Russia May Reduce More U.S. Diplomats in Moscow

OAN Newsroom

Russian President Vladimir Putin is floating the idea of eliminating more U.S. diplomats in Moscow as a response to the recent closures of several Russian embassies in the U.S.
Putin said America has the right to reduce the number of foreign diplomats, but went about removing the staff members in a — quote — “boorish” manner.
Putin also said the closing of the Russian embassies was a violation of property rights, and he plans to sue the U.S. over the matter.
The Russian president made clear that he is reserving the right to reduce U.S. diplomats in Russia, but will wait to see how the situation develops.

House intel panel subpoenas for records on unverified Trump dossier

Christopher Steele Spy :-)

The House Intelligence Committee has issued subpoenas requesting records related to the FBI's relationship with a former British spy who compiled a dossier of unverified allegations about President Donald Trump's connections with Russia.

The committee subpoenaed the FBI and the Justice Department on Aug. 24, giving them until Sept. 1 to turn over information about the nature of the bureau's relationship with Christopher Steele. The panel also wants to know how much Steele was paid and to what extent the dossier was relied upon to obtain FISA warrants and launch the FBI's investigation into Russian activities during the 2016 election campaign.

The subpoenas were first reported by the Washington Examiner.
The FBI and Justice Department did not respond to the initial request for records and the committee has now given them until Sept. 14 to comply. If the records are not provided, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Jeff Sessions will be directed to appear before the committee to answer questions.
Steele compiled the 35-page dossier while working for U.S.-based Fusion GPS, an investigative firm headed by former Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson. The document was initially created as opposition research on behalf of Trump's political rivals and contained a number of salacious allegations involving Russian prostitutes. None of the allegations in the dossier have been corroborated.
However, the dossier was part of the evidence the FBI used to obtain a FISA warrant to monitor communications of Carter Page, a peripheral adviser in the Trump campaign. Former FBI Director James Comey considered the dossier so important that he insisted it be included in January's final Intelligence Community Report on Russian meddling in the election and reportedly offered Steele $50,000 to corroborate the dossier---something the bureau denies paying.

Ex-Sheriff David Clarke to join pro-Trump super PAC

Former Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke Jr. announced Tuesday he will join the super PAC devoted to electing candidates who support the Trump-Pence administration.

Both the super PAC, America First Action, and a spokesperson for Clarke announced that he would join the team as a senior advisor and spokesman.

“It’s truly an honor to join the America First Action team, most importantly because we share the same values that most hard-working, law-abiding Americans do,” Clarke, who resigned last week from his post as sheriff, said in a statement Tuesday. “It gives me the chance to do what I love most—promote President Trump’s agenda, including his fierce support for the American law enforcement officer, and ensure the will of the American people who got President Trump elected is not derailed by the left or the self-serving Washington establishment.”
In June, Clarke announced that he had rescinded his acceptance of a post in the Office of Public Engagement for the Department of Homeland Security. However, the office had never confirmed that it offered him the job, in which he would have served as a liaison between DHS and state and local law enforcement.
Since his resignation last week, Clarke, who has been a loyal Trump supporter, had been rumored to take a post within the administration.
On Friday, DHS pointed Fox News to its announcement in June that “Sheriff Clarke is no longer being considered for a position within DHS.”
“His status with DHS has not changed,” a DHS official told Fox News. Also Friday, the White House told Fox News that it had “no announcement” in regards to a potential administration post for Clarke.
“David Clarke is an American patriot, and we are very proud to welcome him to America First,” Brian O. Walsh, president of the PAC, said Tuesday. “Having spent a lifetime in law enforcement –protecting and serving his community and fighting for justice and the Second Amendment –Sheriff Clarke doesn’t just believe in making America safe again; he’s devoted his life to it.”
Clarke had built a following among conservatives with his social media presence during the 2016 presidential campaign. He spoke at the Republican National Convention last July.
Clarke recently published a memoir, titled, “Cop Under Fire,” which President Trump promoted on Twitter last week.

Illinois Democrat Gutierrez: Kelly a 'disgrace to the uniform' over DACA

U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a Democrat Idiot

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly

An Illinois congressman blasted White House Chief of Staff John Kelly — a retired Marine Corps general and Gold Star father — as a “disgrace to the uniform” Tuesday after the Trump administration announced the dismantling of the DACA program.

DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) was created by former President Barack Obama by executive action in 2012.The program gives hundreds of thousands of young people brought to the country as children protection from deportation and allows them to work in the U.S.

The Washington Examiner reported that U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a Democrat, took personal aim at Kelly because Kelly once reportedly spoke favorably about the program. House members reported in July that Kelly told Latino lawmakers in a closed-door meeting that he was supportive of the program, but pointed out that it was probably illegal.
“He's personally for it. He thinks it will not hold up, according to the attorneys he's spoken with,” Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, told the Associated Press at the time. “He was challenged by those of us in the room, by lawmakers, to publicly announce his own position and to be a leader and to stand up and defend DACA. He said he would consider it.”
Gutierrez also said, after the July meeting, that Kelly, who previously headed the Department of Homeland Security, took credit for keeping the program alive for so long since Trump took office.
Gutierrez changed his tune after the Trump administration's Tuesday announcement.
“General Kelly is a hypocrite who is a disgrace to the uniform he used to wear,” the congressman said in a statement.
"General Kelly, when he was the head of Homeland Security, lied straight to the faces of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus about preventing the mass deportation of DREAMers," Gutierrez also said. "He has no honor and should be drummed out of the White House along with the white supremacists and those enabling the president's actions by ‘just following orders.'"
The Examiner reported that Kelly is a retired four-star general and Gold Star father. One of his sons died in Afghanistan. 

INSANE! High school teacher calls Trump shirt a "swastika" and makes stu...

Mayor de Blasio Cartoons

New York's de Blasio hints there should be a parade in his honor

Mayor de Blasio claims he’s running the city so well that “you’d assume they’d be having parades out in the streets” — and insisted he’d be more popular if it weren’t for “the time in history.”

“When I think about how crime’s gone down for four years, graduation rates up, test scores are up, more jobs than ever in our history — I think, ‘Wow, just that quick profile, any candidate anywhere would want it,’ ” he boasted to New York magazine.

“You’d assume they’d be having parades out in the streets. But that’s not the time in history we’re living in,” he arrogantly added.
De Blasio’s job-approval rating plummeted over the summer to a 50 to 42 percent margin, according to a Quinnipiac University survey released in late July.
New Yorkers are split — 46 percent to 46 percent — on whether he deserves a second term, the poll found.
The mayor admitted he had made “missteps” and had “insufficiencies as a communicator” — but said New Yorkers were simply taking out their frustrations with the current economic climate on their leaders.
“The Great Recession, specifically, but really the decades of people being economically stagnant, deeply affected people’s views, understandably,” de Blasio said. “And the increased cost of living around here.”

Cuba opens 5-month transition likely to end Castro reign

HAVANA — Cuba on Monday began a five-month political transition expected to end with Raul Castro's departure from the presidency, capping his family's near-total dominance of the political system for nearly 60 years.

Over the rest of September, Cubans will meet in small groups to nominate municipal representatives, the first in a series of votes for local, provincial and, finally, national officials.

In the second electoral stage, a commission dominated by government-linked organizations will pick all the candidates for elections to provincial assemblies and Cuba's national assembly.
The national assembly is expected to pick the president and members of the powerful Council of State by February. Castro has said he will leave the presidency by that date but he is expected to remain head of the Communist Party, giving him power that may be equal to or greater than the new president's.
Cuban officials say 12,515 block-level districts will nominate candidates for city council elections to be held Oct. 22.
An opposition coalition says it expects 170 dissidents to seek nomination in the block-level meetings that began Monday. A few opposition candidates made it to that stage previously but were defeated.
The government does not allow the participation of parties other than the ruling Communist Party and has worked to quash the election of individual opposition candidates, leading critics to call the votes an empty exercise meant to create the appearance of democratic participation.
Cuban officials say dissidents are paid by foreign governments and exile groups as part of a plan to overthrow the island's socialist system and reinstall the capitalism and U.S. dominance ended by the country's 1959 revolution.
At one session Monday evening, about 400 people gathered to choose their neighborhood's candidate, meeting in front of a house adorned with photos of the late Fidel Castro and Cuban flags. Choosing between their current delegate and a young challenger, they re-nominated physician Orlando Gutierrez. Both men were praised as "revolutionary" and "honest."
"We have to be here to defend our revolution and the social gains we have won," said one voter, Ivis Garcia, who works for a state-owned real estate enterprise.
Raul Castro, 86, became president in 2008 and launched a series of slow-moving and limited socio-economic reforms after his brother Fidel stepped down due to illness. Fidel Castro died last year at age 90.
Cuba's new president has long been expected to be First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel, a 57-year-old career party official who has maintained a low public profile in recent years.
Many Cubans' greatest exposure to Diaz-Canel this year has been through an unusual video of the vice president speaking at a private Communist Party event, footage that was leaked to the public by an unknown culprit and widely distributed on thumb drives and online.
In the video, Diaz-Canel discusses plans for crackdowns on independent media, entrepreneurs and opposition groups trying to win municipal positions.
"We're taking all possible steps to discredit that," he says in the footage. "We're involved in this whole process."
The workings of the Cuban government are highly opaque and the public only rarely hears from high-ranking officials, with the exception of a few annual speeches and edited selections of talks at twice-a-year sessions of congress and similarly infrequent party meetings. In addition, the government maintains tight control of the media and internet use in the country and leaks of high-level meetings and speeches are highly unusual.
The Diaz-Canel video may have been leaked by the government itself to telegraph that Diaz-Canel will not accelerate the reform process started by Raul Castro, said Armando Chaguaceda, a Mexico-based Cuban political scientists.
"It could serve to send a signal of official intentions not to create any political opening, without being an official government statement," Chaguaceda said.

Congress returns to several pressing issues, with Harvey money, debt ceiling at forefront

Leaders of the GOP-controlled House purportedly plan to vote Wednesday on a $7.9 billion Hurricane Harvey relief package separate from deciding on whether to raise the federal debt ceiling, setting up a potential White House showdown and adding another twist to what will be an action-packed next several weeks on Capitol Hill.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told “Fox News Sunday” that he and President Trump wanted Congress to have a combined vote on the relief package and increasing the debt ceiling, amid concerns that they won’t have enough money to help clean up from the deadly storm that flooded much of southeast Texas, then parts of Louisiana.

However, two of the House’s most fiscally conservative groups -- the House Freedom Caucus and the Republican Study Committee -- have already balked at the White House plan.
“What happened in Texas is a tragedy and it needs an urgent Congressional response,” North Carolina Rep. Mark Walker, leader of the Republican Study Committee, said Monday. “Congress is united behind this effort, but I worry about jeopardizing an agreement with such legislative games. … The debt ceiling should be paired with significant fiscal and structural reforms.”
Meanwhile, Congress’ top two Democrats have signaled some support for the idea.
"Providing aid in the wake of Harvey and raising the debt ceiling are both important issues, and Democrats want to work to do both," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, of New York, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, of California, said in a joint statement Sunday. "Given the interplay between all the issues Congress must tackle in September, Democrats and Republicans must discuss all the issues together and come up with a bipartisan consensus."
In addition to having to raising the debt ceiling by Sept. 29 and appropriate billions to hurricane victims in dire need, Congress also must pass a separate spending resolution to avoid a government shutdown after Sept. 30.
The linking of the emergency money and the debt ceiling is just the latest in a recent series of such proposals -- including Trump vowing before the hurricane to “close down” the government if the spending resolution doesn’t include money for his campaign-promised U.S.-Mexico border wall.
The Associated Press reports the House will vote separately on the debt ceiling and the Harvey funding.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told Fox News on Monday the chamber will indeed vote Wednesday on the hurricane money. He also said he fully realizes Mnuchin’s concerns about having enough money but was not specific about whether the issues would be combined into one vote.
The GOP-controlled Senate has not said when or how it will vote on the issue.
Trump plans to meet with congressional leaders from both parties this week as lawmakers upon their return.
The government's cash reserves are running low because the debt limit has already been reached, and the Treasury Department is using various accounting measures to cover expenses.
Mnuchin originally had said that Congress would need to raise the $19.9 trillion borrowing limit by Sept. 29 to avoid a catastrophic default on the debt, allowing the government to continue borrowing money to pay bills like Social Security and interest.
But on Sunday, he said that deadline had moved up due to unexpected new spending on Harvey.
"Without raising the debt limit, I'm not comfortable that we would get the money that we need this month to Texas to rebuild," he said.
Trump's aid request would add $7.4 billion to dwindling Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster aid coffers and $450 million to finance disaster loans for small businesses. An additional $5 billion to $8 billion for Harvey could be tucked into a catch-all spending bill Congress must pass in the coming weeks to fund the government past Sept. 30.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Sunday described the federal aid package as an important initial "down payment" on Harvey relief that he expects will come to $150 billion to $180 billion.
GOP lawmakers also head into the final quarter of the year trying pass Trump’s plan to overhaul the federal tax code.
Meanwhile, Trump may be poised to throw another tricky issue Congress' way.
The White House says the president on Tuesday will decide the fate of the younger immigrants brought to the United States as kids and protected from deportation by former President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. If Trump ends or phases out the program, there will be pressure for Congress to step in with a fix to save nearly 800,000 from the threat of deportation.
Some Republicans have even begun to talk about the possibility of a deal to protect this group in exchange for funding Trump's border wall, despite Democrats called the proposal a nonstarter.

Republicans divided on Trump's expected DACA announcement

Why did they not protest the conditions in their own country? (MEXICO)

Some top Republicans have spoken out to challenge President Trump’s expected announcement Tuesday that reportedly calls for the end of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.

House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republicans urged Trump to hold off on scrapping the program and allow lawmakers some time to come up with a legislative fix.

Trump’s reported plan calls for a six-month delay that would give Congress some time to pass legislation that would address the hundreds of thousands of immigrants covered by the program.
Some see Trump’s reported delay as an attempt to kick the can down the road, and putting the pressure on Congress. One vocal opponent called it “Republican suicide.”
“Ending DACA now gives chance 2 restore Rule of Law. Delaying so R Leadership can push Amnesty is Republican suicide,” Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said on Twitter.
King, who believes that DACA is unconstitutional, warned that pushing the decision to Congress would be a mistake. "We've got enough of never-Trumpers in Congress that are undermining the president's agenda," he said last week.
Under DACA—which was created through executive action by President Obama in 2012-- people who come to the U.S. illegally when they are children are protected from deportation and granted work permits.
“It is right for there to be consequences for those who intentionally entered this country illegally,” Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said in a statement, according to The New York Post. “However, we as Americans do not hold children legally accountable for the actions of their parents.”
Ryan, for his part, told a Wisconsin radio show that ending DACA would affect “kids who know no other country.”
Many House Republicans represent highly conservative districts, and if the president goes through with the six-month delay — creating a March deadline — the pressure is likely to be amplified as primary races intensify ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.
The New York Times reported that Trump himself will not make the Tuesday announcement. The job will reportedly be left to Attorney General Jeff Sessions at an 11 a.m. briefing. There will not be questions.
Trump—who made campaign promises of getting tougher on immigration-- has reportedly personally struggled with the issue. Ten states have already threatened to sue the administration over the issue.
“It is time for President Trump to stop breaking one of the clearest campaign promises he made,” Roy Beck, the president of Numbers USA, an advocacy group that aims at reducing the amount of both legal and illegal immigration, told The Wall Street Journal.
Todd Schulte, the president of FWD.us, a progressive immigration group, told the paper that the federal government has the contact information of every DACA recipient, which is about 800,000.
“They grew up here, they work at nearly every major company in America, serve in the military and many are working on recovery efforts in Texas,” he said. “If DACA is repealed and no permanent legislation passed, they will all be fired and our government will begin the large-scale deportation of people raised in the United States, using information they volunteered to the government with the promise it would never be used against them or their families.”
South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham said he backs Trump’s purported announcement but also suggested Congress take matters into its own hands.
“I will be supportive of such a position,” said Graham, who is part of bipartisan legislation on the issue. “I have always believed DACA was a presidential overreach.
"However, I equally understand the plight of the Dream Act kids who -- for all practical purposes know no country other than America. If President Trump makes this decision we will work to find a legislative solution to their dilemma.”