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Residents in President Biden’s home state of Delaware – which he represented in the Senate for more than three decades – saw a $15 decrease in their utility bills in 2018, replacing the anticipated $65 increase.
The reason was the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, according to the Delaware Public Service Commission, in announcing the rate cut from Delmarva. The tax reform package that President Trump signed in late 2017, among other things, slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.
Delaware is one of at least 38 states to pass along the corporate tax rate cut to customers, according to data compiled by Americans for Tax Reform. That includes the current president’s birth state, where the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission announced in 2018 a monthly credit to customer bills for 17 electric, natural gas, and water and wastewater utilities, totaling more than $320 million.
Now the Biden administration is proposing to increase the corporate tax to 28%. That’s still lower than it was before Trump’s tax reform package – but some fear enough to force power bills to increase.
Investor-owned utility companies, such as electric, gas and water companies, are regulated entities and required by law to get their billing rates approved by state public utility commissions. The commissions must consider how tax liability and other expenses factor into the cost of operation. Utility companies have significantly less flexibility in how to absorb such costs.
“Those taxes are passed directly to the public utility customers,” Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist told Fox News. “With public utilities, all agreed to the rate of return. … Regulated businesses can’t move money around.”
The Trump corporate tax cut in 2017 reportedly led more than 100 public utilities across the country to return $90 billion to customers, according to annual SEC 10-K filings. After the tax cut, public service commissions had to enter settlements with public utility companies to determine what to do with the excess accumulated deferred income tax balances, or EADIT.
Biden has repeatedly promised that he would not increase taxes on anyone earning less than $400,000 annually. However, because of how utility rates are determined, these corporate tax hikes could turn into an indirect tax on utility rate payers.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki dismissed this concern when asked about it in April.
“Well, I would say that there’s no reason that that is what needs to happen. We have evidence of what happens,” Psaki said. “Back in 2017, when Republicans prioritized tax cuts for big corporations over investing in working people, there were many arguments made about what the impact would be: the benefits would be passed on to consumers, they would invest in R&D, there would be jobs created. None of that happened. … So I would say that’s not a concern we have at this moment in time.”
The utility rate cuts that accompanied the corporate tax cut spanned the country in red, blue and battleground states. This included some of the most populous states, such as Texas, where at least 10 companies cut rates; New Jersey, where 14 utility companies passed it on to customers; Virginia, where at least a dozen companies cut rates; and nine companies out of Ohio and six companies in Illinois passed along the savings. Residents in smaller states, such as Utah and Vermont, also benefited, as did ratepayers in both Carolinas, both Dakotas and the two early presidential contest states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
As with any legislation, Biden will have to rely on the support of Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
In Arizona, at least 10 utility companies, including electric, water and waste water companies, cut rates or provided refunds in the hundreds of millions, attributed to the corporate tax cut. In West Virginia, at least three companies passed on savings from the corporate rate cut to customers. These were Appalachian Power Company, which reportedly saved $235 million; Potomac Edison that reportedly saved $85 million and West Virginia American Water Company reportedly saved $4.6 million.
“Any increase in the corporate tax rate increases the bills you pay, particularly with publicly regulated corporations,” Norquist said. “This is going to affect the public utilities in all 50 states.”
There was a school of thought that said former Vice President Joe Biden would begin to sink in the polls the moment he announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. Biden’s first day in the race, the thinking went, would be his best day.
In fact, the opposite has happened. Since formally becoming a candidate on April 25, Biden has shot up in the polls. On announcement day, Biden held a 6.3-point lead over second-place Sen. Bernie Sanders in the RealClearPolitics average of polls. Today, that lead is 23.5 points. That is a big change.
Polls do not tell us who will win an election months from now. But they do tell us what is happening at this moment. And at this moment, Democratic voters, who are sometimes said to be moving left and itching to transform the United States with a “Green New Deal,” “Medicare for All,” and through-the-roof taxes on the rich, are in fact responding to a decidedly more centrist appeal.
That appeal, from Biden, is a promise not to fundamentally remake American society but to restore things to the way they used to be. And “the way they used to be” means before President Trump.
Obviously, Democratic voters want to replace a Republican president with a Democratic president. But they are especially dismayed by Trump — and some, driven by increasingly strident news coverage, seem to have gone nearly ’round the bend about him.
But for some center-left Democrats, the solution to the Trump Problem — that is, the fact that Trump is president — might not be the “Green New Deal” or “Medicare for All.” It is to restore the pre-2017 order in American politics. And Biden, Barack Obama’s vice president from 2009 to 2017, is the physical embodiment of that old order.
That is what Biden promises. Nearly every day, he repeats some version of his core campaign pledge: “I want to restore the soul of this country.”
Biden’s unexpected choice of Charlottesville, Va., as the theme of his announcement was a way of saying that something has gone terribly wrong in the U.S. and that he wants to return to the pre-Trump past. Addressing a real or imagined moral crisis is one way for an opposition candidate to run against an incumbent president whose term has brought solid economic growth, low unemployment, and higher wages.
How long will Biden’s lead last? Who knows? There is simply no telling how the Democratic race will play out. In the last two Republican nomination contests, we saw one race, in 2012, in which several candidates alternated holding the lead before Mitt Romney finally won. In the other, in 2016, we saw Trump lead a big field virtually the entire time. Now, with an even bigger Democratic field, the race dynamics are not yet clear.
Plus, for Biden specifically, there will always be the issue of age. Biden will be 78 years old on inauguration day 2021. That is the same age Trump would be upon leaving office, should he serve eight years. But Biden would be just beginning his presidency nearing the age of 80. That is totally uncharted territory in U.S. history. (By the way, one other candidate, Sanders, is even older.)
Even if Democrats want to restore the old order, they might decide a younger candidate should do the job.
They might also want a candidate without Biden’s record of fizzling out in presidential campaigns. In his first run for president, in 1988, Biden withdrew amid a plagiarism scandal before any votes were cast. In his second run, in 2008, he quit after finishing fifth in the Iowa caucuses. So, he has run twice and never even made it to the New Hampshire primary.
Now, though, Biden stands ahead of the field. Democrats know how old he is, they know he has lost in the past, and they still like him.
There’s a truism that elections are always about the future, not the past. That’s often the case. But what if it isn’t this time? A lot of political truisms did not hold up in the 2016 election, which was won by a man with another promise of restoration, to “Make America Great Again.”
Now, many Democrats seem happy to support a candidate who pledges to take them back a few years. Again, that could change, but for the moment, it shows how many Democrats yearn to return to a time before Trump.
El golero de la selección nacional, Fernando Muslera, llegó a Turquía quince minutos antes de que los militares cerraran el aeropuerto. Dice que no percibe un clima de violencia, aunque por precaución está en su casa.
“Estoy sorprendido. Llegué desde Montevideo hace tres horas al aeropuerto y quince minutos después los militares lo cerraron. Estoy en mi casa y me ha llamado todo el mundo, dicen que la cosa está difícil pero yo veo gente en la calle. Incluso vi que en el aeropuerto había militares pero también mucha gente y ellos se fueron. Como no sé turco no entiendo muy bien lo que está pasando, pero hay mucha gente en la calle y no nada violento”, dijo el futbolista a El País.
Muslera está solo, sin su familia, porque mañana debe sumarse a la concentración de su equipo, el Galatasaray, en Suiza. “Por ahora no tengo ninguna indicación. Tengo que irme mañana a Suiza pero voy a esperar para ver si me muevo o me quedo en Estambul”, dijo a El País. “Hace tiempo que la cosa está complicada por acá, yo voy a esperar”, agregó.
Peter Manfredonia, the fugitive University of Connecticut student wanted in two killings, was caught in Maryland after a manhunt that stretched on for days, police announced Wednesday night.
Peter Manfredonia, the fugitive University of Connecticut student wanted in two killings, was caught in Maryland after a manhunt that stretched on for days, police announced Wednesday night.
Manfredonia was taken into custody at a truck stop in Hagerstown near the Washington County Sheriff’s Office following a six-day, multi-state manhunt involving several law enforcement agencies after he allegedly killed two men and bolted from Connecticut on Sunday.
The University of Connecticut senior was not injured and no officers were hurt.
The Hagerstown Police Department said an Uber driver dropped off Manfredonia, 23, in the city on Tuesday.
Investigators said the rampage began last Friday when Manfredonia allegedly hacked to death Ted DeMers, 62, with a machete in Willington, Conn.
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He then went to another home and allegedly held another man hostage before stealing his guns and truck and speeding to Derby, Conn.
In Derby, Manfredonia is believed to have shot and killed Nicholas Eisele, a former high school classmate, and forced Eisele’s girlfriend into her 2016 Black Volkswagen Jetta before leaving the state. She was found uninjured in Columbia, New Jersey. Police found Eisele shot to death on Sunday.
Pennsylvania police said Manfredonia took an Uber to a Walmart in East Stroudsburg, not far from the New Jersey border. Police discovered through interviews with the driver and from security camera footage that Manfredonia walked behind the store and onto railroad tracks, investigators said.
Credit: Connecticut State Police
State police also noted that Manfredonia had been seen on surveillance video at a Sheetz in Chambersburg, Pa. A Hyundai Santa Fe reported stolen Monday was recovered near the Sheetz.
Police later suspected Manfredonia to be in the Hagerstown, Md., area, where a ride-hailing service dropped off someone matching his description Wednesday.
Investigators have not elaborated on a possible motive for the crimes.
Manfredonia is a 2015 graduate of Newtown High School. He is a senior at the University of Connecticut, but has not lived on the campus in Storrs, Conn., at the time of the crimes or during recent semesters, UConn spokesperson Stephanie Reitz told WVIT.
A lawyer for the suspect’s family, Michael Dolan, said Wednesday that Manfredonia, an honors engineering student at UConn, had not shown signs of violence. He said the Newtown native had a history of depression and anxiety, but would not say whether he was on any medication for those conditions.
“This came as a total surprise to everybody based on Peter’s past,” he said. “He’s been a kind-hearted person who has no history of violence or any trouble with the law.”
Fox News’ Marta Dhanis, Danielle Wallace and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The winter surge of COVID-19 brutalized much of Los Angeles County, sending case rates and deaths skyrocketing for weeks.
But in some neighborhoods, the pandemic’s wrath was barely felt.
In West Hollywood, Malibu and Playa del Rey, infection rates actually fell, or increased much less than elsewhere, according to a Times data analysis of more than 300 neighborhoods and cities across the county.
Those communities’ relative good fortune can be explained by some obvious demographic factors, such as Malibu’s low housing density and West Hollywood’s large population of singles able to work from home.
But residents and city officials also point to other factors they believe helped keep the pandemic under control: sea breezes, easy access to open space for exercising, a strong culture of mask compliance and, crucially, limited contact with other people.
“I am keenly aware that I am in the minority of people,” said Shayna Moon, a project manager for a technology company who works from home in Playa del Rey, where case rates declined during the surge. “So few people have been protected in the way that people in my age and income bracket and education have been.”
The data analysis underscores the wrenching inequities unveiled by the pandemic in L.A. County and beyond.
Some areas — the Eastside, eastern San Fernando Valley, South L.A. and southeastern part of the county — have been devastated by the coronavirus. Many of these are low-income communities with a high number of residents who are essential workers, putting their lives at risk at supermarkets, manufacturing firms and other businesses. They are far more likely to live in overcrowded conditions, bringing the coronavirus home from work and spreading it among the household.
Hard-hit areas lack the assets — vast recreational open space and a population with the economic means to stay home, get goods delivered and work remotely — of affluent communities that fared better. It was not just living in sprawling single-family homes rather than denser apartments that made the difference, but additional economic and lifestyle factors.
When taken as a whole, these factors paint a tale of two surges — showing that the luxuries of location and privilege play an important role in one’s ability to avoid the coronavirus.
This story, which examined weekly case rates between Nov. 15 and Jan. 15, is about some of the places the holiday surge passed over.
Malibu
In the courtyard of a Malibu shopping plaza last week, Renee Henn, 27, sat on a bench in the sun as people milled around sipping coffee, chatting over lunch at physically distanced tables and popping into a Pilates studio.
Henn, who lives in a house near the beach with her father and his girlfriend, has been able to work remotely for a local tech company during the pandemic. She said lack of density, lifestyle factors and even the Malibu climate could help explain the area’s relatively tame COVID-19 numbers.
“We’re near the water, and the sea air heals,” she said. “Everybody is outside all the time.”
While L.A. County’s coronavirus case rate exploded by 450% during the surge, the case rate for the city of Malibu only doubled. That places it near the top of the list of communities least affected by the surge.
Pricey real estate may have helped to insulate Malibu. The median home value in the seaside community is $2 million, according to census data, and many of the essential workers at restaurants, grocery stores and other businesses in its compact commercial district live outside the area.
The city’s affluent residents were able to pivot to working remotely soon after the pandemic started, and most City Hall services and meetings immediately transitioned to online.
“A lot of people in Malibu were able to adjust to working from home,” said the city’s mayor, Mikke Pierson, “and I think it made a huge difference compared to all the people that had to head out on 9-to-5 jobs that required them to be out among other people.”
Pierson noted that Malibu does not have nursing homes or long-term care facilities (although there have been efforts to establish some), which have been hubs for outbreaks of the virus.
But as a tourist destination, Malibu poses some risks. With up to 15 million visitors a year, Malibu considers crowding on beaches and trails to be a “real concern” during the pandemic, said city spokesman Matt Myerhoff.
To encourage healthy behavior, the City Council in November passed an ordinance requiring the use of masks. It is enforced with a $50 fine that can be avoided if the person in violation complies immediately. The city also placed digital signage along highways encouraging the use of face coverings in public.
“The city has been using all of its communications channels to repeat and reinforce the [Los Angeles County] public health officials’ safety recommendations [and] health orders,” Myerhoff said.
Additionally, the area has plenty of open space. Julia Bagnoli, 36, lives in an “Airstream in the woods,” she said, in the hilly area of Topanga just east of Malibu. She has a number of jobs — including alcohol treatment counseling and teaching yoga at a children’s school — but her primary occupation is Vedic astrology, which she has been able to practice remotely throughout the pandemic.
Compared with her woodsy home, “the city is just more crowded,” she said while playing with her puppy Usha at a shopping plaza on Pacific Coast Highway. She noted that there are only about 10,000 people in Topanga and fewer than 14,000 in Malibu. “There’s like 14,000 people in a four-block radius in Hollywood. We’re just more spread out.”
West Hollywood
West Hollywood, in some ways, would seem a prime candidate as a superspreader locale. The city jams 36,000 people into less than 2 square miles.
But while other densely populated areas in the county, including parts of South L.A. and the San Gabriel Valley, saw coronavirus case rates skyrocket by more than 1,000% during the surge, West Hollywood saw its cases climb by only 46%.
The main difference: household size. West Hollywood is a place where many residents live alone, according to city data. And many of the area’s residents have been able to work from home throughout the pandemic.
Those options are off the table for many of the essential workers and people who depend on multigenerational housing in parts of L.A. that were hit hard by the surge.
Dex Thompson, a 33-year-old actor, said he is the sole occupant of his house near the busy intersection of Fairfax Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard and has been going on “Zoom auditions” since the start of the pandemic. Even the decision to audition has been deliberate, he said.
“There’s a little bit of narcissism here,” Thompson said of West Hollywood, as he snacked on sushi and beet juice outside Whole Foods. “Everyone feels a little important, like, ‘I’m about to be somebody, and you’re not, so am I going to risk my life for you or for this opportunity?’”
That luxury — of housing, work and choices — has, in many ways, been a determining factor amid the pandemic.
Lisa Cera, a stylist, said she and her business partner have managed to keep their business afloat by working out of her apartment.
Like Thompson, she is the sole occupant of her home, which is around the corner from West Hollywood’s commercial corridor. She has three interns — two of whom work remotely — and is tested for the coronavirus any time she has to step onto a film set.
Although Cera has friends on the East Coast who have contracted COVID-19, she said she didn’t know anyone in West Hollywood who has had it.
Keeping fit may have helped her and others in her neighborhood to stay healthy during the pandemic, she said. She hikes in Runyon Canyon almost every day and is careful to pull her mask tighter when someone gets close to her on the popular trail.
Though ocean breezes and gourmet juices may seem like less-than-quantifiable factors, there is a case to be made for their correlation to health and avoidance of COVID-19.
Lifelong, systemic lack of access to primary healthcare and nutrition, as well as environmental factors like pollution, can contribute to a higher likelihood of illness and death from the virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many of those factors have long plagued the poorer, denser and more diverse parts of the county that were hit hardest during the surge.
West Hollywood’s network of social programs may have also made a difference. The city provided free grocery and meal delivery for vulnerable residents, expanded assistance for renters and small businesses and developed advanced technological outreach and communication efforts, according to city spokeswoman Lisa Belsanti.
Additionally, West Hollywood, like Malibu, passed an ordinance requiring the use of masks in public.
Some residents said the combination of factors worked.
“We’re a small city,” said Douglas, 49, a real estate developer who declined to give his last name. “West Hollywood is good at communicating policies and getting the information out.”
Playa del Rey
In Playa del Rey, an affluent beachfront neighborhood near Los Angeles International Airport, the pandemic has barely registered.
In fact, infection rates declined by 25% during the two-month period identified by The Times.
The area in the heart of Silicon Beach doesn’t have Malibu’s spaciousness, but it seemed to have demographic advantages. The coastal community is largely residential, with a mix of single-family homes and apartments, and it has fewer crowded households than most neighborhoods and cities in the county, according to a Times review of data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
It’s also among the most affluent — and has a high percentage of white-collar workers, meaning many presumably have the advantage of working from home.
Moon, the project manager and a Midwest transplant to the neighborhood, has been cautious about following public health guidelines, she said, expressing gratitude that her employer has allowed her to work from home since April.
Moon said she doesn’t step foot outside her apartment without a mask — and rarely ventures farther than neighborhood groceries and drugstores.
“I assume very little risk on a daily basis. I’ve basically been insulated from it because of the demographic that I’m in,” she said.
But the public health precautions — such as stay-at-home orders and intermittent bans on indoor and outdoor dining — have taken their toll on the neighborhood.
At Playa Provisions, a well-known eatery just off the beach, business is down by 75%.
“We love being that go-to staple and dependable location for people to come,” said Brooke Williamson, the restaurant’s co-owner and co-chef. “Every moment of this has been so painful.”
She and her staff never relaxed their safety precautions, even as the neighborhood fared better than other parts of the county, she said.
“I tried not to think about the area not being dangerous. I always treated my restaurant and staff and family as if we were in the highest-risk areas to try to avoid being relaxed in any way.”
While Williamson talked, more than a dozen people walked by her restaurant. All wore masks.
Former Trump adviser Roger Stone claimed on Wednesday that North Korea had interfered in the U.S. presidential election. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump continued to assert that fraudulent activity was prevalent during the November election.
Stone, who has previously spoken of his respect for some members of the QAnon conspiracy theory movement, was sentenced to 40 months in prison for lying to investigators in connection with the Mueller probe into Russian election meddling during Trump’s 2016 campaign. Trump commuted Stone’s sentence in July.
With the Electoral College expected to meet on December 14, Trump has intensified his claims of widespread election fraud. Democrat President-elect Joe Biden was widely projected to be the winner of the election despite Trump’s protestations. During an interview on The Alex Jones Show, Stone said he had received further proof of election fraud.
“I just learned of absolute incontrovertible evidence of North Korean boats delivering ballots through a harbor in Maine, the state of Maine,” Stone said. “If this checks out, if law enforcement looked into that and it turned out to be true, it would be proof of foreign involvement in the election.”
Newsweek reached out to the Maine Bureau of Corporations, Elections and Commissions for comment.
Stone told Jones that he prayed daily for Trump to be “strengthened” in his fight against “an epically corrupt deep state that has no problem in what appears to be the cyber-manipulation of the votes of the American people.”
Roger Stone, former adviser to President Donald Trump, said Wednesday that he had knowledge of “incontrovertible evidence” of election fraud. Mark Wilson/Getty
In a July interview, Stone praised some members of the QAnon movement as “great patriots.” Many of the theories espoused by QAnon adherents revolve around Trump leading a covert battle against Democrats, some members of the business community and individuals in the entertainment industry. According to the theory, those individuals are involved in pedophilia, human trafficking and satanic worship.
While Trump has declined to distance himself from the QAnon movement, his claims that Democrats conspired to win the election have continued. On Wednesday, Trump released a 46-minute long video on his Twitter feed detailing his allegations of election fraud.
“The Democrats had this election rigged right from the beginning,” Trump said, citing claims of voting machine manipulation, improper mail-in ballots and insufficient signature checks.
Trump has alleged that many of the mail-in ballots, which skewed Democratic, were illegally counted. Those ballots allegedly helped swing the election in Biden’s favor. “If we are right about the fraud,” Trump said, “Joe Biden can’t be president. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of votes.”
Trump’s legal team has filed litigation in some battleground states contesting the election process. However, many of those lawsuits have been dismissed by judges.
“What a disaster this election was,” Trump said. “A total catastrophe, but we’re going to show it, and hopefully the courts—in particular, the Supreme Court of the United States—will see it and respectfully, hopefully, they will do what’s right for our country.”
According to the Associated Press, Biden was projected to win the election with 51.3 percent of the popular vote to Trump’s 47 percent. Biden received 306 electoral votes, more than the 270 electoral votes required to be officially declared president. Although some litigation on behalf of Trump is still ongoing, states have until December 8 to certify their election results before the Electoral College convenes on December 14.
The president endorsed a bipartisan budget deal without any of the spending restraints previously demanded by Republicans.
President Donald Trump may have to hand out some new nicknames — for himself — after endorsing a bipartisan budget deal with Congress: “Trillion Dollar Trump?” “Deficit Don?”
With a new bipartisan budget deal that does nothing to cut federal spending, Trump is on track for another $1 trillion deficit this year. And there’s no reason to believe the following fiscal year will be any different, with ballooning deficits from higher spending, the 2017 tax cuts — Trump’s signature legislative achievement, which slashed revenue — and none of the entitlement reforms long preached by Republican leaders on Capitol Hill.
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Candidate Trump bragged that he would pay off the entire federal debt in eight years, but President Trump is governing as if deficits don’t matter.
In fact, Trump is approaching the level of red ink from President Barack Obama’s first term, when Obama racked up trillion-dollar deficits four years in a row. Trump is on pace to do the same, starting with this year’s yawning deficit of more than $1 trillion, according to budget estimates.
But there are huge differences: Trump has a growing economy with historically low unemployment and a soaring stock market, while Obama was battling a brutal downturn in the economy during the worst recession in 80 years, making it much harder to curb federal spending.
Though Trump’s administration has repeatedly proposed massive cuts in its annual budget plans, lawmakers in both parties have laughed off the proposals. Now Trump has agreed to a second sweeping budget deal with Democrats that increases spending by more than $300 billion.
“This was a real compromise in order to give another big victory to our Great Military and Vets!” Trump tweeted Monday night in announcing his support for the $1.37 trillion package.
But some in Trump’s party were far less excited, wary that the profligate spending under Trump makes Republicans look like hypocrites.
“Everybody here basically… talks about it in a campaign and then gets into the rhythm here and we keep generating all these deficits and adding to all that debt,” Sen. Mike Braun (Ind.) said. “That’s what I ran against. That’s one of the big things why people back in Indiana elected me.”
Other Republicans said Trump wasn’t to blame.
“It’s not the president who is spending too much. It’s Congress,” said Sen. Joni Ernst (Iowa), who argued there was little her party could do to take a harder line in the talks against spending. “Do we want a shutdown in the government again? We don’t want to shut down the government.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), who served as the lead Democratic negotiator, and Senate Minority Leader Schumer (D-N.Y.) hailed the deal, saying it met their priorities for more domestic spending while “turning off” the tens of billions in automatic spending cuts slated to go into effect if no deal were reached.
“Democrats have always insisted on parity in increases between defense and non-defense, and we are pleased that our increase in non-defense budget authority exceeds the defense number by $10 billion over the next two years,” the two Democrats said in a joint statement. “It also means Democrats secured an increase of more than $100 billion in funding for domestic priorities since President Trump took office.”
Part of the deal would include a second debt ceiling increase under Trump, with few of the spending reductions demanded by the GOP in the Obama era.
Instead, Trump and the GOP’s biggest fiscal priorities — bolstering the Pentagon and slashing tax rates — have trumped the GOP’s deficit hawk rhetoric. The deal also seeks to prohibit Democrats from tying the administration’s hands on key border and spending priorities, which Republicans see as a big win.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had pushed Trump to enter into budget negotiations for months, arguing that avoiding a default and shutdown was worth the price of increasing spending with a Democratic House in divided government.
But McConnell was careful to call it “The Administration-Pelosi Budget Deal” in his news release, despite the fact he’ll back it because of the increase in Pentagon spending. Not a word was included about the deficit.
“I am very encouraged that the administration and Speaker Pelosi have reached a two-year funding agreement that secures the resources we need to keep rebuilding our armed forces,” McConnell said. “This was our top objective: Continuing to restore the readiness of our armed forces and modernize our military to deter and defend against growing threats to our national security.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), a close Trump ally, is backing the agreement but said Democrats “refused to even discuss meaningful budget offsets and more importantly, any long-term reforms to the driving spending forces adding to our debt.”
Other Republicans complained about the increase in the deficit, but that doesn’t mean they’re prepared to vote against the package either — not with Trump giving them cover to vote for it.
“I’m very concerned about it. Particularly on the entitlement side, the mandatory spending side, which is where most of the money is. And that’s something that the president has not had a particular interest in doing anything about,” acknowledged Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the party whip. “We’re going to end up spending more than a lot of Republicans, I’m sure, would like. But that’s what it’s going to take to get a deal.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who is up for reelection next year, said Trump hasn’t done enough on the deficit but insisted the problem is caused by both parties. And Cornyn noted he’s likely to back the agreement, “reluctantly.”
“I don’t see the alternative,” Cornyn said. “We’re not going to deal with the growth in deficits and debt and mandatory spending this week. Sadly, that’s not on the table.”
The U.S. deficit is on track to exceed $1 trillion this year — the highest level since 2012, when much of the country was still climbing out of the recession. In fact, deficits have never been so high outside of wartime or an economic recession.
Within four years, the Treasury is set to spend more on interest payments than on the nation’s entire defense budget.
Some of Trump’s close advisers, including hard-line fiscal conservatives like acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and acting Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, pushed for more cuts to spending or a one-year deal at current spending levels.
But Democrats refused to go along with such a plan, and at the end of the day, Mnuchin and Trump believed a happy Wall Street — along with voters who like federal spending and want to see the values of their 401K plans rising — was more important than the deficit, to the disappointment of GOP conservatives.
“We have to be focused on fiscal responsibility,” Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.) said on CNN on Monday afternoon. “It’s one thing for Republicans to talk about it, but we’ve got to live up” to it.
Sarah Ferris and Caitlin Oprysko contributed to this report.
The Trump administration has been on high alert in response to what military and intelligence officials have deemed specific and credible threats from Iran against U.S. personnel in the Middle East.
But President Trump is frustrated with some of his top advisers, who he thinks could rush the United States into a military confrontation with Iran and shatter his long-standing pledge to withdraw from costly foreign wars, according to several U.S. officials. Trump prefers a diplomatic approach to resolving tensions and wants to speak directly with Iran’s leaders.
Disagreements over assessing and responding to the recent intelligence — which includes a directive from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that some American officials interpret as a threat to U.S. personnel in the Middle East — are also fraying alliances with foreign allies, according to multiple officials in the United States and Europe.
Trump grew angry last week and over the weekend about what he sees as warlike planning that is getting ahead of his own thinking, said a senior administration official with knowledge of conversations Trump had regarding national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“They are getting way out ahead of themselves, and Trump is annoyed,” the official said. “There was a scramble for Bolton and Pompeo and others to get on the same page.”
Bolton, who advocated regime change in Iran before joining the White House last year, is “just in a different place” from Trump, although the president has been a fierce critic of Iran since long before he hired Bolton. Trump “wants to talk to the Iranians; he wants a deal” and is open to negotiation with the Iranian government, the official said.
“He is not comfortable with all this ‘regime change’ talk,” which to his ears echoes the discussion of removing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein before the 2003 U.S. invasion, said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
When asked about the accounts of Trump’s frustration with Bolton, National Security Council spokesman Garrett Marquis said, “This reporting doesn’t accurately reflect reality.”
Trump is not inclined to respond forcefully unless there is a “big move” from the Iranians, a senior White House official said. Still, the president is willing to respond forcefully if there are American deaths or a dramatic escalation, the official said.
While Trump grumbles about Bolton somewhat regularly, his discontent with his national security adviser is not near the levels it reached with Rex Tillerson when he served as Trump’s secretary of state, the official added.
Trump denied any “infighting” related to his Middle East policies in a tweet on Wednesday. “There is no infighting whatsoever,” Trump said. “Different opinions are expressed and I make a decisive and final decision — it is a very simple process. All sides, views, and policies are covered. I’m sure that Iran will want to talk soon.”
On Wednesday morning, the president attended a Situation Room briefing on Iran, a person familiar with the meeting said.
Pentagon and intelligence officials said that three distinct Iranian actions have triggered alarms: information suggesting an Iranian threat against U.S. diplomatic facilities in the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Irbil; U.S. concerns that Iran may be preparing to mount rocket or missile launchers on small ships in the Persian Gulf; and a directive from Khamenei to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and regular Iranian military units that some U.S. officials have interpreted as a potential threat to U.S. military and diplomatic personnel. On Wednesday, the State Department ordered nonessential personnel to leave the U.S. missions in Baghdad and Irbil.
In Tokyo on Thursday, visiting Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Tehran was exercising “maximum restraint.”
“We believe that escalation by the United States is unacceptable and uncalled for,” Zarif told his Japanese counterpart, Taro Kono.
U.S. and European officials said there are disagreements about Iran’s ultimate intentions and whether the new intelligence merits a more forceful response than previous Iranian actions.
Some worry that the renewed saber-rattling could create a miscalculation on the ground, said two Western officials familiar with the matter. And Iran’s use of proxy forces, the officials said, means it does not have absolute control over militias, which could attack U.S. personnel and provoke a devastating U.S. response that in turn prompts a counter-escalation.
Bolton warned in a statement last week that “any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.”
Military officials have described themselves as torn between their desire to avoid open confrontation with Iran and their concern about the recent intelligence, which led the commander of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr., to request a host of additional military assets, including an aircraft carrier and strategic bombers.
Multiple officials said uniformed officers from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, led by its chairman, Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., have been among the leading voices articulating the costs of war with Iran.
Other officials said the view that deterrence rather than conflict was required was “monolithic” across the Pentagon and was shared by civilian officials led by acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan, whom Trump nominated last week to remain in the job but who has not yet been confirmed by the Senate. As the tensions have intensified, Shanahan has been in touch multiple times a day with other senior leaders, including Bolton, Pompeo and Dunford, officials said.
Some defense officials have described Bolton’s more aggressive approach as troubling.
Defense officials said that they are considering whether they will field additional weaponry or personnel to the Persian Gulf region to strengthen their deterrent against possible action by Iran or proxy groups, but that they hope additional deployments will prevent rather than fuel attacks.
Trump’s fears of entangling the United States in another war have been a powerful counterweight to the more bellicose positions of some of his advisers.
Trump has called the Iraq War a massive and avoidable blunder, and his political support was built in part on the idea that he would not repeat such a costly expenditure of American blood and treasure.
A new deal with Iran, which Trump has said he could one day envision, would be a replacement for the international nuclear compact he left last year that was forged by the Obama administration. Trump’s early policy on Iran, which predated Bolton’s arrival, was aimed at neutralizing the pact and clearing the way for an agreement he thought would more strictly keep Iran in check.
Trump’s administration has been frustrated, however, that Iran and the rest of the signatories to the nuclear agreement have kept it in force.
Trump’s anger over what he considered a more warlike footing than he wanted was a main driver in Pompeo’s decision last weekend to suddenly cancel a stop in Moscow and on short notice fly instead to Brussels, where he sought meetings on Monday with the European nations that are parties to the Iran nuclear deal, two officials said. Pompeo was not accorded the symbolic welcome of joining their joint Iran-focused meeting. Instead, he met with foreign ministers one by one.
Pompeo’s visit was meant to convey both U.S. alarm over the recent intelligence on Iran and Washington’s desire for diplomacy, not war, two officials said.
But European leaders, who have been watching the febrile atmosphere in Washington with alarm, have not been convinced, according to conversations with 10 European diplomats and officials from seven countries, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive assessments of Washington and Tehran.
Pompeo “didn’t show us any evidence” about his reasons Washington is so concerned about potential Iranian aggression, said one senior European official who took part in one of Pompeo’s meetings. The official’s delegation left the meeting unconvinced of the American case and puzzled about why Pompeo had come at all.
Many officials in European capitals said they fear that conflict with Iran could have a cascading effect on their relations with Washington, ripping open divisions on unrelated issues.
They distrust Trump’s Iran policy, fearing that key White House advisers are ginning up rationales for war. And leaders need to win reelection from citizens who hold Trump in low regard and would punish them for fighting alongside Americans on the Iran issue.
Democratic members of Congress, while traditionally strong supporters of pressuring Iran, have also raised questions about the intelligence and the administration’s apparent flirtation with combat. In a statement on the Senate floor on Wednesday, Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, demanded “answers from this administration about Iran . . . and about what intelligence this administration has.” So far, he said, the administration has ignored those demands and refused to provide briefings.
“We cannot, and we will not, be led into dangerous military adventurism,” he said.
Anxieties over the heightened threat environment spilled over into Capitol Hill on Wednesday during a classified briefing. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) argued that the intelligence warranted an escalation against Iran, said one person with knowledge of the briefing. In response, Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton (Mass.) accused her of exaggerating the threat in what the person described as a “very heated exchange.”
A representative for Moulton declined to comment. A spokesman for Cheney said the congresswoman “will never comment on classified briefings and believes that any member or staffer who does puts the security of the nation at risk.”
Michael Birnbaum in Brussels, Simon Denyer in Tokyo and Missy Ryan, Karen DeYoung and Carol Morello in Washington contributed to this report.
White House aides describe the strategy not so much as delegation but as an concerted effort to restore confidence with a public battered by the contradictory messaging and scorched-earth politics of the Trump years. In just over a week, the White House has booked 80 TV and radio interviews with 20 senior administration officials, members of the Covid-19 response team and Cabinet secretary designates. They’ve had officials on each major network, booking them on every Sunday show in the first week. And they are working with CNN to have three of the doctors in charge of its Covid-19 response take questions from the public during a coronavirus town hall, said Mariel Sáez, the White House director of broadcast media.
Who’s not been booked for any sit-down interviews: Biden.
But the president hasn’t exactly been absent either. He appeared for brief ceremonies where he signed executive orders and delivered mostly scripted remarks. He’s taken a handful of questions from the news media. And he’s expected to give a major foreign policy address on Monday amid a planned trip to the State Department, his first visit to a Cabinet agency.
As main protagonists go, Biden’s role has been comparatively limited — a startling contrast to the omnipresent president who preceded him. Donald Trump didn’t so much love the spotlight as he sought to totally consume it. Whether he was sending Twitter screeds at all hours or shouting answers over the ear-splitting blades of his presidential aircraft, Trump craved media attention like no American leader before him.
Biden’s current approach is nearly the antithesis. It also stands in contrast to how he operated earlier in his career. As a senator, he was known for his loquaciousness. As vice president, there was an ever-simmering fear in the White House that he would trample on the message of the day with his proclivity to freelance (a fear that often did not become realized).
Biden’s own White House aides are now as ubiquitous as he is, some perhaps even more so. Already, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, domestic policy adviser Susan Rice, economic adviser Brian Deese and climate heads John Kerry and Gina McCarthy have cycled through the White House briefing room to answer questions. Press Secretary Jen Psaki was non-committal as to when Biden may be taking questions there, offering that they are always looking for opportunities to do so. Trump, during his early time in office, brought the cameras in for his sit down with automobile industry leaders as well as union leaders and workers. He did the same for speeches at the CIA and DHS, and traveled to Philadelphia for a televised address to the congressional GOP retreat. Whereas Biden has not done a television interview, Trump had conducted three by this point in his presidency.
“He’s secure. He’s not threatened by someone else being in the spotlight,” Paul Begala, the veteran Democratic strategist, said of Biden. “In fact, I think he likes that. He’s showing the country that he’s pulled together a really talented and diverse team.”
During the presidential campaign, Biden turned his pledge to hire and rely on the advice of experts into a weapon against Trump. And his advisers went into the transition acutely aware of the history of presidents who shouldered too much of the load. Jimmy Carter, the first president elected after Richard Nixon left office, was a poor delegator and quickly came to be seen as unable to meet the demands of the office.
“You can start with character, then you go to candor, compassion, all of the things that Trump lacked and Biden and his team are talking about,” Begala said. “But then you have to go to actually getting stuff done. They seem to be enormously aware of the fact that simply not being Trump is no longer enough.”
Among those taking to the airwaves is White House chief of staff Ron Klain, who is seen inside the administration as someone the public trusts on the pandemic. Klain has had a major public presence in messaging around Covid, with interviews and an active Twitter persona he developed since managing the Obama administration’s Ebola response.
During that crisis, Klain himself discovered the importance of capable deputies. On days when public anxiety about the virus was rising, he coined an acronym and emailed people “PTFOTV.” “Everyone in my office knew what PTFOTV stood for,” Klain told POLITICO last year. “It was ‘Put Tony Fauci On TV.’”
Fauci, who maintained high approval ratings during Trump’s final year, is now back in the role and being deputized by Klain all over again. And, in his media renaissance, he has gone to some length to tout his liberation from Trump. “The idea that you can get up and talk about what you know, what the evidence is, what the science is,” Fauci said, “it is somewhat of a liberating feeling.”
But with that freedom comes complications for an administration that is simultaneously putting many top officials out in public and hoping they all stay on the same message. In a Thursday event sponsored by the National Education Association, Fauci stressed Biden wants to keep to his goal of reopening most K-8 schools within his first 100 days. But Fauci added it “may not happen because there may be mitigating circumstances,” a hypothetical scenario the White House has avoided entertaining.
There’s little doubt that whomever replaced Trump in the White House would keep their public utterances more in line with historical standards. On Twitter alone, Biden has yet to announce anything approaching news, let alone reveal — as Trump often did — that he’d fired a top aide or scuttling his party’s congressional negotiations.
Silence can have its advantages. Former president Barack Obama went long stretches without popping up in public, particularly as Congress engaged over high-stakes negotiations. His aides were eager to deploy him when his input would have the most impact. And they were mindful, too, that Obama’s entry into a public debate could instantly polarize it — and give Republicans a handy political foil.
During his own campaign, Biden perfected the act of laying low, to such an extent that Democrats joked he was part of an Avengers-like ensemble rather than a solo act.
Some, including people close to Biden, say while it’s not a driving factor, there is a generational component to his decision not to scramble for attention. At 78, he is the oldest president in history. His tech savviness is not regularly touted. He has pledged to be a bridge to a future generation of Democrats — who welcome whatever bit of the attention he can give them.
One of those next-generation Democrats, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), recalled speaking privately with Biden after he dropped out of the presidential race. Biden, Swalwell told POLITICO, said “he would do all he could if elected to ‘pass the torch.’” The congressman said he believes Biden views the deployment of experts and surrogates as a nod to the public that the government is working on its behalf.
“These are the faces,” Swalwell said of Biden’s current approach. “It’s not a show.”
Some faces in the administration have been more prominent than others. Vice President Kamala Harris has been by Biden’s side at many meetings and appearances, as her press team has been careful to note. This week, she was deployed for interviews with TV stations and editorial boards in Arizona and West Virginia, states with Democratic senators the administration is courting to support its priorities.
Then there’s Pete Buttigieg, known for his non-stop media hits during his presidential bid and as one of the Biden campaign’s most effective surrogates.
Buttigieg has made a dizzying number of appearances in his new role as Transportation secretary designate, stopping off at “The View,” “Morning Joe” (twice) and another MSNBC show, CNN (twice), NPR, Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight show, local TV stations in Green Bay and Detroit, an interview with the Washington Post, and a sit-down with “Captain America” star Chris Evans’ media company — all since mid-December.
Presidential nominees traditionally hold to a strict code of omertà before the Senate waves them through. But a Buttigieg adviser said the issues he’s talking about — Covid relief, Biden’s “Buy American” executive order, and climate change — are all “important transportation priorities that Pete is eager to get to work on at DOT, if confirmed.”
Buttigieg’s actual role in the administration has sometimes taken a back seat to whatever news is dominating the day. In a recent CNN interview with Don Lemon, he was asked about the Senate impeachment hearings involving Trump, Biden’s devotion to unity, and the president’s reversal of the transgender military ban — a topic to which he has a personal connection as an openly gay veteran.
Rather than duck, Buttigieg followed the lead set by others in Biden’s orbit and engaged, calling Biden’s order an example of what it really means to “support our troops.”
Gen. Jack Keane shares his military outlook on warfare in Eastern Europe.
Over the weekend, Russian troops launched an assault on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, which was repelled in a counteroffensive, Ukrainian officials said Sunday.
The city was still in Ukrainian hands after shelling that sent thousands into underground shelters and as battles raged on the street. As Russian troops continue to try and capture the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, other assaults are happening on several fronts.
Officials have said Russian forces are firing indiscriminately on civilian areas in Kharkiv, which has seen some of the most fierce fighting since the unprovoked invasion began last week. The attack on civilian targets represents an escalation of Russian aggression.
“Dozens of dead and hundreds of wounded! This horror must be seen by the whole world! Death to the occupiers!” Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, wrote on his Facebook page.
Russia briefly took control of the city on Sunday before it was taken back hours later. Despite the onslaught, big cities remain under Ukrainian control, officials said.
Kharkiv matters because of its significance. The city has a population of nearly 1.5 million people and is located in the country’s northeast, around 20 miles from its northern border with Russia, making it the largest of Ukraine’s cities near that nation.
The city is also a central piece to Russia’s strategy to defeat Ukraine as it faces unanticipated resistance in trying to capture Kyiv.
A map of Kharkiv and Kyiv in Ukraine. Kharkiv, the second-largest city, has seen some of the most intense fighting since Russian troops invaded Ukraine last week. (iStock)
“The longer this thing goes, the worse it is for them,” Dan Hoffman, a former CIA senior officer and station chief, told Fox News. “It’s an intelligence failure on their part. That’s an intelligence failure that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin didn’t have that all figured out. He comes from an intelligence background, so he should have known all this stuff.”
Kharkiv was founded in 1654 and has become a large industrial, scientific, educational and transpiration hub.
Historically, Kharkiv was the Ukrainian capital from 1920 to 1934, when Ukraine first became was part of the Soviet Union, before it was moved to Kyiv. In World War II, it changed hands between Soviet and Nazi German forces several times and suffered heavy destruction.
Culturally, it has strong ties to Russia. Many residents speak Russian and travel back and forth between both nations is common.
In 2014, when demonstrators help oust pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, Kharkiv became a key point for opponents of the new government in an effort to restore him to power. Yanukovych eventually fled to the city where he held a wider base.
His pro-Russia supporters, at one point, stormed the City Hall and briefly took it over.
Currently, Kharkiv is a major transpiration hub and is home to more than 60 universities, according to Eurocities. In addition, the city manufactures diesel locomotives, machine tools and electronics.
El comportamiento de no pocos legisladores a lo largo del tiempo, lo exorbitante de los recursos que malgastan y la falta de trasparencia en su ejercicio son causa del desprestigio del Congreso mexicano.
En contrapartida, es de justicia destacar el esfuerzo fecundo y generoso de muchos diputados y senadores. Valga un ejemplo: tuve el privilegio de asistir al segundo informe anual de la Comisión de Justicia del Senado, presidida por Roberto Gil Zuarth, quien evidenció la trascendencia de la tarea realizada por sus integrantes, con el auxilio de un selecto equipo de colaboradores.
Daré solamente algunos datos: las 43 reuniones celebradas, la aprobación de 183 asuntos legislativos y el procesamiento de 81 nombramientos o ratificaciones de funcionarios públicos —todo ello alcanzado prácticamente por unanimidad y con la aprobación del pleno del Senado— acreditan el talante democrático y la capacidad política de sus miembros.
La tarea incluye un número importante de cuerpos normativos, como las modificaciones al Código de Justicia Militar, que armonizó los derechos de los civiles con la disciplina castrense, preservando a ésta “como un bien jurídico-institucional a tutelar”.
Su presidente se refirió también a los asuntos en trámite, como la Ley Nacional de Ejecución Penal, la Ley Penal para Adolescentes, la de Ejecución de Penas, la humanización del sistema penitenciario sin que el Estado pierda su poder de castigo, pero buscando que las cárceles dejen de ser “calabozos de frustración o plazas anárquicas para el reclutamiento y la actividad criminal”. Recordó que “nos hemos acostumbrado a sustituir las deficiencias institucionales con restricción a los derechos humanos y a costa muchas veces de la dignidad de las personas”, pues “siempre es más fácil limitar un derecho que crear una nueva capacidad estatal”.
Hizo ver que Ayotzinapa reabrió la discusión sobre el modelo policiaco, la distribución de competencias y las responsabilidades penales y de seguridad, así como lo relativo a la intervención federal en estados y municipios bajo riesgos o amenazas; sin olvidar la mutación del crimen organizado, que pasó de la especialización corporativa en el trasiego de drogas, a la diversificación en delitos comunes y transacciones ilegales.
Nos recordó la ilusión generada por los procesos de cambio político, que suponían la modernización de las estructuras económicas y de las instituciones de seguridad y justicia; pero que no se ha cerrado la brecha de desigualdad, ni logrado hacer valer la ley ni privilegiado el interés público.
Destacó la urgencia de “aumentar la eficacia del poder coercitivo del Estado, pero no bajo la lógica simplista del castigo, sino bajo el paradigma de la reparación del daño que hace de la víctima el fin último del reproche social”. Y un largo etcétera.
Este ejemplo y muchos más honran al Congreso y deben estar en la balanza cuando se juzgue el desempeño del parlamento mexicano. ¡Lástima que las buenas noticias no suelen ser noticia!
Three people have died in national parks around the US since the start of the government shutdown, during which the Trump administration chose to keep the parks open.
After most of the federal workforce was granted leave on 21 December, three days later a 14-year-old girl fell 213m to her death at the Horseshoe Bend Overlook, part of the Glen Canyon Recreation Area in Arizona.
On Christmas Day, a man died at Yosemite National Park in California after suffering a head injury from a fall. On 27 December, a woman was killed by a falling tree at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which straddles the borders of North Carolina and Tennessee.
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The deaths follow a decision by Trump administration officials to leave the scenic – but sometimes deadly – parks open even as the Interior Department has halted most of its operations.
During previous extended shutdowns, the National Park Service barred access to many of its sites across the nation.
Spokesman Jeremy Barnum said in an email that an average of six people die each week in the park system, a figure that includes “accidents like drownings, falls, and motor vehicle crashes and medical related incidents such as heart attacks”.
“Throughout the year, the National Park System offers a wide range of visitor experiences in unique landscapes with potential hazards that may exist at parks across the nation,” Mr Barnum said.
“Visitors can reduce their risk of injury if they plan ahead and prepare properly, select the most appropriate activity that matches their skill set and experience, seek information before they arrive at the park about hazards and environmental conditions, follow rules and regulations and use sound judgement while recreating.”
In 1995 and 2013, respectively, the Clinton and Obama administrations made the decision to close the parks altogether.
Officials came to the conclusion that it would jeopardise public safety and the parks’ integrity to keep them open, but the closures also became a political cudgel for Democrats because they exemplified one of the most popular aspects of federal operations that had ground to a halt.
In January 2018, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney and then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke made the decision to keep national park sites as accessible as possible in the event of a shutdown.
Trump officials forged ahead with the plan – but that shutdown only lasted for three days. The current shutdown enters the third week on Saturday.
Several former Park Service officials, along with the system’s advocates, said in interviews that activities such as viewing animals and hiking outdoors can carry a greater risk when fewer employees are around.
Diane Regas, president and chief executive of the Trust for Public Land, said the group has sent a letter to Donald Trump calling on him to close all national parks.
She said administration officials may have underestimated the broad scope of what it takes to maintain these sites.
“I think we all know that not having bathrooms is a nuisance,” Ms Regas said. “What I think people forget is, not having adequate sewage treatment can be dangerous.”
“When you bring people together, running these parks is like running a small city. We are taking risks with some of our most treasured natural resources without knowing that we’re doing our best to protect people, that we’re doing our best to protect park resources. When it comes to our national parks, I just don’t believe that’s acceptable.”
The Park Service estimates that up to 16,000 of its 19,000-person workforce are given leave during the shutdown.
Officials said services such as cleanup and maintenance vary from park to park, due to agreements with concessions and surrounding municipalities that are donating services, such as trash collection and road clearing.
Still, roughly half a dozen rangers are currently available to patrol Yosemite National Park, for example, which is about the size of Rhode Island. Officials said skeleton crews are working to close off hazardous areas covered in snow and ice.
On Christmas Eve, the 14-year-old girl raced from the car park where her parents parked to see the Horseshoe Bend Overlook, a dramatic cliff that looks out to a peninsula of jagged rock.
After a long search, her parents reported her missing about 5pm, triggering an emergency response, according to the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office. She was discovered near the cliff near dark, forcing authorities to wait and retrieve her body the next morning.
National Park Service officials said rangers responding to an emergency call found the second victim at Yosemite with a head wound, apparently from a short fall.
They did not confirm social media chatter from other visitors that he ran after a dog that he illegally brought into the park. The man, who was not identified, died of his injuries.
A spokesman for the Pacific West Region of the Park Service said the public wasn’t notified of the Yosemite death because of the shutdown and that it is also delaying an investigation into its causes.
“We aren’t releasing more details because the incident remains under investigation, said Andrew Muñoz, acting chief of public and congressional affairs for the region.
Two days after the Yosemite incident, 42-year-old Laila Jiwani was killed by a falling tree on Porter Creek Trail in the Smoky Mountains.
One of Jiwani’s two children, a 6-year-old, was airlifted to a hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening, according to a Park Service spokesman.
Frank Dean, president and chief executive of the Yosemite Conservancy, said in a phone interview that the park’s staff is doing its best under challenging circumstances.
“This is the first time in a long-term shutdown where the parks have remained open,” said mr Dean, who served as a park ranger and assistant to the superintendent in Yosemite before going on to become superintendent for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. What we’re finding now is it’s not really working, because you’ve got understaffing. As this thing drags on, you’ve got free access and no guidance.”
Daniel Wenk, who served as Yellowstone National Park’s superintendent until retiring in September, said in an interview that not having a robust presence could impede the agency’s response to an emergency.
“A casual cross-country skier would want to go to Tower Falls” in Yellowstone, Mr Wenk said. “If they suffer a heart attack – every year you have that – we wouldn’t be able to quickly respond. You might be dramatically delayed. It’s correct, people die in national parks all the time.
“If you can attribute [the shutdown] to people not being able to get to them for an hour and a half, that’s another story.”
While a handful of major parks have remained open during past shutdowns, many agency staffers had not anticipated that the budget impasse would persist this long.
Now some superintendents are closing off areas of their parks as it drags on, having determined that they cannot adequately protect either the habitat, wildlife or visitors.
Mount Rainier’s National Park Inn has been cleaning toilets and collecting trash at its own expense, but will stop doing that after breakfast on Sunday.
Melinda Simpson, operations manager at the concessionaire Rainier Guest Services, said that after that point, the National Park Service “will be then closing the park and locking the gates”.
“We couldn’t continue to operate under these conditions, and really wish we could. It’s very disappointing,” she said, noting that the operation’s 45 employees would have to go without pay while it was shut down. We are just waiting and looking forward to welcoming the guests when they open up the park again.”
Kristen Brengel, vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association, said that superintendents need the freedom to shutter parks if they determine it is no longer sustainable to keep them accessible.
“The political pressure to keep the parks open is overriding some of these judgment calls,” she said in an interview. “We need a release valve here for the Park Service, so they can do the right thing.”
In addition to restrooms not being maintained and visitors not being properly warned and guided by staff, crews cannot work to prepare parks for the summer season and fix roads.
Vehicle accidents ranked second behind drowning as a cause of death in parks in 2007, according to the last comprehensive tally released to the public.
The crime rate then increased by 17 percent from 2006 to 2011. Construction of the wall began in 2008, under President George W. Bush, and was completed in mid-2009, during the Obama administration. Crime has ebbed and flowed within a fairly narrow band since then.
Local officials, including Mayor Dee Margo, a Republican, have spoken out against Mr. Trump’s claims. Representative Veronica Escobar, a Democrat who recently won Mr. O’Rourke’s former seat, has demanded that the president apologize and meet with migrant families seeking asylum in the United States.
Among lawmakers who represent border districts, there is remarkably little support for a wall, and Democrats in Washington have stuck to their refusal to give Mr. Trump the $5.7 billion he is requesting for it. The latest numbers floated by Democrats in their negotiations with their Republican counterparts are between $1.3 billion and $2 billion.
Yet Mr. Trump has been undeterred. During his State of the Union address, he repeated grisly stories of violent crimes committed by illegal immigrants — never mind that the crime rate among immigrants is no higher than among native-born residents. He said a wall would stem the flow of deadly opioids and other illicit drugs into the United States — another dubious assertion, given that most drugs arrive at legal ports of entry.
Mr. Trump’s aides are trying to build a momentum after what they believe was a speech well received by his political base. Unlike some of his predecessors, the president did not immediately leave on a road trip to sell the messages in the address. But he has been eager to return to rallies, which energize him and filled up his calendar before the midterm elections.
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