Trump asserted in a tweet that the whistleblower’s complaint was “way off” and claimed that key Democrats didn’t think he would release a transcript of his call with the Ukrainian president, which sparked the scrutiny.
“The so-called Whistleblower’s account of my perfect phone call is ‘way off,’ not even close,” he tweeted.
The so-called Whistleblower’s account of my perfect phone call is “way off,” not even close. Schiff and Pelosi never thought I would release the transcript of the call. Got them by surprise, they got caught. This is a fraud against the American people!
Trump’s tweet came the morning after The New York Times reported that a second intelligence official was considering whether to file their own whistleblower complaint over concerns about the president’s dealings with Ukraine.
The person reportedly has more direct information than the first whistleblower, who did not have direct knowledge but cited “multiple White House officials with direct knowledge.”
Pelosi last week announced that Democrats would launch a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump over his dealings with Ukraine. The probe is being handled by the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight and Reform committees.
The White House released a rough transcript of the July 25 call that matched key details from the whistleblower complaint. Trump was quoted in the memo as asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “look into” the former vice president. Trump this week also publicly encouraged Ukraine and China to launch probes into Biden.
“I would think that if they were honest about it they’d start a major investigation into the Bidens,” Trump told reporters at the White House when asked about Ukraine.
House Democrats have ramped up their impeachment probe in recent days, issuing a subpoena on Friday for Ukraine-related documents from the White House and issuing a request for similar information from Vice President Pence.
Claire Risoli, owner of Pocha LA, said her restaurant has to be careful to abide by the rules, but can’t “ruffle feathers” either.
“We just have to play by the rules if we want to play in the game,” Risoli said.
That said, Risoli does not want to have to “police” her customers either.
“It’s definitely a concern. I don’t want to be in the position of having to turn anyone away,” she added.
Some customers, however, are nonplussed by the requirement.
“I’m fine with it. We have three kids. Whenever they wanted to play sports, guess what, they had to have their vaccination stuff. Going to the school, they had to show all that. I’m fine with them requesting that we show that we have vaccinations,” said diner Roland Macias.
For more information about how to provide proof of vaccination, check out KTLA’s guide.
On Friday, the president made a four-hour visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center where his doctor, Sean Conley, performed his check-up with 11 other specialists.
Andrew Yang and Kathryn Garcia at campaign events. | Alex Wong/Getty Images, Richard Drew/AP Photo
NEW YORK — Andrew Yang stood in front of a roaring crowd and a Chinese lion-dancing troupe in Flushing and exhorted his most loyal constituency — Queens’ Asian-American community — to support his rival in the New York City mayor’s race along with him.
“Kathryn Garcia is a true public servant,” he said through a microphone, highlighting her years of public service. “For anyone listening to my voice right now, if you support me, you should rank Kathryn number two on your ballot.”
Garcia did not return the favor.
“Let me be very clear, I’m not co-endorsing,” she told another crowd an hour later outside of Stuy-Town in Manhattan. “We are campaigning together. We are promoting ranked choice voting.”
The declaration elicited awkward murmurs from the crowd and more than a few confused expressions. But after making a splash Friday night, when the two Democratic mayoral candidates announced they’d be campaigning together, Garcia told POLITICO Saturday she never planned to back her competitor and Yang never expected her to.
“That was not a surprise for him or for his team … they absolutely knew what I was gonna say,” she said as she sped downtown to the Staten Island Ferry inside her custom-wrapped green and blue campaign van.
Ranked-choice voting, where voters can list five candidates in order of preference on their ballots, is debuting on its largest U.S. stage this year has changed the game in New York’s typically bare-knuckle political arena. Under the system, alliances between candidates are a common strategy to win support from voters’ in their second- and third-place choices.
Saturday’s matchup underscored the unpredictable nature of the primary, less than three days away. The alliance has torn away the psychological security blanket afforded to a normal frontrunner leading in normal polls. And it’s put Eric Adams, the Brooklyn Borough President and former NYPD captain who’s been dominating those polls, on the attack.
“I think it’s a level of hypocrisy,” he told reporters at a campaign stop in the Mount Eden neighborhood of the Bronx, focusing his ire on the former sanitation commissioner.
“We heard Kathryn talk about how Yang treated her as a woman. We heard how she felt — he did not have the experience and know-how to run the city,” he said. “He has criticized her. Their teaming up together is just a level of hypocrisy in my opinion.”
He then alleged the move was an attempt to make sure “candidates of color” were locked out of contention.
“They’re saying that we can’t trust a person of color to be the mayor of the City of New York, where the city is overwhelmingly people of color,” he said of Yang and Garcia, accusing them of deliberately announcing the agreement on Juneteenth, a holiday that celebrates the emancipation of enslaved people in the U.S.
Garcia dismissed the accusation.
“No, Eric, we’re winning. That’s your problem,” she said. “And I think he’s surprised that his traditional politics is not as effective … I don’t see how I was a hypocrite. I don’t see how Andrew was a hypocrite.”
“It’s actually consistently where both of us have been for this entire race,” she added later. “He’s been saying, ‘Put Kathryn number two,’ and I’ve been saying, ‘I’m not telling you who my number two is,’ and that I do want people to rank their [own] ballots.”
Where she’s taken issue with Yang is when he was riding high in the early polls and said he’d hire her for a top-level position to help run his City Hall.
“I’m fine with taking his number two votes. I was offended by the deputy mayor [comment]. I was never running for that — I was running for mayor.”
In a statement, the Yang campaign told POLITICO that they were “excited to spend time with Kathryn Garcia today and our teams are looking forward to handing out 40,000 pieces of joint lit in each of our best neighborhoods for the next 3 days.”
Nearly a half-dozen of Adams’ supporters released statements razing the two candidates as well, including former Gov. David Paterson, City Council Majority Leader Laurie Cumbo, Civil Rights Activist Ashley Sharpton and City Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez.
“Latino and Black New Yorkers did not organize and fight for generations so that they could finally put a working class person of color in Gracie Mansion, just to then have their victory taken from them by a backroom deal,” Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. said. “Both candidates should be ashamed of themselves.”
But in cities like San Francisco, where ranked-choice voting has been the norm for more than a decade, the alliances are a common feature for contenders who are not necessarily leading the pack.
“The classic RCV opportunity is where you have a person in the lead … and two ideologically compatible contenders who, in the aggregate, out-poll the leader,” Alex Clemens, a veteran Bay Area political strategist and lobbyist with Lighthouse Public Affairs, told POLITICO in April. “In a situation like that, it would make a great deal of sense for them to align.”
Despite the gang-up, Adams still appeared to be reveling in his frontrunner status as he soaked up support in another day of campaigning across the boroughs.
At Orchard Beach, he donned a yellow bathing suit and took a dip in the water as multiple beach-goers called his name.
“OK, now I’m really going to vote for him because he’s at the beach,” said a woman who joined the hordes asking to snap photos with the candidate throughout the day.
He attempted to clarify his earlier remarks about “people of color,” as Yang is of Asian descent and would be the first Asian-American mayor of New York.
“You know, they should be willing, if they’re gonna do some cross-endorsements, think of some of the other candidates in the field as well,” he said, referring to candidates like Maya Wiley and Dianne Morales who are Black and Afro-Latina. “But typical Yang.”
Wiley spent her day campaigning across the city, focusing on her proposals for mental health and wellness.
She told reporters that she had been invited to campaign with Yang and Garcia, but turned it down due to Yang’s recent comments about mentally ill New Yorkers at Wednesday’s debate.
“I couldn’t do it because I spent this entire campaign focused on how we serve people who are mentally ill, recognize that they have value and have human rights, and that they deserve services and support,” she said at a campaign stop in Rochdale Village in Queens. “After the comments Andrew made at the debate, I simply could not stand up for those comments.”
Both Yang and Garcia’s campaign denied that Wiley had been invited to campaign with the duo Saturday.
Wiley was referring to the debate hosted Wednesday by POLITICO, WNBC and Telemundo 47 where Yang said, “Mentally ill people have rights, but you know who else have rights? We do! The people and families of the city.”
“My own daughter was body slammed on a subway by a mentally ill person, just a few weeks ago, and that was a traumatizing event for her. But did she say, ‘Mom, I wish there was a police officer to take this mentally ill person in handcuffs?’ No, she said ‘Mom, how come we’re not providing and getting help and outreach to these folks?’” Wiley said.
“We need a continuum of care and services for folks, everything from mental health crisis intervention … [to] rehabilitation services for those who are also drug addicted, because that is a reality and a mental health issue of its own, and we have to make sure we have both a housing first strategy for that and also the emergency medical services we need,” Wiley said.
The candidate has had a surge of momentum on the left since winning the endorsement of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a host of other progressive luminaries that followed. But she has not been as strident as Morales, who vowed to cut the NYPD budget in half and fight against the construction of new jails after Rikers is closed.
Morales faced a campaign revolt that derailed the momentum she had just begun to gather weeks ago. Scott Stinger, the city comptroller who was also running in the progressive lane, was accused by two women of sexual misconduct — allegations he’s denied.
That left Wiley to pick up the progressive mantle in the waning weeks of the campaign. On Saturday, she received an endorsement from the Black Lives Caucus, the political arm of Black Lives Matter Greater New York.
“We’re four days out from choosing a mayor,” said Chivona Newsome, co-founder of the organization. “Being a Black woman, it’s important we break those concrete ceilings. Not only is it the first woman, it’s the first Black woman.”
Newsome said the caucus went with Wiley because of her policies — and despite the fact that she was once aligned with Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Newsome issued an important caveat, though, in announcing the group’s backing.
“If Maya gets in there and she doesn’t live up to her campaign promises, we will bring hell and holy fire,” she said.
Image caption
Hay 9.261 kilómetros de distancia entre Santo Domingo –la capital de República Dominicana– y Mitilene (Lesbos).
¿Cómo terminaron 46 ciudadanos de República Dominicana pidiendo asilo político junto a miles de refugiados sirios en Grecia, a más de 9.000 kilómetros de su tierra?
La respuesta a esta pregunta está en algún lugar de la colina pelada donde está ubicado el gigantesco centro de recepción de refugiados de Moria, en la isla de Lesbos.
Pero, para encontrarla, primero hay que negociar el intrincado laberinto de tiendas de campaña y barracas prefabricadas donde el gobierno griego alberga a miles de solicitantes de asilo llegados acá por el mar Egeo.
“Actualmente hay entre 3.500 y 4.000. La verdad es que es imposible saber exactamente cuántos”, me dice el director del centro, Spyros Kourtis, mientras caminamos hacia una zona del mismo donde cree podremos encontrar lo que estoy buscando.
“La mayoría son sirios, pero también hay muchos de Libia, Afganistán, Pakistán, Nepal y últimamente de India”, explica.
Y encontrar entre ellos también a ciudadanos dominicanos fue una sorpresa.
“Actualmente hay entre 3.500 y 4.000 (solicitantes de asilo). La verdad es que es imposible saber exactamente cuántos”
“Para nosotros es como si fueran del Polo Sur”, le dice Kourtis a BBC Mundo.
Y el intenso calor del mediodía ayuda a reforzar la sensación de lejanía que quieren transmitir sus palabras.
Con España como objetivo
Efectivamente, a vuelo de pájaro hay 9.261 kilómetros de distancia entre Santo Domingo –la capital de República Dominicana– y Mitilene, la capital de Lesbos.
Y para entrar a Europa desde el Caribe por el este de Grecia no sólo hay que dar un inmenso rodeo: en los últimos dos años la llamada ruta del Mediterráneo ya se cobró unos 8.000 muertos.
¿Qué lleva a los dominicanos a correr semejante riesgo y convertirse así en protagonistas involuntarios de la crisis de migrantes más grande de la era moderna?
“La búsqueda de un bienestar”, me dice Kelvin, (no es su verdadero nombre), a quien encuentro protegiéndose del sol del mediodía en una pequeña tienda de campaña en Moria junto a tres de sus compañeros.
Image copyright Getty
Image caption
Los solicitantes de asilo esperan en el campo de Moria.
“El de nosotros es un país difícil. Es un país que se cogen penas, se coge lucha”, explica este nativo de Santo Domingo.
“Y uno viene aquí a trabajar, a hacer algo”, asegura.
“El de nosotros es un país difícil. Es un país que se cogen penas, se coge lucha”
Cuando dice “aquí”, sin embargo, ni él ni sus camaradas se refieren a esta boscosa isla de 80.000 habitantes que viven del turismo y la agricultura; ni tampoco a Grecia.
“La idea era llegar a Europa. Si Dios quiere y lo permite, tener chance de coger para España”, admite Kelvin.
Y dentro de la pequeña tienda los demás asienten.
El factor Turquía
Efectivamente, según cálculos de la Unión Europea hay más de 170.000 dominicanos en el continente europeo y la inmensa mayoría (más de 130.000) residen en España, su segundo destino en el exterior después de EE.UU.
Image copyright Getty
Image caption
No se sabe exactamente cuántos migrantes y solicitantes de asilo esperan en Lesbos.
En Italia, hay casi 25.000. En Alemania, más de 7.000.
Comparativamente, los dominicanos en Grecia son tan pocos que no se incluyen regularmente en las estadísticas.
Pero hay puntos en los que la costa de Lesbos está a nada más 10 kilómetros de Turquía.
Y ahí está la clave de esta sorprendente ruta, pues para entrar a Turquía los ciudadanos dominicanos no necesitan la visa que sí les exige la Unión Europea.
“La idea era llegar a Europa. Si Dios quiere y lo permite, tener chance de coger para España”
“A uno le pintan cosas: que vueles a Turquía porque así ya estás cerca de Europa, que esto, que lo otro. Te dicen: ‘Dame tanto que yo te voy a hacer llegar ahí’, te dicen que va a ser fácil encontrar trabajo”, le dice a BBC Mundo Kelvin.
“Pero la persona que me mandó, si yo la conociera, tendría problemas conmigo, porque esta pela que estoy pasando es desagradable”, se queja.
———————————————-
El ecuatoriano de Lesbos
Además de República Dominicana, Ecuador es el único otro país latinoamericano cuyos ciudadanos no requieren visa para entrar a Turquía, pero sí a la Unión Europea.
Pero en el centro de registro de migrantes de Moria, en Lesbos, solamente hay un ciudadano ecuatoriano: José Espinoza, de 37 años.
Image copyright BBC Mundo
Image caption
José Espinoza habla turco con fluidez.
“Yo tenía siete años viviendo en Turquía. De hecho hablo turco perfectamente”, afirma Espinoza.
“Pero quería cruzar a Europa porque la cosa se está poniendo fea allá. Puras bombas es ese país”, le dijo a BBC Mundo.
————————————–
Un cruce riesgoso
El sentimiento de haber sido engañados, por los traficantes o sus intermediarios, es una constante entre los dominicanos que intentan el viaje.
“Te dicen que vas a cruzar una fronterita, un río. Pero son cuatro horas en el mar”, cuenta Rommel (tampoco es su verdadero nombre), quien como Kelvin ya pasa de los 30 años.
“Te dicen que vas a cruzar una fronterita, un río. Pero son cuatro horas en el mar”
“Son muchos los que se han ahogado”, agrega.
Como todos los que están en esta tienda, Rommel también voló a Estambul, y después de pasar algunas semanas en Turquía cruzó el mar Egeo hacia Lesbos de noche.
Y, como todos aquí, también fue interceptado por los guardacostas griegos antes de tocar tierra.
Image copyright Reuters
Image caption
El trayecto entre Turquía y Grecia es muy peligroso en las condiciones en las que lo hacen los migrantes.
“Es muy raro que el que hace la travesía llegue a la orilla”, se suma a la conversación un tercero, que pide identificarlo bajo el apodo de Nene.
Ninguno aquí quiere que se publique su verdadero nombre, aunque estos ya fueron dados a conocer públicamente por el Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de República Dominicana.
Tampoco quieren fotografías.
Y su aprehensión es tal que no me permiten siquiera hacer fotos de lo que parecen detalles inocentes de su pequeña tienda: los zapatos que se amontonan a la entrada, la bolsa en la que guardan algunas naranjas…
“Tengo poca ropa, así que me pueden reconocer por eso”, me dirá más tarde otro, llamado Ramón, cuando le propongo retratarlo de espaldas.
A merced de los traficantes
Puede que sea la vergüenza del migrante ilegal.
Pero tal vez es simple precaución para evitar represalias de las redes de traficantes que llevan años introduciendo a dominicanos de forma ilegal a la UE por Grecia desde Turquía, a menudo forzándolos a involucrarse en otras actividades ilegales.
En marzo de 2011, por ejemplo, 69 mujeres y 16 hombres fueron repatriados desde Grecia a República Dominicana por haber ingresado ilegalmente al país heleno.
Image copyright Getty
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Muchos migrantes llegan engañados sobre el viaje o con falsas promesas de empleo.
Y en esa oportunidad, varias de las repatriadas denunciaron haber sido forzadas a dedicarse a la prostitución luego de haber sido engañadas con promesas de empleo en España.
Lo mismo declararon también las 14 mujeres liberadas por la policía griega en julio de 2013, como parte de un operativo contra una red internacional de tráfico de dominicanas.
La operación, bautizada Acrópolis-Caronte, se saldó con la supuesta desarticulación de la banda y el arresto de 73 personas –incluyendo numerosos dominicanos– en Turquía, Grecia y España, en noviembre de ese mismo año.
Pero todo, sin embargo, indica que la ruta a través de Turquía sigue abierta.
Sólo que el mayor control en las fronteras luego del acuerdo suscrito entre Turquía y la UE para enfrentar la crisis de migrantes está haciendo más complicado el trayecto.
La ruta de Lesbos
Es también por eso que más y más dominicanos están pasando por islas como Lesbos.
La cancillería dominicana le dijo a BBC Mundo que sabe que 46 personas han solicitado asilo político en el centro de Moria y que también conoce de 6 dominicanos en la isla de Kos, también cercana a Turquía.
Pero esa es sólo una pequeña muestra.
Funcionarios de la Autoridad Portuaria de Lesbos estiman que desde inicios del año a la fecha ellos han interceptado a unos 150 dominicanos.
Image caption
El número de refugiados que llegan a Lesbos se ha reducido drásticamente.
Y mientras el número total de refugiados se ha reducido de forma significativa en los últimos dos meses –pasando de miles todos los días a no más de 50 diarios, y en algunos casos cero– el número de dominicanos parece ir en aumento.
De hecho, los operadores de servicios de transferencias de dinero en Mitilene dicen recibir visitas de ciudadanos de República Dominicana todos los días.
“Es algo que empezamos a notar sobre todo a partir del mes pasado”, le dice a BBC Mundo Dmitris Kotrotsios, de la agencia Mytonis Travel, donde opera una sucursal local de Western Union.
“De hecho, la mujer que se acaba de ir era de Dominicana”, me cuenta.
Pero cuando salgo corriendo a la calle a buscarla, ya no la veo.
No está en el paseo que rodea la pequeña bahía en la que hay atracados algunos veleros, ni en ninguno de los pintorescos cafés que observan el puerto.
Movimiento libre
¿Cómo reconocer a otros posibles dominicanos? ¿Dónde encontrarlos?
Mientras recorro las apretadas calles de Mitelene caigo en cuenta de que físicamente muchos no deben ser muy diferentes de los migrantes sirios, libios o africanos.
Y, de hecho, también conozco dominicanos que, a juzgar por lo que veo aquí, también podrían pasar por griegos, aunque dudo que, como ellos, acostumbren frecuentar los restaurantes y bares de la zona del puerto.
Image copyright BBC Mundo
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Los migrantes aspiran a salir de Moria cuanto antes y continuar el viaje.
Después de 45 días, los solicitantes de asilo pueden obtener un documento que los autoriza para moverse libremente por la isla, pero el dinero es escaso.
Y lo que me intriga es la posibilidad de que todavía haya dominicanos que logran llegar hasta aquí sin ser interceptados por las autoridades.
Si ese es el caso, ¿cómo se comportan? ¿Qué hacen? ¿Y cómo siguen desde acá ahora que hay tantos controles?
La recién llegada
Las respuestas me las da Carolina, de 23 años, quien llegó desde Turquía hace nada más cuatro días, junto a otros 12 dominicanos.
“Yo paso la mayor parte del tiempo en el cuarto (del hotel), aunque he salido un par de veces, cuando no me ha gustado la comida que he encargado”, cuenta.
“Pero hay algunos que nunca salen”, me dice luego de que la abordo a la salida de una sucursal de Western Union.
Carolina se dice dispuesta a tomar las cosas con calma antes de proseguir un viaje que, en su caso, tiene como destino la isla griega de Rodas, donde vive su madre.
Image copyright BBC Mundo
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La vida no se detiene en Mytilene, capital de Lesbos.
Pero confiesa que una de sus compañeras de trayecto va a intentar seguir rumbo a España mañana, a pesar de que el día anterior otra de sus amigas fue capturada cuando trataba de embarcarse hacia Atenas con documentos falsos.
Al día siguiente, Carolina me confirmará que su amiga logró llegar a España.
Y en el vuelo de regreso a Atenas identifico a por lo menos dos dominicanos: al menos hoy no hay nadie en la caseta de control migratorio a la entrada de la sala de embarque.
Y al tratarse de un vuelo nacional la aerolínea comprueba la identidad, pero no la existencia de un visado
Junto con Carolina, hacemos un cálculo de cuánto ha gastado hasta la fecha y rápidamente superamos los US$9.000 sólo en lo pagado a los traficantes.
Es mucho más de lo que le habían dicho cuando empezó el viaje, que ella también se había imaginado muy diferente.
Y a eso se le debe sumar lo gastado en alimentación y hospedaje en 45 días de camino, los que ha podido cubrir gracias a la ayuda de sus padres.
Pensando en el regreso
No todas, sin embargo, son afortunadas.
“Yo quiero llegar al sitio donde quiero ir. Ya he gastado demasiado”
Algunas mujeres, reconoce Carolina, tienen que hacer “lo que se hace” para conseguir el dinero.
Carolina confiesa que de haber sabido lo que le esperaba jamás habría emprendido el viaje, pero, por el momento, no se plantea rendirse.
“Yo quiero llegar al sitio donde quiero ir. Ya he gastado demasiado”, le dice a BBC Mundo.
Image copyright BBC Mundo
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Hasta los 45 días, los migrantes y solicitantes de asilo no pueden salir del campo con libertad.
Y ese sentimiento también parece predominar entre los dominicanos de Moria.
“Yo no puedo regresar porque allá debo demasiado dinero y me pueden picar (matar)”, afirma uno de ellos para justificar la solicitud de asilo en la que la mayoría han depositado sus esperanzas.
Y, de hecho, según la cancillería dominicana, solamente tres dominicanos en Lesbos han aceptado su oferta de gestionar una repatriación voluntaria.
Por lo que cuentan Kelvin y sus compañeros, sin embargo, todo sugiere que la solicitud de asilo político de muchos no es sino una maniobra desesperada que parece condenada al fracaso.
Frente al masivo flujo de migrantes que buscan entrar a su territorio, la UE está privilegiando a los sirios que huyen de la guerra, y bajo los términos del reciente acuerdo con Turquía será este país el que tendrá que lidiar con solicitudes como las de Kelvin.
Y ni la situación política, ni los grandes indicadores de la economía dominicana, sugieren que Turquía vaya a hacer otra cosa que eventualmente repatriarlos.
Dice mucho del país caribeño, sin embargo, que, según las encuestas, uno de cada dos dominicanos diga que si pudiera irse del país lo haría.
De hecho, son muchos los que lo están haciendo.
Y, en el fondo, esa es la principal razón por la que uno se puede encontrar a dominicanos arriesgado su vida a más de 9.000 kilómetros de La Española, en las azules aguas del mar Egeo.
LONDON — Former prime minister David Cameron has broken his long silence on Brexit, confessing in new memoirs that he is “truly sorry” for the chaos and rancor that has engulfed Britain after it voted to leave the European Union three years ago.
The memoirs are artfully revealing. Cameron both covers his posterior and concedes some mistakes — of strategy and timing, mostly. He admits he is today “depressed” about Brexit; he charges that the current prime minister, Boris Johnson, was a major misleader; and he confesses he smoked a lot of dope during his Eton school days — sneaking off to an island in the River Thames to get “off my head” on marijuana.
It was Cameron who confidently called for the June 2016 Brexit referendum — and it was Cameron who led the muddled, muted campaign for Britain to remain in the European Union.
After Brexit won 52 percent to 48 percent, Cameron quickly resigned, notably caught on a hot mic humming a tune as he strode away from the podium in front of 10 Downing Street.
Many Britons blame Cameron for today’s Brexit quagmire, branding the former prime minister as “the man who broke Britain.”
Cameron’s critics say the British public was never really clamoring for the 2016 referendum and that Cameron called it only to quell internal squabbles in his fractious Conservative Party and to quiet the rabid Tory tabloids.
Cameron confesses the whole thing quickly devolved into a “terrible Tory psychodrama.”
In an interview with the Times newspaper, as a part of the book’s pre-publication publicity campaign, Cameron labeled Prime Minister Johnson’s possible “no-deal” Brexit “a bad outcome.”
He also warned that the country might be forced to stage a second referendum on whether to leave the European Union.
“I don’t think you can rule it out, because we’re stuck,” said Cameron, who served as prime minister from 2010 to 2016.
In his memoir and interview, Cameron charges that his former political chums — Johnson and his sidekick, the current government minister in charge of carrying out Brexit, Michael Gove — misled voters in 2016 about the swell benefits of leaving Europe.
Cameron calls his former friend Gove “mendacious” and says Gove and Johnson behaved “appallingly” during the 2016 referendum.
Cameron points to their false pro-Brexit claims that Turkey was about to join the European Union (it wasn’t) and their suggestions that soon Britain would be flooded by millions of Turkish Muslim immigrants (never happened).
Although he does not call Johnson or Gove liars, Cameron said the pair “left the truth at home” when they claimed, for example, that leaving Europe would produce a $440 million a week windfall to fund the country’s beloved National Health Service.
“Boris had never argued for leaving the EU, right? Michael was a very strong Eurosceptic, but someone whom I’d known as this liberal, compassionate, rational Conservative ended up making arguments about Turkey and being swamped and what have you. They were trashing the government of which they were a part, effectively,” Cameron told the newspaper.
In a bit of a side-dish, Cameron remembers Johnson’s current special adviser, Dominic Cummings, who ran the leave campaign in 2016 and came up with the slogan “take back control,” for spreading “poison” and turning Tory against Tory.
Cameron said his Brexit defeat three years ago has left him “hugely depressed.”
“Every single day I think about it, the referendum and the fact that we lost and the consequences and the things that could have been done differently, and I worry desperately about what is going to happen next,” Cameron said.
And yet. The former leader still argues that Britain was never really comfortable in the European Union and that a referendum was “inevitable” and the “right approach.”
Essentially, Cameron wants it both ways. He failed. But it was the right thing to do.
In his interview, Cameron criticizes Johnson’s move recently to suspend Parliament and accuses him of “sharp practices” in stripping 21 Conservative lawmakers of their party membership for rebelling against him.
In other excerpts, Cameron recalls with some shame his membership in the elite University of Oxford drinking society, the Bullingdon Club. At his initiation into the posh ranks, he remembers how he awoke hung over, with wine bottles piled outside his door, to find a group of his new Bullingdon buddies — which probably included Boris Johnson, Cameron admits he cannot quite recall — “with one of them standing on the legs of an upended table, using a golf club to smash bottles as they were thrown at him.”
It is a stunning image of the two men who would come to define the Brexit age.
A section of the U.S.-Mexico border fence as seen from Tijuana, Mexico. The California governor plans to split his state’s National Guard troops on the border into three new deployments.
Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images
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A section of the U.S.-Mexico border fence as seen from Tijuana, Mexico. The California governor plans to split his state’s National Guard troops on the border into three new deployments.
Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images
Gov. Gavin Newsom is rescinding former Gov. Jerry Brown’s deployment of California National Guard troops to the Mexican border, pulling most of 360 troops off their current missions but leaving some in the area to combat transnational drug smuggling.
“The border ’emergency’ is a manufactured crisis,” Newsom will say during his State of the State address Tuesday morning, according to advance excerpts provided by his office. “And California will not be part of this political theater.”
Each of the 50 states, three territories and the District of Columbia maintain National Guard units. During peacetime, the Guard is under the command of each state governor and adjutant general and typically is called upon to respond to emergencies and natural disasters. In time of war, the president can place the Guard under military command.
The recent National Guard deployment to the southern border is something of a hybrid. Federal authorities asked governors to provide Guard troops to assist with border security. The federal government is paying the cost of deployment. But the Guard troops remain under the authority of their state governor and adjutant general.
The California governor is splitting the troops up into three new deployments in a move he will tell lawmakers will allow the National Guard to “refocus on the real threats facing our state”:
110 troops to support CalFire’s wildfire prevention and suppression efforts. Unlike the current deployment, which is funded by the federal government, the state will need to foot the bill for this new mission.
At least 150 troops to expand the California National Guard’s statewide Counterdrug Task Force — if the Trump administration’s Department of Defense agrees to fund the expansion.
100 troops for intelligence operations targeting drug cartels. The governor’s office says some of these troops who are “specially trained counter-narcotic screeners” will be deployed to California ports of entry — both at the Mexican border and elsewhere. The governor’s office says funding for this mission will continue to come from the federal government under the terms of the previous deployment agreed to by the Brown and Trump administrations.
Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks in Sacramento, Calif. last month.
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Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks in Sacramento, Calif. last month.
Rich Pedroncelli/AP
California National Guard troops have been deployed at the border since last spring, when Brown gave them what he called a “crystal clear” scope.
“This will not be a mission to build a new wall,” Brown wrote in an April 11 letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and then-Defense Secretary James Mattis. “It will not be a mission to round up women and children or detain people escaping violence and seeking a better life. And the California National Guard will not be enforcing federal immigration laws.”
But the National Guard has been aiding federal efforts along the border by handling duties that otherwise would have had to be performed by U.S. troops and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, including vehicle maintenance, administrative support and operating cameras on the border.
Aside from state National Guards, the president has ordered thousands of active-duty troops to the border. As NPR’s Greg Myre has reported, the National Guard and other troops at the border are limited to providing surveillance and other support roles. They cannot act as a police force or make arrests. Every president since Ronald Reagan has called on the National Guard for limited, temporary missions along the frontier.
After initially praising Brown for agreeing to his deployment request, President Trump then criticized him for not supporting, in his words, a safe and secure border.
Newsom’s reversal of Brown’s deployment is no surprise. During the gubernatorial campaign, Newsom said he disagreed with Brown’s decision. And on his first full day in office last month, Newsom said he had directed California National Guard Adjutant General David Baldwin to prepare “a menu of options.”
“What’s appropriate, what would be inappropriate, what was our commitment under the executive order Gov. Brown signed, how does remuneration work, what exactly is the work currently being done versus the work that was initiated when the executive order wasn’t in place,” Newsom said that day.
He added: “I can assure you I have not deviated from my previous statements in terms of my desire to move in a different direction.”
Una rotura fibrilar de grado I en el bíceps femoral izquierdo había dejado a Gastón Silva sin actividad en las últimas semanas y se estimaba que fuera baja para la próxima doble fecha de Eliminatorias en la que Uruguay recibirá a Ecuador y luego visitará a Chile.
Pero el defensor celeste se sumó el martes a los trabajos junto al plantel del Granada y hoy estuvo a la orden, en el banco de suplentes, en el encuentro que su equipo empató 1-1 con el Deportivo La Coruña por la Liga de España.
En tal sentido, todo hace indicar que Silva, citado a la selección por el maestro Tabárez, no tendrá ningún problema para vestir la Celeste en la próxima doble fecha de Eliminatorias rumbo al Mundial de Rusia 2018.
Members of a heavily-armed group of vigilantes calling themselves the United Constitutional Patriots intercepted and apprehended hundreds of asylum seekers this week, despite having no authority to do so.
One of the men filmed while others took the asylum seekers, including children, into custody on Tuesday night. For the past two months, the group has camped out in the desert near the town of Sunland Park, on the border between New Mexico and the Mexican state of Chihuahua.
“This is a brand new group who’s invading camp right now guys,” one of the group’s members can be heard saying in the video, which was first broadcast by a local television station, KENS5. The group then turned the asylum seekers over to Border Patrol.
An armed militia is rounding up immigrants in New Mexico and beyond the obvious implications I fear for every visibily latino individual who might encounter a group of this nature. The manhunt for these assholes should be national. pic.twitter.com/ghWZ7WqR93
A Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official told ThinkProgress that while the agency welcomes community assistance, it does not condone vigilante groups taking border enforcement into their own hands.
“Interference by civilians in law enforcement matters could have public safety and legal consequence for all parties involved,” the official said in a statement. “Border Security operations are complex and require highly trained professionals with adequate resources to protect the country.”
Speaking to KENS5, however, United Constitutional Patriots member Jim Benvie — who filmed the initial video — defended the group’s actions.
“We’re just Americans,” Benvie said. “We’re veterans, we’re ex-law enforcement, we’re people who care about the over-strained Border Patrol.” As to why the group was so heavily armed, Benvie contended that there was danger that went along with their patrols, since they were supposedly interfering with cartel-run trafficking.
A Sunland Park police spokesman told ThinkProgress that the group has remained in the desert and has not made forays into residential areas. What’s more, his understanding was that the group was not supposed to intervene, only observe and report. Police also said that Sunland Park was an extremely safe area, owing in part to its proximity to El Paso (which is one of America’s safest cities of its size), as well as the proximity of the nearby military base Fort Bliss.
United Constitutional Patriots did not respond to ThinkProgress’ request for comment.
Groups like United Constitutional Patriots are not a new presence on the border. A variety of organizations, such as the Minutemen and Arizona Border Recon, regularly patrol the border with the stated aim of gathering “intelligence” on migrant crossings. These groups generally deny that they’re militia members or that they’re on the border to do anything other than provide intel to Border Patrol.
On Arizona Border Recon’s homepage, for instance, there is a bolded section explaining why they are not a militia group. “Our objective is not to overthrow any government, or take the law into our own hands. We are not here to replace the Border Patrol,” the section reads. “We operate within the scope of the law as citizens, observing and reporting what we see.”
The extent to which those lofty ideals trickle down to actual members is an open question, however. In a 2016 investigation, Mother Jones documented how many border vigilante volunteers regularly advocate conspiratorial, far-right, and often outright racist ideals. In 2018, Newsweek obtained U.S. Army documents that highlighted “reported incidents of unregulated militias stealing National Guard equipment [while they] operate under the guise of citizen patrols.”
Landowners on the border also told the Washington Post in 2018 that they don’t trust militia groups, describing them separately as “a bunch of guys with a big mouth and no substance,” “trigger happy,” and “fanatical.”
There’s also the question of whether these groups are on the border to defend America, or whether they’re there to raise cash. United Constitutional Patriots, for instance, uses PayPal to collect donations for “gas money, food, tents, sleeping bags, etc.” In the last six months, they’ve raised nearly $5,000, with donations picking up in recent days.
A similar strategy was employed last year by the Arizona group Veterans On Patrol (VOP), which claimed that they had discovered a “child sex camp” near Tucson, Arizona. As ThinkProgress documented at the time, the claims were completely fictitious, but gave VOP an excuse to solicit substantial donations, including everything from prepaid Visa cards to Amazon packages and group gift cards. One expert who had been tracking the group estimated that they’d received tens of thousands of dollars in donations.
The tactics used by United Constitutional Patriots and other “volunteer” border patrol groups raise some troubling questions about who actually gets to enforce the law on the border.
This is especially true bearing in mind the sharp increase in the number of families seeking asylum. According to CBP, an estimated 53,000 families seeking asylum were apprehended in March, an increase of more than 60% since February and the biggest number since Border Patrol started reporting the figures in 2012.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to toughen its hardline approach to people seeking asylum in the United States, announcing plans to cut off aid from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras — where the majority of the migrants originate.
The Justice Department also announced plans this week to keep asylum seekers detained while their asylum claims are processed, which could potentially take months or years given a backlog in the immigration courts.
Police are seeking a gunman after he opened fire on a crowd gathered for a post-funeral meal at a Minneapolis community center this weekend, authorities said.
The shooting broke out around 3:30 p.m. local time on Saturday at the Cora McCorvey Health and Wellness Center, where about 100 people were gathered for a meal following a funeral service, police said.
Witnesses told police that a gunman entered the center and started arguing with people attending the meal before pulling a gun and opening fire on the crowd, Garrett Parten, a spokesperson for the Minneapolis Police Department, told ABC affiliate KSTP in St. Paul.
A man and a woman were hit by the gunfire, and both were taken to a hospital in critical condition, Parten said. The names of injured people were not released.
The assailant immediately fled the center. No arrests have been made.
Police did not provide a description of the gunman, and investigators were working Sunday to determine what relationship, if any, the perpetrator had to the mourners gathered at the center.
“There seems to be a lack of sensitivity to the sanctity of life, and that leaves many of us aching for understanding as to how something like this could happen,” Parten said. “This is very hard for family and friends and loved ones who gathered to grieve and honor someone that they had loved.”
SAN DIEGO (AP) — An appeals court on Wednesday upheld a freeze on Pentagon money to build a border wall with Mexico, casting doubt on President Donald Trump’s ability to make good on a signature campaign promise before the 2020 election.
A divided three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco agreed with a lower court ruling that prevented the government from tapping Defense Department counterdrug money to build high-priority sections of wall in Arizona, California and New Mexico.
The decision is a setback for Trump’s ambitious plans. He ended a 35-day government shutdown in February after Congress gave him far less than he wanted. He then declared a national emergency that the White House said would free billions of dollars from the Pentagon.
The case may still be considered, but the administration cannot build during the legal challenge.
“As for the public interest, we conclude that it is best served by respecting the Constitution’s assignment of the power of the purse to Congress, and by deferring to Congress’s understanding of the public interest as reflected in its repeated denial of more funding for border barrier construction,” wrote Judges Michelle Friedland, a Barack Obama appointee, and Richard Clifton, a George W. Bush appointee.
A freeze imposed by U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam Jr. of Oakland in May prevented work on two Pentagon-funded wall contracts — one spanning 46 miles (74 kilometers) in New Mexico and another covering 5 miles (8 kilometers) in Yuma, Arizona.
Honduran migrant Joel Mendez, 22, passes his eight-month-old son Daniel through a hole under the U.S. border wall to his partner, Yesenia Martinez, 24, who had already crossed in Tijuana, Mexico, Friday, Dec. 7, 2018. Moments later Martinez surrendered to waiting border guards while Mendez stayed behind in Tijuana to work, saying he feared he’d be deported if he crossed. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Honduran migrant Joel Mendez, 22, feeds his eight-month-old son Daniel as his partner Yesenia Martinez, 24, crawls through a hole under the U.S. border wall, in Tijuana, Mexico, Friday, Dec. 7, 2018. Moments later Martinez surrendered to waiting border guards while Mendez stayed behind in Tijuana to work, saying he feared he’d be deported if he crossed. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Honduran migrant Leivi Ortega, 22, wearing a rosary, looks at her phone while she, her partner and their young daughter, wait in hopes of finding an opportunity to cross the U.S. border from Playas de Tijuana, Mexico, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2018. In early December, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that the San Diego sector experienced a “slight uptick” in families entering the U.S. illegally with the goal of seeking asylum. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
In a photo taken from the Tijuana, Mexico, side of the border wall, a guard on the U.S. side, at left, watches Honduran migrants jump the wall into the United States, Sunday, Dec. 2, 2018. Thousands of migrants who traveled via caravan are seeking asylum in the U.S., but face a decision between waiting months or crossing illegally, because the U.S. government only processes a limited number of cases a day at the San Ysidro border crossing in San Diego. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
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While the order applied only to those first-in-line projects, Gilliam made clear that he felt the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued on behalf of the Sierra Club and Southern Border Communities Coalition, was likely to prevail in their argument that Trump ignored Congress’ wishes by diverting Defense Department money.
Gilliam went a step further Friday by ruling definitively that the administration couldn’t use Pentagon counterdrug money for the two projects covered in his May order or to replace 63 miles (101 kilometers) in the Border Patrol’s Tucson, Arizona, sector and 15 miles (24 kilometers) in its El Centro, California, sector.
The administration immediately appealed.
N. Randy Smith, a George W. Bush appointee, strongly disagreed with the appeals court ruling, saying it misread constitutional separation of powers.
“The majority here takes an uncharted and risky approach — turning every question of whether an executive officer exceeded a statutory grant of power into a constitutional issue,” he wrote in his dissent. “This approach is in contradiction to the most fundamental concepts of judicial review.”
The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. Its attorneys argued that the freeze on Pentagon funds showed a “fundamental misunderstanding of the federal appropriations process.”
At stake is billions of dollars that would allow Trump to make progress on a major 2016 campaign promise heading into his race for a second term.
Trump declared a national emergency after losing a fight with the Democratic-led House that led to the 35-day shutdown. Congress agreed to spend nearly $1.4 billion on barriers in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings, which was well below the $5.7 billion the president requested.
Trump grudgingly accepted the money but declared the emergency to siphon cash from other government accounts, finding up to $8.1 billion for wall construction. The money includes $3.6 billion from military construction funds, $2.5 billion from Defense Department counterdrug activities and $600 million from the Treasury Department’s asset forfeiture fund.
Acting Defense Secretary Mark Esper has yet to approve transferring the military construction funds. The Treasury Department funds have so far survived legal challenges.
The president’s adversaries say the emergency declaration was an illegal attempt to ignore Congress.
The administration said the U.S. needed emergency protection to fight drug smuggling. Its arguments did not mention illegal immigration or unprecedented numbers of Central American families seeking asylum at the U.S. border , which have dominated public attention in recent months.
The administration has awarded $2.8 billion in contracts for barriers covering 247 miles (390 kilometers), with all but 17 miles (27 kilometers) of that to replace existing barriers not expand coverage. It is preparing for a flurry of construction that the president is already celebrating at campaign-style rallies.
Trump inherited barriers spanning 654 miles (1,046 kilometers), or about one-third of the border with Mexico. Of the miles covered under Trump-awarded contracts, more than half is with Pentagon money.
The Army Corps of Engineers recently announced several large Pentagon-funded contacts.
SLSCO Ltd. of Galveston, Texas, won a $789 million award to replace the New Mexico barrier. Southwest Valley Constructors of Albuquerque, New Mexico, won a $646 million award for the work in Tucson. Barnard Construction Co. of Bozeman, Montana, won a $141.8 million contract to replace barrier in Yuma and El Centro.
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