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Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani told “Fox News Sunday” that President Trump will sit down one-on-one with Special Counsel Robert Mueller “over my dead body” amid bombshell new revelations in the false statements case against ex-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, whom Giuliani said was “railroaded” and “framed.”

In a spirited back-and-forth with host Chris Wallace, Giuliani also reiterated his claim that Trump initially “didn’t know about” the hush-money payments made to two women by former Trump attorney Michael Cohen that prosecutors have alleged constituted campaign finance violations.

Giuliani said Trump eventually found out about the payments and reimbursed Cohen, adding that Cohen is a “complete, pathological liar” who defied basic principles of ethics by secretly tape-recording his own client for several hours.

“Yes, this man is lying — is that a surprise to you, that Michael Cohen is lying?” Giuliani asked. “The man got up in front of a judge and said, ‘I was fiercely loyal to Donald Trump.’ Nonsense. He wasn’t fiercely loyal to him, he taped him. He sat there with [CNN anchor] Chris Cuomo, told him he wasn’t being taped, showed him a drawer and he lied to him and taped him for two hours.”

FBI MISSES DEADLINE TO PROVIDE DOCS ON MYSTERIOUS WHISTLEBLOWER RAID

In April, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he didn’t know about Cohen’s $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, or how he got the money. But in a September 2016 tape recorded by Cohen, Trump apparently tells Cohen he was aware of a hush-money payment to buy the silence of another woman, Karen McDougal.

Playboy model Karen McDougal, left, sued to be released from a 2016 agreement requiring her to keep quiet about an alleged tryst she claims she had with Donald Trump, as Stormy Daniels said she passed a 2011 polygraph test.

“There was an intervening conversation” after the payment took place and before the Air Force One comments, Giuliani said, that led to Trump reimbursing Cohen’s payment. The reimbursement could be legally significant because, while third parties like Cohen are limited in the amount they can contribute to a presidential candidate, candidates themselves have no such spending limit.

Top Democrats, including incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., have said any campaign finance violation by Trump “certainly” could be impeachable. But they have so far cautioned against pursuing impeachment based on campaign finance concerns alone, as top legal experts and a former Federal Election Commission chairman have said that obtaining a criminal conviction for such alleged violations is often extremely difficult.

While Cohen has pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws “at the direction of” Trump, he also pleaded guilty to a smattering of unrelated fraud and false statemens charges — and Trump has suggested his former attorney was simply seeking a lenient sentence. Last week, a tearful Cohen who lamented covering up what he characterized as Trump’s “dirty deeds” was sentenced to 36 months in prison.

MUELLER RELEASES FLYNN DOCS SHOWING FBI CONCERNS ABOUT BREAKING PROTOCOL TO  INTERVIEW HIM

Giuliani also suggested to Wallace that Trump had difficulty remembering the 2016 conversation while aboard Air Force One.

“That was a conversation he was asked, middle of the campaign — he’s working 18 hours a day. I wouldn’t be able to remember a lot of things that happened in September of 2016. … When he sat down with his lawyer, and went through it in great detail, and saw things that could refresh his recollection, we immediately corrected it. Nobody pushed us.”

“Over my dead body. But, you know, I could be dead.”

— Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, on a Mueller interview 

Trump tweeted Sunday morning that Cohen “only became a ‘Rat'” after the FBI raided his office in April. “Why didn’t they break into the DNC to get the Server, or Crooked’s office?” Trump asked, in an apparent reference to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Asked whether Trump — who has already provided written responses to inquiries from the special counsel — would meet with Mueller, Giuliani responded, “Yeah, good luck, good luck — after what they did to Flynn, the way they trapped him into perjury, and no sentence for him.” (Mueller has recommended Flynn receive no jail time, and Flynn is set to be sentenced Dec. 18.)

He added: “Over my dead body. But, you know, I could be dead.”

Flynn pleaded guilty this year to making false statements to FBI agents who broke the agency’s usual protocol by interviewing him at the White House without involving the White House Counsel’s office.

COMEY ADMITS SENDING AGENTS DIRECT TO INTERVIEW FLYNN WAS SOMETHING FBI ‘GOT AWAY WITH’

Flynn has since said in a bombshell court filing that top FBI brass pressured him not to bring a lawyer to the interview, which prompted the federal judge overseeing the case to demand all relevant documents from Mueller’s team for review. It remains technically possible for the judge to overturn Flynn’s guilty plea if he finds that it was coerced, or would represent a miscarriage of justice.

The agents who interviewed Flynn at the White House in January 2017 — including Strzok — said they did not initially think Flynn was lying.

The documents released by the Mueller team on Friday in response to the judge’s order reveal that the decision to interview Flynn about his contacts with the Russian ambassador was controversial within the Justice Department. One FBI document said then-Acting Attorney General Sally Yates “was not happy” when then-FBI Director James Comey informed her that the FBI planned to talk to Flynn.

The report also said several unnamed people back at FBI headquarters “later argued about the FBI’s decision to interview Flynn.” On Jan. 23, 2017 — just one day before the Flynn interview — The Washington Post, citing FBI sources, reported that the FBI had wiretapped Flynn’s conversations with Russian officials and cleared him of any wrongdoing.

While many sections of Mueller’s Friday filing are redacted, prosecutors apparently did not provide a so-called “302” witness report that FBI policy dictates should have been written contemporaneously with the Flynn interview. Instead, they provided a 302 report of an interview with Strzok months later on unrelated matters, in which Strzok also discussed his interview with Flynn and said he appeared to be telling the truth.

Strzok was removed from the Mueller probe for anti-Trump bias in late July 2017, after text messages surfaced in which he bashed the president and apparently coordinated media leaks detrimental to the White House.

Giuliani told Wallace that “the president doesn’t know that [Flynn] lied” to FBI agents, pointing out that there is no public evidence — other than Flynn’s guilty plea — that he committed the crime. Flynn, under significant financial pressure as a result of the prosecution, sold his home in Virginia this year.

On Sunday, GOP Rep. Devin Nunes told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” that Flynn had likely only pleaded guilty because of that overwhelming financial pressure and because “he was just out of money.”

While Trump did tweet early last year that Flynn had lied to the FBI, Giuliani said the president was simply using publicly available information to come to that conclusion. “He knows what he reads,” Giuliani said, referring to Trump.

“What they did to General Flynn should result in discipline,” Giuliani continued. “They’re the ones who are violating the law. They’re looking at a non-crime: collusion. The other guys are looking at a non-crime: campaign violation, which are not violations, and they are the ones who are violating the law, the rules, the ethics, nobody wants to look at them. They destroyed Strzok and Page’s 19,000 texts. If he destroyed texts, they would put him in jail, even though they can’t because he’s the president.”

Giuliani acknowledged that Flynn had misled Vice President Pence regarding his conversations with the then-Russian ambassador, admitting “that was a lie, but that’s not a crime.”

Giuliani, the former U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, derided Mueller’s efforts in another false statements prosecution in the Russia probe.  George Papadopoulos, recently released from prison after pleading guilty to making false statements to FBI agents, said Friday he plans to run for a seat in the House of Representatives.

“Fourteen days for [former Trump aide George] Papadopoulos — I did better on traffic violations than they did with Papadopoulos,” Giuliani said.

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT IG BLAMES FBI-WIDE SOFTWARE GLITCH FOR MISSING TEXTS, ADMITS STRZOK, PAGE PHONES WIPED

He then pointed to a report by the Department of Justice’s internal watchdog last week, which blamed a technical glitch for a swath of missing text messages between anti-Trump ex-FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page — and revealed that government phones issued by Mueller’s office to Strzok and Page had been wiped clean after Strzok was fired from the Russia probe.

Giuliani linked the Cohen prosecutions for campaign finance violations to the Mueller probe, saying Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — a frequent target of several conservatives in Congress, who sought to impeach him this summer — is overseeing both probes.

Mueller referred the Cohen campaign finance case to Southern District of New  York prosecutors because it fell outside the ambit of his mandate to probe Russian collusion. Cohen has also pleaded guilty in a separate case brought by Mueller’s team on a charge that Cohen lied to Congress by claiming that work on a since-abandoned plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow had stopped in early mid-2016, when it really continued for months afterwards.

“The person in charge of this investigation is Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general,” Giuliani said. “He is the boss of Mueller, and he is the boss of the Southern District of New York. He’s the one that determined, ‘let’s move it over here’ — he put it there, in the Southern District of New York. They’re working for the same Rod Rosenstein.”

Michael Cohen, right, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, arrives at federal court for his sentencing for dodging taxes, lying to Congress and violating campaign finance laws in New York on Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2018. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

Multiple reports and indications suggest that the Mueller probe is winding down. Speaking to ABC’s “This Week,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said the end result should be as transparent as possible.

“When Mueller’s investigation is complete, whenever that may be, it should be disclosed to the American public,” Durbin said. “They ought to see it in detail, understand everything that has transpired.”

Responding to Giuliani’s claims that hush-money payments would not be criminal, Durbin effectively told all parties to wait and see.

“I think the responsibility of Congress is very clear: park yourselves on the sidelines and let Mueller complete this investigation,” Durbin said.

Meanwhile, former FBI Director James Comey acknowledged last week that when the agency initiated its counterintelligence probe into possible collusion between Trump campaign officials and the Russian government in July 2016, investigators “didn’t know whether we had anything” and that “in fact, when I was fired as director [in May 2017], I still didn’t know whether there was anything to it.”

His remarks square with testimony this summer from Page, the former FBI lawyer whose anti-Trump texts became a focus of House GOP oversight efforts. Page told Congress in a closed-door deposition that “even as far as May 2017” — more than nine months after the counterintelligence probe commenced — “we still couldn’t answer the question” as to whether Trump staff had improperly colluded with Russia.

Fox News’ Alex Pappas contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/giuliani-on-whether-trump-will-sit-down-with-mueller-good-luck-over-my-dead-body

President Donald Trump‘s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani blasted the president’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen as “pathetic” and a “serial liar” when questioned about Cohen’s claim that as a candidate Trump directed him to arrange hush payments to women who claimed to have past affairs with Trump.

“The man is pathetic. That’s a lawyer you were interviewing,” Giuliani told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on “This Week” Sunday after watching a clip of Cohen’s exclusive interview with Stephanopolous last week. “He’s the guy you depend on to determine whether or not you should do it this way or that way.”

In his first interview since being sentenced to three years in prison, Cohen told ABC News that during the campaign Trump did direct him to pay off women with claims of past affairs and that the president knew what he was doing was wrong.

“Nothing at the Trump organization was ever done unless it was run through Mr. Trump. He directed me, as I said in my allocution and I said as well in the plea, he directed me to make the payments, he directed me to become involved in these matters,” Cohen told Stephanopolous in the exclusive interview.

Alex Wong/Getty Images, FILE
Rudy Giuliani, former New York City mayor and current lawyer for U.S. President Donald Trump, speaks to members of the media at the White House, May 30, 2018 in Washington.

Giuliani said the president maintains that he did not direct Cohen to make the hush payments, which Giuliani said were initiated by Cohen.

“Well, the president said that’s false,” Giuliani said on “This Week” when questioned about Cohen’s claim that Trump directed his actions.

“And he said it was false under oath,” Giuliani continued, referring to Cohen. “He said it was false in his tape recorded conversation with Chris Cuomo. He said it was false on five other tape recorded conversations. He said on those tape recorded conversations that he did it on his own to start and then he brought it to the president and then the president reimbursed him.”

In addition to maintaining that the president was uninvolved in the payments initially, Giuliani went further in asserting that the hush payments to former Playboy model Karen McDougal and porn star Stormy Daniels, whose actual name is Stephanie Clifford, were not illegal in the first place.

“It’s not a crime, it’s not a crime, George, paying $130,000 to Stormy whatever, and paying $100,000 to the other one, it’s not a crime,” Giuliani said, pointing to the legal case involving John Edwards, a former U.S. senator and former presidential contender.

Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images
Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney exits federal court after his sentencing hearing, Dec. 12, 2018, in New York.

When Stephanopoulos challenged that there are major differences with the Edwards case, Giuliani argued there were grounds for comparison and said that because the payments were not solely for the purpose of influencing the election, but also to protect the president’s family from embarrassing media coverage, the payments do not meet the legal standard for illegal campaign contributions.

“I can produce an enormous number of witnesses that say the president was very concerned about how this was going to affect his children, his marriage, not just this one but similar — all those women came forward at that point in time, that — that tape with Billy Bush and all of that. It’s all part of the same thing. And I know what he was concerned about and I can produce 20 witnesses to tell you what he was concerned about,” Giuliani said.

Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images
Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney exits federal court after his sentencing hearing, Dec. 12, 2018, in New York.

Giuliani went on to characterize the seriousness of the charge of a campaign finance violation.

“Oh right, a campaign finance violation, give me a break,” Giuliani said, and sought to draw a comparison to a reporting violation by the 2008 Obama campaign. In that case, the Obama campaign was fined for not properly filing on information regarding a collection of donations in the final days of the campaign.

Though Trump and his team say Cohen is lying, Cohen says it’s the president who is not telling the truth.

“He knows the truth, I know the truth, others know the truth, and here is the truth: The people of the United States of America, people of the world, don’t believe what he is saying. The man doesn’t tell the truth. And it is sad that I should take responsibility for his dirty deeds.

Trump has maintained that he never directed Cohen to break the law, and if Cohen did, he says he is without fault.

“I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law. He was a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law. It is called ‘advice of counsel,’ and a lawyer has great liability if a mistake is made,” Trump said in a tweet Thursday.

Source Article from https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-donald-trumps-lawyer-blasts-cohen-pathetic/story?id=59838323

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Source Article from https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-15/obamacare-court-setback-won-t-kill-law

U.S. Border Patrol next to the the border wall dividing Nogales, Ariz., and Nogales Mexico.

Susan Schulman/Barcroft Media via Getty Images


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U.S. Border Patrol next to the the border wall dividing Nogales, Ariz., and Nogales Mexico.

Susan Schulman/Barcroft Media via Getty Images

I do not doubt that U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents did all they could to try to save the life of Jakelin Caal Maquin, a 7-year-old girl from Guatemala, who died in the custody of the United States.

The little girl and her father were among a group of more than 100 migrants who turned themselves over to Border Patrol agents last Thursday night, Dec. 6, after they had crossed the U.S.-Mexican border and trudged through a rugged, isolated area of the New Mexican desert.

The girl and her father were placed on a bus. She was reportedly not breathing by the time she arrived at a Border Patrol station, about eight hours after she had been placed in custody. Emergency medical personnel found the little girl had not had food or water for days. She had a temperature of 105.7 degrees. She was flown to Providence Children’s Hospital in El Paso, Texas and less than a day later, Jakelin Caal Maquin died.

Border Patrol Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said, “The agents involved are deeply affected and empathize with the father over the loss of his daughter. … We cannot stress enough the dangers posed by traveling long distances, in crowded transportation, or in the natural elements through remote desert areas without food, water and other supplies.”

I’ve reported stories on Border Patrol agents. I know many of them are fathers and mothers from families with their own migration stories. Many agents talk about the times they have had to rescue people stranded in deserts or forests after they’ve crossed the border or saved people who have been savaged by criminal gangs and smugglers.

There are thousands of children now in the custody of U.S. government. Even if you hold the family of the 7-year-old girl responsible for putting her life in danger to cross into the United States, you may wonder: Was a 7-year-old girl who had been taken in from the desert not given water or food for the eight hours she was in U.S. custody? And how can the president, who often contends the U.S. has never been better, stronger or richer, be astonished when thousands of families in countries that are roiled by crime, drugs and poverty decide to set out for the U.S. — whatever the risks — because they see it as what Lincoln called “the last best hope” of Earth?

Jakelin Caal Maquin’s father is now with a charity group in El Paso and told the Guatemalan consul that he has no complaints about the way his daughter was treated by the Border Patrol or medical staff. The Inspector General’s Office of the Department of Homeland Security will investigate how Jakelin Caal Maquin died.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2018/12/15/676894328/opinion-what-the-death-of-a-7-year-old-migrant-says-about-this-country

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Source Article from https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-15/obamacare-court-setback-won-t-kill-law

The family of a 7-year-old Guatemalan girl who died in U.S. Border Patrol custody is disputing an account from U.S. officials who said she had not been given food or water for days.

In a statement released by lawyers, the parents of Jakelin Caal said the girl had been given food and water and appeared to be in good health as she traveled through Mexico with her father, 29-year-old Nery Gilberto Caal Cuz. The family added that Jakelin had not been traveling through the desert for days before she was taken into custody.

Tekandi Paniagua, the Guatemalan consul in Del Rio, Texas, told The Associated Press that he spoke with the Jakelin’s father. The consul said Nery Caal told him the group they were traveling with was dropped off in Mexico about a 90-minute walk from the border.

Border Patrol officials did not immediately respond to the family’s comments.

The family’s statement was released Saturday during a news conference in El Paso, Texas, at an immigrant shelter where Jakelin’s father is staying. Her family did not attend and has asked for privacy.

Jakelin and her father were seeking asylum in the U.S. and were among a large group of migrants arrested Dec. 6 near a remote border crossing in New Mexico. Hours later they were placed on a bus to the nearest Border Patrol station, but Jakelin began vomiting and eventually stopped breathing. She later died at a Texas hospital.

Border Patrol officials on Friday said agents did everything they could to save the girl but that she had not had food or water for days. They added that an initial screening showed no evidence of health problems, and that her father had signed a form indicating she was in good health.

But the family took issue with that form, which was in English, a language her father doesn’t speak or read. He communicated with border agents in Spanish but he primarily speaks the Mayan Q’eqchi’ language.

“It is unacceptable for any government agency to have persons in custody sign documents in a language that they clearly do not understand,” the statement said.

Jakelin’s family is urging authorities to conduct an “objective and thorough” investigation into the death and to determine whether officials met standards for the arrest and custody of children.

A cause of death has not yet been released. A private prayer service was held in Texas on Friday so her father could see Jakelin’s body before it is taken to Guatemala, said Ruben Garcia, director of the Annunciation House shelter where her father is staying.

“All of us were moved by the depth of his faith and his trust that God’s hand is in all of this,” Garcia said.

Family members in Guatemala said Caal decided to migrate with his favorite child to earn money he could send back home. Jakelin’s mother and three siblings remained in San Antonio Secortez, a village of about 420 inhabitants.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/us/migrant-girls-relatives-dispute-official-story-on-her-death

“I don’t see why we wouldn’t,” Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, said about whether they would go public with a subpoena.

Mr. Mueller is investigating two chief issues: Did the Trump campaign collude with the Russians, and has the president obstructed justice by interfering in the Russia investigation?

Investigators have interviewed nearly all the White House and Justice Department officials who were directly involved in the episodes under scrutiny in the obstruction inquiry. But Mr. Mueller is still seeking to speak with several witnesses about ties between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia.

In particular, Mr. Mueller wants to learn what the campaign knew about WikiLeaks’s plans to release Democratic emails hacked by the Russians in the months before the election. As part of that inquiry, Mr. Mueller is closely examining whether one of Mr. Trump’s longtime associates, Roger J. Stone Jr., was a conduit between WikiLeaks and the campaign. Mr. Mueller is fighting a legal battle with an associate of Mr. Stone’s who is refusing to testify before a grand jury and hand over documents.

Maybe. The person is most likely not barred from speaking publicly about the case, but because the proceeding has been sealed, the lawyers involved cannot discuss it. If the witness ultimately loses and the court orders jail time, then it would most likely become public.

Similar disputes often arise in cases in which prosecutors are trying to identify government officials who have leaked classified information to reporters. In those instances, reporters often refuse to answer investigators’ questions, forcing judges to decide whether to jail them.

In high-profile investigations that involve celebrity defendants or organized crime figures, witnesses who are loyal to the person under investigation occasionally refuse to cooperate with investigators. A decade ago, federal prosecutors asked a judge to jail the trainer of the baseball slugger Barry Bonds, who was under investigation for using performance-enhancing drugs. The trainer spent a year in jail as he refused to testify about whether he had given drugs to Mr. Bonds, significantly hurting the government’s case.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/us/politics/special-counsel-subpoena.html

SAN ANTONIO SECORTEZ, Guatemala (AP) — Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal Maquin received her first pair of shoes several weeks ago, when her father said they would set out together for the United States, thousands of miles from this small indigenous community in Guatemala where she spent her days plodding through mud and surrounded by coconut trees.

The 7-year-old was excited about the possibility of a new life in another country, relatives said Saturday. Maybe she would get her first toy, or learn to read and write.

Instead she died in a Texas hospital two days after being taken into custody by US Border Patrol agents in a remote stretch of New Mexico desert.

The death has drawn attention to the increasingly perilous routes that Central American migrants traverse to reach the US, where some plan to apply for asylum, and to the way migrants are treated once in custody. Jakelin’s family says her father paid a human smuggler to sneak them across the border; asylum wasn’t the plan.

Sadness hangs in the air outside the tiny wooden house with a straw roof, dirt floors, a few bedsheets and a fire pit for cooking where Jakelin used to sleep with her parents and three siblings. The brothers are barefoot, their feet caked with mud and their clothes in tatters. A heart constructed out of wood and wrapped in plastic announces Jakelin’s death.

Members of the Caal Maquin family and neighbors stand in front of Claudia Maquin’s house in Raxruha, Guatemala, on Saturday, Dec. 15, 2018.
Associated Press/Oliver de Ros

Grandfather Domingo Caal said the family got by on $5 a day earned harvesting corn and beans. But it wasn’t enough. Jakelin’s father Nery Caal decided to migrate with his favorite child to earn money he could send back home. Nery often took his daughter to fish at a nearby river. The long journey north would be an even greater adventure.

The girl leapt with joy when she was told about the trip, Domingo Caal said in Spanish.

The people of San Antonio Secortez, a lush mountain hamlet with 420 inhabitants within the municipality of Raxruha, speak the Mayan Q’eqchi’ language, though most of the men also know Spanish.

Domingo Caal translated for Claudia Maquin as she attempted to describe her daughter’s life while holding back tears. Jakelin liked to climb trees, Claudia said, but she gives few details.

“Every time they ask me what happened to the girl, it hurts me again,” Maquin said.

Read more: The 7-year-old migrant girl who died in Border Patrol custody received medical care 90 minutes after first showing symptoms

Claudia Maquin, 27, shows a photo of her daughter, Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal Maquin in Raxruha, Guatemala, on Saturday, Dec. 15, 2018.
Associated Press/Oliver de Ros

Members of 13 families from San Antonio Secortez have established homes in the US, and community members set off firecrackers to celebrate each time word arrived that one of the townsfolk had made it. The Caals said they believed that Jakelin and Nery would make it, too.

“He was desperate,” Domingo Caal said, explaining that his son borrowed money — using his plot of land as guarantee — to pay for the voyage.

Tekandi Paniagua, the Guatemalan consul in Del Rio, Texas, told The Associated Press that Nery Caal and his daughter took about a week to reach the US border. Paniagua said Caal, 29, told him on Friday that they had been dropped off near the border and walked just an hour and a half to reach it.

They were detained soon afterward along with a large group of other migrants near the Antelope Wells border crossing at about 9:15 p.m. on Dec. 6 in a dry, rugged area flecked with ghost towns and abandoned buildings.

The consul said Caal told him the girl never lacked food or water either before or after they were detained, and said he had no complaints about how they were treated.

Read more:After a 7-year-old migrant girl died in Border Patrol custody, Kirstjen Nielsen said ‘this family chose to cross illegally’, and critics are outraged she’s blaming the death on the family

A heart-shaped sign displays the name of Jakelin Amei Rosmey Caal in Raxruha, Guatemala, on Saturday, Dec. 15, 2018.
Associated Press/Oliver de Ros

US Customs and Border Protection said Friday that the girl initially appeared healthy and that an interview raised no signs of distress. Authorities said her father spoke in Spanish to border agents and signed a form indicating she was in good health.

Jakelin’s death drew immediate questions from members of Congress and others about whether more could have been done. There were only four agents working with a group of 163 migrants, including 50 unaccompanied children, and only one bus to take them to the nearest station 94 miles away. The Homeland Security Department’s inspector general has opened an investigation.

That single bus set out on a several-hour trip to the Border Patrol station filled with unaccompanied minors — following protocol — while the daughter and her father waited for it to return. They left about eight hours after being detained.

Caal told the consul that while they were on the bus, his daughter began to feel warm and uncomfortable and began to vomit, and Caal told the driver that his daughter was ill.

Elvira Choc, 59, Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal’s grandmother, rests her head on her hand in front of her house in Raxruha, Guatemala, on Saturday, Dec. 15, 2018.
Associated Press/Oliver de Ros

Officials said agents radioed ahead to have emergency medical technicians available in Lordsburg. When they arrived, 90 minutes later, she had stopped breathing. Emergency crews revived her, and she was airlifted to an El Paso, Texas, hospital, to which the father was driven.

The girl died at about 12:30 a.m. Dec. 8, roughly 19 hours after she began throwing up on the bus and 27 hours after being apprehended. Officials said she had swelling on her brain and liver failure. An autopsy was scheduled to determine the cause of death. The results could take weeks.

Paniagua said the father, whom he described as a devout evangelical Christian, now appeared to be “more serene, more stable.”

Source Article from https://www.businessinsider.com/jakelin-caal-maquin-fled-guatemala-village-poverty-2018-12

Source Article from https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/421542-zinke-blames-false-attacks-in-resignation

December 15 at 7:09 PM

Republicans are facing a moment of reckoning on health care after a federal judge struck down the Affordable Care Act, imperiling the landmark law the GOP has struggled against for eight years.

During the midterm campaign, President Trump and Republican candidates vowed repeatedly to protect millions of Americans with preexisting medical conditions, as the law does, even as the administration embraced a legal challenge by 20 GOP-led states to the law commonly known as Obamacare.

That lawsuit led to Friday’s ruling by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, who concluded the law is unconstitutional because of a change to the nation’s tax laws that Republicans made last year. The White House has said the law will stay in place, pending the appeals process.

Nevertheless, Republicans are under greater pressure to produce an alternative to the law they have ardently opposed since its passage and a means to ensuring affordable health care coverage to some 52 million people with conditions such as diabetes, asthma and cancer. But they are still riven by the divisions that thwarted previous efforts to overhaul the law.

“There are a lot of flaws in the ACA, but there are a lot of very good provisions as well, and tossing it out the window altogether is not the way to go,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who disagreed with Friday’s ruling. “We can’t have our position be to just repeal and not replace the ACA.”

Agreeing on a replacement has been an elusive goal for the GOP, which tried and failed to pass a plan in the Senate last year. Collins notably voted against that plan. With Democrats about to take control of the House, their window for getting an Obamacare alternative to Trump’s desk has effectively closed for the next two years.

However, there is still a political imperative for Republicans to rally around a plan of their own, especially ahead of 2020 elections for president and Congress. Democrats are seizing on Friday’s ruling to highlight the repeated GOP efforts to dismantle the ACA.

“In the midterms, the threat to health-care was theoretical, and now it’s a clear and present danger,” said Jesse Ferguson, a former Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee official.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) vowed her chamber would “formally intervene in the appeals process” when her party takes power in January. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he will force votes next year that would show Republicans have been dishonest on health care, votes certain to be used in campaign ads. A liberal group is planning to pressure GOP senators up for reelection to oppose the ruling.

“They are trapped by their white-hot hatred of President Obama and everything he did,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), speaking of Republicans. “And if they stay in that place it will be their undoing as a party.”

While many congressional Democrats spoke out in the hours after the judge’s ruling, Republicans on Capitol Hill were much quieter Saturday. The dynamic resembled this year’s midterm elections, in which Democrats were eager to run on health care and Republicans sought to direct voters’ focus to other topics.

The politics of health care have shifted in recent years. Repealing and replacing the ACA was a rallying cry for Republicans during the President Barack Obama’s terms and a cause for concern for many Democrats. But over time, the law gained popularity, millions of Americans were insured and Obama left office.

Thirty-seven states have expanded Medicaid under the law, with three Republican-leaning states — Idaho, Nebraska and Utah — approving ballot measures last month to expand the health-care program for the poor and disabled.

In the midterms, Democrats made health care their signature issue, positioning themselves as staunch defenders of the law’s well-regarded provisions, most notably its protections for people with preexisting conditions. They cast Republicans as hostile to those provisions, noting their failed 2017 repeal-and-replace effort.

They also highlighted the lawsuit, which was joined by Republican governors and state attorneys general from 20 states. Among them was Josh Hawley, who was elected to the Senate in Missouri despite facing attacks over his decision to join the legal fight.

Hawley was among the Republicans who campaigned on pursuing protections for people with preexisting conditions outside of Obamacare. He advocated a federal insurance guarantee as a potential alternative for ensuring protections.

“Now it’s time for both parties to work together to lower healthcare costs, improve access to quality care for all, and protect those with preexisting conditions,” Hawley wrote Friday on Twitter, responding to the ruling.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, the Democrat that Hawley defeated, had a different take. “@HawleyMO has won the victory he sought in his lawsuit,” she tweeted Friday. “Obamacare has been gutted by a Texas Court due to his lawsuit. Rs promised repeal and replace. They didn’t. Now @HawleyMo has done repeal thru courts. But there’s no replace. Scary stuff for millions.”

House Republican leaders praised Friday’s ruling and pointed to the legislation they passed in their chamber last year to overhaul the health-care law.

“President Trump has made clear he wants a solution and I am committed to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to make sure America’s health-care system works for all Americans,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in a statement.

What that solution would entail was not clear. A spokesman did not immediately respond to a request seeking more clarity.

Trump on Saturday commented on the ruling against the ACA, telling reporters that he wanted to work with Democrats to pass a new law — without offering specifics or saying how he would do it.

“We’ll get great health care for our people, that’s a repeal and replace, handled a little bit differently, but it was a big, big victory by a highly respected judge, highly, highly respected in Texas,” Trump said.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) did not weigh in on the ruling publicly. A spokesman did not provide any information on his thinking. The day after the midterms, McConnell expressed no interest in a new effort to rip up the ACA in the next Congress.

“I think it’s pretty obvious, the Democratic House is not going to be interested in that,” said McConnell, who suggested instead that lawmakers address the law’s flaws “on a bipartisan basis.”

Republicans expanded to a 53-to-47 Senate majority in the midterms. Still, Schumer promised Saturday to raise the issue of health care in the next session of Congress.

“The GOP spent all last year pretending to support people with preexisting conditions while quietly trying to remove that support in the courts,” he tweeted. “Next year, we will force votes to expose their lies. They will no longer be able to get away with lying to the American people.”

Republican senators will also face pressure from outside the Capitol.

“We’re going to ask every Republican senator, for example, up in 2020, to publicly say they oppose this lawsuit and it should be overturned,” said Leslie Dach, campaign chair of Protect Our Care, an alliance of liberal groups.

One of the Republican senators facing a potentially competitive reelection campaign is Joni Ernst of Iowa. Ernst issued a statement Saturday saying that it was “important that we protect people with preexisting conditions, as we repeal and replace Obamacare.”

She highlighted legislation she has co-sponsored on that front. It has yet to receive a vote.

Josh Dawsey contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/health-care-law-ruling-puts-republicans-on-the-defensive-after-campaign-promises/2018/12/15/28592816-007d-11e9-ad40-cdfd0e0dd65a_story.html

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Source Article from https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-12-15/obamacare-court-setback-won-t-kill-law

Source Article from https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/421542-zinke-blames-false-attacks-in-resignation

Two years after Donald Trump won the presidency, nearly every organization he has led in the past decade is under investigation.

Trump’s private company is contending with civil suits digging into its business with foreign governments and with looming state inquiries into its tax practices.

Trump’s 2016 campaign is under scrutiny by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, whose investigation into Russian interference has already led to guilty pleas by his campaign chairman and four advisers.

Trump’s inaugural committee has been probed by Mueller for illegal foreign donations, a topic that the incoming House Intelligence Committee chairman plans to further investigate next year.

Trump’s charity is locked in an ongoing suit with New York state, which has accused the foundation of “persistently illegal conduct.”

The mounting inquiries are building into a cascade of legal challenges that threaten to dominate Trump’s third year in the White House. In a few weeks, Democrats will take over in the House and pursue their own investigations into all of the above — and more.

The ultimate consequences for Trump are still unclear. Past Justice Department opinions have held that a sitting president may not be charged with a federal crime.

House Democrats may eventually seek to impeach Trump. But, for now, removing him from office appears unlikely: It would require the support of two-thirds of the Senate, which is controlled by Republicans.

However, there has been one immediate impact on a president accustomed to dictating the country’s news cycles but who now struggles to keep up with them: Trump has been forced to spend his political capital — and that of his party — on his defense.

On Capitol Hill this week, weary Senate Republicans scrambled away from reporters to avoid questions about Trump and his longtime fixer Michael Cohen — and Cohen’s courtroom assertion that he had been covering up Trump’s “dirty deeds” when he paid off two women who claimed they had affairs with the president before he was elected.

“I don’t do any interviews on anything to do with Trump and that sort of thing, okay?” said Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho).

“There’s no question that it’s a distraction from the things that obviously we would like to see him spending his time on, and things we’d like to be spending our time on,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). “So that’s why I’m hoping that some of this stuff will wrap up soon and we’ll get answers, and we can draw conclusions, and we can move on from there.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), summed it up another way: “It’s been a bad week for Individual Number One,” referring to the legal code name prosecutors in Manhattan used in court filings to refer to the president.

Trump attorney Rudolph Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did White House or Trump Organization officials.

As the bad news has rolled in, the president has cut back his public schedule. He spent more time than usual in his official residence this week, with more than two dozen hours of unstructured “executive time,” said a person familiar with his schedule.

In several tweets on Thursday, Trump sought to cast doubt on two former advisers who have cooperated with investigators. Cohen, Trump said, just wanted a reduced prison sentence. Former national security adviser Michael Flynn, he said, was the victim of scare tactics by the FBI.

Then — after wordy explanations of how both men had gone wrong — Trump tried to sum up his increasingly complex problems with a simple explanation.

“WITCH HUNT!” he wrote.

“He’s just never been targeted by an investigation like this,” said Timothy L. O’Brien, a reporter who wrote a biography of Trump, adding that the longtime real estate mogul had contended with extensive litigation in his business career, but never legal threats of this scale. “The kind of legal scrutiny they’re getting right now — and the potential consequences of that scrutiny — are unlike anything Donald Trump or his children have ever faced.”

Mueller’s investigation began in May 2017 after Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey. The special counsel’s mandate: to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 campaign and whether the Kremlin worked with Trump associates. Mueller is also examining whether the president has sought to obstruct the Russia probe.

So far, Mueller has charged 33 people. That includes 26 Russian nationals — some of whom allegedly stole emails and other data from U.S. political parties, others of whom allegedly sought to influence public opinion via phony social media postings.

Several Trump aides have also pleaded guilty.

Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, was found guilty in August of tax and bank fraud charges and pleaded guilty in September to conspiracy and obstruction charges unrelated to his work for the campaign. He agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation — though the special counsel’s office recently asserted he has been lying to investigators.

Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, admitted to lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. Rick Gates, Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman, admitted to conspiracy and lying to the FBI. Former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts. Cohen admitted to lying about efforts to build a Trump project in Moscow that lasted into Trump’s presidential run. All agreed to cooperate with investigators.

It’s unclear where Mueller’s inquiry is headed — and whether it will end with a spate of indictments reaching further into Trump’s world or with a written report submitted to the Justice Department.

Trump has repeatedly denied there was any “collusion” between his associates and Russia and has attacked the investigation as a fishing expedition led by politically biased prosecutors. Advisers said he has recently ramped up his attacks — hoping to undermine confidence in Mueller’s work — because he believes the probe is at a critical stage.

Separately, federal prosecutors in Manhattan have pursued another investigation that emerged out of the 2016 campaign: hush-money payments Cohen made to two women who said they’d had extramarital affairs with Trump.

Cohen, who was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison for what a judge called a “veritable smorgasbord of criminal conduct,” pleaded guilty to campaign-finance violations in connection to the payments.

Cohen also named who told him to pay off the women: Trump.

“He was very concerned about how this would affect the election,” Cohen told ABC News in an interview that aired Friday.

Trump has denied he directed Cohen to break the law by buying the silence of former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal and adult-film star Stormy Daniels. He also said Cohen, as his lawyer, bore responsibility for any campaign finance violations.

“I never directed him to do anything wrong,” Trump told Fox News on Thursday. “Whatever he did, he did on his own.”

Prosecutors also revealed Wednesday they had struck a non-prosecution agreement with AMI, the company that produces the National Enquirer tabloid, for its role in the scheme.

The company admitted it had helped pay off one of Trump’s accusers during the campaign. It said it had done so in “cooperation, consultation, and concert with” one or more members of Trump’s campaign, according to court filings.

It is unclear whether prosecutors will pursue charges against campaign or Trump Organization officials as part of the case.

But at the White House, advisers have fretted that this case — and not Mueller’s — could be the biggest threat to Trump’s presidency. House Democrats have already indicated the campaign-finance allegations could be potential fodder for impeachment proceedings.

The nearly $107 million donated to Trump’s inaugural committee has drawn the attention of Mueller, who has probed whether illegal foreign contributions went to help put on the festivities.

The special counsel already referred one such case to federal prosecutors in Washington. In late August, an American political consultant, W. Samuel Patten, admitted steering $50,000 from a Ukrainian politician to the inaugural committee through a straw donor.

Patten pleaded guilty to failing to register as a foreign lobbyist and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

On Friday, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said his panel plans to investigate possible “illicit foreign funding or involvement in the inauguration.”

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that federal prosecutors in New York are examining whether the inaugural committee misspent funds. The Washington Post has not independently confirmed that report.

Officials with the committee, which was chaired by Trump’s friend Tom Barrack, said they were in full compliance “with all applicable laws and disclosure obligations” and have not received any records requests from prosecutors.

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told reporters this week that questions about the committee’s practices have “nothing to do with the president of the United States.”

Trump also faces a pair of civil lawsuits alleging he has violated the Constitution by doing business with foreign and state governments while in office.

Trump still owns his private company, though he says he’s given up day-to-day control to his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. Since the 2016 election, Trump’s businesses have hosted parties for foreign embassies, hosted Malaysia’s prime minister and Maine’s governor, and rented more than 500 rooms to lobbyists paid by the Saudi government.

The lawsuits allege that such transactions violate a Constitutional ban on presidents taking emoluments, or payments, from foreign or state governments. One complaint was filed by congressional Democrats; the other by the Democratic attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia.

“What we want to do is be able to tie the flow of money from foreign and domestic sovereigns into Donald Trump’s pocketbook,” said Karl A. Racine (D), the D.C. attorney general. He called the emoluments clauses “our country’s first corruption law.”

The plaintiffs are seeking to have Trump barred from doing business with governments. But the more immediate threat for Trump and his company is the legal discovery process, in which the plaintiffs are seeking documents detailing his foreign customers, how much they paid — and how much wound up in the president’s pocket.

So far, Trump — who is represented by the Justice Department and a private attorney — has failed to get the cases dismissed or block discovery.

Earlier this month, the two attorneys general sent Trump’s company a raft of subpoenas. They expect to get answers early next year.

In New York, where Trump’s business is based, incoming Attorney General Letitia James (D) is preparing to launch several investigations into aspects of his company.

“We will use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well,” James told NBC News.

She said she wanted to look into whether Trump had violated the emoluments clause by doing business with foreign governments in New York and examine allegations detailed by the New York Times that Trump’s company engaged in questionable tax practices for decades.

New York state’s tax agency has also said it is considering an investigation into the company’s tax practices.

Earlier this year, New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood filed suit against Trump and his three eldest children, alleging “persistently illegal conduct” at the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a case spurred by reporting by The Post in 2016.

Trump is accused of violating several state charity laws, including using his charity’s money to pay off legal settlements for his for-profit businesses. He used the foundation to buy a portrait of himself that was hung up at one of his resorts. Trump also allegedly allowed his presidential campaign to dictate the charity’s giving in 2016 — despite laws that bar charities from participating in campaigns.

The attorney general has asked for Trump to pay at least $2.8 million in penalties and restitution and that he be barred from running a charity in New York for 10 years.

Trump has called the suit politically motivated and “ridiculous.”

Last month, a New York state judge denied a request by Trump’s attorneys to throw out the suit.

Meanwhile, a defamation suit against Trump by former “Apprentice” contestant Summer Zervos has also quietly advanced through the New York courts.

A judge has allowed Zervos to seek discovery — including possibly deposing the president — as the two sides wait for a panel of New York appellate judges to rule on Trump’s latest move to block the lawsuit.

Trump has argued that, as a sitting president, he is immune from the claims in both the foundation and Zervos case. He maintains that the 1997 Supreme Court decision in Clinton v. Jones — which said that presidents do not have immunity from civil litigation — does not apply in state courts.

Alice Crites, Josh Dawsey, Jonathan O’Connell, Tom Hamburger, Michael Kranish, Carol D. Leonnig, Elise Viebeck and John Wagner contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mounting-legal-threats-surround-trump-as-nearly-every-organization-he-has-led-is-under-investigation/2018/12/15/4cfb4482-ffbb-11e8-862a-b6a6f3ce8199_story.html

President Donald Trump, who has expressed regret for skipping a visit to Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day, made an unscheduled stop at the site Saturday under drizzling skies to observe the thousands of Christmas wreaths left each year at military grave sites.

In rainy, 53-degree weather, Trump traveled to the 624-acre U.S.military cemetery without the usual presidential coterie of advisers and staffers. 

He was visiting Section 60, where military personnel killed in the Global War on Terror since 2001 are interred.  

Holding a black umbrella in his left hand, the commander-in-chief — wearing an overcoat and red and white striped tie — strode among the grave sites. Volunteers led by Wreaths Across America have placed wreaths on headstones. 

The visit in a steady rain offered a touch of irony, since the White House had blamed rain for the president’s decision not to visit a U.S. cemetery in France last month, which marked the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.

With a guide in a yellow slicker at his side, Trump walked slowly among the grave sites, most of them adorned with the Christmas wreaths. Some bearing the Star of David were not.

Apparently praising the annual work by Wreaths Across America, Trump could be overheard saying, “They’re doing a great job.” 

The president also spoke briefly to reporters about expanding the crowded cemetery property, where over 400,000 men and women are buried. An average of 25 burials are performed each day at Arlington National Cemetery.

Last month, in an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, Trump expressed regret for not visiting the cemetery during Veterans Day weekend, saying that he was prevented from doing so because he was “extremely busy on calls for the country.”

“In retrospect, I should have, and I did last year, and I will virtually every year,” he said.

In 2017, Trump was in Vietnam on Veterans Day and met with veterans there in lieu of laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington.

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Days after he was criticized for canceling a trip to a WWI cemetery in Paris and not visiting Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day, President Donald Trump honored the nation’s veterans and touted his administration’s commitment. (Nov. 15)
AP

During his visit to France, Trump did not attend the ceremony at Aisne Marne American Cemetery because of inclement weather, according to White House officials.

Although other dignitaries and U.S. officials made the trip, White House officials said the bad weather grounded a planned helicopter ride to the site and that a presidential motorcade would have disrupted traffic throughout the area.

The site of Arlington National Cemetery, once an estate owned by Gen. Robert E. Lee, is less than five miles from the White House, just across the Potomac River. 

The land was first used as a military cemetery in 1864 following the Battle of the Wilderness during the Civil War.

Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/12/15/arlington-cemetery-trump-views-christmas-wreaths-military-graves/2323740002/

“The majority of the rulebook for the Paris Agreement has been created, which is something to be thankful for,” said Mohamed Adow, international climate lead at Christian Aid.

Source Article from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/paris-climate-agreement-global-deal-poland_us_5c157158e4b049efa752d123

SAN ANTONIO DE CORTEZ, Guatemala (Reuters) – The 7-year-old Guatemalan migrant girl who died in U.S. custody this month was inseparable from her father and had looked forward to being able to send money home to support her impoverished family, relatives said on Saturday.

Nery Caal, 29, and his daughter Jakelin were in a group of more than 160 migrants who handed themselves in to U.S. border agents in New Mexico on Dec. 6. Jakelin developed a high fever and died hours later while in the care of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.

“The girl said when she was grown up she was going to work and send dough back to her mom and grandma,” said her mother Claudia Maquin, who has three remaining children, speaking in the Mayan language Q’eqchi and betraying little outward emotion.

“Because she’d never seen a big country, she was really happy that she was going to go,” she added, explaining how her husband had gone to the United States to find a way out of the “extreme poverty” that dictated their lives.

Corn stood behind her palm-thatched wooden house and a few chickens and pigs scrabbled in the yard as she spoke, dressed in a traditional blouse with a 6-month-old baby in her arms.

A family photograph at the house showed Jakelin smiling and looking up at the camera, wearing a pink T-shirt with characters from the cartoon series “Masha and the Bear.”

Deforestation to make way for palm-oil plantations has made subsistence farming increasingly hard for the 40,000 inhabitants of Raxruha municipality, where the family’s agricultural hamlet of San Antonio de Cortez lies in central Guatemala, local officials said. That has spurred an exodus of migrants.

Setting out on Dec. 1, Caal and his daughter traveled more than 2,000 miles (3,220 km) so Jakelin’s father could look for work in the United States, said her mother, who learned of the girl’s death from consular officials.

Almost 80 percent of Guatemala’s indigenous population are poor, with half of those living in extreme poverty. The mayor of San Antonio de Cortez described the Caal family as among the worst off in the village.

Mayor Cesar Castro said in recent months more and more families were uprooting to try to reach the United States, often selling what little land they owned to pay people traffickers thousands of dollars for the trip.

“It’s not just the Caal family. There are endless people who are leaving,” Castro said. “I see them drive past in pickups, cars and buses.” He said most of them came back in the end, often penniless after being dropped off by traffickers, caught by authorities and deported.

Jakelin’s death has added to criticism of U.S. of President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policies from migrant advocates and Democrats in the U.S. Congress.

The U.S. government defended Jakelin’s treatment, and said there was no indication she had any medical problems until several hours after she and her father were taken into custody.

INSEPARABLE

Domingo Caal, Jakelin’s grandfather, said she had gone on the journey because she did not want to leave her father.

“The girl really stuck to him. It was very difficult to separate them,” said Domingo, 61, wearing muddy boots and a faded and torn blue shirt.

Jakelin’s uncle, Jose Manuel Caal, said he had heard she was ill before she died, but had expected her to recover. “The girl’s death left us in shock,” he said.

The family hope the girl’s father can remain in the United States.

“What I want now is for Nery to stay and work in the United States. That’s what I want,” said his wife.

A Guatemalan consular official told Reuters on Friday that Caal told him he had crossed the border planning to turn himself in to U.S. authorities, and will try to stay.

Record numbers of parents traveling with children are being apprehended trying to cross the U.S. border with Mexico. In November, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers detained 25,172 members of “family units,” the highest monthly number ever recorded, the agency said.

Parents with children are more likely to be released by U.S. authorities while their cases are processed because of legal restrictions on keeping children in detention.

Slideshow (17 Images)

Caal remains in the El Paso, Texas area, where his daughter died after being flown by helicopter to a hospital there for emergency treatment when she stopped breathing.

A brain scan revealed swelling and Jakelin was diagnosed with liver failure. She died early in the morning on Dec. 8, with her father at the hospital, a CBP official said.

U.S. authorities are investigating the death.

Reporting by Sofia Menchu; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Jonathan Oatis

Source Article from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-border-guatemala/dead-guatemalan-girl-dreamed-of-sending-money-home-to-poor-family-idUSKBN1OE0PY

Encouraging enrollment has never been a priority for Trump administration officials, and confusion caused by the court decision in Texas could further depress enrollment, which was already lagging behind last year’s numbers.

From Nov. 1 to Dec. 8, about 4.1 million people had signed up for Affordable Care Act coverage through the federal marketplace, with new enrollment in the 39 states that use the federal website Healthcare.gov down by 20 percent compared with the same period last year.

In all, 11.8 million people in all 50 states signed up for health insurance through the law’s marketplaces for 2018. This year’s enrollment period is now ending except for in Rhode Island, where it will end Dec. 23, and in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York and the District of Columbia, where it will end in January.

“During a year when most people don’t know when the deadline is, if the only news you hear is that the A.C.A. was struck down, that is only going to hurt enrollment,” Josh Peck, a co-founder of the group Get America Covered and the former chief marketing officer for Healthcare.gov during the Obama administration, said in an email.

The administration has slashed marketing efforts and enrollment assistance and encouraged people to buy skimpier, less expensive plans that do not meet the standards of the law. These actions, and the elimination of the law’s tax penalty for not having coverage starting next year, are most likely among the reasons fewer people are signing up.

Even as enrollment in private plans under the Affordable Care Act will most likely be smaller next year, hundreds of thousands more low-income adults are expected to enroll in expanded Medicaid in five states that recently gave them the option through citizens’ initiatives or legislative action. Those states are Idaho, Maine, Nebraska, Utah and Virginia. Last month’s Kaiser tracking poll found that 59 percent of respondents living in the 14 states that have not yet expanded Medicaid want them to do so.

Other broadly popular provisions of the law are one that allows young people to stay on their parents’ health insurance plan until they turn 26, and another that allows people to get certain types of preventive care, like vaccinations, mammograms and other types of screenings for diseases, at no charge.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/us/politics/obamacare-ruling-health-care.html

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On Saturday, President Donald Trump said Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who’s facing federal investigations, will leave the administration at year’s end.
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is leaving next year, President Donald Trump announced Saturday — the latest high-level departure from the president’s administration. 

Zinke has held his position since the start of Trump’s presidency, making him one of a handful of cabinet members who still have their original post within the administration.

The former Navy SEAL wielded an unflinching demeanor as the head of a sprawling agency. Interior has roughly 70,000 employees, manages the country’s natural resources on land and offshore, and oversees federal lands that collectively make up a fifth of the country.

For much of his tenure, Zinke, 57, a former Montana congressman, was the target of allegations and investigations. Those were sure to be examined in public in the new Democrat-led House of Representatives.

Here are some of the key controversies in Zinke’s time as President Donald Trump’s Interior Secretary. 

A land development deal

Zinke came under scrutiny for his role in a Montana land deal that could benefit him personally. The Interior Department’s own inspector general reportedly referred this case to the Department of Justice for potential prosecution.

The investigation examined a meeting Zinke had with David Lesar, chairman of Halliburton, an energy company. At issue: a project near land owned by Zinke’s family foundation. The project, according to CNN, could improve the value of the Zinke land. 

Zinke said that meeting was innocent, and the pair just talked about the background of the project. 

“We go out to dinner. We talk about the background of the park: what are the neighbors like, what was the vision of the park, where the boundaries are, where the water table is because the water table has changed over time, what the railroad is. So they have the background,” Zinke said in June, during an interview with a Montana radio show.

Shrinking national parks 

Zinke also faced questions and scrutiny over his rationale for shrinking national parks and monuments

He was criticized heavily by environmental groups. His cuts to the size of parks engineered “the largest rollback of public land protection in American history,” said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group.

The Interior’s inspector general investigated the shrinking of one specific park, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah. The watchdog group examined whether Zinke redrew the lines of the park to help a former Utah lawmaker, a Republican and supporter of the Trump administration. 

Last year, the president approved Zinke’s recommendation to cut the monument by nearly half. The new boundaries helped free land surrounding 40 acres owned by former state Rep. Mike Noel and, according to the Washington Post, would help bring a proposed water pipeline to the area.

The agency’s watchdog released its findings last month, saying it found “no evidence” that Zinke altered the monument to help Noel or that Zinke and his staff even knew of the former lawmaker’s financial interest in the changes. 

Casino deal

The Interior Department’s watchdog group was also examining why Zinke denied a casino deal in Connecticut with the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes when staffers at Interior recommended approving it, the Washington Post reported.

The new casino would have been a competitor with MGM Resorts. The company and several senators lobbied for Zinke to deny a permit for the project, which he did. 

Travel concerns 

The agency’s inspector general admonished Zinke for his use of military charter planes. One trip, in June 2017, cost $12,375 for a trip to speak at the developmental camp for the Golden Knights, a professional hockey team based in Las Vegas.

He also was criticized by lawmakers for spending more than $53,000 on three helicopter trips in 2017, including one that returned him to Washington in time to take a horseback ride with Vice President Mike Pence, according to The Associated Press.

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The U.S. Department of Interior spent $139,000 to fix doors in Secretary Ryan Zinke’s office. The price is more than double the median U.S. household income in 2017.
USA TODAY

Office remodeling

Zinke drew criticism earlier this year for moving forward with the replacement of three sets of doors at Interior’s historic headquarters, costing nearly $139,000.

A spokeswoman for Zinke said at the time he was unaware of the contract before reporters started asking about it. 

The work is part of a decade-long modernization of the 1936 building that began before Zinke took office in March 2017.

More: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke accused of mixing politics with government business

Offshore drilling exemption for Florida

Zinke made a big deal in January when, after the president unveiled his plan to open up 90 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf off the U.S. coast to oil and gas exploration, he flew to Florida and revealed the Sunshine State would be exempt from offshore drilling.

It was seen as a political gambit and a huge gift to Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who weeks later decided to challenge Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.

But The Washington Post later reported the move caused some friction within the White House because it was not coordinated with the West Wing’s political shop. 

Contributing: Ledyard King, Associated Press

Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/12/15/ryan-zinke-secretary-interior-donald-trump/2322324002/