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Hill Republicans revive ‘Dream Act’ talks as Trump decides fate of Obama program

Congressional Republicans are looking to revive legislation that could give a deportation reprieve to thousands of illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, in turn easing the pressure on President Trump as he faces a deadline to decide the fate of a related Obama-era program.

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., is leading the charge on a conservative version of the so-called Dream Act. The talks come as Trump prepares to announce whether he’ll keep the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program – which was former President Barack Obama’s unilateral, executive-action version of Dream Act legislation.

The timing for a Trump announcement has been fluid. In the most recent guidance, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said the decision will be made next Tuesday.
Trump initially had said the call could come as early as Friday or this weekend, without going into detail. Asked if ‘Dreamers,’ or those affected by the policy, should be worried, Trump told reporters: "We love Dreamers. We love everybody."
One official told Fox News earlier that Trump ultimately is expected to end DACA, while allowing those in the country who qualified under the program to stay until their work permits expire.
Such a move would infuriate Democrats – as well as some moderate Republicans. However, if lawmakers can draft legislation that accomplishes similar goals, it could give Trump some leeway to end DACA without significant impact.
A senior administration official suggested Friday that the onus was back on Congress to pursue a legislative solution.
"Congress has to do this,” the official told Fox News.
Some Republicans support the goals of Obama’s DACA but think the former president committed an overreach by doing it through executive action. Tillis’ office pointed to this distinction in describing his legislative effort.
“Regardless of the policy itself, DACA is an executive overreach that sets immigration policy through executive order instead of the proper channel—legislation,” Tillis spokesman Daniel Keylin told Fox News. “It’s the responsibility of Congress, not the President to offer a long-term legislative fix.”
Congress has been considering legislation to shield young illegal immigrants from deportation for years, dating back to the George W. Bush administration. Lawmakers tried again to pass a bill during the Obama administration, but couldn’t muster the votes amid flagging Republican support. The Obama administration announced the DACA policy in 2012.
According to Keylin, Tillis will be working with Republicans on “conservative legislation” to address the “long-term uncertainty” undocumented minors face. Kelyin told Fox News that they needed to create a “fair but rigorous process” for legal status, requiring individuals 18 or older to either be “employed, pursue post-secondary education, or serve in the Armed Forces.”
While the legislation is still being drafted, McClatchy reported that Tillis' bill is expected to be similar to one introduced by Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla. Curbelo’s bill, the “Recognizing America’s Children Act,” would offer an eventual path to U.S. citizenship to immigrants who entered illegally before Jan. 1, 2012 and were 16 years old or younger, according to the Miami Herald.
“The White House has sent a very strong message by preserving the executive order that protects these young people,” Curbelo said in an interview with the Miami Herald in March. “We know that they’ve been very aggressive when it comes to immigration policy, so it certainly stands out that they have left the DACA executive order untouched.”
On Friday, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said he supported a legislative solution to protect undocumented minors, but also urged the president to reconsider scrapping DACA.
"I actually don't think he should do that and I believe that this is something that Congress has to fix," Ryan said on radio station WCLO in Janesville, Wis., Friday. "President Obama did not have a legislative authority to do what he did."
Ryan added: "There are people who are in limbo. These are kids who know no other country, who were brought here by their parents and don't know another home. And so I really do believe that there needs to be a legislative solution."
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, also weighed in on the issue, calling on the president to halt rescinding DACA, saying it would “further complicate a system in serious need of permanent, legislative solution.”
Hatch added that the “solution must come from Congress,” and that he will be working with colleagues and the administration to pass “meaningful immigration reform” and provide a “workable path forward for the Dreamer population.”
Then-candidate Trump promised to terminate DACA during the 2016 presidential campaign, but since taking office has weighed whether to preserve components of it.
Looming in the background is the threat of potential legal action by state attorneys general led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and nine other AGs who oppose DACA. Paxton said Thursday that his office would stick to a previously determined Sept. 5 deadline set by officials from Texas for a decision.
Fox News’ John Roberts, Chad Pergram and Kelly Chernenkoff contributed to this report. 
Brooke Singman is a Politics Reporter for Fox News. Follow her on Twitter at @brookefoxnews.

DACA: Trump expected to end 'Dreamers' immigration program

President Donald Trump is expected to announce the end of an Obama-era program that allowed undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children stay and contribute to the country, sources told Fox News late Sunday.

An official announcement to the end of the program will be on Tuesday, the sources said. After the announcement, Congress will have a six-month window to act.

The program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, was established in 2012. DACA, as it is usually referred to, protected young immigrants who came to the U.S. as children without legal status.
About 800,000 people have signed up to be part of the program. Many people have protested the end of the program and discussed fear of deportation.
According to a report from the Center for American Progress and FWD.us, ending DACA will have a massive economic impact.
The report said 91 percent of DACA recipients are employed and removing them from the work force would put 700,000 people out of jobs. For all those who would lose their jobs, it would cost $3.4 billion to replace them.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said Friday that he believes Trump should keep the program and let lawmakers decide. Several Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Marco Rubio, have said they hope “we can work on a way to deal with this issue and solve it through legislation.”
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said on Friday Trump is "in the process of finalizing and will make a decision Tuesday of next week," Sanders said. "He loves children and wants to make sure this decision is done correctly."
The decision to end the program, Sanders said, is not one Trump "takes lightly." The President, Sanders said, "takes time and diligence to make sure he goes through the process," adding that the choice he will make "is weighing on him, certainly."
Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez tweeted shortly after the AP report, saying, “Democrats are going to fight tooth and nail for DREAMers, today, tomorrow, and every single day. 

In rare move, Trump slams South Korea's approach to North Korea

President Trump on Sunday appeared to rebuke South Korea for its “talk of appeasement” with North Korea prior to this weekend’s huge nuclear test, saying Pyongyang only “understands one thing.”

“South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!'' Trump said on Twitter.

Some questioned Trump's jab at an important U.S. ally.
Patrick Cronin, an Asia expert with the Center for a New American Security, said Trump's comment on South Korea was probably "intended to stiffen the spine of an ally." He said he agreed with the intention.
"I think Washington is very serious about showing some unexpected resolve," he said. "We need our ally and we need to remain ironclad. But at the same time, we can't afford South Korea to go weak in facing down this growing danger."
Kim Jong Un's regime on Sunday claimed "perfect success" in an underground test of what it called a hydrogen bomb. It was the North's sixth nuclear test since 2006 — the first since Trump took office in January — and involved a device potentially vastly more powerful than a nuclear bomb.
Ely Ratner, a national security official in the Obama administration, told The New York Times that the U.S. is going to need “close cooperation with not only South Korea but China as well, he’s coming out swinging at all of them rather than trying to build support and coordination.”
Trump also suggested putting more pressure on China, the North's patron for many decades and a vital U.S. trading partner, in hopes of persuading Beijing to exert more effective leverage on its neighbor. Trump tweeted that the U.S. is considering "stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea." Such a halt would be radical. The U.S. imports about $40 billion in goods a month from China, North Korea's main commercial partner.
Ratner told The Times that this weekend’s test may have a “chance of pushing China into a place it’s never been before.”
Trump warned last month that the U.S. military was "locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely" and that the U.S. would unleash "fire and fury" on the North if it continued to threaten America. The bellicose words followed threats from North Korea to launch ballistic missiles toward the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam, intending to create "enveloping fire" near the military hub that's home to U.S. bombers and other aircraft.
The U.S. has about 28,000 troops stationed in South Korea and is obliged by treaty to defend it in the event of war.
In South Korea, the nation's military said it conducted a live-fire exercise simulating an attack on North Korea's nuclear test site to "strongly warn" Pyongyang over the latest nuclear test. Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the drill involved F-15 fighter jets and the country's land-based "Hyunmoo" ballistic missiles. The released live weapons "accurately struck" a target in the sea off the country's eastern coast, the JCS said.
"Denuclearization is not a viable U.S. policy goal," said Richard Fontaine, president of the Center for a New American Security, but neither should the U.S. accept North Korea as a nuclear power. "We should keep denuclearization as a long-term aspiration, but recognize privately that it's unachievable anytime soon."

North Korea reportedly appears to be readying for new launch

What a shame that one IDIOT is going to end up getting his whole nation destroyed.

North Korea appears to be preparing to launch a ballistic missile-- possibly an ICBM, South Korean media reported Monday.

South Korea's Defense Ministry said North Korea appeared to be planning a future launch to show off its claimed ability to target the United States with nuclear weapons, though it was unclear when this might happen.

Chang Kyung-soo, an official with South Korea's Defense Ministry, told lawmakers that Seoul was seeing preparations in the North for an ICBM test but didn't provide details about how officials had reached that assessment.
Following U.S. warnings to North Korea of a "massive military response," South Korea on Monday fired missiles into the sea to simulate an attack on the North's main nuclear test site a day after Pyongyang detonated its largest ever nuclear test explosion.
The heated words from the United States and the military maneuvers in South Korea are becoming familiar responses to North Korea's rapid, as-yet unchecked pursuit of a viable arsenal of nuclear-tipped missiles that can strike the United States.
The most recent, and perhaps most dramatic, advancement came Sunday in an underground test of what leader Kim Jong Un's government claimed was a hydrogen bomb, the North's sixth nuclear test since 2006.
Chang also said the yield from the latest nuclear detonation appeared to be about 50 kilotons, which would mark a "significant increase" from North Korea's past nuclear tests.
In a series of tweets, President Trump threatened to halt all trade with countries doing business with the North, a veiled warning to China, and faulted South Korea for what he called "talk of appeasement."
South Korea's military said its live-fire exercise was meant to "strongly warn" Pyongyang. The drill involved F-15 fighter jets and the country's land-based "Hyunmoo" ballistic missiles firing into the Sea of Japan.
The target was set considering the distance to the North's test site and the exercise was aimed at practicing precision strikes and cutting off reinforcements, Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
Each new North Korean missile and nuclear test gives Pyongyang's scientists invaluable information that allows big jumps in capability. North Korea is thought to have a growing arsenal of nuclear bombs and has spent decades trying to perfect a multistage, long-range missile to eventually carry smaller versions of those bombs.
Both diplomacy and severe sanctions have failed to check the North's decades-long march to nuclear mastery.
In Washington, Trump, asked by a reporter if he would attack the North, said: "We'll see." No U.S. military action appeared imminent, and the immediate focus appeared to be on ratcheting up economic penalties, which have had little effect thus far.
In briefs remarks after a White House meeting with Trump and other national security officials, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters that, “We are not looking to the total annihilation of a country, namely North Korea,” U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said after meeting Trump and his national security team. “But as I said, we have many options to do so.”
Mattis said the U.S. will answer any threat from the North with a "massive military response -- a response both effective and overwhelming."
Mattis also said the international community is unified in demanding the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and that Kim should know Washington's commitment to Japan and South Korea is unshakeable.