Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Project Veritas drops CNN exposé
The tables appear to be turning on CNN as a whistleblower launches bombshell allegations of bias against the network. In its latest investigative piece, Project Veritas claims to expose the anti-Trump culture at the highest levels of the news outlet. The organization worked with a CNN contractor who helped gather evidence, including secret recordings at editorial meetings.
The first clip, released Monday, features a man who is allegedly CNN President Jeff Zucker telling staffers he wants them to focus on the president’s impeachment. The video also shows Nick Neville, a media coordinator at CNN, acknowledging Zucker’s negative stance toward the president is personal.
Project Veritas shared a clip of Zucker talking about the forthcoming leaks on a morning call just before its release, confirming the source was an insider. The whistleblower has now been identified as Cary Poarch, who said he decided to secretly record meetings at the network to expose the bias.
Conservative political activist and Project Veritas organizer James O”Keefe took to Twitter to call for support for the insider, calling him a “patriot. Poarch has set up a GoFundMe page in which he plans to use for any legal challenges he may now face.
China tempers hopes about US tariff truce
BEIJING (AP) — A truce in a U.S.-Chinese tariff
war and Beijing’s promises to open more of its state-dominated economy
are raising hopes among investors.
But Beijing has tempered expectations, while companies express frustration over the halting pace of market-opening moves.
The
China Daily, an English-language newspaper aimed at foreign readers,
warned the two sides have yet to put last week’s agreement on paper
after President Donald Trump suspended a planned tariff hike. In
exchange, Trump said Beijing would buy up to $50 billion of American
farm goods, a pledge China has yet to confirm.
“There is always the possibility that
Washington may decide to cancel the deal if it thinks that doing so will
better serve its interests,” said the newspaper. It called on the Trump
administration to “avoid backpedaling.”
Business
groups welcomed the truce as a possible step toward ending the costly,
15-month-old fight but said it was a small one. Talks broke down earlier
after Trump accused Beijing of backsliding on promises Washington
believed were locked in.
Friday’s agreement
coincided with China’s announcement of a timetable to carry out a 2017
promise to abolish limits on foreign ownership of some finance
businesses, starting with futures trading firms on Jan. 1. Securities
firms and mutual fund managers follow later in the year.
Investors
saw that as a commitment to freer trade. Chinese officials say it has
nothing to do with the trade talks and isn’t a concession to Washington.
Over
the past 18 months, President Xi Jinping’s government also has promised
to allow full foreign ownership in banking, insurance and auto
manufacturing in hopes of making its slowing, state-dominated economy
more competitive and productive.
Chinese
market-opening initiatives follow a standard script. Authorities
announce dramatic but vague promises that raise hopes abroad. Six months
to a year passes while companies wait to see regulations. Many are
dismayed when they impose costly licensing requirements or curbs on the
size of a business.
None addresses U.S.
complaints that plans for government-led creation of Chinese competitors
in robotics and other industries violate Beijing’s market-opening
commitments and are based on stealing or pressuring companies to hand
over technology.
Foreign companies are
frustrated that Beijing is moving so gradually 17 years after joining
the free-trading World Trade Organization. China, the biggest global
exporter, is widely seen as having benefited most from freer trade but
faces complaints it violates the rules and spirit of the WTO by blocking
access to its own markets and subsidizing Chinese competitors.
“China’s
opening-up process needs to move beyond piecemeal changes and instead
embrace an absolute approach in which China goes from ‘increasingly
open’ to ‘open’,” said Joerg Wuttke, the president of the European Union
Chamber of Commerce in China.
Chinese
leaders want foreign capital, skills and competition for an economy
where huge but inefficient state companies still control industries
including oil and gas, telecoms, banking, insurance and power
generation.
Beijing wants more foreign
involvement to help improve China’s finance industry but remains
skeptical about the maturity and capability of its own domestic players,
said Lester Ross, a lawyer in Beijing for the firm WilmerHale.
Still,
“There is a lot of attractiveness” for foreign banks, insurers and
other competitors in China’s fledgling market, he said.
Opening
its own markets also gives Beijing leverage to ask the United States
and other governments to let wholly Chinese-owned banks, insurance and
other companies into their markets, Ross said.
Beijing
allowed full foreign ownership of electric car producers starting last
year. Restrictions on commercial vehicle manufacturing end next year and
for passenger vehicles in 2022.
That
reflects confidence Chinese electric car brands including BYD Auto and
BAIC, which are among the global industry’s biggest producers by
vehicles sold, can compete with foreign rivals.
Global
automakers that until now were required to work through state-owned
partners are so deeply enmeshed in those ventures that most plan to
stick with them. Buying out partners could cost billions of dollars and
the foreigners would lose their political connections.
“China
is accelerating the pace of opening, but we still need to see those
implementing regulations in place and how fast those are carried out,”
said Ross.
Foreign banks are applying to set
up shop in China following an August 2018 pledge to allow full foreign
ownership. But they need an eye-wateringly high minimum capital of 40
billion yuan ($5.7 billion) to operate in China or 8 billion yuan ($1.1
billion) to conduct cross-border services.
That’s
beyond the reach of all but the richest foreign institutions but
affordable for state-owned Chinese banks, some the biggest global
competitors.
A handful of American, European
and Japanese banks have gotten approvals to set up Chinese ventures.
It’s unclear if they met the capital requirement or if regulators eased
that as a concession to Washington and other trading partners.
In
insurance, foreign investors face a time-consuming licensing process
requiring them to apply in each one of China’s 36 provinces and major
cities and wait up to a year for approvals. That could take up to a
decade.
“China’s efforts to boost investor
confidence face significant headwinds,” said Andrew Coflan and Allison
Sherlock of Eurasia Group in a report.
Another
hurdle: Government controls on the movement of money into and out of
China that add to the cost and difficulty of bringing in investment
capital and taking home profits.
Such obstacles “make entrance by foreign financial firms a challenge, even with no ownership caps,” said Coflan and Sherlock.
Also
Tuesday, the Chinese post office said fees it pays the United States
and other countries to deliver packages will nearly triple through 2025
under an agreement following complaints by Washington.
Payments
will rise 27% next year and by 164% in total through 2025 under the
Sept. 25 agreement by members of the Universal Postal Union, the State
Postal Bureau said in a statement.
The Trump
administration complained the U.S. Post Office was subsidizing Chinese
exporters, which it said pay too little to deliver the vast flow of
packages generated by online commerce.
Trump imposes sanctions on Turkey, threatens its economy
WASHINGTON (AP) — Targeting Turkey’s economy,
President Donald Trump announced sanctions aimed at restraining the
Turks’ assault against Kurdish fighters and civilians in Syria — an
assault Turkey began after Trump announced he was moving U.S. troops out
of the way.
The United States on Monday
also called on Turkey to stop the invasion and declare a cease-fire, and
Trump is sending Vice President Mike Pence and national security
adviser Robert O’Brien to Ankara as soon as possible in an attempt to
begin negotiations. Pence said Trump spoke directly to Turkish leader
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who promised not attack the border town of Kobani,
which in 2015 witnessed the Islamic State group’s first defeat in a
battle by U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters.
“President Trump communicated to him very
clearly that the United States of American wants Turkey to stop the
invasion, implement an immediate cease-fire and to begin to negotiate
with Kurdish forces in Syria to bring an end to the violence,” Pence
said.
The Americans were scrambling for
Syria’s exits, a move criticized at home and abroad as opening the door
to a resurgence of the Islamic State group, whose violent takeover of
Syrian and Iraqi lands five years ago was the reason American forces
came in the first place.
Trump said the approximately 1,000 U.S. troops
who had been partnering with local Kurdish fighters to battle IS in
northern Syria are leaving the country. They will remain in the Middle
East, he said, to “monitor the situation” and to prevent a revival of IS
— a goal that even Trump’s allies say has become much harder as a
result of the U.S. pullout.
The Turks began attacks in Syria last week against the Syrian Kurdish fighters, whom the Turks see as terrorists. On Monday, Syrian government troops moved north toward the border region, setting up a potential clash with Turkish-led forces.
Trump
said Turkey’s invasion is “precipitating a humanitarian crisis and
setting conditions for possible war crimes,” a reference to reports of
Turkish-backed fighters executing Kurdish fighters on the battlefield.
The
Kurdish forces previously allied with the U.S. said they had reached a
deal with President Bashar Assad’s government to help them fend off
Turkey’s invasion, a move that brings Russian forces deeper into the
conflict.
In his sanctions announcement,
Trump said he was halting negotiations on a $100 billion trade deal with
Turkey and raising steel tariffs back up to 50%. Trump also imposed
sanctions on three senior Turkish officials and Turkey’s defense and
energy ministries.
“I am fully prepared to swiftly destroy
Turkey’s economy if Turkish leaders continue down this dangerous and
destructive path,” Trump said.
Treasury
Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the sanctions will hurt an already weak
Turkish economy. Pence said the U.S. will continue to ramp up the
sanctions “unless Turkey is willing to embrace a cease-fire, come to the
negotiating table and end the violence.”
American troops consolidated their positions in northern Syria on Monday and prepared to evacuate equipment in advance of a full withdrawal, a U.S. defense official said.
The
official, who was not authorized to be quoted by name, said U.S.
officials were weighing options for a potential future counter-IS
campaign, including the possibility of waging it with a combination of
air power and special operations forces based outside Syria, perhaps in
Iraq.
The hurried preparations for a U.S.
exit were triggered by Trump’s decision Saturday to expand a limited
troop pullout into a complete withdrawal.
Defense
Secretary Mark Esper said Monday he would travel to NATO headquarters
in Brussels next week to urge European allies to impose “diplomatic and
economic measures” against Turkey — a fellow NATO ally — for what Esper
called Ankara’s “egregious” actions.
Esper
said Turkey’s incursion had created unacceptable risk to U.S. forces in
northern Syria and “we also are at risk of being engulfed in a broader
conflict.”
The only exception to the U.S.
withdrawal from Syria is a group of perhaps 200 troops who will remain
at a base called Tanf in southern Syria near the Jordanian border along
the strategically important Baghdad-to-Damascus highway. Those troops
work with Syrian opposition forces unrelated to the Kurdish-led fighters
in northern Syria.
Esper said the U.S.
withdrawal would be done carefully to protect the troops and to ensure
no U.S. equipment was left behind. He declined to say how long that
might take.
In a series of tweets Monday,
Trump defended his gamble that pulling U.S. forces out of Syria would
not weaken U.S. security and credibility. He took sarcastic swipes at
critics who say his Syria withdrawal amounts to a betrayal of the Kurds
and plays into the hands of Russia.
“Anyone
who wants to assist Syria in protecting the Kurds is good with me,
whether it is Russia, China, or Napoleon Bonaparte,” he wrote. “I hope
they all do great, we are 7,000 miles away!”
Trump
has dug in on his decision to pull out the troops, believing it
fulfills a key campaign promise and will be a winning issue in the 2020
election, according to White House officials.
This
has effectively ended a five-year effort to partner with Syrian Kurdish
and Arab fighters to ensure a lasting defeat of the Islamic State
group. Hundreds of IS supporters escaped a holding camp amid clashes
between invading Turkish-led forces and Kurdish fighters, and analysts
said an IS resurgence seemed more likely, just months after Trump
declared the extremists defeated.
Trump
spoke about the IS detainees in a phone call Monday with Kurdish General
Mazloum Kobani. Pence said Mazloum assured the president that Kurdish
forces would continue to support the prisons holding IS fighters.
Republican
Senate leader Mitch McConnell, normally a staunch Trump supporter, said
he was “gravely concerned” by events in Syria and Trump’s response so
far.
Withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria
“would re-create the very conditions that we have worked hard to destroy
and invite the resurgence of ISIS,” he said in a statement. “And such a
withdrawal would also create a broader power vacuum in Syria that will
be exploited by Iran and Russia, a catastrophic outcome for the United
States’ strategic interests.”
New Jersey
Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, said Trump is weakening America. “To be clear, this
administration’s chaotic and haphazard approach to policy by tweet is
endangering the lives of U.S. troops and civilians,” Menendez said in a
statement.
However, Trump got quick support
from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who earlier had
lambasted his withdrawal decision as “shortsighted,” ″irresponsible” and
“unnerving to its core.” Graham said he was asked to join the president
and his team for phone calls with the key leaders in the conflict.
“President
Trump made it clear to President Erdogan this incursion is widely
unpopular in the United States, greatly destabilizing to the region, is
putting in jeopardy our successes against ISIS, and will eventually
benefit Iran,” Graham said.
The Kurds have turned to the Syrian government and Russia for military assistance, further complicating the battlefield.
The prospect of enhancing the Syrian government’s position on the battlefield and inviting Russia to get more directly involved is seen by Trump’s critics as a major mistake. But he tweeted that it shouldn’t matter.
“Others may want to come in and fight for one side or the other,” he wrote. “Let them!”
Monday, October 14, 2019
Do California power shutoffs work? Hard to know, experts say
SAN
FRANCISCO (AP) — Millions of Californians spent part of the week in the
dark in an unprecedented effort by the state’s large electrical
utilities to prevent another devastating wildfire. It was the fifth time
Pacific Gas & Electric Co. has pre-emptively cut the power but
by far the largest to date in the utility’s effort to prevent a deadly
wildfire sparked by its power lines.
But do the power shut-offs actually prevent fires?
Experts
say it’s hard to know what might have happened had the power stayed on,
or if the utility’s proactive shutoffs are to thank for California’s
mild fire season this year.
“It’s
like trying to prove a negative,” said Alan Scheller-Wolf, professor of
operations management and an energy expert at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper
School of Business. “They can’t prove they prevented a disaster because
there’s no alternative universe where they didn’t try this.”
The
winds that prompted the mass outage that affected nearly 2 million
people in northern and central parts of the state shifted southward by
Friday, where a wind-fueled wildfire prompted officials to order the
evacuation of 100,000 people from their homes in foothills of the San
Fernando Valley.
California is experiencing
the first major fire activity of the season after two years that brought
some of the most devastating fires on record, many of them caused by
utility equipment. Until Monday, fires had covered only about 5% of the
acreage burned by that date last year, and only about 13% of the average
for the last five years.
But it’s too early — and maybe impossible — to tell if that can be attributed to increased measures to cut power.
“We
have good reason to be skeptical, and the reason is that PG&E
bears the costs of starting a fire, but they don’t bear the costs of
shutting off power,” said Severin Borenstein, faculty director of the
Energy Institute at University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of
Business.
He noted that weather forecasting
is notoriously difficult, “so even if PG&E were doing the best
possible job, it would not get it right sometimes.”
PG&E
said in a statement that employees located 23 spots where parts of its
systems were damaged during the strong winds, but officials have
declined to provide details, saying it will be included in a
state-mandated report.
Gov. Gavin Newsom
blasted PG&E for what he called decades of mismanagement,
underinvestment and lousy communication with the public. He pointed to
San Diego Gas & Electric, which pioneered proactive power
shutoffs following a devastating 2007 fire sparked by its equipment, as a
model for responsibly shutting off power in bad weather.
“Specifically
as it relates to their predictive analysis, their weather station, I
had a chance to visit it a few months ago,” Newsom said. “It’s
exceptional, it’s at another level.”
SDG&E,
which serves 3.6 million people, has spent about $1.5 billion to better
predict bad weather and update its equipment, said Chief Operating
Officer Caroline Winn. The company hired meteorologists, data scientists
and fire experts and deployed an extensive array of weather monitors,
she said. It replaced about 18,000 wooden poles with steel, installed
new conductors and increased the wind tolerance in remote areas, using
data from weather sensors to know which equipment was most at risk. The
company also sectionalized electrical circuits so power managers could
target outages more precisely to the lines facing danger.
“We didn’t have all the answers then, but what we did know as we had to change and we had to do things differently,” Winn said.
A
decade of data and the refined grid have helped SDG&E to
narrowly target outages when they’re necessary, she said. Of its 14
outages since 2013, only two affected more than 20,000 customers and
most have been significantly fewer.
Outside
California, other large western utilities in Nevada and Utah said they,
too, are considering proactively shutting off power to avoid sparking
fires.
“We want to make sure our system
isn’t the cause of one of these devastating fires,” said Tiffany
Erickson, a spokeswoman for Rocky Mountain Power in Utah, which has
notified 5,000 households and businesses that shutoffs are possible
during dangerous weather.
Last month,
Southern California Edison shut off electricity to 14,000 customers in
the remote Mammoth Lakes area along the eastern side of the Sierra
Nevada because of forecasts of extreme winds and extremely dry
vegetation.
Winds reached 88 mph (141 kph)
and the California Highway Patrol banned trucks and campers from
traveling along a highway after gusts blew over big-rig trucks, the
utility said. The winds knocked down power poles and damaged electric
circuits.
“It’s abundantly clear that the
conditions that were in place up there were so severe that they could
likely have caused a spark to occur,” said Don Daigler, a company
spokesman. “We’re not going to do this willy-nilly.”
Stephen
Pyne, a retired Arizona State University professor and fire historian,
likened the power line problem to challenges posed by railroads until
the early 1900s, when steam engines and train wheels regularly threw
sparks that ignited deadly fires.
“Think
about the railroads then,” Pyne said. “They were enormously powerful —
economically, politically, socially. And we took it on. Railroads ceased
to be a source of regular or lethal emissions (of sparks.)”
___
Cooper
reported from Phoenix. Associated Press writers Olga R. Rodriguez in
San Francisco; Keith Ridler in Boise, Idaho; Brady McCombs in Salt Lake
City and Brian Melley in Los Angeles contributed to this story.
Ambassador expected to testify key assurance was from Trump
WASHINGTON
(AP) — A U.S. ambassador is expected to tell Congress that his text
message reassuring another envoy that there was no quid pro quo in their
interactions with Ukraine was based solely on what President Donald
Trump told him, according to a person familiar with his coming testimony
in the impeachment probe.
Gordon Sondland,
Trump’s hand-picked ambassador to the European Union, is among
administration officials being subpoenaed to appear on Capitol Hill this
week against the wishes of the White House. It’s the latest test
between the legislative and executive branches of government, as the impeachment inquiry by House Democrats deepens.
On
Monday, the House panels leading the investigation expect to hear from
Fiona Hill, a former top National Security Council expert on Russia.
Sondland’s
appearance, set for Thursday, comes after a cache of text messages from
top envoys provided a vivid account of their work acting as
intermediaries around the time Trump urged Ukraine’s new president,
Volodymr Zelenskiy, to start investigations into a company linked to the
family of a chief Democratic presidential rival, Joe Biden.
One witness who may not be called before Congress is the still anonymous government whistleblower
who touched off the impeachment inquiry. Top Democrats say testimony
and evidence coming in from other witnesses, and even the president
himself, are backing up the whistleblower’s account of what transpired
during Trump’s July 25 phone call
with Zelenskiy. Lawmakers have grown deeply concerned about protecting
the person from Trump’s threats over the matter and may not wish to risk
exposing the whistleblower’s identity.
Democratic
Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said
Sunday, “We don’t need the whistleblower, who wasn’t on the call, to
tell us what took place during the call. We have the best evidence of
that.”
Schiff said it “may not be necessary”
to reveal the whistleblower’s identity as the House gathers evidence.
“Our primary interest right now is making sure that that person is
protected,” he said.
The impeachment inquiry
is testing the Constitution’s system of checks and balances as the
House presses forward with the probe and the White House dismisses it as
“illegitimate” without a formal vote of the House to open impeachment
proceedings.
In calling for a vote, the
White House is trying to press House Democrats who may be politically
reluctant to put their names formally behind impeachment. But House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has resisted those efforts and is
unlikely to budge as Congress returns. Democrats say Congress is well
within its power as the legislative branch to conduct oversight of the
president and it is Republicans, having grown weary of Trump’s actions,
who may be in the greater political bind over a vote.
Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., said Sunday he’d be fine with taking a formal vote, “but it’s not required.”
“Look,
my own opinion is that we ought to just take this off the table because
it’s such a non-issue, and there’s no doubt in my mind that of course
if Nancy Pelosi does that she will have the votes and that will pass,”
Himes said.
Sondland’s appearance comes
after text messages from top ambassadors described their interactions
leading up to Trump’s call and the aftermath.
Sondland
is set to tell lawmakers that he did understand the administration was
offering Zelenskiy a White House visit in exchange for a public
statement committing to investigations Trump wanted, according to the
person, who demanded anonymity to discuss remarks not yet given.
But
Sondland will say he did not know the company being talked about for an
investigation, Burisma, was tied to Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, the
person said. Sondland understood the discussions about combating
corruption to be part of a much broader and publicized Trump
administration push that was widely shared, the person said.
In
the text exchange, the diplomats raised alarm that Trump appeared to up
the ante, withholding military aid to Ukraine over the investigation.
One
seasoned diplomat on the text message, William Taylor, called it “crazy
to withhold security assistance” to Ukraine in exchange for “help with a
political campaign.”
Sondland responds that
the assertion is “incorrect” about Trump’s intentions. “The President
has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind,” he said in the
text message.
The person familiar with
Sondland’s testimony said that before Sondland sent that text, he spoke
to Trump, who told him there was no quid pro quo. Sondland then repeated
that message to Taylor.
Schiff appeared on “Face the Nation” on CBS and Himes spoke on ABC’s “This Week.”
___
Tucker reported from Providence, Rhode Island.
Syrian army moves to confront Turkish forces as US withdraws
DAMASCUS,
Syria (AP) — Syria’s army deployed near the Turkish border on Monday,
hours after Syrian Kurdish forces previously allied with the U.S. said
they had reached a deal with Damascus to help them fend off Turkey’s
invasion.
The announcement of a deal between
Syria’s Kurds and its government is a major shift in alliances that
came after President Donald Trump ordered all U.S. troops withdrawn from
the northern border area amid the rapidly deepening chaos.
The
shift sets up a potential clash between Turkey and Syria and raises the
specter of a resurgent Islamic State group as the U.S. relinquishes any
remaining influence in northern Syria to President Bashar Assad and his
chief backer, Russia.
On
Monday morning, Syria’s state news agency said that the army had moved
into the town of Tal Tamr, which is about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from
the Turkish border.
SANA said government
forces would “confront the Turkish aggression,” without giving further
details. Photos posted by SANA showed several vehicles and a small
number of troops.
Tal Tamr is a
predominantly Assyrian Christian town that was once held by IS before it
was retaken by Kurdish-led forces. Many Syrian Christians, who make up
about 10 percent of Syria’s pre-war population of 23 million, left for
Europe over the past 20 years, with the flight gathering speed since the
country’s conflict began in March 2011.
SANA did not say from which area the Syrian army had moved into the town.
Despite
widespread criticism from its NATO allies in Europe and the U.S.,
Turkey has pressed on with its offensive into northern Syria.
Turkish
forces appeared set to launch an operation on the town of Manbij
farther west on Monday, according to CNN-Turk, which said the forces had
reached the city’s edge.
Trump sees ‘consensus’ on imposing new sanctions on Turkey
President Trump on Sunday said there is widespread support in Washington to impose new sanctions against Turkey over its swift incursion into northern Syria.
Specific details about the sanctions were unclear but Trump said on Twitter, "Treasury is ready to go, additional legislation may be sought. There is great consensus on this. Turkey has asked that it not be done. Stay tuned!"
Reuters, citing an unnamed U.S. official, reported that the measures were being “worked out at all levels of the government for rollout.”
Last week, Trump vowed to obliterate Ankara’s economy if Turkey did anything in Syria that he considered "off limits."
Over the past five days, Turkish troops and their allies have pushed their way into northern towns and villages, clashing with the Kurdish fighters over a stretch of 125 miles. The offensive has displaced at least 130,000 people.
On Sunday, at least nine people, including five civilians, were killed in Turkish airstrikes on a convoy in the Syrian border town of Ras al-Ayn, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Syrian Kurdish officials.
The New York Times reported that the troop advancement was so fast, they seized a road that complicated the U.S. troop pullout.
Trump has faced criticism over his decision to give Turkey a green light for the offensive. Critics said the U.S. abandoned its Kurdish allies that were credited for their actions to defeat ISIS. Trump has insisted that he wants to pull U.S. troops out of endless wars.
Trump was criticized by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., for his initial decision, but was praised Sunday night for working with Congress “to impose crippling sanctions against Turkeys (sic) outrageous aggression/war crimes in Syria.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report
Specific details about the sanctions were unclear but Trump said on Twitter, "Treasury is ready to go, additional legislation may be sought. There is great consensus on this. Turkey has asked that it not be done. Stay tuned!"
Reuters, citing an unnamed U.S. official, reported that the measures were being “worked out at all levels of the government for rollout.”
Last week, Trump vowed to obliterate Ankara’s economy if Turkey did anything in Syria that he considered "off limits."
Over the past five days, Turkish troops and their allies have pushed their way into northern towns and villages, clashing with the Kurdish fighters over a stretch of 125 miles. The offensive has displaced at least 130,000 people.
On Sunday, at least nine people, including five civilians, were killed in Turkish airstrikes on a convoy in the Syrian border town of Ras al-Ayn, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Syrian Kurdish officials.
The New York Times reported that the troop advancement was so fast, they seized a road that complicated the U.S. troop pullout.
Trump has faced criticism over his decision to give Turkey a green light for the offensive. Critics said the U.S. abandoned its Kurdish allies that were credited for their actions to defeat ISIS. Trump has insisted that he wants to pull U.S. troops out of endless wars.
Trump was criticized by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., for his initial decision, but was praised Sunday night for working with Congress “to impose crippling sanctions against Turkeys (sic) outrageous aggression/war crimes in Syria.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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