Melanie Keener stands outside the Storey County Courthouse in Virginia City, Nev., where she now works in a largely undefined security job. After filing a sexual harassment complaint against Sheriff Gerald Antinoro, Keener was removed from her position as the sheriff’s chief deputy.
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Melanie Keener stands outside the Storey County Courthouse in Virginia City, Nev., where she now works in a largely undefined security job. After filing a sexual harassment complaint against Sheriff Gerald Antinoro, Keener was removed from her position as the sheriff’s chief deputy.
Maggie Starbard for NPR
In a small county in rural northern Nevada, Melanie Keener was once the second-most powerful person in law enforcement. She was Storey County’s chief deputy, overseeing detentions, investigations and the patrol division.
That ended in 2016 when she reported her boss, Sheriff Gerald Antinoro, for sexual harassment.
“Coming forward has broke me,” Keener said.
Reporting her boss, she said, has ruined her nearly 20-year law enforcement career. She was removed from her position and relegated to an isolated desk in the Storey County Courthouse in Virginia City.
Meanwhile, the man she accused, Antinoro, remains the top law enforcement official in Storey County. He’s still sheriff even after an internal investigation of her complaint found that Antinoro had violated the county’s sexual harassment policy.
Accusations against Antinoro aren’t limited to Keener’s suit. In fact, the county administrator said in court proceedings that there have been “numerous” complaints against the sheriff. Court documents, a police report, interviews and state ethics commission hearings detail multiple other allegations. They range from harassment to using racial slurs and misusing government resources. There also are more serious allegations, including rape.
The allegations have prompted Antinoro’s critics in this rural county, with a population of about 4,000, to ask what it takes to unseat a man accused of so much misconduct, especially toward women.
Storey County Sheriff Gerald Antinoro, here in Virginia City, Nev., is being sued for sexual harassment by his former chief deputy, Melanie Keener.
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Storey County Sheriff Gerald Antinoro, here in Virginia City, Nev., is being sued for sexual harassment by his former chief deputy, Melanie Keener.
Maggie Starbard for NPR
Antinoro, known as Jerry, has never been prosecuted for a crime. He denies all the allegations that have been made against him, saying they’re part of an organized witch hunt by people who don’t like having a law-enforcing sheriff in town. In fact, he won his third term to office last year and beat a recall effort by his opponents.
“The people of Storey County haven’t bought into their nonsense,” Antinoro said in an interview at his office in Virginia City. “And they keep returning me to office because obviously somebody thinks I’m doing a good job and that I’m a decent guy.”
The law enforcement convention
Keener’s lawsuit details what allegedly happened between her and Antinoro. She claims her troubles began on a business trip to Ely, Nev., for a law enforcement convention in 2015. Keener and Antinoro drove the roughly five-hour drive together.
On the last night, after a little gambling and light drinking, she and Antinoro walked back to their separate rooms. She said she told him about “blowing” $80 gambling.
In her room, while she was washing her face and changing for bed, she heard the ding of a text message. It was from Antinoro.
“And about that blowing thing…LOL,” it said, followed by a smiley-face emoji.
She deflected what she read as clear sexual innuendo. She texted back that she’d probably lost $100 altogether. She said she was trying to steer the conversation back to a place where she felt comfortable without upsetting her boss.
She got another text: “I’m bored stiff over here. LOL.” Then another asking her to grab another drink. Keener told him she was going to bed.
The next day, the car ride home was equally uncomfortable when he started talking.
Overlooking a snow-covered Virginia City. The majority of residents are retirees, and tourists head here for the preserved charm of an Old West town.
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Overlooking a snow-covered Virginia City. The majority of residents are retirees, and tourists head here for the preserved charm of an Old West town.
Maggie Starbard for NPR
“There was just this long narrative of his sexual life and to the point where I didn’t know what to say,” Keener said. “This is my boss. I was terrified that I would lose my job. So I didn’t say anything. And then the treatment just got worse.”
She said she was silent as Antinoro detailed his visits to swinger clubs, his penchant for watching his girlfriend at the time have sex with other men in public. She wrote it all down in a statement for the county’s internal investigation, which was included in court proceedings.
“I don’t know — maybe I didn’t respond the way he thought I would,” she said.
Her cool reaction to Antinoro’s sexual banter, she alleged, led to months of growing hostile behavior.Antinoro would throw his feet up on her desk repeatedly when she was speaking. Once, fed up, she claims she put her gum on his shoe in protest. He scraped it off and threw it at her head.
A Polaroid picture of Melanie Keener on her first day as a police officer. Keener began her law enforcement career nearly 20 years ago, but after reporting her boss for sexual harassment, she feels as though she will no longer be able to continue a career in law enforcement.
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A Polaroid picture of Melanie Keener on her first day as a police officer. Keener began her law enforcement career nearly 20 years ago, but after reporting her boss for sexual harassment, she feels as though she will no longer be able to continue a career in law enforcement.
Maggie Starbard for NPR
About eight months later, she said, she was supposed to go on another business trip with her boss. She said she was worried about going out of town with him again.While Antinoro was away, she found the courage to report him.
“I felt like it was a burden,” Keener said. “And they didn’t know what to do with me, so they just stuck me in the county manager’s office and they were just like, ‘OK, you stay here. You report to work here.'”
Antinoro stayed in his position as sheriff while the county investigated. And Keener? Human resources took her badge, her gun, her IDs and relegated her to a hidden corner of the brick courthouse in Virginia City. She’s still there, even after the investigation found that Antinoro had violated the county’s policy against sexual harassment.
“I am really trying to get past it,” she said. “It’s hard when you know that your law enforcement career is over and the person who ended your career is walking around like a little hero everywhere he goes.”
And it feels like there is nothing she and other women can do, she said.
“Nothing this man does, nothing he has done ever catches up to him,” Keener said. “You know, they call him Teflon because it doesn’t matter what he does wrong. He gets away with it.”
Keener sits at her desk in the back corner of the Storey County Museum in Virginia City. After filing a sexual harassment complaint against Antinoro, Keener was removed from her position as the sheriff’s chief deputy.
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Keener sits at her desk in the back corner of the Storey County Museum in Virginia City. After filing a sexual harassment complaint against Antinoro, Keener was removed from her position as the sheriff’s chief deputy.
Maggie Starbard for NPR
Storey County’s development
Storey County isn’t well known outside Nevada. It’s about 22 miles southeast of Reno and some 44 miles northeast of Lake Tahoe, near the California-Nevada border. The county seat, Virginia City, is a former silver and gold mining town that was the setting of the TV Western Bonanza. Many of its storefronts still look like they’re right out of the late 1800s.
The few hundred locals in Virginia City frequent the Bucket of Blood Saloon, built in 1876. It’s just down the street from the sheriff’s office, past the Virginia City Outlaws theater and across from Grandma’s Fudge Factory. The majority of residents are older retirees, and tourists head here for the preserved charm of the Old West.
But there has been a push in recent years to lure high-tech businesses to the area. That infusion of new money is bringing new scrutiny to local government and the people who run it.
The county seat, Virginia City, was once a silver and gold mining town. It looks like something out of the late 1800s.
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The county seat, Virginia City, was once a silver and gold mining town. It looks like something out of the late 1800s.
Maggie Starbard for NPR
It’s particularly concerning because the controversy around the sheriff is playing out in the shadow of the national #MeToo movement. In this rural area, though, women have few recourses against elected county officials, said Marlene Lockard of the nonpartisan Nevada Women’s Lobby.
“In this day and age, the message this sends to women is alarming, and I do think that women in that community are afraid to come forward,” Lockard said.
The Nevada Women’s Lobby is pushing for legislation to allow a “provision of impeachment or removal” for an elected county official who has been found to have violated sexual harassment policies multiple times.
“[Storey County] really is the last vestiges. It’s a tired old saw where the good old boys reign,” Lockard said. “I think this legislation and the efforts of many different resources in Nevada will send them a message: Just because you’re a lone county in rural Nevada doesn’t mean the women there should be treated any differently.”
Virginia City is a small town, which means pretty much everyone knows about the sheriff’s troubles — and about his feud with Lance Gilman.
Lance Gilman is a county commissioner and the owner of the famous Mustang Ranch brothel,an important source of revenue for the county.
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Lance Gilman is a county commissioner and the owner of the famous Mustang Ranch brothel,an important source of revenue for the county.
Maggie Starbard for NPR
Gilman is also a well-known and powerful man around town. He’s a county commissioner and the owner of the famous Mustang Ranch brothel,an important source of revenue for the county. Gilman said it pays hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes and fees each year.
Along with his business partner, Roger Norman, Gilman is responsible for bringing more than 100 companies to the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center. They include tech giants like Tesla and Google. He said the businesses have taken the county from one of the poorest in Nevada to potentially the wealthiest.
Gilman wants Antinoro removed from office, saying it’s not good for business to have a man accused of sexual assault and harassment in charge of law enforcement. Gilman and his business partner spearheaded an unsuccessful recall effort against the sheriff that ended in 2017. He’s also suing Antinoro for defamation.
Antinoro said Gilman is out to get him because Gilman doesn’t like the way he enforces the law at the brothel — something Gilman insists is not true. Meanwhile, Gilman said the businesses he has brought to town are concerned.
“It’s had a worry impact on the businesses. Obviously they’re here. Obviously we’re successful,” Gilman said. “They are all, unfortunately, aware of what we have going on.”
Allegations of rape
The most serious accusation against Antinoro is rape.
In a 2014 Sparks, Nev., police report, a woman said that Antinoro, then a deputy in the sheriff’s office, raped her in 2006 at the direction of another sheriff’s office employee.
The woman, afraid of being identified, reported the alleged rape to police under a pseudonym. She didn’t know Antinoro, she said, but did know the other man.
“They both were in full uniform with guns,” their accuser saidin an interview with NPR.
She spoke on the condition of anonymity, still afraid of the men. She said it took her about eight years to gather the courage to report the alleged rape to police, she said.
“I knew it was gonna be very hard for people to believe that these two had done that,” she said. After all, they were in law enforcement. “I was scared.”
The Storey County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia City. Sheriff Antinoro’s nine years in the position are marred by multiple accusations that range from harassment to alleged criminal behavior. They include rape, organizing the gang rape of a woman, sexual harassment, using racial slurs and misusing government resources.
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The Storey County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia City. Sheriff Antinoro’s nine years in the position are marred by multiple accusations that range from harassment to alleged criminal behavior. They include rape, organizing the gang rape of a woman, sexual harassment, using racial slurs and misusing government resources.
Maggie Starbard for NPR
She’s still afraid. She recounted the alleged assault in an interview on the condition that she’d never be identified.
She told police she was asleep at home when she heard the crackle of a police radio.
“I was not awake when it first started happening, and when I became fully awake and realized what was going on, I was rigid with fear,” she said.
She said she was forced to perform oral sex on Antinoro at the direction of the other man. Then Antinoro raped her as the other man watched, pleasuring himself. NPR is not naming that man because his accuser is afraid that identifying him will identify her.
“Then they both got up, got dressed and left,” she said. “My family doesn’t know about it. My friends don’t know about it. I’m embarrassed. I know I shouldn’t be, because I was the victim. But I am embarrassed that somebody had that kind of control over me.”
Too ashamed to initially confide in friends or family, she turned to alcohol. She said that because of the drinking, she lost her job and custody of her daughter.
“I was trying to block it out. Just trying to get all the memories to go away,” she said. “Beating myself up because I shouldn’t have let it happen.”
Finally she told a friend. In 2014, she reported it to the Sparks police near Storey County, abouteight years after the alleged assault. But police couldn’t pursue the case. The statute of limitations had run out.
She’s sober now, she has a steady job and she has spent a lot of time in therapy. But she’s still afraid.
Many accusations against Antinoro are documented in hundreds of pages of depositions in the two lawsuits against the sheriff, a police report alleging rape and interviews with alleged victims and their lawyers. And yet he has never been prosecuted.
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Many accusations against Antinoro are documented in hundreds of pages of depositions in the two lawsuits against the sheriff, a police report alleging rape and interviews with alleged victims and their lawyers. And yet he has never been prosecuted.
Maggie Starbard for NPR
“I don’t live in that county. But I drive through that county to get to my home, and every time I see a Storey County car, I freeze,” she said. “I feel my blood pressure rising, my pulse racing. I feel sweaty. Because I think, ‘What if it’s one of them?’ “
Antinoro denies he raped the woman. He said in a deposition that it was consensual and didn’t involve anyone else.
Another alleged assault is also detailed in Keener’s sexual harassment lawsuit. This one involved a woman who said she was romantically involved with Antinoro. She has never reported her alleged rape to police — she and her lawyer said she’s too afraid to speak about what allegedly happened. She did not speak with NPR, and NPR is not identifying her because she is the alleged victim of a sexual assault.
In her deposition, she testified thatshe met Antinoro at her job. In 2015, he heard her birthday was coming up, and he asked her to go skydiving.
“It’s always been on my bucket list,” she said she told him.
A portrait of Antinoro hangs on the wall of the Storey County Courthouse in Virginia City. Despite many allegations, he has won three elections and beat a recall effort by his opponents.
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A portrait of Antinoro hangs on the wall of the Storey County Courthouse in Virginia City. Despite many allegations, he has won three elections and beat a recall effort by his opponents.
Maggie Starbard for NPR
She’d been divorced for a few years, and he seemed nice. So she said yes.
“The more things we did, I, I just felt comfortable with him,” she testified in her deposition. “I thought he was an OK guy, you know?”
She agreed to go with him to Lodi, Calif., for a romantic weekend. He asked her to wear a dress he liked. They swam at the hotel pool, had dinner and cocktails, then went for a swim again. That’s when things turned.
She testified that she looked up from the pool and saw Antinoro speaking to three men she didn’t recognize. She asked who they were — friends of his? He said no, they were there to have sex with her. She said she was shocked and that she didn’t want to do it. She threatened to call the police if he didn’t make them leave.
She said she went to the room; Antinoro followed her. She went to the bathroom. Then the door opened. One of the men from the pool was there. He pulled her out of the bathroom.
“And then they just, they threw me up against one of the other guys,” she testified. “I started screaming and screaming, and the other guy that was there put some duct tape on my mouth and threw me on the bed. It was all over after that.”
She testified that the three strangersraped her. Antinoro was there at the beginning, she said, but she was so distraught as she tried to fight the men off that she’s not sure if he stayed. The next morning, she said, Antinoro acted like nothing had happened.
“He set me up to get raped,” she said in her testimony.
Afraid, she pretended everything was fine until she got home and away from Antinoro. She has never pressed charges, also out of fear.On the day she was deposed, she was still afraid.
“I’m scared to death of him,” she said in her testimony. She went on: “Now that I’ve given this testimony, well, what’s he going to do? … That’s why I didn’t want to do this.”
Her statement was referred to police in Lodi, Calif., by the Nevada attorney general. The police opened a case in 2018, then closed it. To protect the identity of any possible victims of sexual assault, they would not discuss the case.
Antinoro denies the allegations against him. “It’s a concerted effort by a small group of people to try and remove me from office,” he said. Because “I enforce the rules, I follow the law and I don’t give people breaks.”
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Antinoro denies the allegations against him. “It’s a concerted effort by a small group of people to try and remove me from office,” he said. Because “I enforce the rules, I follow the law and I don’t give people breaks.”
Maggie Starbard for NPR
“A complete and utter fabrication”
Antinoro has never been prosecuted for or charged with these alleged sexual assaults. He denies the allegations.
He spoke at length to NPR from his office about the accusations. He called every assault accusation a fabrication. He attributed the sexual harassment findings and the reports of racist language in the Keener complaint as people being politically correct.
He also denies the more serious accusations.
The alleged rape in Sparks, Nev.?
“It was false then and it’s false now, no truth to it whatsoever,” he said.
The orchestrated gang rape in Lodi, Calif.?
“That is a complete and utter fabrication. Plain and simple,” he said.
He does acknowledge he has called white people the N-word, but he doesn’t see that as racist.
The conversation about his sex life with Keener, his former chief deputy, during their car ride home from the conference?
He said if it bothered her she should’ve said something.
As far as the text messages to Keener?
“There was no sexual innuendo. Never had any interest in her in that manner,” he said. “And, you know, it makes me not want to talk to anybody because you can take anything and turn it into sexual connotation.”
Antinoro’s opponents say they are determined to remove him from office.
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Antinoro’s opponents say they are determined to remove him from office.
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So why would so many people make up these stories?
“It’s a concerted effort by a small group of people to try and remove me from office,” Antinoro said. Because “I enforce the rules, I follow the law and I don’t give people breaks.”
Before landing in Storey County, he bounced around different law enforcement agencies in Utah andthen in Nevada. He was known as Gerald Cook until about 17 years ago, when he changed his name. He said he wanted to retake his family’s Italian name.
He was“invited to leave his position” as chief enforcement officer at the Nevada Transportation Authority in 2006, hesaid in court proceedings, though it’s unclear why. Later that year, he joined the Storey County Sheriff’s Office as a deputy. In 2010, he was elected to his first term as sheriff.
He sits at his desk. On the bookshelf nearby is a framed picture of him and President Trump. He said he related to Trump because he was accused of so many “false” things driven, he said, by political vendettas.
“That’s why,” he said, he wrote the president a letter of support.
“Knowing what I’ve gone through,” he said. He related.
He got a signed response back.
“Dear Sheriff Antinoro, thank you for your kind letter of support,” it reads. “I appreciate your service to our nation as Sheriff of the Storey County Police Department.”
Antinoro framed it and put it on the shelf next to the picture in his office.
Ethics commission investigation
Antinoro’s opponents, though, are determined to remove him from that office; chief among them is Gilman.
Lance Gilman is largely responsible for bringing tech giants like Tesla to Storey County. He and his business partner at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center spearheaded an effort to recall the sheriff, but Antinoro prevailed.
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Lance Gilman is largely responsible for bringing tech giants like Tesla to Storey County. He and his business partner at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center spearheaded an effort to recall the sheriff, but Antinoro prevailed.
Maggie Starbard for NPR
“We’ve tried every avenue to say, ‘Look at this,’ ” Gilman said in an interview at the industrial center that houses the more than 100 businesses he helped bring to the county.
The sheriff’s opponents asked the Nevada attorney general’s office to review all the allegations.
A statement from the attorney general’s office said investigators “spent hundreds of hours conducting a thorough investigation of allegations related to Storey County Sheriff Antinoro, including coordinating with the FBI.” But it said it “found no criminal conduct within our office’s jurisdiction to prosecute.”
The statement pointed out that matters like sexual harassment fall under the Nevada Equal Rights Commission and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
It closed the investigation last year.
“This isn’t about politics,” Keener says. “This is about an individual that is the highest law enforcement authority in Storey County.”
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“This isn’t about politics,” Keener says. “This is about an individual that is the highest law enforcement authority in Storey County.”
Maggie Starbard for NPR
Now Gilman is pinning his hopes on the Nevada Commission on Ethics. If a county official is found to have “willfully violated” the ethics of his office three times, the commission must file a removal complaint with the courts, said Yvonne Nevarez-Goodson, the commission’s executive director.
Antinoro has been found to have willfully violated the ethics of his office twice. He is appealing one of those decisions and plans to appeal the other.
Meanwhile, women like Keener say they worry that she and his other alleged victims will be dismissed as political pawns.
“This isn’t about politics. This is about an individual that is the highest law enforcement authority in Storey County,” she said. “To see it as politics, that takes away from those that have been victimized by him.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has departed for Hanoi by train for talks with US President Donald Trump.
Although he flew to Singapore when he met Donald Trump in Singapore last year, it seems the long-standing tradition of long-distance train travel for North Korean leaders is still going strong.
Rep. Matt Gaetz apologized late Tuesday for comments many regarded as threatening to Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal attorney who is set to testify Wednesday in front of the House Oversight Committee.
“While it is important 2 create context around the testimony of liars like Michael Cohen, it was NOT my intent to threaten, as some believe I did. I’m deleting the tweet,” Gaetz wrote on Twitter.
The Florida Republican and Trump ally came under fire for a tweet earlier Tuesday that asked Cohen, “Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot…”
Gaetz later defended his comments, telling reporters, “We’re witness testing not witness tampering. And when witnesses come before Congress their truthfulness and veracity are in question and we have the opportunity to test them.”
Cohen, who pleaded guilty to lying to Congress, is expected to testify Wednesday about Trump’s knowledge of leaked Democratic emails and negotiations for Trump Tower Moscow during the campaign, along with the hush-money payments to two women who alleged affairs with Trump that led to Cohen’s guilty plea for campaign finance violations.
Gaetz’ apology was in response to a statement from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who had issued an admonishment after Gaetz’ initial tweet to members about comments that “can adversely affect the ability of house committees to obtain the truthful and complete information necessary to fulfill their duties” — comments she said should be monitored by the Ethics Committee.
Ahead of the president’s dinner with Kim, some reporters who were supposed to go into the dinner — including ones who asked questions in the previous appearance — were barred from entering.
At first the White House was not going to allow any print pooler reporters into the room, citing sensitivities of shouted questions. But according to the designated print pooler, a Wall Street Journal reporter, photographers protested, and the Journal reporter was allowed into the room. Wire pool reporters were not allowed into the room.
But Sanders appeared to change her explanation, seeming to cite space as the main issue at stake.
“Due to the sensitive nature of the meetings we have limited the pool for the dinner to a smaller group, but ensured that representation of photographers, TV, radio and print poolers are all in the room,” Sarah Sanders said in a statement. “We are continuing to negotiate aspects of this historic summit and will always work to make sure the U.S. media has as much access as possible.”
On Tuesday, India said its Air Force conducted strikes against a militant camp in Pakistani territory. That attack killed a “very large number” of terrorists, trainers and senior commanders belonging to the Jaish-e-Mohammed, according to New Delhi.
India’s response came after the group recently claimed responsibility for a deadly attack in India-controlled Kashmir where more than 40 security officers were killed. That suicide car bombing prompted a barrage of international criticism toward Pakistan for failing to crack down on terror groups operating on its soil.
For its part, Islamabad denied there were any casualties from India’s Tuesday strike.
On Wednesday, Pakistan said its Air Force carried out strikes along the so-called Line of Control to demonstrate its “right, will and capability for self defence.” The Line of Control is the de facto border between the Indian and Pakistani parts of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Then, according to a spokesman for the Pakistan armed forces, Indian planes entered Pakistani airspace and two jets were shot down. One of the aircraft fell on India’s side of Kashmir, while the second came down in Pakistani-held territory, and its pilot was captured, the spokesman said.
An Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman acknowledged that one pilot was missing and a combat jet had been lost. That spokesman also claimed a Pakistani jet had been shot down in the altercation.
Why does it matter?
Kashmir has always been a sensitive topic for both countries, which have fought two wars over the mountainous region. In 2014, forces from Pakistan and India exchanged fire in border clashes.
Tuesday’s attack was the first time India has used airstrikes inside Pakistan since 1971. Moreover, the area it struck — Balakot — was well outside Pakistani Kashmir and beyond the Line of Control.
Since the terrorist attack earlier this month, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been under pressure from his base to respond with force ahead of a parliamentary election due to take place by May.
“That India entered Pakistan’s airspace is a clear indication that it is willing to do whatever it takes to keep India safe, which, I suspect, caught Pakistan off-guard,” Akhil Bery, analyst for South Asia at political consultancy Eurasia Group, told CNBC on Tuesday.
Dhruva Jaishankar, a fellow in foreign policy studies at Brookings India, said India has faced a series of terrorist attacks since the 1990s from groups and individuals based in Pakistan. The challenge for both sides has always been about how to respond to provocations from its neighbor, especially after each country became a nuclear power.
Jaishankar told CNBC that both countries have tested the limitations of how far they can escalate the conflict before reaching a “nuclear threshold.”
To be clear, escalating tensions to the point of nuclear conflict would be catastrophic for both India and Pakistan and would destabilize the entire region — an option unlikely to be taken by either New Delhi or Islamabad.
For his part, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s sway with the country’s influential military is limited. The way Khan handles this week’s situation will be a big test of his leadership, according to Moeed Yusuf, associate vice president for the Asia Center at the United States Institute of Peace.
“You have a new leader in Pakistan who (has to) show that he is strong and willing to stand up to India,” Yusuf told CNBC. “He must also follow the army’s lead and so if the army decides to escalate, he won’t be able to say much to them right now.”
For Modi, meanwhile, it would be “political suicide” if he walked back on the conflict at this stage — when it may appear to outside observers that India and Pakistan had evenly matched each other’s force, Yusuf said.
What’s next?
Experts have said it is highly unlikely that a war would break out between the two nations — even if the situation escalates further in the coming days.
Eurasia Group’s Bery said New Delhi’s public statements on its air strikes were careful to emphasize that it was an attack on a terror camp that was already planning terrorism against India. Modi may also have electoral politics in mind.
“Modi has already alluded to the strikes in a campaign rally earlier today, and will continue to press the point he is willing to do whatever it takes to keep India safe,” Bery said on Tuesday, adding that the prime minister is positioning himself as someone committed to India’s security to appeal to more voters.
For Pakistan’s part, Jaishankar said it is possible that Islamabad would play up Wednesday’s air strikes as “some kind of a retribution” and that could even lead to a de-escalation of tension between the countries.
The international community may need to get involved in coming days, according to Yusuf, who said the U.N. Security Council should step in and prevent further use of force.
— The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to the report.
As House Democrats vote Tuesday to stop President Trump’s emergency declaration on the southern border, congressional Republicans should ask themselves: Why is it that every other president is permitted by courts to exercise “executive discretion,” and yet Trump isn’t?
A New York Times report on Monday set up the scene for weak-willed Senate Republicans, writing that, “The [Democrat-controlled] House’s vote on a declaration of disapproval will force Republicans to choose between the congressional prerogative over federal spending established in the Constitution and a president determined to go around the legislative branch to secure funds for a border wall that Congress has refused to grant.”
Trump’s emergency declaration earlier this month does nothing more than free up little bits of money already allocated to the executive branch so that he can build more wall barriers on the border, stunting the overwhelming flood of illegal immigration from Latin America.
It’s every bit of a crisis today as it was when former President Barack Obama called it that in 2014, and the media happily played along. Trump’s official declaration only means he’s using his last option to address the issue.
This isn’t an choice between fidelity to the Constitution or blind loyalty to a president; though I’ll note the executive branch is part of that newly appreciated document, and Congress has already given the president the authority to do exactly what Trump is pursuing. This is a choice about relinquishing authority to Democrats to set immigration policy even while a Republican president is in office.
Obama made up his own law in 2012 that said nearly 1 million eligible illegal immigrants in the U.S. would not only be overlooked by law enforcement but could come out, declare themselves to the public, and receive indefinite legal protection.
Take for granted that the program was created out of compassion — plus Obama’s upcoming re-election — for young immigrants who may only know the U.S. as their home, but it should then also be taken for granted that if one president can dictate immigration policy within the authority Congress has given them, the same right belongs to every other president. Or, at the very least, every other president should be able to exercise power in moving to limit the influx of foreigners by erecting limited structures on the border.
Not so fast, says the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit!
The federal court ruled in November that the Trump administration could not end the Obama-era program with the argument that it was never legal to set it up in the first place. And yet, in the court’s unanimous opinion, it repeatedly acknowledged that the executive branch has the right to determine enforcement of immigration law by way of “executive discretion.”
Page 10: Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals “was a permissible exercise of executive discretion.”
Page 27: The Reagan administration “exercised executive discretion to defer the deportation of the minor children of non-citizens” and “extended voluntary departure, the mechanism through which these individuals were allowed to remain in the United States is, like deferred action, a creature of executive discretion.”
Page 69: “We therefore conclude that DACA was a permissible exercise of executive discretion.”
Who with a straight face could argue that it’s acceptable “executive discretion” for one president to carve out an exception for up to 1 million people not legally entitled residence in the U.S. but that it’s unconstitutional for another duly elected executive to eliminate that same exception? The 9th Circuit did it.
Now Trump’s emergency declaration is, as everyone knew it would be, tangled up in court. That order didn’t even affect anyone in the U.S., whether legally here or not. It did nothing more than cobble together funds available to the executive so that Trump might add on to the existing walls and barriers at the southern border, slowing down the drug dealers, human traffickers, and child molesters from Central America.
Skittish Republicans can keep this in mind when presented with the fake dilemma that they must either choose between the Constitution and the president. They can instead choose reality.
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.
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.
Residents and officials of Budgam district, in Indian-controlled Kashmir, said one Indian plane crashed in an open field there at about 10:15 a.m. local time.
“It was an Indian Air Force jet. The jet is completely charred and we have recovered the dead body of the pilot,” said Syed Sehrish Asgar, the deputy commissioner of Budgam district.
Rashid Ahmad Mir, a resident of Budgam, said he heard a loud crash and looked out his window to find smoke billowing out from a nearby field. He rushed to the scene of the flames and found a charred body.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, India’s Air Force entered Pakistan to strike what the government claimed was a training camp belonging to the Jaish-e-Mohammed militant group in Balakot, Khyber-Pakhtunkwha Province, resulting in “heavy casualties.” But the Pakistani government and residents of the area reached by telephone said the strikes instead struck an open ravine, resulting in minimal damage.
Those strikes were in response to the Feb. 14 suicide bombing by Jaish-e-Mohammed on an Indian paramilitary convoy in Kashmir, which New Delhi vowed to respond to. The suicide bombing killed 40 Indian soldiers, the worst incident in Kashmir in three decades.
Jaish-e-Mohammed is classified as a terrorist group by the United Nations and blacklisted. Although the group is formally banned by Pakistan’s government, American and Indian officials say it operates freely in the country, which Islamabad denies.
In an effort to diffuse tensions, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the foreign ministers of both India and Pakistan on Tuesday evening.
As House Democrats vote Tuesday to stop President Trump’s emergency declaration on the southern border, congressional Republicans should ask themselves: Why is it that every other president is permitted by courts to exercise “executive discretion,” and yet Trump isn’t?
A New York Times report on Monday set up the scene for weak-willed Senate Republicans, writing that, “The [Democrat-controlled] House’s vote on a declaration of disapproval will force Republicans to choose between the congressional prerogative over federal spending established in the Constitution and a president determined to go around the legislative branch to secure funds for a border wall that Congress has refused to grant.”
Trump’s emergency declaration earlier this month does nothing more than free up little bits of money already allocated to the executive branch so that he can build more wall barriers on the border, stunting the overwhelming flood of illegal immigration from Latin America.
It’s every bit of a crisis today as it was when former President Barack Obama called it that in 2014, and the media happily played along. Trump’s official declaration only means he’s using his last option to address the issue.
This isn’t an choice between fidelity to the Constitution or blind loyalty to a president; though I’ll note the executive branch is part of that newly appreciated document, and Congress has already given the president the authority to do exactly what Trump is pursuing. This is a choice about relinquishing authority to Democrats to set immigration policy even while a Republican president is in office.
Obama made up his own law in 2012 that said nearly 1 million eligible illegal immigrants in the U.S. would not only be overlooked by law enforcement but could come out, declare themselves to the public, and receive indefinite legal protection.
Take for granted that the program was created out of compassion — plus Obama’s upcoming re-election — for young immigrants who may only know the U.S. as their home, but it should then also be taken for granted that if one president can dictate immigration policy within the authority Congress has given them, the same right belongs to every other president. Or, at the very least, every other president should be able to exercise power in moving to limit the influx of foreigners by erecting limited structures on the border.
Not so fast, says the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit!
The federal court ruled in November that the Trump administration could not end the Obama-era program with the argument that it was never legal to set it up in the first place. And yet, in the court’s unanimous opinion, it repeatedly acknowledged that the executive branch has the right to determine enforcement of immigration law by way of “executive discretion.”
Page 10: Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals “was a permissible exercise of executive discretion.”
Page 27: The Reagan administration “exercised executive discretion to defer the deportation of the minor children of non-citizens” and “extended voluntary departure, the mechanism through which these individuals were allowed to remain in the United States is, like deferred action, a creature of executive discretion.”
Page 69: “We therefore conclude that DACA was a permissible exercise of executive discretion.”
Who with a straight face could argue that it’s acceptable “executive discretion” for one president to carve out an exception for up to 1 million people not legally entitled residence in the U.S. but that it’s unconstitutional for another duly elected executive to eliminate that same exception? The 9th Circuit did it.
Now Trump’s emergency declaration is, as everyone knew it would be, tangled up in court. That order didn’t even affect anyone in the U.S., whether legally here or not. It did nothing more than cobble together funds available to the executive so that Trump might add on to the existing walls and barriers at the southern border, slowing down the drug dealers, human traffickers, and child molesters from Central America.
Skittish Republicans can keep this in mind when presented with the fake dilemma that they must either choose between the Constitution and the president. They can instead choose reality.
President Trump paid a courtesy call Wednesday to the leaders of Vietnam, the nation hosting this week’s summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
During the visit, Trump and Vietnamese President Nguyen Phu Trong presided over the signings of several commercial trade deals affecting the airline industries of their two countries.
U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing signed agreements with VietJet for 100 737 MAX planes and with Bamboo Airways for 10 787 Dreamliners as the two leaders looked on Wednesday.
President Trump meets Vietnamese President Nguyen Phu Trong at the Presidential Palace, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2019, in Hanoi. (Associated Press)
U.S.-based aviation technology company Sabre also inked a deal with Vietnam Airlines.
The White House did not immediately provide details on the agreements.
Trump, who arrived in Hanoi on Tuesday, said he hoped for “great things” from his second meeting with Kim. The president is scheduled to meet with Kim later Wednesday in Hanoi for a second round of nuclear talks.
The U.S. is attempting to achieve denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula following a series of missile tests by North Korea that have worried its immediate regional neighbors, such as China and Japan, and raised concerns that Pyongyang was developing weapons that could reach deep into the U.S. mainland.
The two heads of state previously met in Singapore last June.
As House Democrats vote Tuesday to stop President Trump’s emergency declaration on the southern border, congressional Republicans should ask themselves: Why is it that every other president is permitted by courts to exercise “executive discretion,” and yet Trump isn’t?
A New York Times report on Monday set up the scene for weak-willed Senate Republicans, writing that, “The [Democrat-controlled] House’s vote on a declaration of disapproval will force Republicans to choose between the congressional prerogative over federal spending established in the Constitution and a president determined to go around the legislative branch to secure funds for a border wall that Congress has refused to grant.”
Trump’s emergency declaration earlier this month does nothing more than free up little bits of money already allocated to the executive branch so that he can build more wall barriers on the border, stunting the overwhelming flood of illegal immigration from Latin America.
It’s every bit of a crisis today as it was when former President Barack Obama called it that in 2014, and the media happily played along. Trump’s official declaration only means he’s using his last option to address the issue.
This isn’t an choice between fidelity to the Constitution or blind loyalty to a president; though I’ll note the executive branch is part of that newly appreciated document, and Congress has already given the president the authority to do exactly what Trump is pursuing. This is a choice about relinquishing authority to Democrats to set immigration policy even while a Republican president is in office.
Obama made up his own law in 2012 that said nearly 1 million eligible illegal immigrants in the U.S. would not only be overlooked by law enforcement but could come out, declare themselves to the public, and receive indefinite legal protection.
Take for granted that the program was created out of compassion — plus Obama’s upcoming re-election — for young immigrants who may only know the U.S. as their home, but it should then also be taken for granted that if one president can dictate immigration policy within the authority Congress has given them, the same right belongs to every other president. Or, at the very least, every other president should be able to exercise power in moving to limit the influx of foreigners by erecting limited structures on the border.
Not so fast, says the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit!
The federal court ruled in November that the Trump administration could not end the Obama-era program with the argument that it was never legal to set it up in the first place. And yet, in the court’s unanimous opinion, it repeatedly acknowledged that the executive branch has the right to determine enforcement of immigration law by way of “executive discretion.”
Page 10: Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals “was a permissible exercise of executive discretion.”
Page 27: The Reagan administration “exercised executive discretion to defer the deportation of the minor children of non-citizens” and “extended voluntary departure, the mechanism through which these individuals were allowed to remain in the United States is, like deferred action, a creature of executive discretion.”
Page 69: “We therefore conclude that DACA was a permissible exercise of executive discretion.”
Who with a straight face could argue that it’s acceptable “executive discretion” for one president to carve out an exception for up to 1 million people not legally entitled residence in the U.S. but that it’s unconstitutional for another duly elected executive to eliminate that same exception? The 9th Circuit did it.
Now Trump’s emergency declaration is, as everyone knew it would be, tangled up in court. That order didn’t even affect anyone in the U.S., whether legally here or not. It did nothing more than cobble together funds available to the executive so that Trump might add on to the existing walls and barriers at the southern border, slowing down the drug dealers, human traffickers, and child molesters from Central America.
Skittish Republicans can keep this in mind when presented with the fake dilemma that they must either choose between the Constitution and the president. They can instead choose reality.
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.
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.
If you’re a journalist stranded in Vietnam, an Amtrak passenger stranded on a train or a former Trump lawyer stranded in a nightmare of your own making, you’ll certainly resonate with today’s Short List. It’s Ashley Shaffer with today’s most talked-about stories.
Four thousand-plus migrant children say they were abused
Thousands of migrant children who crossed the southern border into the U.S. reported they were sexually assaulted while in government custody, according to Department of Health and Human Services documents released Tuesday. In the past four years, 4,556 children said they were sexually assaulted while in the care of Health & Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, which takes custody of unaccompanied minors who cross the southern border alone and those separated from their families. The data show the majority of the alleged assaults were carried out by other minors in custody, but at least 178 were carried out by staff. The allegations go back to 2015.
House blocks Trump’s emergency declaration. Now what?
The House voted to block President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency along the southern border on Tuesday, but Democrats didn’t win enough support from Republicans to overcome Trump’s threatened veto. The measure now goes to Senate. Trump declared an emergency this month after Congress sent the president a bipartisan funding bill that failed to meet his $5.7 billion demand for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Democrats have said the declaration is unconstitutional and are using a provision from the National Emergencies Act to try to halt the president. If the resolution passes both houses, Trump could still veto it.
Kim Jong Un gave U.S. journalists the boot
One hotel’s not big enough for American journalists and Kim Jong Un. Kim and his team pulled a fast one on the White House, forcing them to relocate the media’s press filing center from the hotel where the North Korean leader is staying. Television crews that spent weeks setting up equipment and establishing camera positions scrambled in the hours ahead of Trump’s arrival to meet Kim at the nuclear summit meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam. The two world leaders, who’ve threatened each other with nuclear annihilation in the past, are set to convene Wednesday. Few details about their agenda have been released, but it’s a safe bet that much of the discussion will center on their denuclearization agreement.
Real quick
Nearly 200 passengers were stranded for more than 24 hours on an Amtrak train that hit a downed tree in Oregon.
A 21-year-old tweeted lies about Robert Mueller and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. People believed them. Now, he’s eyeing the 2020 election.
Holiday Inn, a.k.a. retirement home? A man in Texas plans to skip a nursing home and check into a Holiday Inn to live his “golden age” – and save money.
Michael Cohen once said he’d “take a bullet” for Trump. Today, he met behind closed doors with a Senate committee planning to accuse the president of ‘criminal conduct,’ according to a source familiar with the testimony. Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and confidant, pleaded guilty to several charges including for paying hush money to women who said they slept with Trump and for lying to Congress about negotiations for a Trump Tower in Russia. The question looming over his testimony: Did the president participate in those crimes? Trump, of course, has said he was not involved. Cohen’s also scheduled to testify for the first time publicly on Wednesday (and yes, it will be televised).
She says Trump kissed without consent. Now she’s suing.
A former staffer on Trump’s 2016 campaign says he kissed her “on the lips” without consent two months before the general election, and now she’s suing. A lawsuit filed Monday says Trump kissed Alva Johnson on his way out of one of the campaign’s RVs at a Florida work event. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders called the allegation “absurd on its face” and said Johnson’s description of events contradicts “multiple highly credible eye witness accounts.” Three Trump supporters who were present, including then-Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, told The Washington Post they did not witness the alleged incident.
This is a compilation of stories from across the USA TODAY Network. Want The Short List straight to your inbox? Sign up, and tell your friends.
Three people were killed in New York on Tuesday when a Manhattan-bound Long Island Rail Road train struck a car on the tracks. (iStock)
Three people were killed in New York on Tuesday night when a Manhattan-bound train struck a car that was on the tracks, officials said.
The vehicle was “trying to beat the gate” at an intersection in Westbury around 7:30 p.m., according to Nassau County police.
The Long Island Rail Road train hit the vehicle, killing all three people inside, officials said. Several passengers on the commuter train suffered minor injuries.
The transit agency said the train was scheduled to arrive at Penn Station in New York City from Ronkonkoma at 7:56 p.m.
Service was suspended in both directions on the Ronkonkoma and Huntington/Port Jefferson branches.
Fourteen candidates are vying to become Chicago’s next mayor, and more than 150 have lined up to run for a seat on the City Council. To win a Chicago race outright, a candidate must win more than 50 percent of the vote. Otherwise each race will go to an April 2 runoff between the top two finishers. Results below are not final.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Thousands of accusations of sexual abuse and harassment of migrant children in government-funded shelters were made over the past four years, including scores directed against adult staff members, according to federal data released Tuesday.
The cases include allegations of inappropriate touching, staff members allegedly watching minors while they bathed and showing pornographic videos to minors. Some of the allegations included inappropriate conduct by minors in shelters against other minors, as well as by staff members.
Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., released the Health and Human Services Department data during a hearing on the Trump administration’s policy of family separations at the border. The data span both the Obama and Trump administrations. The figures were first reported by Axios.
From October 2014 to July 2018, the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a part of Health and Human Services, received 4,556 complaints. The Department of Justice received an additional 1,303 complaints, including 178 allegations of sexual abuse by adult staff.
Health and Human Services officials said the vast majority of allegations weren’t substantiated, and they defended their care of children.
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“We share the concern,” said Jonathan White, a Health and Human Services official who was in charge of the effort to reunify children with their parents, testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. “Any time a child is abused … is one time too many. We abide fully with the laws this Congress has passed, and we are very proud of our outstanding track record of full compliance including referring every allegation for investigation. The vast majority of investigations prove to be unsubstantiated.”
The Office of Refugee Resettlement manages the care of tens of thousands of migrant children. More than 2,700 children were separated from their parents over the summer at the border, and were placed in shelters. But most of the children in government custody crossed the border alone.
Children are placed in government custody until they can be released to sponsors, usually a parent or close relative, while awaiting immigration proceedings. The shelters are privately run under contracts with the government.
Youth are held for increasingly longer periods of time, currently about two months. As of the first week of February, more than 11,000 migrant toddlers, children and teens were in federal custody as unaccompanied minors, up from about 2,500 detained children three months after Trump took office. Tens of thousands of children cycle through the system each year.
Sexual abuse allegations are reported to federal law enforcement, though it’s not clear whether anyone was charged criminally. In many cases, staff members were suspended and eventually fired.
Deutch said the data were clearly alarming.
“Together, these documents detail an unsafe environment of sexual assaults by staff on unaccompanied minors,” he said.
Health and Human Services officials say all allegations must be reported to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, child protective services and the FBI, and all allegations involving adults to local law enforcement. The department must cooperate with all investigations.
Facilities must provide training to all staff, contractors and volunteers. Background checks are completed on potential employees, and facilities are prohibited from hiring anyone who has engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior.
Three Republican senators — Susan Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — have said that they will support the resolution, and several others have expressed extreme unease. Vice President Mike Pence and a Justice Department lawyer joined Republican senators on Tuesday for a lunch on Capitol Hill to outline what they maintained was the president’s statutory authority for the declaration.
Some senators emerged from the lunch still reluctant to say how they would vote.
“Any action by the administration must comply with federal law, so I am reviewing and assessing the specific legal authorities and justifications put forth by the administration,” said Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas. “I am very worried about the slippery slope that could occur.”
Some Republican lawmakers and aides said they were unconcerned because they were confident that they could prevent the two-thirds majority needed in both chambers to override a presidential veto, possibly the first delivered by Mr. Trump.
“There will be nowhere near the votes to override a veto,” Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the Republican whip, said Tuesday morning at a news conference. “Ultimately, we’re going to stand with the president in making sure we can secure this border.”
The resolution of disapproval, under the National Emergencies Act of 1976, serves as the easiest mechanism for Congress to end Mr. Trump’s declaration. House Democrats are still weighing the possibility of joining one of the lawsuits that have been filed to challenge the merits of the declaration.
Democrats, who overwhelmingly endorsed the resolution of disapproval, framed the vote as an ultimatum on whether lawmakers would buck party loyalty in order to protect Congress’s constitutionally granted powers. Ms. Pelosi, in a floor speech on Tuesday, listed a number of instances when House Republicans had objected to President Barack Obama’s use of executive power, vowing that “we are not going to give any president, Democratic or Republican, a blank check to shred the Constitution of the United States.”
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.
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.
HANOI, Vietnam — For his second summit with President Donald Trump, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un opted to go retro — riding the rails like his grandfather decades before.
Kim’s decision to take the train all the way across China was probably prompted at least in part by security considerations— his train is built like a tank and almost as slow. But it also marks a major attempt at showmanship designed to bring back memories of North Korean “eternal president” Kim Il Sung’s many travels by railroad.
Kim Jong Un’s journey aboard his forest green train from Pyongyang to the Vietnamese border town of Dong Dang took more than two and a half days. That’s longer than it took Trump to fly halfway around the world, even with Air Force One stopping for fuel along the way.
“Kim Jong Un is already putting on a big show, opting for more than a 60-hour train journey, when he can get to Hanoi in just four hours by flight,” Nam Sung-wook, a former South Korean intelligence official, told Reuters.
For that trip, Kim traveled aboard an Air China Boeing 747, meaning the first images from that history-making arrival showed him disembarking from an American-made plane emblazoned with a Chinese flag.
This time around, when Kim stepped down early Tuesday from his distinctive yellow-trimmed train, he was greeted with a bouquet of flowers on a patterned red carpet lined with a Vietnamese honor guard and the five-pointed communist-starred flags of North Korea and Vietnam. He then switched to a black limousine for the final drive to Hanoi.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un arrives in Vietnam on Tuesday.Nhac Nguyen / AFP – Getty Images
That’s a much more on-message scene for the North Koreans, who want their home audience to see Kim as the man in charge.
But it’s also familiar on another level.
North Koreans grow up seeing images of Kim’s grandfather traveling by train, which he took to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, among other places. Kim Il Sung visited Vietnam in 1958 and 1964, though he used a mix of airplanes and trains on those journeys.
A mock-up of a car from the train is on permanent display at the mausoleum where Kim Il Sung and his son, late leader Kim Jong Il, lie in state, along with maps that light up to show the routes he took on his travels.
Inside the car is a desk used by the leaders, along with chairs and a sofa. Guides explain that the carriage was used as a mobile office — proof, they insist, the leaders worked tirelessly for the people.
Kim Jong Un will mimic aspects of his grandfather’s trip to Vietnam by traveling to some of the same locations visited by the elder Kim, two sources with direct knowledge of security and logistics planning told Reuters.
“This is legacy politics,” said Christopher Green, a North Korea expert with the International Crisis Group. “North Korea will want to play up Kim’s succession to the role of his grandfather, who successfully built up North Korea’s international legitimacy after the establishment of the state.”
Kim Jong Il, who was Kim Jong Un’s father, was known to have hated flying and traveled by train on several trips to China. He is said to have fitted his train out to accommodate lavish parties and karaoke sessions.
During his father’s rule, trips abroad were often not reported for days after they were over, if at all.
But that appears to be changing, also suggesting the importance in the minds of the North’s propagandists of getting their own visuals out quickly to the nation.
Kim Jong Un waves from his train before leaving Pyongyang on his way to Vietnam.KCNA via KNS / AP
It took North Korean state media less than half a day from the time his train — which is made up of carriages decked out with pink leather chairs and big-screen televisions — was spotted crossing the border into China to report that Kim was onboard.
Images released by the official Korean Central News Agency showed him inspecting an honor guard in Pyongyang and waving from the train.
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