Pelosi slams California ICE raid as 'unjust and cruel,' amid outcry over mayor's tipoff to immigrants

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Wednesday slammed as "unjust and cruel" a raid of illegal immigrants in California last week that netted hundreds of criminals, many with convictions for violent crimes -- but which was partially thwarted by a Democratic mayor who tipped off the public to the crackdown.

The four-day raid in the San Francisco Bay Area led to the arrest of 232 illegal immigrants, 180 of whom Immigration and Customs Enforcement said “were either convicted criminals, had been issued a final order of removal and failed to depart the United States, or had been previously removed” from the country and had come back illegally.

The arrests included 115 who "had prior felony convictions for serious or violent offenses, such as child sex crimes, weapons charges and assault, or had past convictions for significant or multiple misdemeanors."
But officials fumed after Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf tweeted out a warning of the impending raid, a move which ICE Acting Director Tom Homan said led to as many as 800 illegal immigrants -- many with criminal convictions -- fleeing before they could be arrested.
ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS WITH SEX, ROBBERY CONVICTIONS AMONG THOSE WHO EVADED CAPTURE AFTER DEM MAYOR'S WARNING
The Department of Justice is currently reviewing Schaaf’s actions. A DOJ spokesman declined to comment on the status of that review to Fox News.
But Pelosi, in a statement Wednesday, appeared to take the side of the mayor, accusing the White House of terrorizing “innocent immigrant families.”
“Just last week, President Trump decided to terrorize innocent immigrant families in the Bay Area with his unjust and cruel raids,” she said.
Her remarks came after Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Justice Department filed a lawsuit Tuesday night against California, arguing that three recently passed laws interfere with federal immigration policies.
TRUMP DOJ SUES CALIFORNIA OVER 'INTERFERENCE' WITH IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT 
"The Department of Justice and the Trump administration are going to fight these unjust, unfair and unconstitutional policies," Sessions is expected to tell California law enforcement officers in an address Wednesday.
Those laws the DOJ is fighting include a measure offering worker protections against enforcement actions and which DOJ officials claim prevent companies from cooperating with immigration officials. Another law, dubbed by critics as the "sanctuary state" bill, restricts state and municipal cooperation with federal authorities, including what information can be shared about illegal-immigrant inmates.
Pelosi said it marked “a new low” from the Trump administration and said the president was abusing the legal system “to push his mass deportation agenda.”
"The people of California will not be bowed by the Trump administration's brazen aggression and intimidation tactics,” Pelosi said. “Californians will continue to proudly keep our doors open to the immigrants who make America more American. We will fight this sham lawsuit and will fight all cowardly attacks on our immigrant communities."
An estimated 2.5 million immigrants are believed to be in California illegally. In the most recent figures, ICE has reported about 16 percent of its enforcement apprehensions take place in that state.

ICE 'testing our defenses,' San Francisco sheriff says, after federal agents manage to interview inmate in sanctuary city

California jail officials reportedly allowed ICE agents to interview inmates, the sheriff's office said -- in violation of department policy and state law.  (AP)

ICE agents managed to interview an inmate in a San Francisco jail earlier this month, in what the sanctuary city's sheriff is calling a deliberate effort by the feds to find "weak points" in her department's pro-illegal immigrant policies and state laws.
In a separate snafu, police said, ICE agents were granted an interview room with an inmate in another jail, but that inmate declined to speak with the agents.
Jail officials apparently violated both departmental policy and California law by accomodating the agents, authorities said Monday.

San Francisco Sheriff Sheriff Hennessy apologized, saying she is responsible for her officers allowing ICE agents to interview an inmate.  (Reuters)

“My staff made a mistake and I have to hold myself accountable,” San Francisco Sheriff Vicki Hennessy told The San Francisco Chronicle. “I apologize on behalf of the department. I feel embarrassed by it. I’ve taken steps to make sure it never happens again.”
But Hennessy said federal immigration authorities, who arrested 232 in a sweeping Bay Area immigration crackdown just weeks ago, knew what they were doing.
SESSIONS BLASTS 'RADICAL' MOVE BY CALIFORNIA TO BLOCK ICE RAIDS
ICE was "testing our defenses and they found some weak points," Hennessy told the Chronicle.

A pro-illegal immigrant protester in San Francisco, where authorities reportedly let ICE agents interview an inmate earlier this month.  (Reuters)

California state law mandates that inmates receive a consent form prior to interviewing with ICE agents, and San Francisco police policy goes a step further by banning ICE agents from having any access to inmates, the paper reported.

"I feel embarrassed by it. I've taken steps to make sure it never happens again."

Officials reportedly did not provide a consent form to the inmate they managed to interview.
“How sheriff’s deputies are not aware of our sanctuary policies is quite frankly beyond me,” city public defender Jeff Adachi told the Chronicle.
Jail officials reportedly turned the ICE agents away when they attempted to return, according to local reports.
News of the jailhouse episode comes amid a bitter legal and political feud between California and the federal government over immigration policy.
On more than 200 occassions already this year, ICE has requested that California hold or surrender illegal immigrant inmates, the Chronicle reported. The state has not acted on any of these requests.
Last week, the Justice Department announced it is suing California for impermissibly interfering with federal immigration authority, in violation of the Constitution's Supremacy Clause.
“California is using every power it has, and some it does not, to frustrate federal law enforcement,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said. “So you can be sure I’m going to use every power I have to stop them.”

Putin Cartoons

In Pennsylvania special election, the silence of Democrat Conor Lamb speaks volumes to Trump voters

Having grown up in Western Pennsylvania, specifically the 18th congressional district, and driving back over the years through mountains and valleys along the Monongahela River, I’ve witnessed the economic decline of the once booming steel towns that dot the region. People have been forced to leave the area in pursuit of better jobs and opportunities.

Administrations, both Democrat and Republican, have promised to deliver change. Every election they campaign on it, then they get elected and middle America gets forgotten.

That tide shifted with the election of President Trump. So far, he’s doing everything he said he would do.
On Tuesday, voters in the18th District have a choice in a special election between Republican State Representative Rick Saccone, a former Air Force Counter Intelligence Officer, and Democrat Conor Lamb, a former Marine and Assistant U.S. Attorney.
A vote for Conor Lamb would be a vote for the Democrat party whose failed policies are more of the same.  They’re policies that have forgotten about middle America, which is the heart and soul of the 18th district.
They’ve driven out industrial and manufacturing jobs and mired small businesses with taxes and regulations.  Put quite frankly:  why would anyone want to go back to the failed policies of the past that left this entire region devastated?

Lamb is young, good looking, and charismatic. However, good looks don’t create jobs, revitalize the economy, and let you keep more of your money.

Rick Saccone will be a needed ally to President Trump at a time when even some Republicans want to oppose him and govern from the swamp.  Saccone will support the president’s policies to continue to “Make America Great Again” - policies that are delivering on the hope and change we were promised under President Obama but never saw.
When Hillary Clinton, the presidential candidate from Conor Lamb’s party, said she was going to put coal miners and coal companies out of business during the presidential election, where was Conor Lamb? He was eerily silent when his party’s candidate said she’d take jobs away from people in his state, and now he’s asking those people for their vote.
Coal miners, steel workers and the working class people who supply these industries with their family businesses overwhelmingly voted for President Trump. For the first time in decades, they’re getting the attention they deserve.
In June, a new coal mine opened in nearby Somerset county, marking the first time a mine has opened in the country in years.  Corsa Coal Company’s CEO said, “The tone of government has completely changed. Coal is no longer a four letter word.”
He also credited President Trump with rolling back regulations and supporting the development of more energy resources at home such as coal, shale oil, and natural gas. That means more jobs for working families in Western Pennsylvania.
The Somerset County Commissioner said of the coal mine, “It will put guys back to work and put money in their pockets.  It’s going to be a boom for everyone.”
Where was Conor Lamb when the coal mine opened?  Did he have any good words for his fellow Pennsylvanians, who had waited so long for good news?  Once again he was eerily silent. Had his party’s candidate won the presidency the coal industry would be losing jobs not creating them.
People in Western Pennsylvania, like the rest of the country, have seen increases in their paychecks thanks to the Trump tax cuts, which Lamb opposed. Small businesses are no longer saddled with regulations and have found relief because of the tax cuts, as well. A CNBC survey out last month found that optimism among small businesses for the president’s tax cuts hit a new high.
Likewise, there is a great deal of support in Western Pennsylvania for the President’s plan to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, except from Canada and Mexico. The tariffs would help protect those steel and aluminum jobs that are still the heart of the region. Jim McCaffrey, a senior vice president for coal sales at Consol Energy said the tariffs could "revive the American steel industry."
Lamb is young, good looking, and charismatic. Outwardly, he’s got all the makings of a politician.
However, good looks don’t create jobs, revitalize the economy, and let you keep more of your money. On substance, he’s part of the party of politics as usual that has done nothing to help Western Pennsylvania.
He is the past, Saccone and Trump are the future.
It appears that Lamb is pulling the wool over people’s eyes in what is a conservative, Democrat district. While publicly trying to play himself off as a moderate, he is anything but that. In fact, his recent extreme, anti-Israel comments that surfaced from his time at the University of Pennsylvania would suggest that he’ll fit right in with the far-left Washington establishment liberals.
While a student at the university, he was upset about an ad in the school newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian, that was supportive of Israel. Commenting in the paper Lamb said, "It was disheartening to see the add (sic) in the DP the other day which read, ‘Wherever we stand, we stand with Israel.’" He went on to say that Israel was guilty of terrorism and their government targeted civilians.
Saccone, like Trump, understands that Israel is one of America’s closest allies. Lamb does not.
When voters go to the polls on Tuesday they can choose to vote for Rick Saccone and continue the pro-economic, pro-growth policies of President Trump that are bringing jobs back to the region.  Their other choice is to vote for Conor Lamb and the policies of the party of Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, who want to ship industrial jobs overseas, and refer to the pay raises and bonuses that millions of people have received as “crumbs.”
This is Conor Lamb’s party. If he wins, where will Conor Lamb be, on the side of the people or the party? His eerie silence has been deafening.
Bueller, Bueller…..anyone???
Lauren DeBellis Appell was deputy press secretary for then-Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., in his successful 2000 re-election campaign, as well as assistant communications director for the Senate Republican Policy Committee (2001-2003).

North Korea to seek peace treaty with US at Trump meeting: report

Kim Jong Un, the bellicose North Korean leader, hopes to sign a peace deal after the upcoming meeting with President Donald Trump, which is tentatively set for May, Bloomberg reported, citing a South Korea report.

Dong-A Ilbo, South Korea's national newspaper, spoke to an unidentified senior official from President Moon Jae-in's office, who said Kim will likely raise the possiblity of the peace treaty.

The report said Kim is also likely to voice his desire to establish diplomatic relations with the U.S. and consider nuclear disarmament, the report said.
The regime wants a peace treaty to end the more than 60-year-old ceasefire between the two sides and to safeguard its sovereignty, Koh Yu-hwan, who teaches North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul, told the outlet.
“There were agreements between the U.S. and North Korea to open up discussion on a peace treaty, but they never materialized,” Koh said. “The U.S. wants a peace treaty at the end of the denuclearization process, while for the North, it’s the precondition for its denuclearization.”
The peace treaty would need to address issues such as the U.S. military’s presence in South Korea and the continued military drills aimed at countering the North’s threat in the region.
Trump last week accepted a meeting with Kim – expected sometime in May – but the key details of the meeting are yet to be decided.
Despite speculation of possible denuclearization, it is still widely believed that Kim will insist on keeping some nuclear weapons as a deterrent – a proposal that might be too hard to swallow for the Trump administration that came out against nuclear North Korea in any shape or form.
Kim might also propose giving a full report on the North’s current nuclear weapons arsenal and allowing international verification once the denuclearization process takes hold, said Choi Kang, vice president of Seoul’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies.
In addition, North Korea could offer Trump to release several American citizens currently being imprisoned in the country.

Pressure grows for 'The View' star Joy Behar to apologize over anti-Christian comments, but ABC is silent

ABC News has maintained a stony silence amid increased pressure for its star Joy Behar to apologize on-air to the "millions of Christians" who watch "The View," leaving Disney boss Bob Iger to fend for himself when an angry shareholder asked him about the brouhaha at a recent shareholder meeting.

On Feb. 13, Behar criticized Vice President Pence's faith by saying that hearing from Jesus is actually called “mental illness.” The resulting public outrage led scores of angry viewers to call or write ABC News demanding an apology. It wasn’t until late last week that Iger, CEO of ABC parent Disney, finally revealed when questioned by a concerned shareholder that Behar had privately called the vice president to apologize.

“ABC is doing absolutely nothing about this,” an ABC source told Fox News.
Multiple ABC sources told Fox News that ABC -- despite tens of thousands of formal viewer complaints -- has not subjected Behar’s comments to review by the news division’s Editorial Standards and Practices department.  The unit normally would rule on whether a public apology was required, and whether Behar and much-feared “The View” boss Hilary Estey McLoughlin should be subjected to discipline for Behar’s offensive remarks.

"ABC is doing absolutely nothing about this.”

“Joy Behar apologized to Vice President Pence directly. She made a call to him and apologized, which I thought was absolutely appropriate,” Iger said at the shareholder meeting. Audio reveals that Iger appeared irritated and dismissive of the shareholder, sharply cutting off the exchange.
A White House source described to Fox News the conversation between Pence and the ABC News star.
“She apologized to the vice president, he accepted and said he wasn’t offended by her comment for his own sake but on behalf of the millions of Christians who watch ABC and her show," the source told Fox News. "He encouraged her to make the same apology publicly on the show that she did privately to him.”
But Behar has yet to publicly apologize and it appears that she has no plans to do so.
Media Research Center President Brent Bozell issued a statement declaring that Behar’s private apology is “not nearly enough” and promised to continue his campaign against “anti-Christian bigotry” at the network.
Bozell’s watchdog group is presently running a campaign on behalf of aggrieved Christians, urging that viewers contact “View” advertisers about Behar’s “hateful, anti-Christian remarks.” As a result, more than 30,000 calls have been placed to ABC News and the show’s advertisers have received more than 10,000 calls of angry viewers complaining about the “anti-Christian” remarks.
“Behar and ABC need to publicly apologize for the bigoted slurs on ‘The View.’ The bigoted statements made about the vice president's Christian faith offended hundreds of millions of Christians across the country, the largest faith group in the United States. Their apology should therefore be as public as their insult,” Bozell said.
The MRC, which bills itself as “America’s media watchdog,” has published the contact information of 14 advertisers of “The View,” including Clorox, Dove, Pampers, Downy, Oreo and Gerber.
Disney has not responded to multiple requests for comment, while ABC News pointed Fox News to an on-air comment that Behar made last month as her public statement on the matter.
“I don’t mean to offend people but apparently I keep doing it,” she said during the non-apology. “It was a joke.”
A representative of ABC News declined to comment when asked directly if Behar would apologize based on the latest MRC attack on its advertisers.
An ABC source said that the news division does not expect “The View” to abide by the editorial standards and practices of the rest of its “news” programming.
Standard procedure at ABC News is that when a piece of content becomes the object of heated viewer complaints, executives in its Standards and Practices Department, which has several staffers despite ABC News’ small size, review it and determine a course of action. These actions can include mandating an apology or imposing some manner of discipline on personnel involved.
Recently, ABC News suspended for a month without pay its chief investigative correspondent, Brian Ross, after he broadcast an incorrect report about former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s guilty plea. Ross was later demoted to a sinecure at ABC’s beleaguered Lincoln Square Productions.
In 2015, ABC News compelled George Stephanopoulos to recuse himself from moderating presidential debates after it was revealed the “Good Morning America” star had been secretly giving tens of thousands of dollars to the Clinton Foundation. ABC continues to pay Stephanopoulos in the range of $15 million dollars a year despite his diminished clout and social cache now that the Clintons are out of power.
Fox News contacted spokespeople for ABC News, ABC Television Network and Disney -- none of whom would comment on Behar.
Among those not commenting is ABC News Senior Vice President for Talent and Business Barbara Fedida, who is believed to have executive oversight of “The View. “
According to a number of reports in the Daily Mail, ABC News’ and particularly Fedida’s stewardship of “The View” has rankled producers at the longtime chat show. ABC News assumed control of “The View” from ABC Daytime in 2014.
Increasing incursions by “the View” into news territory have made the program more controversial. Only on Friday, Behar and “View” guest Valerie Jarrett, who is Barack and Michelle Obama’s best friend, both made excuses for a co-founder of the Women’s March who has ties to the anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan.
“Everybody has baggage,” Behar said. “Unless you're in utero, you have baggage.”

Putin ordered to shoot down passenger plane over terror threat

Russia's President Vladimir Putin said in a new film he ordered – but later pulled back – the shooting down of a passenger plane in 2014 after officials believed a man with a bomb was targeting the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.

In the two-hour film called “Putin,” the Russian president said he was advised on February 7, 2014, that a plane carrying passengers from Ukraine to Turkey had been hijacked – just as the 2014 Winter Olympics Games were to be opened.

“I was told: A plane en route from Ukraine to Istanbul was seized, captors demand landing in Sochi,” Putin said in the film, Reuters reported.
There were 110 passengers aboard. There were reportedly 40,000 in attendance at the Opening Ceremonies.
Security officials believed the plane was taken over by a man with a bomb and changed its course to Sochi.
Putin ordered that the plane be downed as part of the emergency plan.
“I told them: Act according to the plan,” Putin told reporter Andrey Kondrashov, a top state TV presenter and Putin's current press secretary.
But the terrorist scare turned out to be a false alarm and the Russian leader called off the order. The passenger who caused the panic was drunk and the plane was still on its way to Turkey.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, reportedly confirmed Mr Putin's account.
Putin was also asked during the interview whether there were any conditions under which the Russian government would give back Crimea to Ukraine.
“What are you talking about? Such circumstances do not exist and never will,” Putin said, according to Russia's Tass news agency.
Crimea, a territory that formally belonged to Ukraine was annexed by Russia in 2014 following Russian meddling and a disputed referendum.
The film was released just a week before the presidential elections on March 18 that Putin is expected to win.
Putin faces multiple challengers, but none of them are expected to seriously challenge the incumbent. Alexei Navalny, a prominent leader of opposition, has been barred from standing in the election.

Chicago Cartoons

Medicare drug benefit is weakened by congressional budget deal

Congress has undermined the Medicare drug benefit that millions of older Americans depend on – one of the few federal health-care programs that's working well. 

The two-year federal budget deal passed recently shifts more of the program's costs onto drug manufacturers starting in 2020. In the process, the change eliminates one of the key features that has made the program – known as Part D – successful for over a decade.

If the change stays in place, Part D could soon become just another budget-busting entitlement with little hope of long-term sustainability.
Medicare Part D provides private, federally subsidized prescription drug coverage to 42 million senior citizens. And since being implemented in 2006, the program has served beneficiaries extraordinarily well. In one recent survey, 87 percent of enrollees reported being satisfied with their Part D coverage.
Such positive attitudes are largely the result of Part D's market-based structure, which provides patients with a wide array of coverage options. This year, the average enrollee had 23 stand-alone plans to pick from. This setup forces insurers to compete with one another for seniors' business by offering the highest-quality, lowest-cost plans possible.
The program has also proven surprisingly affordable for taxpayers. A recent analysis from the American Action Forum found that the program's 2016 costs were less than half what was projected when the law was first implemented.
That's an unheard of feat for a federal program. One of the main reasons costs have remained so low? Plan providers are encouraged to keep patient drug expenses under control.
Under the standard benefit model, enrollees pay for the full price of their drugs until they reach a deductible of $405. After that, they're responsible for only a quarter of drug costs up to a certain limit – $3,750 this year.
It's at this point that beneficiaries enter a gap in coverage known as the "donut hole" in which they will pay 35 percent of a brand name medicine's cost in 2018. Once drug spending reaches about $5,000, patients are in the catastrophic phase of coverage, and cost-sharing drops off once again.
ObamaCare established a plan to phase out this donut hole by 2020 so that seniors would only have to pay 25 percent of brand-name drug costs after meeting their deductible. The remaining 75 percent of the cost would be split between pharmaceutical companies – which would discount drugs by 50 percent – and insurers that would cover the other 25 percent.
By making plan providers responsible for such a significant share of donut hole spending, the reform gives these companies a powerful incentive to keep as many patients as possible out of the donut hole. After all, once patients reach the donut hole, insurers see their costs soar. It's for this reason that three in four Part D enrollees never enter the coverage gap.
The budget deal effectively obliterates that incentive – and thus threatens the program's long-term sustainability. It does this by shifting the vast majority of donut hole spending onto drug companies and letting insurers almost entirely off the hook. As of 2020, plan providers will only be responsible for 5 percent of a brand-name drug's cost in the coverage gap, while pharmaceutical makers will have to pay for 70 percent.
The consequences for Part D could be catastrophic. Insurers will actually have an incentive to drive patient drug spending over the donut-hole threshold as quickly as possible by, for instance, encouraging patients to rely on costly brand-name drugs instead of more affordable generics. Once patients enter the coverage gap, insurer costs would plummet.
What's remarkable about this change is that it's a far better deal for insurance companies than for patients or taxpayers. A recent analysis by the consulting firm Avalere estimates that the government will save $7 billion over the next decade thanks to these changes. The average Part D beneficiary will save $20 a year. Insurers, meanwhile, will save a whopping $40 billion.
Insurance companies don't deserve another government handout. And Americans don't deserve another unsustainable entitlement program. Lawmakers need to roll back these misguided changes and rescue Part D from its impending fiscal ruin.

Former Obama officials form anti-Trump national security think tank

FILE -- Then President-elect Donald Trump, left, and former President Barack Obama arrive for Trump's inauguration ceremony at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S. January 20, 2017.  (REUTERS/J. Scott Applewhite/Pool)

A group of about 50 former Obama administration officials recently formed a think tank called National Security Action to attack the Trump administration's national security policies.

The mission statement of the group is anything but subtle: “National Security Action is dedicated to advancing American global leadership and opposing the reckless policies of the Trump administration that endanger our national security and undermine U.S. strength in the world.”

National Security Action plans to pursue typical liberal foreign policy themes such as climate change, challenging President Trump's leadership, immigration and allegations of corruption between the president and foreign powers.
This organization uses the acronym NSA, which is ironic. Three of its founding members – Ben Rhodes, Susan Rice and Samantha Power – likely were involved in abusing intelligence from the federal NSA (National Security Agency) to unmask the names of Trump campaign staff from intelligence reports and to leak NSA intercepts to the media to hurt Donald Trump politically. This included a leak to the media of an NSA transcript in February 2017 of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's discussion with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak. No one has been prosecuted for this leak.
Given the likely involvement of Rhodes, Rice and Power to weaponize intelligence against the Trump presidential campaign, will their anti-Trump NSA issue an apology for these abuses?
It is interesting that the new anti-Trump group says nothing in its mandate about protecting the privacy of Americans from illegal surveillance, preventing the politicization of U.S. intelligence agencies or promoting aggressive intelligence oversight. Maybe this is because the founders plan to abuse U.S. intelligence agencies to spy on Republican lawmakers and candidates if they join a future Democratic administration.
It takes a lot of chutzpah for this group of former Obama officials, who were part of the worst U.S. foreign policy in history, to condemn the current president's successful international leadership and foreign policy.
After all, ISIS was born on President Obama's watch because of his mismanagement of the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and his "leading from behind" Middle East policy. The Syrian civil war spun out of control because of the incompetence of President Obama and his national security team.
This was a team that provided false information to the American people about the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the nuclear deal with Iran. I wonder if the anti-Trump NSA will include videos on its website of former National Security Adviser Susan Rice falsely claiming on five Sunday morning news shows in September 2012 that the attack on the Benghazi consulate was "spontaneous" and in response to an anti-Muslim video.
And of course there's the North Korean nuclear and missile programs that surged during the Obama years due to the administration’s "Strategic Patience" policy, an approach designed to kick this problem down the road to the next president. Because of President Obama's incompetence, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un may have an H-bomb that he soon will be able to load onto an intercontinental ballistic missile to attack the United States.
It must appall this group of former Obama national security officials that President Trump is succeeding as he undoes everything they worked on.
ISIS will soon control no territory in Iraq or Syria because of the Trump administration's intensified attacks on it and arming of Kurdish militias.
In sharp contrast to President Obama, President Trump drew a chemical weapons red line in Syria and enforced it.
North Korea is pushing for talks with the U.S. in response to strong United Nations sanctions the U.S. worked to obtain in 2017. And compliance with the new sanctions has been significantly improved, especially by China, as the result of President Trump’s actions.
President Trump repaired the damage done to U.S.-Israel relations by President Obama and has recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel – something several previous presidents promised but failed to do.
Iranian harassment of U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf stopped in 2017, likely due to the more assertive Iran policy of President Trump. This includes the president's successful effort to build a stronger U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia.
President Trump is right when he says he inherited a mess on national security from the Obama administration. This is because President Obama and his national security team undermined U.S. credibility and left President Trump a much more dangerous world. I doubt the new anti-Trump National Security Action think tank will succeed in convincing Americans otherwise.

Fred Fleitz a former CIA analyst, is senior vice president for policy and programs with the Center for Security Policy, a national security think tank. His new book is “The Coming North Korea Nuclear Nightmare: What Trump Must Do to Reverse Obama’s ‘Strategic Patience.” Follow him on Twitter @FredFleitz.