Saturday, January 11, 2020

Omar, Tlaib balk after report of Trump administration plan to expand travel ban: 'Straight up racism!'


Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., expressed outrage Friday after a report said the Trump administration was considering an expansion of the nation's travel ban to cover more countries.
In a statement, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley neither confirmed nor denied the expansion report but defended the existing policy.
“The Travel Ban has been very successful in protecting our Country and raising the security baseline around the world," Gidley said. "While there are no new announcements at this time, common-sense and national security both dictate that if a country wants to fully participate in U.S. immigration programs, they should also comply with all security and counter-terrorism measures -- because we do not want to import terrorism or any other national security threat into the United States."
Nevertheless, Omar and Tlaib both addressed the travel ban Friday.
“What do 5 out of 7 of these countries have in common? They are Muslim-majority countries the President already tried to ban,” Omar tweeted.
It wasn't clear whether she was referring to the currently banned countries or a potential list.
“We need to pass the #NoBanAct immediately to stop this madness," she added.
Tlaib called the ban “Straight up racism!”
“No more waiting,” she tweeted. “Too many Muslims have been intentionally targeted, discriminated against, separated from their families and denied opportunities solely based on their faith.”
The administration’s travel ban, which has been through several rounds of litigation and iterations, currently includes seven countries (with certain exceptions) not allowed to fly to the United States: Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela and North Korea.
Some confusion ensued at airports across the country in 2017 -- about who was allowed in and who wasn’t -- after President Trump signed the original travel ban into law through an executive order just seven days after taking office. Massive protests added to the disorder.
Trump’s first version of the travel ban -- dubbed by critics as "the Muslim ban" because it called for a 90-day travel from Muslim-majority countries Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen -- proposed blocking refugee admissions for 120 days and suspended travel from Syria and was immediately blocked by the courts.

​​​​​​​U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., left, and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., at a news conference in Washington, March 13, 2019. (Getty Images)
​​​​​​​U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., left, and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., at a news conference in Washington, March 13, 2019. (Getty Images)

A watered-down version was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 vote.
The list of banned countries could potentially be doubled from seven to 14, two people familiar with the proposal told the Associated Press. Iraq, Sudan and Chad could be on the list, a different person said.
The added countries would most likely be Muslim-majority - a point of controversy as Trump openly floated the possibility of banning all Muslims from entering the U.S. while running for president.
The expanded ban would reportedly be part of a hyper-focus on immigration for the 2020 election.
A document outlining the plan has been circulating around the West Wing, but the listed countries have been blacked out.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., called the proposal "xenophobic."
“An expanded Muslim Ban will worsen our relationships with countries around the world. It won't do anything to make our country safer. It will harm refugees, alienate our allies and give extremists propaganda for recruitment," she said.
Trump criticized the Justice Department in 2017 for making changes to the original ban, tweeting they “should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report. 
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Homeland Security officials announce milestone in southern border wall construction

FILE – In this Sept. 10, 2019 file photo, government contractors erect a section of 
Pentagon-funded border wall along the Colorado River in Yuma, Ariz. (AP Photo/Matt York)
OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 8:05 PM PT — Friday, January 10, 2020
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf provided an update on the construction of the U.S. border wall on Friday. While speaking in Yuma, Arizona, Wolf marked a milestone for the Trump administration by announcing 100 new miles of southern border wall have been completed.
Homeland Security officials later posted a video to Twitter, saying new stretches of the wall were constructed in every border state “from California to Texas.”
Republican Sen. Martha McSally also joined him on the trip. She said Border Patrol agents will now be able to stop illegal activity because border walls work.
Wolf provided assurances that Homeland Security keeps the safety and well-being of the local communities.
“We continue to be transparent on everything that we do. We continue to reach out to land owners. We continue to engage local communities, local representatives, elected officials and the like. So there’s nothing that we’re trying to hide here, we’re very transparent about it. We’ll continue to be very cognizant of any environmental issues that we address.”
– Chad Wolf, Acting Secretary of Homeland Security
Construction crews are aiming to finish 450 miles of the border wall by the end of 2020.
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Iran admits ‘human error’ resulted in Ukrainian plane being shot down ‘unintentionally’

In this Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020 photo, rescue workers search the scene where a Ukrainian plane crashed in Shahedshahr, southwest of the capital Tehran, Iran. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 8:30 PM PT — Friday, January 10, 2020
Iranian state media is saying human error led to a Ukrainian flight to be shot down. Friday evening reports cited Iranian military officials, who reportedly said the nation “unintentionally” shot down the Boeing 737.
The flight was brought down shortly after takeoff from Tehran’s international airport on Wednesday. All 176 passengers on board were killed in the crash, including 63 Canadian citizens.

In this Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020 photo, bodies of the victims of a Ukrainian plane crash are collected by rescue team at the scene of the crash in Shahedshahr, southwest of the capital Tehran, Iran. Iran on Friday denied Western allegations that one of its own missiles downed a Ukrainian jetliner that crashed outside Tehran, and called on the U.S. and Canada to share any information they have on the crash, which killed all 176 people on board. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier claimed the evidence showed Iranian military involvement. His remarks came after reports quoted senior U.S. Defense and Intelligence officials, who said the plane was hit by an anti-aircraft missile system.
“We have intelligence from multiple sources, including our allies and our own intelligence,” stated Trudeau. “The evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile.”
President Trump has also said he does not believe mechanical failure caused the Ukrainian jet to crash. On Thursday, he said the plane was flying in a pretty rough neighborhood and somebody could have made a mistake.
“At some point, they’ll release the black box,” he said. “I have a feeling that something very terrible happened.”
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Friday, January 10, 2020

John Kerry Cartoons









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NJ vaccine bill eliminating religion as student exemption is likely to advance after Senate deal: reports


A large group of demonstrators gathered outside the Statehouse in Trenton, N.J., on Thursday to protest a controversial bill that would remove religion as a legal reason for parents not vaccinating public school students.
The bill passed the state House last month but stalled in the Senate. But senators reportedly reached a deal Thursday that is expected to result in Senate approval on Monday, reports said.
The proposal would then head to Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat who hasn't been clear about whether he backs the plan or not.
The latest development came despite some 1,000 "anti-vaxx" protesters showing up Thursday. Many shouted “Kill the bill!” after a Republican, state Sen. Declan O’Scanlon, who had called for an amendment to give parents who choose not to vaccinate their children another choice besides homeschooling, agreed to cast the deciding vote in favor of it.
Parents who don't allow their children to be vaccinated can send them to private school and daycare, O'Scanlon said, adding that another amendment says public schools must accept an unvaccinated child if there’s evidence a vaccine harmed one of their siblings.
“I think we need to do all we can to maximize vaccine compliance,” O'Scanlon added.
“I think we need to do all we can to maximize vaccine compliance.”
— New Jersey state Sen. Declan O’Scanlon
Some protesters shouted “Murderer!” and “Traitor!” from inside the Senate gallery as lawmakers voted 18-15 to approve the amendments.
“This type of amendment will once again allow the wealthy to buy their way out of a law via private schools,” Sue Collins, co-founder of the New Jersey Coalition for Vaccination Choice told NJ.com. “Unless you have enough money, your religious beliefs are not valid.”
“This type of amendment will once again allow the wealthy to buy their way out of a law via private schools. Unless you have enough money, your religious beliefs are not valid.”
— Sue Collins, co-founder, New Jersey Coalition for Vaccination Choice
Andrea Kelly chooses not to vaccinate her children and protested Thursday because she said she can’t afford to send her children to a private school.
Beata Savreski, the mother of three boys, drove to the capital for the first time to make her voice heard.
“I want to preserve our rights as parents,” she said.
Republican state Sen. Gerald Cardinale called the bill “a deliberate attack on religious freedom.”
State Senate President Stephen Sweeney, a Democrat, said the bill is a “public health issue” and said he expects it to pass on Monday when the chamber reconvenes.
“We’re either going to get it done now or we’re going to get it done in the next session, but by all means this is getting done,” Sweeney told NorthJersey.com. “It’s the right health care policy and it’s based on science, unlike what [the protesters are] chanting and saying. They have a right to their opinion.”
It’s not the first time the protesters have voiced their disapproval. They came out to the Statehouse in large numbers when the state Assembly passed the bill last month.
The bill was prompted by a recent outbreak of measles in New Jersey.
More than 1,200 cases of measles were reported in 31 states in 2019, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
If Murphy signs the bill into law, it would take effect six months later.
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Trump, at Ohio rally, says Democrats would have leaked Soleimani attack plans


Flush with campaign cash and facing down a possible Senate impeachment trial, President Trump headlined his first major rally of the election year Thursday in Ohio -- and almost immediately, the president capitalized on his order to take out Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani after the military leader was said to have orchestrated an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Iraq.
In unequivocal terms, Trump slammed House Democrats' nonbinding War Powers Resolution, which passed earlier in the day in a rebuke to the Soleimani strike. Trump went on to suggest that Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and "Liddle' pencil-neck" House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., would have tipped off the media about the operation had they known about it.
"They're saying, 'You should get permission from Congress, you should come in and tell us what you want to do -- you should come in and tell us, so that we can call up the fake news that's back there, and we can leak it,'" Trump said. "Lot of corruption back there."
The president added that it would have been impractical to have alerted Congress, given the "split-second" nature of the decision to kill Soleimani.
Separately, Trump said he hoped former Vice President Joe Biden would become the Democrats' presidential nominee, and pledged he would highlight what he called the Bidens' corruption all throughout the campaign.
"He will hear, 'Where's Hunter?',' every single debate nine times at the podium," Trump vowed, in reference to Biden's son, who largely has stayed out of public view after it emerged that he held lucrative overseas board roles while his father was vice president.
Republicans have accused Hunter Biden, who recently was determined to have fathered a child with an Arkansas ex-stripper, of selling access to his father.
Trump was speaking before a packed crowd in Toledo after apparently pulling back from the brink of war with Iran earlier this week, and just hours after officials announced that Iran likely shot down a civilian airliner carrying dozens of Canadians, apparently by mistake. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested the U.S. might bear responsibility, and he declined to condemn Iran.
For the most part, the rally focused on the Iran strike and the response to it from the political left.
"The radical left Democrats have expressed outrage over the termination of this horrible terrorist," Trump said. "Instead, they should be outraged by Soleimani's savage crimes and the fact that his countless victims were denied justice for so long."
Trump said he had acted swiftly after the earlier attack at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and essentially overruled a commander who said the military response would not arrive until the next day. The situation, Trump said, easily could have become "another Benghazi" -- a reference to the deadly 2012 attack at the U.S. consulate in Libya.
"I said, 'nope, get in the planes right now, have them there immediately!'" Trump said. "And, they got there immediately. ... If you dare threaten our citizens, you do so at your own grave peril."
Former President Obama, Trump added, had erred by giving billions to Iran as part of the mostly defunct Iran nuclear deal, including a massive cash payout loaded onto U.S. aircraft.
"By subsidizing Iran's maligned conduct, the last administration was leading the world down the path of war," Trump said. "We are restoring our world to the path of peace, peace through strength."
The campaign event offered Trump an opportunity to spotlight before a friendly crowd his decision to order the deadly drone strike against Soleimani, while keeping the U.S. -- at least for the moment -- out of a wider military conflict.
Trump also emphasized the booming economy, including a strong stock market and historically low unemployment rates.
"Unemployment has reached the lowest level in over 51 years," Trump said. "African-American, Hispanic American and Asian American unemployment have all reached the lowest rates ever, ever, ever recorded. Wages are rising fast, and the biggest percentage increase -- makes me happy -- are for blue-collar workers. Forty million American families are now benefiting from the Republican child-tax credit, each receiving an average of over $2,200 a year."
Trump added that getting rid of "job-killing regulations" had helped spur the industrial sector. He later invoked the destructive and widespread "yellow vest" protests in France, which had started out of frustration with high taxes on gas.
"If you dare threaten our citizens, you do so at your own grave peril."
— President Trump
"America lost 60,000 factories under the previous administration ... They're all coming back," Trump said. "And, right now, just in a very short period of time, we've added 12,000 brand new factories and many more are coming in."
The United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement [USMCA], Trump said, would improve the economy further and make the U.S. automobile industry in particular more competitive.
The Democrats' policies, Trump argued, have produced chaos and poverty. Trump specifically ripped Pelosi, D-Calif., for living in a mansion in San Francisco, even as her "disgusting" district filled with homeless people defecating on the streets.
Trump additionally touted the recent appellate court ruling that green-lit funding for his border wall, slammed "late-term abortion and ripping babies right from the mother's womb right up until the mother's womb," and highlighted Obama's broken promise to ensure Americans could keep their doctors under his health-care plan.
"We will protect patients with preexisting conditions, and we will protect your preexisting physician," Trump vowed.
The president's reelection campaign already had used Facebook ads to highlight Trump’s decision to strike Soleimani, regarded as Iran’s second-most-powerful official.
"We caught a total monster, and we took him out, and that should have happened a long time ago,” Trump said before departing Washington earlier in the day.
Last week’s killing of Soleimani brought long-simmering tensions between the U.S. and Iran to a boil. Iran, in retaliation, fired a barrage of missiles this week at two military bases in neighboring Iraq that have housed hundreds of U.S. troops. But, with no reported injuries to U.S. or Iraqi troops, Trump said he had no plans to take further military action against Iran and instead would enact more sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
The Iran crisis, which momentarily overshadowed Trump's looming impeachment trial, also has opened a new front in the 2020 presidential campaign for Trump, who in 2016 campaigned in part on a promise to end American involvement in "endless wars."
Trump entered the election year flush with over $100 million in campaign cash, a low unemployment rate and an unsettled field of Democrats seeking to challenge him. Yet, polling showed he remained vulnerable.
Back in December, an AP-NORC poll showed Trump's approval rating at 40 percent. No more recent major polls have emerged to gauge support for the president in the wake of the targeted killing of Soleimani, though opinions of Trump have changed little over the course of his presidency.
Trump has never fallen into historic lows for a president’s approval ratings, but Gallup polling showed his December rating registered lower than that of most recent presidents at the same point in their first terms. Notably, approval of Trump and Obama in the Decembers before their reelection bids was roughly the same.
For Trump to win reelection, securing Ohio's 18 electoral votes will be critical. He won Ohio by eight points in 2016, after Obama held the state in 2008 and 2012. The visit to Toledo marked Trump's 15th appearance in Ohio as president.
Trump has anchored his reelection messaging around a solid national economy with an unemployment rate of 3.5 percent. But, people in parts of the industrial Midwest have said they've been left behind, especially as the manufacturing sector has struggled over the past year in response to slower worldwide economic growth and trade tensions with China.
Labor Department figures showed construction and factory jobs slumping in Ohio. In nearby Michigan, manufacturers were shedding workers as well, but so were that state’s employers in the health care, education and social assistance sectors.
But, the Toledo area pointed at an even more alarming trend in an otherwise healthy economy. The Glass City has shedded over 6 percent of its white-collar jobs in the professional and business services sector over the past year, causing the total number of jobs to slump slightly from a year ago.
As an incumbent, Trump has been able to use his position to build a massive campaign cash reserve at a time when Democrats have been raising and spending theirs in a competitive primary. Although many White House hopefuls, most notably Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, have pulled in massive sums, there has been no clear front-runner, and many party officials have been girding for a protracted contest that could further bleed the eventual nominee of resources.
Trump, meanwhile, raised $46 million in the final quarter of 2019 and had over $102 million cash on hand at the end of the year. The Republican National Committee [RNC], which hasn’t faced as strict a set of contribution limits as the candidate, raised even more. Under the current rules, the RNC won’t have to release its December fundraising numbers until the end of the month.
Asked how much he was willing to spend on his reelection, Trump said, "I literally haven't even thought about it." He added: "I will say this: Because of the impeachment hoax, we're taking in numbers that nobody ever expected. You saw the kind of numbers we're reporting. We're blowing everybody away."
Fox News' Andrew O'Reilly and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Rep. Adam Smith mocked for flip-flop on Pelosi strategy; Trump Jr. cites ‘BS’ from Dems’ ‘lunatic fringe’


U.S. Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., became the target of social media trolls and other critics – including Donald Trump Jr. – on Thursday for his abrupt reversal regarding when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should deliver articles of impeachment to the U.S. Senate.
Early Thursday, Smith said he believed Pelosi was looking to establish negotiating leverage with the Senate by withholding the two articles of impeachment against President Trump, which the House approved last month. The articles charge the president with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in relation to a July phone call with the president of Ukraine.
But ultimately, Smith said, he believed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was in charge of the Senate and should determine that body’s course of action regarding a Trump impeachment trial.
“I think it was perfectly advisable for the speaker to try to leverage that to get a better deal,” Smith told CNN, but adding “at this point, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.”
“I think it is time to send the impeachment to the Senate and let Mitch McConnell be responsible for the fairness of the trial,” Smith said. “He ultimately is.”
But just a short time later, Smith posted on Twitter what seemed to be a complete reversal from the statements he made on TV.
“I misspoke this morning,” Smith wrote. “I do believe we should do everything we can to force the Senate to have a fair trial. If the Speaker believes that holding on to the articles for a longer time will help force a fair trial in the Senate, then I wholeheartedly support that decision.”
Critics quickly took note of the sudden retreat by Smith, the 54-year-old chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and suggested that perhaps he was surrendering to pressure from Democratic Party leaders.
“Hahahaha someones not allowed to think for himself and got in trouble for breaking with Nancy’s narrative,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote. “This has been the problem with the sham impeachment from day one, no one actually believes this BS except for the lunatic fringe who have hijacked the whole Democratic party.”
“Bang bang Nancy’s silver hammer went down on Adam Smith’s head …” political commentator Doug Heye wrote, alluding to an old Beatles song.
Smith’s flip-flop wasn’t playing well in his home state, either.
“He has no courage of his convictions, and had to deny his own words an hour later,” said Dori Monson, host of a Seattle radio show, according to MyNorthwest.com.
Later, Smith tried to clarify his remarks during an appearance on Monson’s program.
“All I was saying was, ‘At the end of the day, we can’t force the Senate any more than they can force us,'” Smith told Monson, according to MyNorthwest.com. “‘We have to try to leverage them and persuade them.'”
Fox News' Brooke Singman contributed to this story.
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Pompeo responds to John Kerry on Iran: 'It's a fantasy to think that the nuclear deal was good for the United States'


Secretary of State Mike Pompeo fired back at one of his predecessors in an exclusive interview with Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle" Thursday, saying that John Kerry was indulging in a "fantasy" by claiming that Iran had reined in its destabilizing behavior after signing the 2015 nuclear deal.
"It’s a fantasy to think that the nuclear deal was good for the United States of America, protecting the American people," Pompeo told Laura Ingraham. "There were terror campaigns, there were missile systems that were enhanced, improved during the [period of the] JCPOA [nuclear deal] -- the money that the Iranian regime was permitted to have underwrote the very Shia militias that were the ones that took on and ultimately killed an American."
Kerry told MSNBC Wednesday night that there is "no way at all" the world is safer after Trump ordered a drone strike that killed Quds Force Gen. Qassem Soleimani at Baghdad's airport last week. The former senator from Massachusetts and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee also claimed that Trump was "fixated on undoing anything Barack Obama did ... [and] willing to run the risk of outright war in the effort to fulfill his fantasy."
"This isn’t about undoing what Obama did," Pompeo told Ingraham Thursday. "This is about protecting and defending the American people. President Trump has been incredibly resolute in that."
During an address to the nation on Wednesday, hours after Iran fired 16 missiles at two Iraqi airbases housing American servicemembers in response to Soleimani's death, Trump claimed: "The missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration." Pompeo doubled down on that claim, emphasizing that money paid to Iran by the Obama administration "ultimately ends up in the hands of people who wanted to do Americans harm."
In September 2016, the Treasury Department acknowledged that $1.7 billion was transferred from the U.S. to Iran in foreign hard currency. An initial $400 million delivery was sent to Tehran Jan. 17, the same day Iran agreed to release four American prisoners. The remaining $1.3 billion was paid in subsequent weeks. The $1.7 billion was the settlement of a 37-year-old dispute between the U.S. and Iran over a $400 million payment made by the last Shah of Iran. In addition to those payments by the U.S., billions of dollars in Iranian assets held in financial institutions overseas were unfrozen as part of the nuclear deal.
"All the things that we are now confronting are a direct result of the resources that the regime had available as a result of that terrible nuclear deal," Pompeo said.
Pompeo also responded to criticism of a classified briefing to lawmakers Wednesday that was meant to explain the rationale behind the Soleimani strike. Democrats have said they do not believe the intelligence shown in the briefing proved that Soleimani represented an immediate threat to U.S. interests, while Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, called the briefing "lame" and "insane," describing it as the worst he had sat through in his time on Capitol Hill.
"I thought we did a dynamite job," said Pompeo, who took part in the briefing. "I mean that in the truest sense, but we did our level best to present them with all the facts that we could in that setting." The secretary of state also insisted that Soleimani was planning "a series of imminent attacks" when he was killed.
"We don’t know precisely when -- and we don’t know precisely where," Pompeo said. "But it was real ... There was a real opportunity here and there was a real necessity here. We made the right decision. The president made the right call."
When Ingraham asked whether the administration could trust Congress with classified information, Pompeo said: "Well, we shared an awful lot with them yesterday ... I think there are a number of people who are using this as a political ax to grind. I think that’s most unfortunate."
Pompeo also responded to the apparent downing of a Ukrainian International Airlines plane by Iran early Wednesday that killed all 176 people on board. U.S., Canadian and British officials said earlier Thursday it is "highly likely" that the jet was struck by an Iranian missile.
"I’ve seen the reporting. I can only say that we need to get to the bottom of this very, very quickly," said Pompeo, who added that while a mechanical failure could have caused the crash, "if, in fact, it’s the case that there was something more insidious to this, the American people should know that this would have been Iranian malfeasance that caused it."
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