Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Trump vows to ‘win’ against opioid epidemic

Paramedics display a dose of the opioid overdose reversal drug Narcan, or Naloxone Hydrochloride, in an ambulance in Peabody, Massachusetts, U.S., August 8, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

By James Oliphant

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. (Reuters) – President Donald Trump promised to win the fight against a U.S. epidemic of opioid drug use, but offered no new steps to do so and did not act on a recommendation made by a presidential commission that he declare a national emergency.

Trump spoke at an event he had billed as a “major briefing” on the opioid crisis during a two-week “working vacation” at his private golf club in New Jersey. He also used the appearance to unexpectedly issue a stern warning to North Korea over its threats to the United States.

The Republican president said the United States has no alternative but to stem spreading opioid use, but more than six months into his presidency announced no new policies to combat a public health crisis that kills more than 100 Americans daily.

“I’m confidant that by working with our healthcare and law enforcement experts we will fight this deadly epidemic and the United States will win,” Trump told reporters. “We’re also very, very tough on the southern border where much of this comes in, and we’re talking to China, where certain forms of man-made drug comes in, and it is bad.”

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said the administration was still working to devise “a comprehensive strategy” to be presented to Trump “in the near future.”

A commission created by Trump to study opioid abuse urged him last week to declare a national emergency to address what it called an opioids crisis, framing its death toll in the context of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. An emergency declaration could free up federal resources for the effort.

“The resources that we need or the focus that we need to bring to bear to the opioid crisis at this point can be addressed without the declaration of an emergency, although all things are on the table for the president,” Price told a later news briefing.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opioids were involved in more than 33,000 U.S. deaths in 2015, the latest year for which data is available, and estimates show the death rate has continued rising.

The commission, headed by Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, recommended steps such as waiving a federal rule that restricts the number of people who can get residential addiction treatment under the Medicaid healthcare program for the poor and disabled.

The commission cited government data showing that since 1999 U.S. opioid overdoses have quadrupled, adding that nearly two thirds of U.S. drug overdoses were linked to opioids such as heroin and the powerful painkillers Percocet, OxyContin and fentanyl.

‘THE LOSING SIDE’

Speaking alongside Price, White House senior counselor Kellyanne Conway said, “We are a nation that consumes legal and illegal drugs at a very high and alarming rate. The problem is very complicated, and currently we are on the losing side of this war.”

Conway said the crisis cannot be solved overnight, and that “most of the great work is being done at the state and local levels.” Conway called it a “nonpartisan issue in search of bipartisan support and bipartisan solutions.”

Even before Trump’s event, the Democratic National Committee slammed him, with spokesman Daniel Wessel saying in a statement: “Trump promised he’d come to the aid of communities ravaged by the opioid epidemic, but so far he’s done nothing for them.”

Trump’s initial federal budget called for a 2 percent increase in drug treatment programs and would provide funds to increase border security to stop the flow of drugs into the country.

Substance abuse treatment activists have criticized his proposed cuts to federal prevention and research programs as well as his calls to shrink Medicaid, which covers drug treatment for hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Officials from New Hampshire criticized Trump last week after a leaked transcript of a January conversation with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto showed Trump had called the New England state, hard-hit by the opioid epidemic, a “drug-infested den.”

New Hampshire sued OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP on Tuesday, joining several state and local governments in accusing the drugmaker of engaging in deceptive marketing practices that helped fuel opioid addiction.

The lawsuit followed similar ones against Purdue and other drugmakers by Oklahoma, Mississippi, Ohio and Missouri and several cities and counties in California, Illinois, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee and New York.

Price said Trump’s administration was taking no position on such suits.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu and James Oliphant; Additional reporting by Eric Beech, Yasmeen Abutaleb and Susan Cornwell; Writing by Alistair Bell and Kevin Drawbaugh; Editing by Will Dunham)

North Korea considers missile strike on Guam after Trump’s ‘fire and fury’ warning

North Korea considers missile strike on Guam after Trump's 'fire and fury' warning

By Maureen N. Maratita and Christine Kim

GUAM/SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea said on Wednesday it is considering plans for a missile strike on the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam, just hours after President Donald Trump told the North that any threat to the United States would be met with “fire and fury”.

The sharp increase in tensions rattled financial markets and prompted warnings from U.S. officials and analysts not to engage in rhetorical slanging matches with North Korea, which regularly threatens to destroy the United States.

North Korea said it was “carefully examining” a plan to strike Guam, which is home to about 163,000 people and a U.S. military base that includes a submarine squadron, an airbase and a Coast Guard group.

A Korean People’s Army spokesman said in a statement carried by state-run KCNA news agency the plan would be put into practice at any moment, once leader Kim Jong Un made a decision.

Guam Governor Eddie Calvo dismissed the threat and said the island was prepared for “any eventuality” with strategically placed defenses. He said he had been in touch with the White House and there was no change in the threat level.

“Guam is American soil … We are not just a military installation,” Calvo said in an online video message.

North Korea, which is pursuing missile and nuclear weapons programs in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions, also accused the United States of devising a “preventive war” and said in another statement that any plans to execute this would be met with an “all-out war, wiping out all the strongholds of enemies, including the U.S. mainland”.

Washington has warned it is ready to use force if needed to stop North Korea’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs but that it prefers global diplomatic action, including sanctions. The U.N. Security Council unanimously imposed new sanctions on North Korea on Saturday.

Trump issued his strongest warning yet for North Korea in comments to reporters in New Jersey on Tuesday.

“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen,” Trump said.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, before landing in Guam on a pre-arranged visit, said Trump was trying to send a strong message.

“So I think the president, what the president is doing, is sending a strong message to North Korea in language that Kim Jong Un would understand, because he doesn’t seem to understand diplomatic language,” Tillerson told reporters.

Just moments after Tillerson’s remarks were reported, Trump hammered home his tough talk in a Twitter post about the U.S. nuclear arsenal, in what looked like another warning to North Korea.

“My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal,” he said. “It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before.”

China, North Korea’s closest ally despite Beijing’s anger at Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear programs, described the situation as “complex and sensitive”, and urged calm and a return to talks.

“China calls on all sides to uphold the main direction of a political resolution to the Korean peninsula nuclear issue, and avoid any words or actions that may intensify the problem and escalate the situation,” it said in a statement sent to Reuters, repeating its customary stance.

“‘BLACK SWAN’ EVENT”

North Korea has made no secret of its plans to develop a nuclear-tipped missile able to strike the United States and has ignored all calls to halt its weapons programs.

Pyongyang says its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are a legitimate means of defense against perceived U.S. hostility, including joint military drills with South Korea.

The standoff drove investors out of stocks on Wednesday and into the safety of the yen, Swiss franc, gold and government debt. South Korea’s benchmark index <.KS11> and Japan’s Nikkei <.N225> both closed down more than 1 percent. [MKTS/GLOB]

“Tensions will continue to mount and could eventually develop into a ‘black swan’ event that the markets are not prudently considering,” Steve Hanke, professor of Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University, told the Reuters Global Markets Forum.

South Korea and the United States remain technically still at war with North Korea after the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended with a truce, not a peace treaty.

The South Korean capital, Seoul, is home to roughly 10 million people and within range of massed North Korean rockets and artillery, which would be impossible to destroy in a first U.S. strike.

Tens of thousands of U.S. troops remain stationed in South Korea and in nearby Japan, the only country to have been attacked with nuclear weapons. Wednesday marked the 72nd anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city of Nagasaki by the United States.

“WAR, WAR, WAR”

A senior official at South Korea’s presidential Blue House rejected talk of a crisis on the Korean peninsula, saying Seoul saw a high possibility of resolving the issue peacefully.

North Korea needed to realize its provocations are making the country more isolated and it should respond to the South’s proposal for dialogue, the official said.

In Dandong, a Chinese trading hub across the border from North Korea, residents said they were unperturbed by the escalating rhetoric.

“North Korea always talks about war, war, war, but it never happens,” said a restaurant owner who asked to be identified only by her surname, Yang.

“We now live in peaceful times. But if war does break out it will be us ordinary people that suffer.”

Tension in the region has risen since North Korea carried out two nuclear bomb tests last year and two ICBM tests in July.

Japanese fighters conducted joint air drills with U.S. supersonic bombers in Japanese skies close to the Korean peninsula on Tuesday, Japan’s Air Self Defence Force said.

On Monday, two U.S. B-1 bombers flew from Guam over the Korean peninsula as part of its “continuous bomber presence”, a U.S. official said, in a sign of the island’s strategic importance.

DEEPLY TROUBLING

Guam, popular with Japanese and South Korean tourists, is protected by the advanced U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system, deployed in South Korea.

“I know they’ve not been successful,” Vilma Quichocho, a treasurer at Guam’s Department of Administration, said of previous attempts to launch missiles from North Korea. “But now they’re talking about nuclear warheads and it’s kind of scary.”

Madeleine Z. Bordallo, the U.S. Congresswoman for Guam, said she was confident U.S. forces could protect it from the “deeply troubling” North Korean nuclear threat. She called on Trump to show “steady leadership” and work with the international community to lower tension.

Seoul resident Kim Sung-un, 29, said North Korea tended to make a lot of threats about missile attacks, but did not follow through.

“So I am leaning toward going to Guam, but also at the same time, I can’t help feeling anxious about it,” she said.

Republican U.S. Senator John McCain said Trump should tread cautiously when issuing threats, unless he is prepared to act.

“I take exception to the president’s comments because you’ve got to be sure you can do what you say you’re going to do,” he said in a radio interview.

Former U.S. diplomat Douglas Paal, now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank in Washington, said Trump should not get into a war of words with Pyongyang.

“It strikes me as an amateurish reflection of a belief that we should give as we get rhetorically. That might be satisfying at one level, but it takes us down into the mud that we should let Pyongyang enjoy alone,” said Paal, who served as a White House official under previous Republican administrations.

In a small show of goodwill, North Korea said on Wednesday it had released a Canadian pastor serving a life sentence there on humanitarian grounds.

There was no obvious direct connection between the release and the standoff with the United States, but North Korea has in the past attracted the attention of Washington, and visits by high-profile Americans, with the detention and release of U.S. citizens.

(Additional reporting by Soyoung Kim in SEOUL, Amy Miyazaki, Linda Sieg and Tim Kelly in TOKYO, Philip Wen in DANDONG, Martin Petty in MANILA, James Oliphant, Doina Chiacu, Susan Heavey, John Walcott, Idrees Ali and David Brunnstrom in WASHINGTON, Rodrigo Campos in NEW YORK, and Divya Chowdhury in MUMBAI; Writing by Lincoln Feast; Editing by Paul Tait and Nick Macfie)

Trump plans ‘major briefing’ on opioid crisis

Paramedics display a dose of the opioid overdose reversal drug Narcan, or Naloxone Hydrochloride, in an ambulance in Peabody, Massachusetts, U.S., August 8, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

By James Oliphant

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. (Reuters) – President Donald Trump has scheduled what he called a “major briefing” for Tuesday on the epidemic of opioid drug use in the United States, a health crisis that kills more than 100 Americans daily.

In the midst of a two-week getaway at his golf club in New Jersey, Trump will meet with Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price to discuss the matter. Trump frequently mentioned the opioid crisis as a presidential candidate, but has given it less public attention since taking office in January.

A commission created by Trump to study the matter urged him last week to declare a national emergency to address what it called a crisis involving the epidemic use of opioids, framing its death toll in the context of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The commission, headed by Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, recommended a series of steps Trump could take on his own without Congress. It called for waiving a federal rule that restricts the number of people who can receive residential addiction treatment under the Medicaid healthcare program for the poor and disabled.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opioids were involved in more than 33,000 U.S. deaths in 2015, the latest year for which data is available, and estimates show the death rate has continued rising. Price has called the epidemic one of his agency’s top priorities.

The commission cited government data showing that since 1999 U.S. opioid overdoses have quadrupled, adding that nearly two thirds of U.S. drug overdoses were linked to opioids such as heroin and the powerful painkillers Percocet, OxyContin and fentanyl.

“With approximately 142 Americans dying every day, America is enduring a death toll equal to Sept. 11 every three weeks,” commission members wrote in a report. “Your declaration would empower your cabinet to take bold steps and would force Congress to focus on funding and empowering the executive branch even further to deal with this loss of life.”

So far, the White House has given no indication Trump will adopt the panel’s recommendations.

The Republican president’s initial federal budget called for a 2 percent increase in drug treatment programs and would provide funds to increase border security to stop the flow of drugs into the country.

Substance abuse treatment activists have criticized his proposed cuts to federal prevention and research programs as well as his calls to shrink Medicaid, which covers drug treatment for hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Preserving funds to confront the opioid epidemic emerged as a sticking point in congressional efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act this year.

Republican legislation in the Senate to dismantle the Obamacare healthcare law included $45 billion for fighting the opioid epidemic, on top of the $2 billion in an earlier version of the bill, but the measure was defeated last month.

Trump is away from Washington until later this month while the White House is undergoing renovations. He and his aides have said he is maintaining a daily working schedule. Tuesday’s meeting with Price marks his first public event in days.

“I will be holding a major briefing on the Opioid crisis, a major problem for our country, today at 3:00 P.M. in Bedminster, N.J.,” Trump wrote on Twitter.

Even before the event, the Democratic National Committee slammed Trump, with spokesman Daniel Wessel saying in a statement: “Trump promised he’d come to the aid of communities ravaged by the opioid epidemic, but so far he’s done nothing for them.”

Officials from New Hampshire criticized Trump last week after a leaked transcript of a January conversation with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto showed that Trump had called the New England state, hard-hit by the opioid epidemic, a “drug-infested den.”

A study published on Monday in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and led by University of Virginia researchers found that official figures issued by states on deaths caused by opioid and heroin overdoses were substantially under-reported.

The researchers examined death certificates dating from 2008 to 2014 and found that national mortality rates for opioids were 24 percent above previously reported data, and the heroin mortality rate was 22 percent higher.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu and James Oliphant; Additional reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Will Dunham)

Chicago sues Trump administration over sanctuary city plan

FILE PHOTO - Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel listens to remarks at a news conference in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. on December 7, 2015. REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo

By Julia Jacobs

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Chicago on Monday sued to prevent the Trump administration from enforcing new policies that would withhold money from so-called sanctuary cities that deny U.S. immigration officials access to local jails.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, said the federal policies force the nation’s third largest city to choose between its constitutional rights and funding for law enforcement.

“These new conditions also fly in the face of longstanding City policy that promotes cooperation between local law enforcement and immigrant communities,” the lawsuit said.

The policies also include a requirement that local law enforcement agencies give federal authorities 48 hours notice before releasing anyone wanted for immigration violations.

Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel said on Sunday that the city would sue, escalating a pushback against an immigration crackdown launched by Republican President Donald Trump’s administration.

“We are bringing this legal challenge because the rhetoric, the threats from this administration embodied in these new conditions imposed on unrelated public safety grants funds are breeding a culture and climate of fear,” Emanuel’s senior legal adviser, Corporation Counsel Ed Siskel, said on Monday.The conditions from the Justice Department apply to the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grants, which provide money to hundreds of cities. Chicago is expected to receive $3.2 million this year for purchasing equipment.

Siskel said the city will follow the initial complaint with a motion for a preliminary injunction to halt the government’s imposition of the new conditions.

The city will request a decision from the judge before the Sept. 5 deadline to apply for the Byrne grant, Siskel said.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Monday that Chicago officials have shown an “open hostility” to enforcing laws designed to reduce crime and protect law enforcement.

He added that more Chicagoans were murdered last year than residents of Los Angeles and New York combined, and that Chicago needed to reverse a “culture of lawlessness.”

“This administration will not simply give away grant dollars to city governments that proudly violate the rule of law and protect criminal aliens at the expense of public safety,” Sessions said in a statement.

The lawsuit is the first to challenge the Justice Department over the Byrne program but is not the first legal attack on the administration’s sanctuary city policies.

Emanuel said on Sunday that the lawsuit would prevent the administration from setting a precedent that could be used to target other funding.

Sanctuary cities in general offer illegal immigrants safe harbor by declining to use municipal resources to enforce federal immigration laws. Dozens of local governments and cities, including New York and San Francisco, are part of the sanctuary movement. “Sanctuary city” is not an official designation.

The lawsuit came nearly two weeks after Sessions said the Justice Department would bar cities from the Byrne program unless they allowed immigration authorities unlimited access to local jails and give the 48 hours pre-release notice.

Chicago and its high murder rate have been frequently criticized by Trump, and cracking down on illegal immigration was a theme of his 2016 presidential campaign.

(Reporting by Mark Weinraub and Julia Jacobs; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

At Trump rally, West Virginia governor switches parties

President Trump talks with West Virginia's Democratic Governor Jim Justice after he announced that he is changing parties during a rally in Huntington, West Virginia. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (Reuters) – West Virginia Governor Jim Justice, standing next to President Donald Trump at a rally on Thursday night, announced that he was changing political parties, ditching the Democrats and joining Trump’s Republicans.

“I can’t help you anymore being a Democrat governor,” Justice told the crowd. “So tomorrow I will be changing my registration to Republican,” he said to loud cheers.

Justice, a billionaire businessman with interests in coal and agriculture, won election in November as a Democrat in his first attempt at political office. Until 2015, he had been a registered Republican.

Trump, who won West Virginia by 42 percentage points over Democrat Hillary Clinton, campaigned on a promise to bring back coal jobs, an important industry in the state.

Justice said his late mother would have told him about switching parties: “Jimmy, it’s about damn time you came to your senses.”

Justice told the crowd he had met with Trump twice at the White House in the past several weeks to present ideas on coal and manufacturing.

“He’s got a backbone. He’s got real ideas. He cares about America. He cares about us in West Virginia,” Justice said of Trump, a fellow billionaire businessman.

Trump, who earlier in the day promised a “very big announcement” at the rally, welcomed Justice into the party’s ranks.

“Having big Jim as a Republican is such an honor,” Trump said of the 6-foot-7-inch governor.

With Justice changing his affiliation, there are now 34 Republican governors, 15 Democrats and one independent. Republicans will now control both the legislature and the governorship in 26 of the 50 states.

Republicans control both houses of the West Virginia legislature.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Writing by Eric Beech; Editing by Bernard Orr)

U.S. Vice President Pence’s hawkish tone on Russia contrasts with Trump approach

Vice President Mike Pence delivers a speech during a meeting with U.S. troops taking part in NATO led joint military exercises Noble Partner 2017 at the Vaziani military base near Tbilisi, Georgia. REUTERS/Irakli Gedenidze

By Roberta Rampton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – When President Donald Trump scolded U.S. lawmakers on Thursday for clamping down on Moscow with new sanctions, his message clashed with the one that Vice President Mike Pence pushed during a four-day trip this week to Eastern Europe.

As he toured Estonia, Georgia and Montenegro, Pence said the sanctions passed overwhelmingly by Congress would send a unified message to Russia that it must change its behavior.

Trump, by contrast, took to Twitter to complain that the sanctions legislation, which he grudgingly signed, would send U.S.-Russia relations to “an all-time & very dangerous low.”

While some Republicans played down the divergence, critics said it exemplified an incoherent policy that would unsettle allies and fail to placate Moscow.

“There are some policies where a good cop/bad approach can work,” said Michael McFaul, a U.S. ambassador to Russia under former Democratic President Barack Obama.

But McFaul added that in the case of the Trump administration’s policy toward Russia, Moscow was likely to view the mixed signals as a sign of policy disarray.

If the Republican president continues to want improved relations with Russia, “he’s not achieving his goal,” McFaul said.

The White House’s two-track approach is mirrored in Moscow.

After Trump signed the new sanctions into law on Wednesday, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the No. 2 in the Russian ruling hierarchy, launched a blistering attack on the White House.

Yet Russian President Vladimir Putin — who has tried to cultivate a personal rapport with Trump in phone conversations and face-to-face meetings at a summit in Germany — has not uttered a word in public about the sanctions since Trump approved them.

Trump has repeatedly said he wants better ties with Russia. But the country has loomed large over the first six months of his administration as a special counsel and U.S. congressional panels investigate allegations Moscow meddled in the 2016 U.S. election to help Trump and also examine any potential role by Trump aides.

Moscow denies any meddling and Trump denies any collusion by his campaign.

After Congress passed the sanctions legislation with a large enough margin to override a presidential veto, Trump signed it on Wednesday but criticized it as infringing on his authority and said he could make “far better deals” with governments than Congress could.

As a countermeasure to the sanctions, Putin called for reducing the staff of the U.S. diplomatic mission by 755 people and for the seizure of two properties near Moscow used by American diplomats.

‘SMALL AND BULLYING LEADER’

Jarrod Agen, deputy chief of staff to Pence, insisted that Trump and Pence were “completely aligned” on Russia.

“It was the president’s decision to send the vice president to the region. It was the president’s decision to deliver the message that the vice president delivered,” Agen told Reuters.

He added that Pence and Trump spoke every day during his trip and sometimes multiple times a day.

The disconnect between Pence and Trump on Russia is an anomaly. Pence usually goes to lengths to emphasize his loyalty to his boss and to downplay any differences.

Their different tone on Russia dates back to the U.S. presidential campaign. While Trump often praised Putin, Pence called the Russian president a “small and bullying leader” during a vice presidential debate last October.

During his trip this week, Pence condemned Russia for its “occupation of Georgia’s soil” as he spoke to U.S. and Georgian troops engaged in joint exercises only 40 miles (64 km) away from Russian troops in South Ossetia.

In Montenegro, Pence accused Russia of trying to “destabilize” the western Balkans – a message criticized by Moscow.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said it was “regrettable to note that Washington is sliding ever deeper into the primitive ideology of the Cold War era, which is completely detached from reality.”

Traditional Republican conservatives – who favor a hard line on Moscow – have taken some comfort in Pence’s message, as have foreign leaders concerned about the impact of a rapprochement between Trump and Putin.

“What he (Pence) is saying is good and helpful and should be the policy of the Trump administration – and so for those of us who want it to be that way, we’re happy to embrace it,” said Danielle Pletka, senior vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

“None of us know what Donald Trump thinks in his heart of hearts about Russia,” Pletka said. But she added: “If (Trump) were not comfortable with Pence making this trip, Pence would not be making this trip.”

Republican Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he would not “read a lot” into the different tones struck by Pence and Trump, although he welcomed Pence’s trip to the European countries.

Corker described Pence as the administration’s “ombudsman” on policy and said Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, were key to developing Trump’s foreign policy.

A former U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was at pains to explain the disconnect between Pence and Trump on Russia.

“We are dealing with a major, open split between the president and basically the rest of his administration with the possible exception of Tillerson,” the former official said.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle, Arshad Mohammed and Christian Lowe; Editing by Caren Bohan, Peter Cooney and Alister Doyle)

Grand jury issues subpoenas in connection with Trump Jr., Russian lawyer meeting: sources

Donald Trump Jr. stands onstage with his father Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump after Trump's debate against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, U.S. September 26, 2016. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

By Karen Freifeld and John Walcott

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A grand jury has issued subpoenas in connection with a June 2016 meeting that included President Donald Trump’s son, his son-in-law and a Russian lawyer, two sources told Reuters on Thursday, signaling an investigation is gathering pace into suspected Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.

The sources added that U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller had convened the grand jury investigation in Washington to help examine allegations of Russian interference in the vote. One of the sources said it was assembled in recent weeks.

Russia has loomed large over the first six months of the Trump presidency. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia worked to tilt the presidential election in Trump’s favor. Mueller, who was appointed special counsel in May, is leading the probe, which also examines potential collusion by the Trump campaign with Russia.

Moscow denies any meddling and Trump denies any collusion by his campaign, while regularly denouncing the investigations as political witch hunts.

At a rally in Huntington, West Virginia, on Thursday night, Trump said: “Most people know there were no Russians in our campaign. … We didn’t win because of Russia. We won because of you.”

Mueller’s use of a grand jury could give him expansive tools to pursue evidence, including issuing subpoenas and compelling witnesses to testify. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported a grand jury was impaneled.

A spokesman for Mueller declined comment.

A grand jury is a group of ordinary citizens who, working behind closed doors, considers evidence of potential criminal wrongdoing that a prosecutor is investigating and decides whether charges should be brought.

“This is a serious development in the Mueller investigation,” said Paul Callan, a former prosecutor.

“Given that Mueller inherited an investigation that began months ago, it would suggest that he has uncovered information pointing in the direction of criminal charges. But against whom is the real question.”

A lawyer for Trump, Jay Sekulow, appeared to downplay the significance of a grand jury, telling Fox News: “This is not an unusual move.”

U.S. stocks and the dollar weakened following the news, while U.S. Treasury securities gained.

It was not immediately clear to whom subpoenas were issued and the sources did not elaborate.

Some lawyers said it would put pressure on potential witnesses to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation.

“When someone gets a subpoena to testify, that can drive home the seriousness of the investigation,” said David Sklansky, a professor at Stanford Law School and a former federal prosecutor.

In 2005, a grand jury convened by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald returned an indictment of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a top aide to then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

“A special counsel can bring an indictment and it has happened before,” said Renato Mariotti, a partner at the law firm Thompson Coburn and a former federal prosecutor.

DAMAGING INFORMATION

News last month of the meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer who he was told had damaging information about his father’s presidential rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, fueled questions about the campaign’s dealings with Moscow.

The Republican president has defended his son’s behavior, saying many people would have taken that meeting.

Trump’s son-in-law and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort also attended the meeting.

One of the sources said major Russian efforts to interfere in the election on Trump’s behalf began shortly after the June meeting, making it a focus of Mueller’s investigation.

Ty Cobb, special counsel to the president, said he was not aware that Mueller had started using a new grand jury.

“Grand jury matters are typically secret,” Cobb said. “The White House favors anything that accelerates the conclusion of his work fairly. … The White House is committed to fully cooperating with Mr. Mueller.”

John Dowd, one of Trump’s personal lawyers, said: “With respect to the news of the grand jury, I can tell you President Trump is not under investigation.”

A spokesman for Manafort declined to comment.

Lawyers for Trump Jr. and Kushner did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

‘NOT THINKING OF FIRING MUELLER’

Trump has questioned Mueller’s impartiality and members of Congress from both parties have expressed concern that Trump might dismiss him. Republican and Democratic senators introduced two pieces of legislation on Thursday seeking to block Trump from firing Mueller.

Sekulow denied that was Trump’s plan.

“The president is not thinking of firing Bob Mueller,” Sekulow said.

One source briefed on the matter said Mueller was investigating whether, either at the meeting or afterward, anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign encouraged the Russians to start releasing material they had been collecting on the Clinton campaign since March 2016.

Another source familiar with the inquiry said that while the president himself was not now under investigation, Mueller’s investigation was seeking to determine whether he knew of the June 9 meeting in advance or was briefed on it afterward.

Reuters earlier reported that Mueller’s team was examining money-laundering accusations against Manafort and hoped to push him to cooperate with their probe into possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia. It is not known if the grand jury is investigating those potential charges.

(Additional reporting by Noeleen Walder, Jan Wolfe, Anthony Lin, Jonathan Stempel, Tom Hals, Julia Ainsley, Joel Schectman, Yara Bayoumy, Patricia Zengerle and Eric Beech; Writing by Phil Stewart; Editing by Bill Trott and Peter Cooney)

Trump administration moves to make tougher U.S. visa vetting permanent

FILE PHOTO: A sign warns of surveillance at the International Arrival area, on the day that U.S. President Donald Trump's limited travel ban, approved by the U.S. Supreme Court, goes into effect, at Logan Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., June 29, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

By Yeganeh Torbati

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration moved on Thursday to make permanent a new questionnaire that asks some U.S. visa applicants to provide their social media handles and detailed biographical and travel history, according to a public notice.

The questionnaire was rolled out in May as part of an effort to tighten vetting of would-be visitors to the United States, and asks for all prior passport numbers, five years’ worth of social media handles, email addresses and phone numbers and 15 years of biographical information including addresses, employment and travel history. (See: http://bit.ly/2v0qsR2)

A State Department official declined to provide data on how many times the form had been used or which nationalities had been asked to fill it out since May, only stating that it estimates 65,000 visa applicants per year “will present a threat profile” that warrants the extra screening.

President Donald Trump ran for office in 2016 pledging to crack down on illegal immigration for security reasons, and has called for “extreme vetting” of foreigners entering the United States. On Wednesday, he threw his support behind a bill that would cut legal immigration to the United States by 50 percent over 10 years.

The Office of Management and Budget, which must approve most new federal requests of information from the public, initially approved the form on an “emergency” basis, which allowed its use for six months rather than the usual three years.

The State Department published a notice in the Federal Register on Thursday seeking to use the form for the next three years. The public has 60 days to comment on the request. (See: http://bit.ly/2uZNXJD)

The questions are meant to “more rigorously evaluate applicants for terrorism, national security-related, or other visa ineligibilities,” the notice said.

While the questions are voluntary, the form says failure to provide the information may delay or prevent the processing of a visa application.

Trump ordered a temporary travel ban in March on citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. After months of legal wrangling, the Supreme Court in June allowed the travel ban to go forward with a limited scope.

The form does not target any particular nationality.

Seyed Ali Sepehr, who runs an immigration consultancy in California serving Iranian clients applying for U.S. visas, said that since late June, all of his clients who have been referred for extra security checks have also been asked to fill out the new form.

Kiyanoush Razaghi, an immigration attorney based in Maryland, said he knows of Iraqis, Libyans and Iranians who have been asked to fill out the form.

Immigration attorney Steve Pattison said one of his clients, who is not from one of the six travel ban countries, had been asked to fill out the new form when applying for a visitor visa, indicating that consular officers are using it broadly.

“It could be that everyone is missing another consequence of the use of the form – its deployment in a far wider sense to cover all sorts of individuals,” Pattison said.

(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; editing by Sue Horton and Grant McCool)

Trump, frustrated by Afghan war, suggests firing U.S. commander: officials

FILE PHOTO: A U.S. Navy Corpsman and U.S. soldier take part in a helicopter Medevac exercise in Helmand province, Afghanistan, July 6, 2017. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani/File Photo

By Steve Holland and John Walcott

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s doubts about the war in Afghanistan has led to a delay in completing a new U.S. strategy in South Asia, skepticism that included a suggestion that the U.S. military commander in the region be fired, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.

During a July 19 meeting in the White House Situation Room, Trump demanded that his top national security aides provide more information on what one official called “the end-state” in a country where the United States has spent 16 years fighting against the Taliban with no end in sight.

The meeting grew stormy when Trump said Defense Secretary James Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford, a Marine general, should consider firing Army General John Nicholson, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, for not winning the war.

“We aren’t winning,” he told them, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In addition, once the meeting concluded, Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, got into what one official called “a shouting match” with White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster over the direction of U.S. policy.

Some officials left the meeting “stunned” by the president’s vehement complaints that the military was allowing the United States to lose the war

Mattis, McMaster and other top aides are putting together answers to Trump’s questions in a way to try to get him to approve the strategy, the officials said.

The White House had no comment on the accounts of the meeting.

Another meeting of top aides is scheduled on Thursday.

Although Trump earlier this year gave Mattis the authority to deploy U.S. military forces as he sees fit, in fact the defense secretary’s plans to add around 4,000 more U.S. troops to the 8,400 currently deployed in Afghanistan are being caught up in the delay surrounding the strategy, the officials said.

“It’s been contingent all along informally on the strategy being approved,” a senior administration official said of the troop deployment.

Trump has long been a skeptic of lingering U.S. involvement in foreign wars and has expressed little interest in deploying military forces without a specific plan on what they will do and for how long.

Officials said Trump argued that the United States should demand a share of Afghanistan’s estimated $1 trillion in mineral wealth in exchange for its assistance to the Afghan government.

But other officials noted that without securing the entire country, which could take many years, there is no way to get the country’s mineral riches to market, except to Iran. Trump complained that the Chinese are profiting from their mining operations, the officials said.

(Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Angry and inspired: Democrats train new wave of candidates

Participants give their stump speeches at the graduation event of the Emerge Oregon training program for Democratic women to enter politics, in Portland, Oregon, U.S. July 22, 2017. Picture taken July 22, 2017. REUTERS/Steve Dipaola

By John Whitesides

ROCKVILLE, Md. (Reuters) – The 100 Democratic women who packed into a suburban Maryland conference room recently for a one-day training on how to run for political office were more than activists eager to battle President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans.

The teachers, students and business leaders were also a window into the future for a Democratic Party desperate for new blood, and into the booming effort to turn the left’s grassroots anti-Trump activism into a new wave of Democratic officeholders.

As thousands of potential first-time candidates explore political bids in what Democratic veterans say is an unprecedented surge of activity, a broad but informal network of groups is beefing up efforts to train them for the task.

The goal: turning neophytes into successful politicians who can win, giving the party a deep and diverse bench of up-and-coming progressive talent at all levels of government.

“This era of Trump has made everybody just want to run for office, and it’s not easy,” said Josh Morrow, executive director of 314 Action, which since its founding last year has heard from about 6,000 scientists, engineers and mathematicians exploring political runs and trained nearly 500 of them.

“No matter how accomplished people are, they need help when they first run,” Morrow said.

The surge of interest has given dispirited Democrats, long criticized as a top-heavy party lacking fresh faces, hope for a renaissance at the local and state levels after repeated setbacks under President Barack Obama.

Building from the ground up, from the school board to the statehouse, is a party priority after losing nearly 1,000 state legislative seats in the last eight years. Republicans also control the White House, both chambers of Congress and 33 governor’s offices, the most in nearly a century.

“Local offices matter, and as Democrats we have sort of forgotten that,” said Amanda Litman, a staffer on Democrat Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign who founded the group Run for Something after the 2016 election to recruit and prepare millennials for office.

For first-timers, the initial enthusiasm for public service can quickly give way to worried questions about the logistics of building a fundraising list, utilizing social media and crafting a message.

“I knew I had a steep learning curve,” said Thereasa Black, a lawyer and Navy veteran running for the U.S. Congress from Maryland. She attended the Rockville session run by Emerge America, which prepares women for office.

“This is a way to find people who are like-minded and going through what you are, and can help you,” she said.

A Republican spokesman said Democrats would need more than training and fresh faces to gain ground in next year’s midterm elections given the losses of first-time Democratic candidates in special congressional races in Georgia and Montana earlier this year.

“The challenges that Democrats face go much deeper and come down to fundraising and messaging,” said Rick Gorka, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, which sponsored a training program for about 4,500 volunteer field staff and operatives last year.

‘SO MANY THINGS I DIDN’T KNOW’

Geoffrey Dittberner, 30, said he had volunteered on campaigns before deciding to run for the Minnesota legislature, but he was still unprepared for being a candidate before he was accepted into Run for Something’s training program.

“There were so many things I didn’t know – fundraising, setting up a campaign organization – but they made it pretty easy,” he said. The group’s Slack application gave him access to a variety of resources, from tutorials to mentors and peer networks, discussion groups and on-call experts, he said.

Aside from new groups like 314 Action and Run for Something, about a dozen established organizations that have long offered training to progressive candidates also have been flooded with interest since Trump’s election.

Emily’s List, which for years has trained women candidates who favor abortion rights, has hired five more staffers this year for a reconstituted training unit. It already has heard from 16,000 women interested in becoming candidates this year, compared to 920 in 2016.

Emerge America has seen applications jump by 87 percent and added five new state chapters. The Maryland state chapter, which ran the one-day course in Rockville, had trained 250 women by mid-year. Last year, it trained 55.

At Emerge’s Rockville session, candidates were encouraged to listen more than they talk and delve into their own experiences to explain what motivated them to run.

“When we tap into our own personal story, we relate better to people in our community,” Diane Fink, executive director for Emerge Maryland, told the class. She asked them to put together a three-minute story that explains how they got started.

While Democrats nationally have battled over their core message, most of the training programs say they avoid telling candidates specifically what issues to emphasize.

“First and foremost you should be talking about what matters to voters, not to you,” said veteran Democratic strategist Kelly Dietrich, who founded the National Democratic Training Committee last year to offer free online training for any Democrat running for any office.

So far, more than 6,000 have signed up.

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)