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Pres. Trump Urges House GOP to Move Quickly on Budget, Tax Reform

FILE – In this July 24, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump speaks about healthcare in the Blue Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

OAN Newsroom

President Trump urges House Republicans to move quickly on the budget and tax reform in order to avoid a “political failure” during next year’s election season.
President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence held a conference call with House Republicans on Sunday.
Sources say the president told lawmakers the GOP cannot afford to disappoint the nation by failing on fiscal overhaul ahead of the looming midterm elections.
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reaffirmed his commitment to work with President Trump and House Republicans to speed the progress on tax reform.
“We’ve been waiting for the opportunity to do it, and Donald Trump being elected President, and Republicans having a majority in House and Senate, give us an opportunity to accomplish something really important for the country, to get it growing again,” announced McConnell.
During Sunday’s call House Speaker Paul Ryan said he hopes to pass a revised senate budget this week, which would allow them to enact tax reform by the end of the year.
President Trump also expressed confidence his tax reform is — quote — “the right thing to do for the country.”

Struggling to get signed, Kaepernick 'meeting publishers' to pitch book idea

Colin Kaepernick is reportedly meeting with publishers as he explores the possibility of writing a book.

The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback is “taking meetings with publishers in the New York offices of WME,” according to a Page Six source. IMG-WME agent Carlos Fleming is representing Kaepernick.

The athlete, who’s currently a free agent, has been struggling to get signed by an NFL team, many attributing his political activism and kneeling during the national anthem as one of the reasons teams are wary to sign him.
Green Bay Packers’ coach Mike McCarthy dismissed last week any possibility of signing Kaepernick while Arizona Cardinals is the latest team to snub the athlete on Monday, saying they have no intention of signing him, the Washington Post reported.
Kaepernick also filed last week a collusion grievance, accusing the owners of NFL teams of conspiring against him for kneeling during the national anthem last season and decided to keep him out of the league.
His political activism inspired multiple NFL athletes to kneel during the anthem as well following President Donald Trump remarks that kneeling players should be fired for disrespecting the country.

Sessions: All bets are off in hunt for MS-13 street gang

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has spoken out against MS-13 and promised a new push to combat the violent gang.  (Reuters)

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday promised an all-out assault on the brutal MS-13 street gang “just like we took Al Capone off the streets.”

Sessions said the gang’s members are suspected in a series of killings in New York City's suburbs and the U.S. “will use whatever laws we have” to get them off the street.

The new designation directs prosecutors to pursue all legal avenues, including racketeering, gun and tax laws, to target the gang, said Sessions, a Republican former U.S. senator from Alabama.
Sessions designated the gang with Central American ties as a "priority" for the Department of Justice's Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, which has historically focused on drug trafficking and money laundering. MS-13, or La Mara Salvatrucha, is generally known for extortion and violence rather than distributing and selling narcotics.
"They leave misery, devastation and death in their wake. They threaten entire governments. They must be and will be stopped," the attorney general said, while in Philadelphia.
The gang has become a prime target of President Trump's administration amid its broader crackdown on immigration.
Members of the gang are suspected of committing several high-profile killings in New York, Maryland and Virginia. The gang's violence drew the Republican president's attention after two teenage girls was beaten and hacked to death in a suspected gang attack on Long Island.
The girls were among 22 people believed to have been killed by the gang on Long Island since the start of 2016. Most of the people arrested in those killings were in the U.S. illegally, law enforcement officials have said.
After Trump took office, he directed federal law enforcement officials to focus resources on combating transnational gangs, including MS-13. But the new designation will allow officials to target MS-13 with a "renewed vigor and a sharpened focus," said Sessions, who flew to El Salvador in July, in part to learn more about how the gang's activities there affect crime in the U.S.
MS-13 originated in Los Angeles in the 1980s, then entrenched itself in Central America when its leaders were deported.
Making a street gang like MS-13 a priority marks a shift for the drug enforcement task force, said James Trusty, who headed the Department of Justice's organized crime and gang section before he left in January.
Some MS-13 cases have drug connections, but "you'd be hard-pressed to come up with evidence that MS-13 is part of a cartel," he said. "The most common aspect of MS-13 prosecutions has been murder and witness intimidation or retaliation, not drug trafficking."

Clinton Uranium One deal: FBI informant blocked by Obama-era AG can unlock key info, attorney says

An informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is under a gag order that prevents him from testifying before the United States Congress that Russian nuclear officials were involved in fraudulent dealings in 2009 before the Uranium One deal was approved.
Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch blocked the informant from testifying last year and threatened criminal action against him if he were to do so.
In an interview with FOX Business’ Loud Dobbs, Victoria Toensing, the attorney representing the FBI informant, said she has never heard of a criminal penalty for breaching a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).
“If it does and it is unconstitutional and it’s invalid, if it prohibits my client from giving information to the legislature, the executive cannot say to people, ‘Hey, you can’t give information to another body of the government,’” Toensing said.

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The former Reagan Justice Department official and former chief counsel of the Senate Intelligence Committee said the impact of her client’s knowledge of the Russians’ ability to use the Clintons’ position of power is significant.
“He can tell what all the Russians were talking about during the time that all these bribery payments were made,” Toensing said on “Lou Dobbs Tonight.”
The House Oversight Committee is investigating the Obama-era Uranium One deal, and Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Florida) is calling for the Justice Department to remove the NDA that prevents the former FBI informant from testifying.
“We are glad Ron DeSantis is doing it because he is a former federal prosecutor, and he is a go-getter on this and I think he’ll do a great job,” Toensing said.

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ICE Agents to Target Employers Who Knowingly Hire Illegal Immigrants

October 22, 2017

OAN Newsroom
As the crackdown on illegal immigration continues, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are set to target those who employ undocumented workers.
A spokesperson for ICE says the agency will criminally prosecute employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.
This comes after the acting ICE director said his agents will increase workplace immigration enforcement.
Immigration officials claim the number of inspections at work sites has already grown and will continue to significantly increase over the next fiscal year.

Tillerson to Iranian-backed militias in Iraq: Go home

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson answers a reporter's question during a media availability after s meeting in Doha.  (Reuters)

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Sunday told Iranian-backed militias in Iraq to “go home” during a joint meeting with leaders from Saudi Arabia and Iraq, Reuters reported.

“Iranian militias that are in Iraq, now that the fight against Daesh and ISIS is coming to a close, those militias need to go home. The foreign fighters in Iraq need to go home and allow the Iraqi people to regain control,” Tillerson said at a joint news conference with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir in Doha.

Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, reportedly criticized Tillerson’s remarks as influenced by Iran’s oil-rich regional rival Saudi Arabia.
“Exactly what country is it that Iraqis who rose up to defend their homes against ISIS return to?,” Zarif said in a tweet. “Shameful US FP (foreign policy), dictated by petrodollars.”
Meanwhile, Syria's largest oil field was seized from the Islamic State terror group on Sunday by the U.S.-led coalition, dealing another blow to the extremist group after the loss of its de-facto capital last week.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forced, with air support from the U.S.-led coalition, said it captured the Al-Omar field in a "swift and wide military operation," adding that some militants have taken cover in oil company houses nearby, where clashes are underway.
The U.S.-led coalition confirmed the SDF had retaken the oil field, and that Syrian government troops were two files away from the fields, located in the oil-rich Deir el-Zour province along the border with Iraq.
Syrian troops, backed by Russian warplanes and Iranian-sponsored militias, have retaken nearly all of the provincial capital of Deir el-Zour, as well as the town of Mayadeen, which is across the Euphrates River from the Al-Omar field.