Made in China Cartoons

US intel: China to put missiles on S China Sea man-made islands to guard airstrips

EXCLUSIVE: The U.S. intelligence community thinks the "hundreds" of surface-to-air missiles that China recently shipped to its Hainan Island in the South China Sea will be moved to the country’s nearby and disputed man-made islands in the coming months, two military officials told Fox News on Saturday.
The plan follows what U.S. intelligence officials say is Beijing’s expressed desire to protect its three airstrips on three of the man-made islands.
The missiles now on Hainan island, China’s largest in the South China Sea, are a combination of short- medium- and long-range weapons. And they include one battalion of the advanced SA-21 system, a long-range missle system that is based on fourth-generation Russian software and capable of knocking out aircraft from as far away as 250 miles.
The total number of surface-to-air missiles on Hainan could reach 500, one of the military officials told Fox News.
China shipping more surface-to-air missiles from the mainland to the South China Sea was first reported Friday by Fox News.
The new missiles have been seen by American intelligence satellites on China’s provincial island province of Hainan, which is not part the disputed islands.
Officials think the location is “only temporary” and likely a training site before the missiles are deployed in early 2017 to the contested Spratley Islands or Woody Island.
The two missile systems seen on Hainan island are known as the CSA-6b and HQ-9. The CSA-6b is a combined close-in missile system with a range of 10 miles and also contains anti-aircraft guns. The longer-range HQ-9 system has a range of 125 miles, and is roughly based on the Russian S-300 system.
This latest deployment of Chinese military equipment comes days after the Chinese returned an unclassified underwater research drone in the South China Sea. The Pentagon accused a Chinese Navy ship of stealing the drone, over the objections of the American crew operating it in international waters to collect oceanographic data.
The escalation comes weeks after President elect-Donald Trump received a congratulatory phone call from Taiwan’s president breaking decades-long “one-China” protocol and angering Beijing.
China has deployed surface-to-air missiles to Woody Island in the South China Sea before, as Fox News first reported in February.
It has yet to deploy missiles to its seven man-made islands in the Spratly chain of islands. Weeks ago, civilian satellite imagery obtained by a Washington, D.C., based think-tank showed gun emplacement on all the disputed islands, but not missiles.
Earlier this month, Fox News first reported China getting ready to deploy another missile defense system from a port in southeast China. China also flew a long-range bomber around the South China Sea for the first time since March 2015 and days after Mr. Trump’s phone call with his Taiwan counterpart.
Days before President Trump’s call, a pair of long-range H-6K bombers flew around the island of Taiwan for the first time.
Beijing has long expressed interest in fortifying its seven man-made islands in the South China Sea.
Last year, China’s President Xi Jinping pledged not to “militarize” the islands, in the Rose Garden at the White House.
“This another example of the adventurous and aggressiveness of the Chinese in the face of an anemic and feckless set of policies that we've seen over the last eight years,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, former head of Air Force intelligence, in an interview with Fox News.
This month, U.S. intelligence satellites also spotted components for the Chinese version of the SA-21 system at the port of Jieyang, in southeast China, where officials say China has made similar military shipments in the past to its islands in the South China Sea.
The Chinese SA-21 system is a more capable missile system than the HQ-9.

Democrats hound Trump over closure of foundation

Democrats are hounding President-elect Donald Trump over his decision to dissolve his charitable foundation, blasting the group as a “slush fund” and demanding he take additional steps to avoid conflicts of interest.
The incoming president announced Saturday that he’s directed his counsel to complete the closure.
Trump said in a statement: “I am very proud of the money that has been raised for many organizations in need, and I am also very proud of the fact that the Foundation has operated at essentially no cost for decades, with 100% of the money going to charity, but because I will be devoting so much time and energy to the Presidency and solving the many problems facing our country and the world, I don’t want to allow good work to be associated with a possible conflict of interest.”
But the Democratic National Committee signaled the decision wasn’t good enough for them.
Deputy Communications Director Eric Walker, in a statement, called the announcement a “wilted fig leaf to cover up his remaining conflicts of interest and his pitiful record of charitable giving.”
During the presidential campaign, Democrats sought to draw attention to controversies surrounding Trump’s foundation as Republicans hammered Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton over her family’s foundation – and its alleged conflicts while she was secretary of state.
Walker renewed those allegations in the wake of Trump’s announcement, saying his charity “has a pitiful record of service, and instead has served as a slush fund for Trump to bribe elected officials, attack his political enemies and buy portraits of himself.”
The statement also took a jab at the president-elect over his controversial business holdings: "Shuttering a charity is no substitute for divesting from his for-profit business and putting the assets in a blind trust -- the only way to guarantee separation between the Trump administration and the Trump business."
Walker further questioned how the shut-down would “accommodate the investigation into the foundation.”
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been investigating the foundation following media reports that foundation spending went to benefit Trump's campaign. A spokeswoman says the foundation cannot close until the investigation is complete.
Documents obtained by The Associated Press in September showed Schneiderman's scrutiny of The Donald J. Trump Foundation dated back to at least June, when his office formally questioned the donation made by the charity to a group supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Bondi personally solicited the money during a 2013 phone call that came after her office received complaints from former students claiming they were scammed by Trump University.
The Trump Foundation check arrived just days after Bondi's office told a newspaper it was reviewing a lawsuit against Trump University filed by Schneiderman. Bondi's office never sued Trump, though she denies his donation played any role in that decision.
Trump later paid a $2,500 fine over the check from his foundation because it violated federal law barring charities from making political contributions.
A 2015 tax return posted on the nonprofit monitoring website GuideStar shows the Donald J. Trump Foundation acknowledged that it used money or assets in violation of IRS regulations -- not only during 2015, but in prior years.
Those regulations prohibit self-dealing by the charity. That's broadly defined as using its money or assets to benefit Trump, his family, his companies or substantial contributors to the foundation.
The tax filing doesn't provide details on the violations. Whether Trump benefited from the foundation's spending has been the subject of the Schneiderman probe.
In his statement on Saturday, Trump said his foundation has “done enormous good works over the years in contributing millions of dollars to countless worthy groups, including supporting veterans, law enforcement officers and children. However, to avoid even the appearance of any conflict with my role as President I have decided to continue to pursue my strong interest in philanthropy in other ways.”
Trump's announcement came a day after the president-elect took to Twitter to declare it a "ridiculous shame" that his son Eric will have to stop soliciting funds for his charitable foundation, the Eric Trump Foundation, because of a conflict of interest.
"My wonderful son, Eric, will no longer be allowed to raise money for children with cancer because of a possible conflict of interest with my presidency," Trump tweeted. "He loves these kids, has raised millions of dollars for them, and now must stop. Wrong answer!"
Trump was highly critical during the campaign of the Clinton Foundation. At the final presidential debate, he challenged Clinton to "give back the money" that came from donors in countries that fail to respect various human rights.
More than half the people outside the government who met with Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money -- either personally or through companies or groups -- to the Clinton Foundation. The proportion indicated possible ethics challenges had she been elected president.

Spree of Obama actions revives GOP concerns over ‘midnight’ regs, agenda

A flurry of big decisions out of the Obama administration just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office has rekindled Republican concerns about President Obama’s plans for jamming through so-called “midnight regulations” and other leftover items from his wish-list on his way out the door.
In the last week alone, the Obama administration blocked future oil and gas leases in swaths of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans; granted a record number of pardons and commutations for a single day; and scrapped a dormant registry for male immigrants from a list of largely Muslim countries.
Defense officials told Fox News there is an effort underway to transfer up to 22 additional detainees out of Guantanamo Bay. And Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations stunned Israel on Friday by abstaining on a Security Council measure condemning settlement activity, allowing it to pass.
And Obama still has a month left in office. The most recent announcements were made while the first family was on vacation in Hawaii – leaving unclear what Obama has in store for when he gets back to Washington.
GINGRICH: OBAMA IN 'DESPERATE FRENZY'
Hanging over any final actions is the likelihood that Trump, once in office, will roll back many of them. “The things he’s done this week will be turned around,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said of Obama on “Fox News Sunday.” “He’s in this desperate frenzy.”
But Democrats are urging the outgoing president to pursue further actions, as the administration weighs its next steps.
Among the possibilities:

• Sixty-four House Democrats recently asked Obama to use his pardon power to preserve his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which spared millions of illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children from deportation. Led by Rep. Luis Gutiérrez, D-Ill., the lawmakers asked Obama in a letter to “exercise your Constitutional authority to provide pardons to young people who are American in every way but on paper.” The goal is to make it more difficult for Trump to potentially deport them.
• The White House already has teed up the strong possibility of more clemency for nonviolent drug offenders and others. After Obama pardoned 78 people and granted another 153 commutations on Monday, White House Counsel Neil Eggleston said he expects “more grants of both commutations and pardons before [Obama] leaves office.”
• Former President Jimmy Carter has called on Obama to go further in the Middle East and recognize a Palestinian state before leaving office. In a New York Times op-ed, he wrote: “The simple but vital step this administration must take before its term expires on Jan. 20 is to grant American diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine.”

The White House has expressed reluctance to take some of these steps.
White House spokesman Eric Schultz said “there is a process at the Department of Justice to review pardon applications” and “the president has said he is not going to do anything to circumvent that process.” As for Carter’s appeal, Schultz said, “I don't think [Carter’s] views are new today, so I don't have any new positions or views from us on that.”
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest also said recently that any executive actions the president takes at this stage likely were in the works before the November election.
“What I can rule out are any sort of hastily added executive actions that weren’t previously considered that would just be tacked on at the end,” Earnest said.
Regulation ‘Finish Line’
While Obama weighs his last batch of policy decisions, many regulations already are coming through the pipeline. The final plans reportedly include as many as 98 regulations classified as “economically significant,” meaning each would cost the economy $100 million through compliance and consumer impact.
According to an analysis by the conservative American Action Forum, based on the Federal Register agenda, the administration is eyeing $44.1 billion in “midnight regulations” – or rules pushed in the final two months of an outgoing administration.
“This has been the most active December ever for regulations,” Sam Batkins, AAF’s director of regulatory affairs.
Gina McCarthy, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, didn’t conceal her eagerness in a staff memo sent after the election. “As I’ve mentioned to you before, we’re running—not walking—through the finish line of President Obama’s presidency,” McCarthy wrote.
By late November, the EPA announced stronger greenhouse gas emission standards, pushing 54.1 miles-per-gallon fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks for model years 2022-2025. In mid-November, the Interior Department finalized a rule to cut methane emissions during oil and natural gas production on federal lands.
Among regulations expected to take effect: the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services plans to make it easier for employers to sponsor highly skilled immigrants in the country; the Education Department is working on student debt relief at for-profit colleges; and on the financial services side, the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission are working on matters such as executive pay and mutual fund management.
According to an administration official, the number of active rules at the end of this administration still is 15 percent lower than at the end of the George W. Bush administration. The administration also notes that some economically significant regulations help the economy.
Republican Roll-Back
Congressional Republicans are bent on stopping or reversing the onslaught of new rules.
In a Dec. 5 letter, 20 Republican senators asked Obama to “honor the will of the American people and refrain from working on or issuing any new, non-emergency regulations while carrying out your remaining term in office.”
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in a Nov. 15 letter to federal agency heads signed by other House committee chairmen, asserted, “we will work with our colleagues to ensure that Congress scrutinizes your actions—and, if appropriate, overturns them.”
The Congressional Review Act of 1996 allows Congress, with the president’s signature, to rescind regulations and prohibit agencies from imposing rules that are substantively the same.
That, however, would have limits even when Trump takes office, Batkins said.
“Congress can rescind regulations when it gets back, using the CRA, but the House and Senate will be working on health care, the economy and infrastructure,” Batkins told FoxNews.com. “Congress has a lot on its plate. Of the 100 or more midnight regulations that could fly through, there probably won’t be more than a dozen they would be interested in repealing.”
Asked at a November press conference about GOP calls to hold off on finalizing rules in his final weeks in office, Obama defended their rulemaking pace: “The regulations that we have issued are ones that we've been working on for a very long time. … These aren't things that we've been surprising people with.”

RNC clarifies part of Christmas message after social media criticism

A Republican National Committee official lashed out at critics after part of a Christmas statement it made Sunday sparked outrage on social media.
RNC Chairman Reince Priebus released a three-paragraph statement on the holiday, but it was the first paragraph that drew critics’ attention.
“Over two millennia ago, a new hope was born into the world, a Savior who would offer the promise of salvation to all mankind. Just as the three wise men did on that night, this Christmas heralds a time to celebrate the good news of a new King."
The message kicked off a heated debate on social media over whether the reference to a “new King” was about President-elect Donald Trump.
John Weaver, a top aide to Ohio Gov. John Kasich, was among those who tweeted their displeasure with the statement.
RNC spokesman and future Trump press secretary Sean Spicer defended the message, telling CNN the reference didn’t have anything to do with Trump and “Christ is the King in the Christian faith.”
Spicer later said that it was “sad & disappointing you are politicizing such a holy day.”
The statement also asked Americans to keep military members in their thoughts and prayers and to “rise to meet the material, emotional, and spiritual needs of individuals all around us.”