testimony earlier this month. He explained that the authority of Congress to request tax return information was added in 1924 as a co-equal branch of government, and before, only the president had such authority to request and disclose tax returns. Per his testimony:

    Section 6103(f) does not place any conditions on the exercise of the authority to obtain tax return information by the Ways and Means Committee. Moreover, it provides no basis for the Treasury Secretary to refuse a request. I believe both features were intentional. Since the president at the time had unconditional access to tax returns, Congress wanted to give its committees the same right.

    In 1976, Congress made changes to the law in a couple of key ways relevant to today. First, they eliminated language allowing the committee to submit only “relevant or useful” information to the House. But Yin says the committee still needs a reason to send information to the entire House. Second, they eliminated the ability of the president and any congressional committees not related to tax to disclose tax return information to the public. But tax committees still have that authority, meaning Ways and Means, the Joint Committee on Taxation, and the Senate Finance Committee.

    Basically, a handful of committees can still lawfully request someone’s tax returns and at the very least send them to the rest of the House or Senate, assuming they have a legitimate purpose for doing so.

    But this might not be that big of a hurdle. “Evidence that Trump has abused our tax laws is plentiful,” Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ), who has been making the case for pursuing Trump’s tax returns under Section 6103 essentially since Trump was inaugurated, said in an emailed statement to Vox. He cited a New York Times investigation into Trump and his family’s tax practices that suggested the family for years engaged in a number of schemes to avoid taxes, and leaked pages from Trump’s 1995 and 2005 tax returns; the 1995 ones show a nearly $1 billion loss.

    “Americans have a right to know if their president has paid his taxes, if he has followed the law, and if he is free from financial conflicts of interest,” Pascrell continued. “The law is clear. Under 6103, the Ways and Means Committee chairman is entitled to request Trump’s tax returns — and the Treasury secretary is obligated to deliver them. That’s all there is to it.”


    Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA), now the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, speaks at a news conference in June 2018 in Washington, DC.
    Toya Sarno Jordan/Getty Images

    Even if they have a plan, it won’t be easy

    Neal is proceeding prudently in an effort to be on as solid a footing as possible if and when he asks for Trump’s returns. Dan Rubin, a spokesperson for Neal, told Politico at the start of the year that he wants to “lay out a case about why presidents should be disclosing their tax returns before he formally forces him to do it.”

    But whenever they go for it, the White House promises to be ready. Politico’s Nancy Cook reported that the Treasury Department is “readying plans to drag the expected Democratic request for Trump’s past tax filings … into a legal quagmire of arcane legal arguments.” In other words, Mnuchin probably isn’t just going to happily hand over Trump’s taxes. A Treasury Department spokesperson did not return a request for comment on their plans.

    In parallel, Republicans are also coming to Trump’s defense, trying to paint Democrats’ efforts as ones of extreme partisanship and arguing that seeking Trump’s tax returns is a breach of privacy. They previewed their arguments at a Ways and Means Committee hearing on tax law and legislation related to presidential tax returns at the start of the month.

    “Every single American has a right to privacy and personal information contained in their tax return,” Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) argued in the hearing. He warned that releasing Trump’s returns would open a “Pandora’s box” for Congress to go after virtually anyone’s returns.

    Steve Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center who testified at the hearing, said the slippery slope arguments Republicans employed are absurd. “This is so different. [Trump] oversees the entire executive branch. In my view, the whole request by the Ways and Means Committee ought to pursue their legislative oversight responsibility, part of the checks and balances of the Constitution,” he said.

    There’s a debate over whether making Trump’s tax returns public is legal

    Richard Nixon was the first president to normalize releasing his tax returns, when questions about his tax practices came to light as part of a lawsuit (completely unrelated to the Watergate break-in). He released his tax returns in December 1973 in an effort to quell suspicions, but that’s not what happened: The Joint Committee on Taxation found he owed about $475,000 to the government.

    After Nixon resigned, presidents since started releasing their tax information as a matter of tradition. Trump, however, hasn’t released any — and he doesn’t have any plans to.

    But even if Democrats get Trump’s tax returns, it’s legally questionable if they can make the information public.

    Ken Kies, the managing director of the Federal Policy Group whom Republicans called to testify in the Ways and Means Committee hearing, testified that it would be a felony for a member of Congress or staff to publicly disclose tax returns, punishable for up to five years in prison. Others, however, disagreed.

    Lin told me he believes that Kies is incorrect in his reading and that Trump’s returns or information from them, if they get from the committee to the House, could also be made public. “The act of submitting to the House creates the possibility of public disclosure, and, in fact, that was what Congress intended when it drafted this entire provision,” he said.

    Rosenthal concurred, and pointed to a bipartisan Senate Finance Committee report from 2015 that concluded making taxpayer information available to the Senate and the public as part of an investigation into whether the IRS targeted certain political groups “is clearly permissible under section 6103.”

    Republicans argue that they’re afraid that committee Democrats will leak Trump’s tax information once they get it. But it’s not clear how much water that argument holds.

    “Republicans are trying to feel their way forward on how they can raise objections,” Rosenthal said.


    President Donald Trump speaks with reporters after signing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act into law in the Oval Office in December 2017.
    Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

    Democrats are building their case

    Democrats also appear to be trying to build a case for why they are pursuing Trump’s tax returns so they have a better shot if it does end up in court — a probable outcome. They are on firmer ground pursuing Trump’s tax returns out of their legislative and oversight duties and not because of a partisan fishing expedition.

    John Kovensky at Talking Points Memo recently delved into the matter:

    The key test that Democrats would face in any future court battle comes down to whether they have established that Congress has a legitimate purpose in requesting the returns. Asking for them just to release them immediately, or out of spite or a desire to humiliate, could serve as a reason for a judge to strike down the request.

    A couple of court cases serve as precedent in the matter. One is Kilbourn v. Thompson, an 1880 Supreme Court case dealing with whether Congress could compel testimony after the House issued a subpoena related to a bankruptcy. The court essentially ruled that the nature of the dispute was between private parties and wasn’t within Congress’s legislative or oversight scope. Another is McGrain v. Daugherty, a 1927 case related to the Teapot Dome Scandal, a bribery scandal in the federal government. In that case, the party subpoenaed refused to comply with a Senate investigation, and the court held that Congress could compel testimony because in that case it was under its oversight purview.

    “My reading is that as long as the inquiry fit within one or both of those two responsibilities [oversight and lawmaking], that should be a legitimate purpose, at least based on this case law,” Lin said.

    Democrats appear to be aware of what’s at stake.

    “I think the idea here is to avoid the emotion of the moment and make sure that the product stands up under critical analysis,” Neal told CNN in January. “And it will.”


    The news moves fast. Catch up at the end of the day: Subscribe to Today, Explained, Vox’s daily news podcast, or sign up for our evening email newsletter, Vox Sentences.

    Source Article from https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/26/18223760/democrats-trump-tax-returns-richard-neal

    WASHINGTON — For more than 90 years, a huge concrete cross has dominated part of Bladensburg, Maryland, a Washington suburb. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will be asked to decide whether it should stay, raising a question that has vexed the justices for decades: What is the proper place for religion in American public life?

    To its defenders, which include the state and the American Legion, the 40-foot-tall Peace Cross is a secular monument, a memorial to area war dead. To its detractors, it’s an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion invoking Christianity’s most potent symbol.

    Completed in 1925, it was built to commemorate 49 servicemen who died in World War I. Their names are on a bronze plaque at the base. Private funds paid for the cross, but a state commission took it over in 1961 as well as the land it sits on, which is now in a busy traffic interchange.

    In 2012, the American Humanist Association filed a lawsuit, claiming that its presence on public land violates the Constitution, amounting to a government establishment of religion. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia agreed, saying it could not ignore that “for thousands of years the Latin cross has represented Christianity.”

    Private funds paid for the memorial, but a state commission took it over in 1961 as well as the land it sits on, which is now in a busy traffic interchange.Lawrence Hurley / Reuters file

    Applying a test the Supreme Court has employed in the past to evaluate religious displays, the appeals court said a reasonable observer would conclude that the government “either places Christianity above other faiths, views being American and Christian as one in the same, or both.”

    Monica Miller, the Humanist association’s senior counsel, says the cross was always intended to be a religious symbol, and its original planners wanted it to look like the cross of Calvary, described in the Bible as the place where Christ was crucified.

    “The Latin cross is not embraced by non-Christians or used by them as a symbol of death or sacrifice,” she says. When the government prominently displays the cross as a war memorial, “it does more than just align the state with Christianity. It also callously discriminates against patriotic soldiers who are not Christian.”

    The state parks commission defends the cross as a memorial designed to mirror the cross-shaped markers on the graves of American servicemen overseas. In the aftermath of World War I, the group says, crosses became the cultural symbol of the fallen, as depicted in one of the most famous poems of the war: “In Flanders fields the poppies blow/ Between the crosses, row on row.”

    Local governments may display symbols associated with a particular religion to honor historical events or acknowledge the role of religious faith in society, said Neal Katyal, a Washington lawyer representing the parks commission, and they don’t threaten the values of religious neutrality. But requiring them to be torn down would promote a hostility to religion that the Constitution prohibits.

    The American Legion also urges the court to abandon a test it has used for decades to determine whether government displays or expressions involving religious symbols would be seen by a reasonable person as a government endorsement of a particular religious faith.

    “The test should be coercion,” Michael Carvin, a D.C. lawyer representing the patriotic group, said. “Has there been some tangible threat to liberty because of what the government is doing, such as outright proselytizing? That should be the question.”

    A government’s use of religion in a passive display does not compel people to support or participate in any religion, he says, and a memorial honoring war dead “is precisely where one would expect to encounter religious imagery in a government display.”

    The Trump administration agrees. Its friend of court brief says the Constitution’s ban on an establishment of religion does not prohibit the acknowledgement of religion in public life. “Passive displays generally fall on the permissible side of that line, because they typically do not compel religious belief.”

    Past Supreme Court decisions on this question are widely considered to be a muddle of contradictions. The court has upheld opening legislative sessions with a prayer and has ruled against challenges to “In God We Trust” on currency or the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. But it also invalidated displays of The Ten Commandments in local courthouses.

    A decision is expected by late June.

    Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-decide-if-giant-cross-religious-symbol-or-secular-n975826

    A federal appeals court in Washington on Monday rejected a challenge to special counsel Robert MuellerRobert Swan MuellerSasse: US should applaud choice of Mueller to lead Russia probe MORE’s appointment that was brought by Roger StoneRoger Jason StoneFive tantalizing questions about Mueller’s investigation Mueller pushes back on Stone’s claim CNN was tipped off about arrest Mueller won’t deliver report to Justice Dept. next week MORE associate Andrew Miller.

    “Because the Special Counsel is an inferior officer, and the Deputy Attorney General became the head of the Department by virtue of becoming the Acting Attorney General as a result of a vacancy created by the disability of the Attorney General through recusal on the matter, we hold that Miller’s challenge to the appointment of the Special Counsel fails,” Judge Judith Rogers wrote in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s unanimous opinion.

    The court also upheld a district court order holding Miller in contempt for refusing to testify before the grand jury in Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.

    In appealing the district court ruling, Miller argued Mueller’s appointment was unlawful under the Appointments Clause of the Constitution.

    He claimed the special counsel is a principal officer who was not appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate; Congress did not “by law” authorize the special counsel’s appointment; and the special counsel was not appointed by a “head of Department.”

    Following then-Attorney General Jeff SessionsJefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsTrump says he hasn’t spoken to Barr about Mueller report Ex-Trump aide: Can’t imagine Mueller not giving House a ‘roadmap’ to impeachment Rosenstein: My time at DOJ is ‘coming to an end’ MORE‘s recusal from the Russia investigation, Deputy Attorney General Rod RosensteinRod Jay RosensteinRosenstein says public should trust Barr on Mueller report ‘Dear Attorney General Barr’: Advice from insiders The Hill’s Morning Report – A pivotal week for Trump MORE was acting as head of the department when he appointed Mueller, the court said.

    Stone, for whom Miller worked, was recently indicted on seven charges stemming from Mueller’s investigation, including obstruction of a congressional inquiry, witness tampering and five counts of making false statements to Congress. He has pleaded not guilty.

    Source Article from https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/431575-court-rejects-challenge-to-muellers-appointment

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Constitution explains how a president can be removed from office for “high crimes and misdemeanors” by Congress using the impeachment process. But the Constitution is silent on whether a president can face criminal prosecution in court, and the U.S. Supreme Court has not directly addressed the question.

    The question looms large with Special Counsel Robert Mueller preparing a report on his investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. election, whether President Donald Trump’s campaign conspired with Moscow and whether Trump unlawfully sought to obstruct the probe.

    The U.S. Justice Department has a decades-old policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted, indicating that criminal charges against Trump would be unlikely, according to legal experts.

    Here is an explanation of the rationale behind the Justice Department policy and whether it applies to Mueller.

    WHAT IS THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT POLICY?

    In 1973, in the midst of the Watergate scandal engulfing President Richard Nixon, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel adopted in an internal memo the position that a sitting president cannot be indicted. Nixon resigned in 1974, with the House of Representatives moving toward impeaching him.

    “The spectacle of an indicted president still trying to serve as Chief Executive boggles the imagination,” the memo stated.

    The department reaffirmed the policy in a 2000 memo, saying court decisions in the intervening years had not changed its conclusion that a sitting president is “constitutionally immune” from indictment and criminal prosecution. It concluded that criminal charges against a president would “violate the constitutional separation of powers” delineating the authority of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the U.S. government.

    “The indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would unconstitutionally undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions,” the memo stated.

    The 1973 and 2000 memos are binding on Justice Department employees, including Mueller, according to many legal experts. Mueller was appointed in May 2017 by the department’s No. 2 official Rod Rosenstein.

    But some lawyers have argued that the nation’s founders could have included a provision in the Constitution shielding the president from prosecution, but did not do so, suggesting an indictment would be permissible. According to this view, immunity for the president violates the fundamental principle that nobody is above the law.

    Nixon himself in 1977 offered an opposite view when he told interviewer David Frost, “Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.”

    COULD MUELLER INDICT TRUMP DESPITE THE EXISTING POLICY?

    Possibly. The Justice Department regulations governing Mueller’s appointment allow him to deviate from department policy in “extraordinary circumstances” with the approval of the U.S. attorney general, the nation’s top law enforcement official. Trump appointee William Barr currently holds that post.

    Some legal experts have suggested Mueller could invoke this exception if he has uncovered serious wrongdoing and lacked confidence in the ability of the divided Congress to hold Trump accountable. Some lawyers also have said Mueller is not bound by the 1973 and 2000 memos because he is not a typical employee of the department.

    Ken Starr, who investigated President Bill Clinton in the 1990s in the somewhat different role of independent counsel, in 1998 conducted his own analysis of the question of whether a sitting president can be indicted, indicating he did not consider the 1973 Justice Department memo binding on him.

    Starr did not indict Clinton in his investigation involving the president’s relationship with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky, but lawyers in his office concluded he had the authority to do so, according to a once-secret internal memo made public by the New York Times in 2017.

    After the independent counsel statute under which Starr was named expired in 1999, the Justice Department devised procedures governing the appointment of special counsels to handle certain investigations. Mueller was named after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, who had been overseeing the agency’s Russia probe.

    COULD TRUMP BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE AND THEN PROSECUTED?

    Yes. There is no debate over whether a former president can be indicted for conduct that occurred while in office. In fact, President Gerald Ford, who succeeded Nixon after his resignation, was mindful of this when he granted “a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed.”

    The statute of limitations – restricting the time within which legal proceedings such as a prosecution may be brought – may work to Trump’s benefit if he is re-elected in 2020 and serves a full two four-year terms as president until January 2025.

    Many federal crimes have a five-year statute of limitations, meaning prosecutors have five years from the date the conduct at issue occurred to bring an indictment. That means criminal charges against a re-elected Trump could be time-barred.

    Some lawyers have said that, as a matter of fairness, the normal rules on timeliness of charges should not apply to the president. The issue potentially could be resolved in the courts.

    Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Will Dunham

    Source Article from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-indictment-explainer/can-a-sitting-us-president-face-criminal-charges-idUSKCN1QF1D3

    Workers in Hanoi, Vietnam, making last-minute preparations ahead of this week’s summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

    Carl Court/Getty Images


    hide caption

    toggle caption

    Carl Court/Getty Images

    Workers in Hanoi, Vietnam, making last-minute preparations ahead of this week’s summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

    Carl Court/Getty Images

    President Trump will meet with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un this week in Vietnam, as he attempts to get Pyongyang to move toward what has been an elusive goal: complete denuclearization.

    Trump has maintained that his ultimate goal is to get Kim to relinquish the regime’s nuclear program. But, in the lead up to this second summit, he has repeatedly stressed that he’s not setting a deadline for North Korea to act.

    “I think a lot can come from it — at least, I hope so — the denuclearization, ultimately. I’m in no particular rush. The sanctions are on, the relationships are very strong, and a lot of good things have happened,” Trump said at a White House event last week.

    This was not always the case. After Trump’s historic meeting with Kim in June 2018, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo floated a goal of getting North Korea to give up its weapons by January 2021.

    Trump put a stop to that talk, however. In September of last year, Trump told reporters that he had directed Pompeo to not “get into the time game.”

    “If it takes two years, three years, or five months, it doesn’t matter. There’s no nuclear testing and there’s not testing of rockets,” Trump said.

    Despite Trump’s insistence that he’s not in a hurry, administration officials say he’s urged his negotiators to try to get North Korea to agree to concrete steps.

    The administration has offered few details ahead of the summit, which officially takes place Feb. 27 and 28, but the format will be similar to the talks held in Singapore in June 2018.

    Trump and Kim are expected to meet with each other one-on-one and to participate in sessions with expanded bilateral delegations.

    What does denuclearization mean?

    A major point of dispute over the years between the U.S. and North Korea has been that the two sides have different perceptions of what denuclearization would actually mean.

    In the past, North Korea has argued that the U.S. should also remove any nuclear weapons it has deployed in the region.

    Officials participating in lower-level negotiations in preparation for the summit say they are working to reach a “shared understanding” on this point.

    One criticism of Trump and Kim’s initial meeting was that it only produced a vague agreement, with little in the way of specifics.

    But Jessica Lee, a senior director of the Council of Korean Americans, says there may be some benefit to lowering expectations about quick results.

    “Both the United States and North Korea have to be a little bit less ambitious and more realistic when it comes to outcome, knowing that the eventual goal of eliminating nuclear weapons in North Korea is going to be something that takes years, if not decades,” Lee said.

    After years of basically no diplomatic ties and rising tensions, Lee said it’s important to establish a dialogue.

    “Given the kind of country we’re dealing with in terms of their nuclear and missile capability, it’s absolutely prudent to develop channels of communication and to talk rather than pursue other means of resolving our differences,” she added.

    Some experts have raised concerns that Trump may bargain away too much in search of a pact with North Korea. There had been some worry that Trump might agree to remove U.S. troops from the peninsula in exchange for action from Pyongyang.

    But, Trump said Friday that troop draw downs are not “on the table.”

    Fred Fleitz, a former chief of staff to national security adviser John Bolton, says he does not think Trump will agree to any easing of sanctions at the Vietnam meeting. Before that happens, Fleitz believes North Korea will have to take substantial steps toward giving up its weapons.

    Fleitz said it’s possible that the administration might be willing to open an official liaison office in North Korea, which would open the door to diplomatic relations.

    “It’s such a minor concession, but for the North Koreans it might be important,” he said.

    The White House acknowledges that eventually North Korea’s Kim will have to make a decision about whether he’s serious about abandoning his country’s nuclear program.

    While talks may hold off the immediate threat of a military conflict, they also give North Korea time to continue to develop its arsenal.

    If North Korea wants to change its status with the U.S., Frank Aum, of the U.S. Institute of Peace, says the country cannot keep its weapons.

    “I don’t think the U.S. would agree to have normalized relations and accept North Korea back into the fold as a responsible member of the international community until North Korea denuclearizes,” Aum said.

    Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2019/02/26/697155378/where-the-u-s-stands-on-north-korea-ahead-of-the-trump-kim-summit

    Former Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen is scheduled to appear before three congressional committees this week before he heads to jail to serve a sentence for tax evasion and lying to Congress. On Tuesday, Cohen will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee. On Wednesday, he will go before the House Oversight Committee. And on Thursday, he will testify before the House Intelligence Committee.

    It would be a great service if the Cohen appearances helped increase the store of public information on the Trump-Russia furor. But even though Cohen is a key figure in the matter — his name is mentioned 24 times in the so-called Trump dossier — the hearings appear designed to prevent the public from learning anything new about the Russia matter.

    First, two of the three hearings will be held in secret; both the Senate and House Intelligence committees plan to question Cohen behind closed doors. Those are the hearings that will delve into Russia. The hearing that is public, before House Oversight, is specifically structured not to touch on the Russia matter.

    There is good reason for all the questioning to be public. Cohen is not a government official and has no classified information to share. His 24 mentions in the dossier have been publicly available for two years. His conviction on lying to Congress — specifically, his falsehood about the timing of Trump Tower Moscow discussions — is also public. His own case is over and done with, and he will soon be behind bars.

    Furthermore, Cohen has already answered questions from the House Intelligence Committee, and all members, Democrat and Republican, voted to make those answers public. “There’s no reason to prevent him from testifying publicly since he previously spoke to us in an unclassified setting, and the Democrats supported our motion in the last Congress to publish our interview transcripts,” said Intelligence Committee ranking Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, a former chairman of the committee. (The Cohen transcript has still not been publicly released; GOP lawmakers say the intelligence community is dragging its feet on a routine pre-release review.)

    Some might argue that with the investigation of Trump-Russia special counsel Robert Mueller not yet closed — although there are reports that is coming soon — Cohen should not speak publicly about an ongoing investigation. But the fact is, on Feb. 6, Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff announced a new Russia investigation that will, if carried through, recover much of the same ground as Mueller. That means what Cohen has to say about the Russia affair is now the subject of an ongoing House investigation — the Schiff investigation — and the House owes it to the public to conduct the probe in public.

    Instead, Schiff will keep Cohen’s answers under wraps.

    Over at the Oversight Committee, the one that will be open, Chairman Rep. Elijah Cummings has ruled the hearing will not be about Russia. “The scope of the Oversight Committee’s open public hearing will not include questions relating to the Intelligence Committee’s investigation of efforts by Russia and other foreign entities to influence the U.S. political process during and since the 2016 U.S. election,” Cummings wrote on Feb. 20. Also off the table, Cummings said, is “the counterintelligence threat arising from any links or coordination between U.S. persons and the Russian government, including any financial or other compromise or leverage foreign actors may possess over Donald Trump, his family, his business interests, or his associates.”

    That’s pretty much the whole Russia story, and it won’t be told in Cummings’ hearing room. “The Cohen hearings are designed to keep the Russia collusion narrative alive by keeping key witness testimony hidden,” Oversight Committee Republican Rep. Mark Meadows told me in a text exchange.

    What will the public Cohen hearings be about? After consulting with the Justice Department and with Schiff, Cummings released a list of topics that might be damaging or embarrassing to the president but would reveal little or nothing about the allegation that the Trump campaign and Russia conspired to fix the 2016 election. Among the approved topics: the Stormy Daniels payments; Trump’s compliance with campaign finance laws; Trump’s compliance with tax laws; Trump’s “business practices”; the Trump International Hotel in Washington; the “accuracy of the president’s public statements”; potential fraud by the Trump Foundation, and more.

    Of course, Cummings is the chairman of the committee, and he can pick any topic he likes. And Congress can investigate the president’s business dealings as much as it chooses. But the combination of Cummings’ anything-but-Russia topic list and Schiff’s secrecy means that the public’s only chance to hear from Cohen will not touch the topic that has dominated the Trump presidency and American politics for more than two years.

    The only people who might throw a wrench in the works are Oversight Committee Republicans. They are free to ignore Cummings’ directive and ask Russia-related questions. Cohen has long denied key dossier allegations, but what can he add today? What about the infamous Trump Tower meeting? The Trump Tower Moscow matter? Any other Russia issues?

    “We’re going to ask whatever we want to ask,” said one committee Republican late Monday.

    Cohen might not answer the questions, and the chairman might take Cohen’s side, but Republicans can at the least remind viewers that the Democrats who run the House, after talking Russia nonstop for two years, now don’t want to talk publicly about the subject, even with a star witness sitting in front of them.

    Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-cohen-hearings-designed-to-keep-public-in-dark-about-russia

    “);var a = g[r.size_id].split(“x”).map((function(e) {return Number(e)})), s = u(a, 2);o.width = s[0],o.height = s[1]}o.rubiconTargeting = (Array.isArray(r.targeting) ? r.targeting : []).reduce((function(e, r) {return e[r.key] = r.values[0],e}), {rpfl_elemid: n.adUnitCode}),e.push(o)} else l.logError(“Rubicon bid adapter Error: bidRequest undefined at index position:” + t, c, d);return e}), []).sort((function(e, r) {return (r.cpm || 0) – (e.cpm || 0)}))},getUserSyncs: function(e, r, t) {if (!A && e.iframeEnabled) {var i = “”;return t && “string” == typeof t.consentString && (“boolean” == typeof t.gdprApplies ? i += “?gdpr=” + Number(t.gdprApplies) + “&gdpr_consent=” + t.consentString : i += “?gdpr_consent=” + t.consentString),A = !0,{type: “iframe”,url: n + i}}},transformBidParams: function(e, r) {return l.convertTypes({accountId: “number”,siteId: “number”,zoneId: “number”}, e)}};function m() {return [window.screen.width, window.screen.height].join(“x”)}function b(e, r) {var t = f.config.getConfig(“pageUrl”);return e.params.referrer ? t = e.params.referrer : t || (t = r.refererInfo.referer),e.params.secure ? t.replace(/^http:/i, “https:”) : t}function _(e, r) {var t = e.params;if (“video” === r) {var i = [];return t.video && t.video.playerWidth && t.video.playerHeight ? i = [t.video.playerWidth, t.video.playerHeight] : Array.isArray(l.deepAccess(e, “mediaTypes.video.playerSize”)) && 1 === e.mediaTypes.video.playerSize.length ? i = e.mediaTypes.video.playerSize[0] : Array.isArray(e.sizes) && 0

    Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/25/politics/tillis-to-vote-against-national-emergency/index.html

    PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistan says Indian aircraft crossed into its territory and dropped bombs on Tuesday without causing casualties, in the latest escalation between the nuclear-armed rivals since a deadly attack on Indian troops in the disputed Kashmir region sent tensions soaring.

    Maj. Gen Asif Ghafoor, a military spokesman, said the Indian “aircrafts” crossed into the Pakistan-controlled Muzafarabad sector of Kashmir, which is split between the two countries but claimed by each in its entirety. He said Pakistan scrambled fighters and the Indian jets “released payload in haste,” near Balakot, on the edge of Pakistani-ruled Kashmir.

    Balakot police chief Saghir Hussain Shah told The Associated Press that he had sent teams to the area, which he described as a mostly deserted wooded area.

    “There are no casualties, there are no damages on the ground because of the dropping of the bombs,” he said.

    Pakistan’s Inter Services Public Relations released this photo it says shows a payload dropped by Indian Air Force aicrafts in a hilly terrain of Pakistani territory.AFP / Pakistan Inter Services Public Relations

    There has been no immediate comment from India. India’s Cabinet Committee on Security, presided over by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was to meet Tuesday, New Delhi Television reported.

    The incursion could have been in retaliation for a deadly Feb. 14 suicide bombing in India’s half of Kashmir that killed at least 40 troops. The Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad claimed responsibility. The bomber, who made a video before the attack, was a resident of Indian Kashmir.

    It was the worst attack on Indian forces since the start of the 1989 insurgency in Kashmir. Insurgents have been demanding either outright independence or union with Pakistan. India routinely accuses Pakistan of arming and training militants who cross the mountainous Himalayan region.

    Kashmir has been the cause of two previous wars between the uneasy neighbors. They fought a third war in 1979 over East Pakistan, which gained its independence with the help of India and became Bangladesh.

    Tensions have been high since the attack earlier this month. Pakistan has outlawed Jaish-e-Mohammed and seized its properties in south Punjab’s Bawahalpur area, including religious schools and mosques. India has demanded that Jaish-e-Mohammad leader, Azhar Masood, be listed as a terrorist by the United Nations, but has been stymied by China.

    Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi condemned the incursion, saying New Delhi “endangered” peace in the region for political gains.

    “We are a responsible nation and our forces are capable to defend each every inch of our motherland,” he told a local television channel.

    Associated Press writers Kathy Gannon, Zarar Khan and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad, and Aijaz Hussain in Srinigar, India, contributed to this report.

    Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pakistan-says-indian-jets-dropped-bombs-its-territory-n975996

    President TrumpDonald John TrumpSpike Lee urges Oscars viewers to vote in 2020: ‘Let’s all be in the right side of history’ José Andrés honors immigrants, women in Oscars speech Javier Bardem knocks ‘borders,’ ‘walls’ during Oscars speech in Spanish MORE on Monday ramped up his attacks against Democratic senators over abortion after the Senate failed to advance an anti-abortion measure on Monday.

    “Senate Democrats just voted against legislation to prevent the killing of newborn infant children,” Trump claimed on Twitter on Monday. “The Democrat position on abortion is now so extreme that they don’t mind executing babies AFTER birth.”

    Trump continued in a separate tweet that “this will be remembered as one of the most shocking votes in the history of Congress.”

    “If there is one thing we should all agree on, it’s protecting the lives of innocent babies,” he said. 

    Senate Democrats on Monday blocked a measure to penalize doctors who fail to “exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion.”

    The bill, which was sponsored by Sen. Ben SasseBenjamin (Ben) Eric SasseThe Hill’s Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump Overnight Health Care — Sponsored by America’s 340B Hospitals — Push for cosponsors for new ‘Medicare for all’ bill | Court lets Dems defend ObamaCare | Flu season not as severe as last year, CDC says Senate approves border bill that prevents shutdown MORE (R-Neb.), was introduced with the intention of responding to a controversy in Virginia over late-term abortion.  

    Senators voted 53-44 to advance the measure, seven votes short of the necessary votes. Three Democratic senators, including Joe ManchinJoseph (Joe) ManchinOvernight Energy: Trump ends talks with California on car emissions | Dems face tough vote on Green New Deal | Climate PAC backing Inslee in possible 2020 run Dems face tough vote on Green New Deal Gabbard cites ‘concerns’ about ‘vagueness’ of Green New Deal MORE (W.Va.), Doug Jones (Ala.) and Bob CaseyRobert (Bob) Patrick CaseyGOP wants to pit Ocasio-Cortez against Democrats in the Senate Biden speaking to Dems on Capitol Hill as 2020 speculation mounts: report GOP senators: Trump should not declare border emergency during State of the Union MORE Jr. (Pa.) voted to have the measure proceed. 

    Sen. Tim KaineTimothy (Tim) Michael KaineDemocrats brush off GOP ‘trolling’ over Green New Deal Overnight Defense: Trump declares border emergency | .6B in military construction funds to be used for wall | Trump believes Obama would have started war with North Korea | Pentagon delivers aid for Venezuelan migrants Kaine asks Shanahan if military families would be hurt by moving .6B for border wall MORE (D-Va.) said in a statement after the vote that he opposed the measure because of the Republican Party’s “misleading” statements. 

    “Congress reaffirmed that fact with its passage of the bipartisan Born-Alive Infants Protection Act in 2002. I support that law, which is still in effect. There is no need for additional federal legislation on this topic,” Kaine said. 

    Issues surrounding late-term abortion gained widespread attention in January after a Democratic-backed bill in Virginia’s state legislature proposed to loosen restrictions on late-term abortions in cases where the mother’s health is threatened.

    Gov. Ralph Northam (D) also sparked backlash from lawmakers and anti-abortion groups over the comments he made about third-trimester abortions. 

    “In this particular example, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen: the infant would be delivered; the infant would be kept comfortable; the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother,” Northam said. 

    The governor has contended that his comments were taken out of context. 

    Source Article from https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/431532-trump-claims-democrats-dont-mind-executing-babies-after-birth-after

    Image copyright
    Reuters

    Image caption

    Mexican-American journalist Jorge Ramos talks to the media after his crew’s release

    US broadcaster Univision says its team was briefly detained in the Venezuelan presidential palace where they had been interviewing President Nicolás Maduro.

    The incident happened after award-winning journalist Jorge Ramos showed Mr Maduro images of Venezuelans eating from a bin lorry, the network says.

    Their equipment was confiscated.

    Venezuela’s Information Minister Jorge Rodríguez said the government had welcomed hundreds of journalists but it did not support “cheap shows”.

    Univision, the leading Spanish-language TV network in the US, said the six-member crew had been released after almost three hours but that their recording and personal belongings had not been returned.

    Speaking on Univision, Mr Ramos said Mr Maduro “had not liked” some of the questions about “the lack of democracy in Venezuela, torture, political prisoners and the humanitarian crisis”.

    “He got up after I showed him videos of young people eating out of a bin lorry,” he said of the interview at the Miraflores palace in the capital, Caracas.

    “What I told Nicolás Maduro is that millions of Venezuelans and many governments around the world don’t consider him a legitimate president but a dictator.”

    During their detention, Mr Ramos and Univision Vice President María Martínez were kept for “a few minutes” in a separate room where the lights were turned off, the broadcaster said.

    The Univision crew will be deported on Tuesday, Reuters news agency reports.

    Mr Ramos, a veteran Mexican-born American journalist, is known for his confrontational style of questioning. In 2015, he was thrown out of a news conference of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.

    Media captionThe moment Venezuelan troops crashed through border into Colombia

    Natalie Southwick, Central and South America programme co-ordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said: “By shutting down an interview and censoring one of Latin America’s most high-profile reporters, Nicolás Maduro has demonstrated his fundamental disregard for the press.”

    Last month, several local and foreign journalists were briefly detained while working in Caracas. Some ended up being deported.

    On Twitter, Mr Rodríguez added: “Hundreds of journalists have come through Miraflores who have received decent treatment that we always give to those who do journalistic work.”

    Earlier, a group of Latin American countries and Canada said Mr Maduro was a threat to peace and security in the region and called for his immediate exit, a democratic transition and free elections.

    Meeting in the Colombian capital, Bogotá, the Lima group urged the International Criminal Court to consider whether Venezuela was guilty of crimes against humanity for refusing to allow aid into the country.

    At least two people died in Saturday’s clashes between civilians and troops loyal to Mr Maduro that blocked the entrance of foreign aid organised by opposition leader and self-declared interim President Juan Guaidó.

    Mr Maduro says the aid efforts are part of a US-orchestrated coup.

    In other developments:

    • More than 100 soldiers are said to have defected since the weekend. Speaking to the BBC, some of them say they fear for the safety of their families
    • The US has announced new sanctions against four Venezuelan state governors allied with Mr Maduro
    • The UN Security Council is due to meet later on Tuesday to discuss the crisis

    Please upgrade your browser to view this content.




    Source Article from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47366679

    February 25 at 11:54 PM

    North Korean leader Kim Jong Un arrived at a red-carpet reception in Vietnam Tuesday ahead of a summit meeting with President Trump, after a 65-hour, 2,500-mile train journey from Pyongyang through China.

    Kim disembarked from his personal green armored train at 8:22 a.m. on a cold, rainy morning at Dong Dang station shortly after crossing the Chinese border.

    He was greeted by Vietnamese officials, chatting briefly and smiling. He was handed a bouquet of flowers and shook hands with a long line of officials and military officers before walking past an honor guard dressed in white uniforms and black boots. Outside the station, he smiled and waved at a crowd of people carrying Vietnamese and North Korean flags.

    Kim then got into his personal Mercedes limousine. The car was surrounded by 12 bodyguards, who jogged alongside it briefly before it picked up speed for the final 100 miles to Hanoi.

    Trump is expected to arrive Tuesday evening. 

    Kim Jong Un’s younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, was also seen getting off the train. Already there to greet the North Korean leader were Kim Hyok Chol, who is the recently appointed counterpart of U.S. North Korea envoy Stephen Biegun, and Kim Chang Son, who is Kim Jong Un’s de facto chief of staff.

    Dong Dang station had been cordoned off since Monday, with soldiers and police positioned outside. The entire road from the border town to the capital was closed from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. local time Tuesday.

    Kim flew to his last summit meeting with Trump in Singapore, but North Korea prefers its leaders to stay grounded if at all possible. Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, was rumored to have a fear of flying.

    Featuring heavy armor and bulletproof tinted windows, the train is believed to travel at an average speed of about 35 miles per hour. A South Korean media report based on intelligence reports and defectors’ accounts said it contains conference rooms, an audience chamber, an office with TV screens and satellite phones, and bedrooms. Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported it also carries a small helicopter in case of emergencies.

    Kim’s summit with Trump is scheduled to begin with a private dinner Wednesday evening, the White House announced, followed by a series of official meetings Thursday. Trump will be joined by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney for the dinner. Kim will also have two aides present, and both men will have translators.

    South Korea’s state-run Yonhap news agency said Hanoi Opera House is a possible venue for the dinner, after it was visited by chief of staff Kim Chang Son and U.S. officials last week.

    Trump will meet Vietnam’s president and prime minister on Wednesday before his dinner with Kim.

    Just before 11 a.m., Kim’s motorcade, numbering dozens of vehicles, including two armored tactical vehicles with machine guns mounted on top, sped past a few hundred onlookers and nearly as many reporters along Pho Ly Thuong, a boulevard in the center of Hanoi that was cordoned off by police. Some Vietnamese waved American, North Korean and Vietnamese flags as the motorcade pulled up to the Melia, a hotel where Kim and his entourage are staying. His bodyguards could be seen sprinting into place in front of the main entrance for Kim’s arrival.

    The Melia also is housing some of the traveling White House press corps, mostly television news correspondents from the major networks, who have traveled here to cover the summit — an awkward coincidence for an authoritarian ruler who is used to tightly controlled state media in North Korea.

    The Melia is a Spanish-owned hotel that has hosted big-name leaders including former Cuban president Raúl Castro, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and former U.S. defense secretary Jim Mattis.

    Kim’s schedule in Vietnam has not been publicly announced. Diplomats based in Hanoi said Kim might visit the industrial town of Haiphong and the nearby picturesque tourist site of Ha Long Bay, where limestone karsts rise out of emerald seas. But a rumored trip to a factory operated by South Korean electronics giant Samsung north of Hanoi now appeared unlikely, one official said.

    Kim is thought to be keen to develop North Korea’s economy, especially by promoting tourism and attracting foreign investment into special economic zones.

    The U.S. and South Korean governments also want to encourage him to follow Vietnam’s path from socialism to free-market reform, and his side trips could encourage the notion that he might indeed want to move North Korea away from state socialism and self-reliance.

    But many experts say there is no sign he has any intention of relaxing his state’s vice-like grip on its people or allowing foreign influence to spread. Vietnam’s incredible opening to the world undertaken over the past three decades is unlikely to be a path for North Korea to follow.

    North Korea state media showed a video of Kim’s departure from Pyongyang on Saturday, with a platform clock showing 1627 (4:27 p.m.) on Feb. 23 as he strolled down a long red carpet dressed in a long black overcoat, past an armed guard.

    He was seen waving to a small crowd of clapping and cheering people ecstatically waving pink plastic flowers. A line of officials was then seen walking down the platform, also clapping.

    Hanoi’s exquisite French Colonial-style Metropole hotel is a likely venue for the summit itself, diplomats said. U.S. security and logistics planners were spotted on the hotel grounds on Monday, while reporters and television cameras were gathered outside the building in the heart of the old city.

    Signs of the historic tête-à-tête between Trump and Kim haven’t been confined to the Vietnamese capital’s elite travel locales. In Hanoi’s Old Quarter, shopkeepers, T-shirt makers and flag designers are making the most out of the rare meeting of two longtime adversaries with a host of commemorative swag.

    For 100,000 dong ($4.30), tourists can buy a flag emblazoned with the two leaders’ faces that reads “Make the World Better.” One local T-shirt printer said he couldn’t meet the demand for the Kim-Trump shirts and had to use hair dryers to speed up the production process.

    A local microbrewer is now offering a specialty brew “Kim Jong Ale,” a kimchi sour ale with gentle and refreshing tart notes that belied the dictator’s ignominious reputation.

    The rapidly developing communist country has embraced Washington in recent years as it seeks to counterbalance its long-standing but often antagonistic and sometimes hostile relationship with Beijing.

    As word of a potential second summit between Kim and Trump circulated last year, Vietnamese officials quickly proposed to play host, diplomats said. The interest Vietnam’s leaders have in providing a forum to reduce tensions between the two sides appears to have public support as well.

    In interviews with shopkeepers along the Old Quarter’s bustling streets and sidewalks, vendors expressed support for peaceful diplomatic dialogue, and one T-shirt printer said he sold more summit shirts to locals than foreigners.

    Yonhap reported that Kim will stay until Saturday, citing an unnamed source.

    “On his train trip back, Chairman Kim can drop by Beijing and debrief President Xi Jinping on the outcome of the second summit,” said Cheong Seong-chang, an expert at South Korea’s Sejong Institute. “Kim is expected to reassure Xi about his commitment to denuclearization talks and ask for military and economic support from China.”

    The United States’ main allies in Asia, South Korea and Japan, may have to wait longer for face-to-face debriefs. Trump will fly straight back to Washington after the summit, while Pompeo will take a plane to the Philippines.

    Min Joo Kim and David Nakamura contributed to this report.

    Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/north-korean-leader-kim-jong-un-arrives-in-vietnam-by-train-for-summit-with-trump/2019/02/25/5e2a9420-3912-11e9-b786-d6abcbcd212a_story.html

    Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, pictured earlier this month, issued an executive order on Monday recalling all National Guard and Airmen troops from the U.S.-Mexico border.

    Jose Luis Magana/AP


    hide caption

    toggle caption

    Jose Luis Magana/AP

    Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, pictured earlier this month, issued an executive order on Monday recalling all National Guard and Airmen troops from the U.S.-Mexico border.

    Jose Luis Magana/AP

    Gov. Tony Evers recalled Wisconsin’s National Guard troops from the southern border, making him the third state leader to challenge the Trump administration’s claims of a national emergency along the U.S.-Mexico line.

    “There is simply not ample evidence to support the president’s contention of a national security crisis at our southwestern border,” Evers, a Democrat, wrote in a tweet on Monday afternoon.

    “Therefore, there is no justification for the ongoing presence of Wisconsin National Guard personnel at the border,” the newly sworn-in governor added.

    A statement about the executive order, signed Monday, offers a bit more detail: 112 Guard Soldiers and Airmen, under the command of then-Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, were deployed to the Arizona border on June 21, 2018, to assist with border security.

    Now, Evers is revoking that order.

    It is unclear exactly when the troops will return but Evers said he had directed the adjutant general to “promptly withdraw” all personnel.

    “I cannot support keeping our brave service men and women away from their families without a clear need or purpose that would actively benefit the people of Wisconsin or our nation,” he said.

    Earlier this month, President Trump declared a national emergency in order to fund a border wall, citing mounting criminal activity.

    “It’s a great thing to do because we have an invasion of drugs, invasion of gangs, invasion of people. And it’s unacceptable,” Trump said at the announcement.

    But even before the declaration, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lunan Grisham, also a Democrat, ordered the removal of the majority of Guard troops deployed at her state’s border — including soldiers from Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Wisconsin.

    About a week later, California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom also moved to pull out most of the 360 troops serving as border security alongside federal agents.

    Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2019/02/25/697976575/wisconsin-gov-tony-evers-pulls-national-guard-from-border-says-no-justification