Ferguson police arrest more protesters

Growing unrest in Ferguson led to the arrests of more protesters Thursday night as residents grow wearier ahead of the town’s grand jury decision on whether or not to indict officer Darren Wilson on charges in the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown.
Police did not confirm an official tally. The Chicago Tribune reported at least six were arrested.
Protesters blocked the street in front of the police station and taunted police officers until they were pushed back by the officers in riot gear, the Wall Street Journal reported.
A grand jury is expected to return a decision any day now, which is sure to spark a riot in Ferguson. There has not been an official date set for the decision.
As protesters hope for an indictment, a union official told the Associated Press they are not expecting charges to be filed.
"It's fair to say that neither he nor his defense team expect an indictment," Roorda said, offering his impression of the situation based on the meeting with Wilson.
One of Wilson's attorneys, who also attended Thursday's meeting, said there was no specific discussion of expectations.
"We have absolutely no idea -- no more than anyone else -- what may or may not happen," attorney Neil Bruntrager said. "The only expectation that we would have is that the grand jury would be thorough and fair."
For weeks, local and state police have been preparing for a grand jury announcement in anticipation that it will result in renewed protests. Earlier this week, Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard to help with security.
Authorities have said Wilson shot Brown, who was unarmed, following some sort of physical confrontation that occurred after Wilson told Brown and a friend to stop walking down the center of a street.
Wilson told authorities that the shooting happened after Brown struggled with him for his gun, according to reports by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the New York Times that cited unnamed sources. But some witnesses have said Brown had his arms raised -- as if to surrender -- when the fatal shot was fired.

US announces release of 5 Guantanamo prisoners

The Obama administration has released five Guantanamo Bay prisoners after an administration task force determined they no longer posed a threat.
The Department of Defense announced Thursday that three of the men were sent to Georgia and two to Slovakia for resettlement. The Pentagon identified the three now former prisoners resettled in Georgia as Abdel Ghaib Ahmad Hakim, Salah Mohammed Salih Al-Dhabi and Abdul Khaled Al-Baydani. The two sent to Slovakia were Hashim Bin Ali Bin Amor Sliti and Husayn Salim Muhammad Al-Mutari Yafai.
Hakim was the first prisoner from Yemen to be released since 2010. Yemenis make up the majority of men cleared for release because the U.S. is reluctant to send prisoners to the unstable country.
The group was among dozens of low-level prisoners at Guantanamo who were determined to no longer pose a threat by an administration task force in 2009.
Their release brings the total prison population to 143, about 100 fewer than when President Barack Obama took office pledging to close the detention center.
However Obama's vow to close Guantanamo was opposed by many in Congress, and lawmakers imposed restrictions that brought releases to a halt.
Congress eased the restrictions in December, and releases have resumed.  U.S. State Department envoy Clifford Sloan has been trying to persuade countries to accept prisoners and he praised Georgia and Slovakia for their assistance.
"We are very grateful to our partners for these generous humanitarian gestures," Sloan said. "We appreciate the strong support we are receiving from our friends and allies around the globe."
However House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon slammed the releases in a statement Thursday, saying he is concerned former Gitmo detainees will rejoin terror organizations. 
“What the Obama administration is doing is dangerous and, frankly, reckless," McKeon, R-Calif., said. "They have chosen many times to put politics above national security. It’s time they stop playing with fire and start doing what’s right. Until we can assure the terrorists stay off the battlefield, they must stay behind bars."
Georgia took three prisoners from Guantanamo in 2010. Slovakia has now taken a total of eight men from Guantanamo.
 There are now 74 prisoners at Guantanamo cleared and awaiting resettlement. Thirty-six have been designated for detention without charge. There are also 23 slated for prosecution and 10 either facing trial by military commission or have been convicted or sentenced.

Obama heads to Vegas to rally support for immigration overhaul

Determined to go it alone, President Obama will head to Nevada on Friday to sign an executive order granting “deferred action” to two illegal immigrant groups- parents of United States citizens or legal permanent residents who have been in the country for five years, and young people who who were brought into the country illegally as of 2010.
Obama will sign the executive order at the same Las Vegas high school where he unveiled his sweeping blueprint for a national immigration overhaul nearly two years ago. 
Hispanics are a growing and powerful constituency in Nevada and the state serves as fertile ground for the president to rally public support. 
During a 15-minute primetime speech Thursday, Obama said his administration will start accepting applications from illegal immigrants who seek the deferred actions.
Those who qualify will be granted protections for three years, Obama said, as he laid out his sweeping plan to the public Thursday night from the East Room of the White House.
“Mass amnesty would be unfair,” Obama said during the primetime address. “Mass deportation would be both impossible and contrary to our character.”
Obama, who pitched his plan as a “commonsense, middle ground approach,” said “if you meet the criteria, you can come out of the shadows and get right with the law” but warned “if you’re a criminal, you’ll be deported.”
The president did not specify how many in each "deferred action" group would be granted the new status. According to recent reports, the parental group could involve upwards of 4.5 million immigrants, with those brought into the country illegally making up close to 300,000 new applications. There are an estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally.
But Republicans have been quick to criticize and say the executive action is an example of Obama stretching his powers as president.
Even before the speech, conservatives said they were willing to do whatever was necessary to stop Obama’s plan.
Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, who will become the majority leader in January when the new congressional class is sworn-in, said Obama would regret choosing to ignore the will of the American people.
McConnell, who made his statements from the Senate floor Thursday morning, has led the charge against the president and has promised a legislative fight when Republicans take full control of Congress in 2015.
“If President Obama acts in defiance of the people and imposes his will on the country, Congress will act,” McConnell said.
Utah Rep Jason Chaffetz, who will replace Rep. Darrell Issa as chair of the House Oversight Committee, told Fox News that the president’s timing on announcing the plan was “crystal clear.”
“It’s all about politics,” Chaffetz said. “He just got slaughtered in an election.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said in an op-ed in Politico Wednesday that if Obama acts, the new GOP majority in the Senate should retaliate by not acting on a single one of his nominees – executive or judicial – “so long as the illegal amnesty persists.”

Republicans ready to do whatever it takes to halt Obama immigration plan

Republicans say they will do whatever it takes to halt a White House plan to use an executive order to prevent millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States from being deported.
Tempers on Capitol Hill have flared to the point where Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., even suggested there might be violence in the streets if President Obama goes through with his plan, which was to be unveiled in a national address at the White House tonight.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said in an op-ed in Politico Wednesday that if Obama acts, the new GOP majority in the Senate should retaliate by not acting on a single one of his nominees – executive or judicial – “so long as the illegal amnesty persists.”
Obama has been accused of acting like an emperor with absolute powers, and GOP lawmakers have promised that his actions won’t be met without some sort of political barricade – whether it be at the purse strings, in court, or by filibustering future immigration policy, along with Obama’s nominees. The GOP won enough seats in the midterm elections to take over the majority of the Senate come January, while the House majority grew by 12 seats, giving them a 246-199 advantage over the Democrats, according to the most recent tallies.
“If ‘Emperor Obama' ignores the American people and announces an amnesty plan that he himself has said over and over again exceeds his Constitutional authority, he will cement his legacy of lawlessness and ruin the chances for Congressional action on this issue – and many others,” said Michael Steel, spokesman for Republican House Speaker John Boehner.
According to the plan, the president will use his pen to give “deferred action” status to upwards of four million people, and similar protections to another one million by other means. This means the recipient cannot be deported for at least two years. Immigrants will have to meet certain qualifications and cannot have a criminal record to be eligible.
While such action will not give these immigrants access to federal benefits, like health care tax credits, Medicaid or food stamps, a number of them will be eligible for state services, new federal work permits, and Social Security cards, according to administration officials who have spoken to reporters this week.
The administration and its Democratic backers have argued in recent days that the Republicans’ failure to pass reforms through Congress has forced the president to take action to alleviate the country’s illegal immigration problem. A comprehensive immigration bill passed the Senate in 2013 but has not been taken up by the House since. “We’ve been waiting a year for House Republicans to come to a vote,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday.
“We’re confident it would pass with bipartisan support,” he added.
“All Boehner would have to do is bring it up for a vote,” Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in a podcast interview with Univision journalist Fernando Espuelas. But in the meantime, “the president must do this – and he should go big; I want him to go as big as he can.”
If he does, Republicans say there will be equally big trouble.
“This country’s going to go nuts, because they’re going to see it as a move outside the authority of the president, and it’s going to be a very serious situation,” said Coburn in an interview with USA Today. “You’re going to see – hopefully not – but you could see instances of anarchy… you could see violence.”
Republicans see several avenues for stopping the new protections from going forward. They might gum up any appropriations associated with the deferred actions, though it wasn’t clear Thursday what that might be. They might sue the White House in court, though legal scholars differ on whether they would have a case. Texas Gov. Rick Perry said this week that his state, which spends $12 million a year securing the border with Mexico, might sue Obama, too.
Calling the president the “Emperor of the United States,” Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., suggested that hitting at the funding level might be the first course of action. “Congress should fund the government while ensuring that no funds can be spent on this unlawful action,” he said in a statement Wednesday.
Obama’s move sparked a number of comparisons with monarchies, the Revolutionary War, and tyranny, with Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, going so far as to say that not even King George III had such power over the American colonists in 1776. “It is no exaggeration to say the freedom of the American people is at stake,” he said.
Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., predicted doom. “We’re going to be headed for a constitutional crisis that the president’s making,” he told Lou Dobbs on the Fox Business Network on Wednesday. “He’s going to poison this well so much that we’re not going to be able to do the fixes that we really need to do reform the immigration system.”

Sick hit parade: Another Palestinian song praises running over Jews

The hits keep coming in Israel, on the streets as well as the airwaves -- where yet another twisted tune from Palestinians praises the so-called "car intifada," in which Muslim radicals purposely drive into crowds of Israelis.
"Zionist run away, run away Zionist," go the lyrics to the latest song, which is accompanied by a chilling animated video and was first reported in The Jerusalem Post. "You are about to be killed by a car."
The song comes on the heels of another, similarly-themed tune called "Run Over the Settler," which also praises the disturbing trend that began on Oct. 22, when a Palestinian named Abd Al-Rahman Al-Shaloudi slammed his car into a crowded train station in Jerusalem in an apparently intentional act that killed a 3-month-old Israeli-American baby and an Ecuadorean woman in her 20s. It also comes as Israelis reel from a horrific attack Tuesday in a Jerusalem synagogue in which a pair of Palestinian cousins armed with meat cleavers and a gun slaughtered five people as they worshipped, in an incident that was widely celebrated in Palestinian territories.

"Zionist run away, run away Zionist. You are about to be killed by a car."- Hit song in Palestinian territories, celebrating vehicle attacks

The car attacks, coupled with random stabbings that have occurred with frightening frequency in recent weeks, have sparked fears of a new “intifada,” or uprising, in Israel. But in the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank, the attacks are being glorified in song, and in the words of leaders.
“Run them over, burn the next in line,” goes the song, sung by Anas Garadat and Muhammad Abu Al-Kayed and translated by Palestinian Media Watch. “Don't leave a single settler. Wait for them at the intersection. Let the settler drown in red blood.”
Earlier this month, Palestinian and known Hamas operative Ibrahim Al-Akari rammed a van into a group of pedestrians in Jerusalem, killing a police officer, and on Monday morning, two terrorist attacks occurred hours away from one another. In the first incident, an Israeli soldier died when he was stabbed close to a central Tel Aviv train station. The attacker in the second incident, at a traffic junction in the West Bank, stabbed three people, killing a 26-year-old woman. The victim, Dalia Lemkus, had survived a previous unprovoked stabbing attack at a similar location back in 2006.
In the earlier song, the apparently accidental death of a 2-month-old Palestinian girl is used as justification for the intentional attacks. In that case, the Israeli driver reportedly even called for an ambulance for the stricken child and her brother.
Israeli Police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said the attacks have prompted extra measures to safeguard the public.
“Extra police units have been mobilized in different areas with the emphasis on Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, following yesterday’s attack there,” Rosenfeld told FoxNews.com. “We have also stepped up Border Police operations around Palestinian areas such as Nablus, Bethlehem, and Hebron, and there is increased security being implemented on a ground level, including regular patrols and road blocks.”
But stopping Palestinian terrorists from suddenly veering onto sidewalks and striking with easily concealed knives is a daunting task, Rosenfeld acknowledged.
“We’re working both on an intelligence level and an operational level,” Rosenfeld said. “The intelligence level consists of finding potential suspects before they manage to reach the streets, and on an operational level we have larger numbers of undercover officers in public places ahead of time, that can immediately respond and react when necessary.”
He also confirmed that despite the violence of the last few weeks, regular co-operation is continuing between Israeli and Palestinian police.
Not so with Palestinian media and cultural institutions, however. Local newspapers and television programs have used cartoon images to laud the killings, adding fuel to an already combustible situation.

Last week, the Hamas-supported Al Quds University in Jerusalem proudly unveiled an exhibit glorifying Mutaz Hijazi, who attempted to assassinate the controversial Rabbi Yehuda Glick at the Begin Center in Jerusalem on Oct. 29.
Glick, who was shot four times at close range, had been in the forefront of calls for Jews to be allowed to pray freely on the Temple Mount, site of the Golden Dome and Al Aqsa Mosque, and previously of the Second Jewish Temple. Their demands, supported by only a handful of extreme right-wing politicians who have been subjected to heavy criticism in the Israeli media for inflaming religious tensions, seek to change the status quo at the religious site that has existed since Israel gained control of Jerusalem in 1967.
Glick is recovering from his injuries, but Hijazi, a long-standing member of Islamic Jihad, was tracked down by Israeli security services and killed. He is being hailed as a heroic martyr by Palestinian media and by some Palestinian politicians who, in contrast to their Israeli counterparts, appear to be doing little publicly to ease the spiraling situation.
But while Israeli leaders have called for Glick to stifle demands to pray at the sacred site, Palestinian leaders continue to praise violent terrorists. A spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently referred to terrorist killers as “heroic martyrs... saturating the land of the homeland with their pure blood and igniting the flames of rage.”

The UN gave millions to Somalia. Where did it go?

EXCLUSIVE: The United Nations for years handed out tens of millions of dollars to non-government organizations involved in humanitarian work in strife-battered Somalia with “no assurance” that the money was used for the intended purposes,” according to a report by the U.N.’s own internal auditing watchdog.
In fact, they concluded, “there was no effective financial monitoring” of the work.
According to the watchdogs, any subcontractors used by the NGOs to help carry out their work were not listed in U.N. agreements, meaning that the U.N. may lack any legal right to find out whether the money it handed over went for the proper purposes. 
And atop all that, the U.N.’s chief humanitarian coordinator, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, lacked any appropriate guidelines for handing out the money in the first place. So instead it handed over more than 80 percent of its project funding in advance of any work done, on a quick-impact emergency basis, a method that the auditors said should be ended “immediately” -- but which apparently is continuing into next year.
Those conclusions vary considerably from what OCHA said at the time about its “accountability” for the money under its care:  that it kept meticulous and carefully supervised records on who was doing what and where, with auditing of all projects to guarantee financial probity, and an elaborate system of reporting on “achievements against planned activities and outcomes.”
CLICK HERE FOR THE OCHA “ACCOUNTABILITY” DOCUMENT
According to the U.N.’s watchdog Office for Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), however, that was not the way things were actually working with the Common Humanitarian Fund for Somalia, described as “an important country-level finance tool which provides quick, predictable and strategic funding to U.N. agencies, international and local NGOs working in Somalia.” 
For  at least 2 ½ years, the watchdogs say, the U.N. coordinating agency’s auditing ran far behind schedule on much of the $162 million portion that it managed from the $262 million in the Fund from 2010 through 2013. (Much of the remainder went to other U.N. agencies.)

OCHA handed over more than 80 percent of its project funding in advance of any work done.

In addition, financial reporting requirements for recipients of OCHA’s share of the Fund varied widely, field visits to actually see how work was done were relatively rare, and the performance reports of NGOs who were paid to do the job “could not always be verified.”
According to the U.N. auditors, the coordinating agency’s overall performance as the managing agent for the Fund was “unsatisfactory”— the watchdogs’ highest negative rating, which they blandly say means that “critical and/or pervasive important deficiencies exist” so that  “reasonable assurance cannot be provided with regard to the achievement of control and/or business  objectives under review.”
Translation: problems are big enough that there is no way to tell for sure that the inspected activity is working.
The Common Humanitarian Fund by no means includes all the money that wealthy donor countries, led by the U.S., have sent to Somalia, a country racked for decades by war, terrorism, drought, food supply failures and countless other woes.
In 2013, the year when the U.N. auditors’ examination of the Fund ends, the world gave $714.4 million to Somalia via an OCHA consolidated appeal for various emergencies, with the U.S. aid share amounting to  $184.4 million, or nearly 26 percent.
This year, the U.S. has contributed even more to the same consolidated appeal: $207.6 million, or nearly 38 percent of the total donated so far. Overall, Somalia’s consolidated aid appeal for 2014 is calling for $933 million.
What made the Common Humanitarian Fund different, according to its website, is that it is intended “to support aid agencies in response to the most urgent humanitarian needs” under the direct management of OCHA itself.
Both aspects are a tall order in a country where conditions are often desperate and violent, and where U.N. efforts to provide security programs for the battered citizenry have also suffered from oversight woes made worse by terrorist attacks.
The auditors’ conclusions about the “unsatisfactory” management of the Fund are contained in an internal audit report that was published last August, based on field work that took place a year earlier than that -- an unusually long gestation period.
Perhaps inspired by the auditors’ impending attentions, OCHA’s own concerns about its operations were apparently already percolating. According to the OIOS document, in 2013 -- three years after the Fund was launched -- OCHA started an internal review to determine whether the NGOs it gave money to “had the requisite capacity to receive and manage CHF funds and implement the projects with efficiency and effectiveness.”
Up to that point, according to the auditors, even though key recipients of money “had previously implemented CHF projects,” they had never been asked to provide an assessment of their own capabilities.
The OCHA review of those capabilities, however, mainly amount to a “desk review” of documents submitted by the NGOs, along with opinions offered by clusters of U.N. organizations in Somalia, who all “used the same pool of national and international NGOs” in their work, according to the auditors’ report.
Moreover, OCHA apparently never quite told the participants in its survey everything it was up to. As the auditors put it, “The terms of reference of the review were not shared with participating agencies to ensure that the assessment was comprehensive.”
What the auditors discovered, in fact, was that OCHA never had “specific guidelines” for how it was supposed to hand out money from the Fund, and on what terms, so it simply used rules for emergency handouts—which were never intended for projects running as long (a year or so) as those sponsored by the Fund did.
The quick-and-dirty funding approach gave the green light to handing out 80 percent of project money to recipients up-front, even as the humanitarian coordinator gradually acknowledged that it didn’t have the capability itself to see how well its commissioned projects were faring.
OCHA tried to hire an independent contractor to do that work, but the effort was apparently a fiasco. At the time the auditors had arrived, the coordinating agency was trying to sign up four more contractors to do the same job.
Along with lack of oversight, OCHA apparently got little in the way of financial statements from the NGOs it hired to prove that they had spent the money as the humanitarian agency wanted. According to the auditors, a review of 43 out of 267 projects under the fund’s aegis revealed that none of them had filed certified financial statements about their activities, as required.
Local auditors who had been hired to look at the projects hadn’t provided much insight either. Out of 205 completed Fund projects, only 64 had been audited locally when the investigators arrived. Most of the audits were “desk based,” OIOS noted, and the auditors “did not verify the existence of any activities that took place” under the projects.
In short, “there was no effective financial monitoring of CHF projects,” the watchdogs concluded.
CLICK HERE FOR THE AUDIT
All of that has now changed according to OCHA. In reply to questions from Fox News, the agency reported -- as does the audit -- that the humanitarian coordinator has accepted all OIOS recommendations for improving the situation -- sort of.
All of the backlogged local audits of projects, for example, have been completed, an OCHA spokesman told Fox News. But when it comes to discontinuing its 80 percent up-front payment policy, the agency said, “OCHA is still on track to meet that goal and expects to start rolling out the new policy in the first quarter of 2015.”
Problem is that U.N. auditors recommended that the change occur “immediately,” meaning a still-unknown amount of  time before August 2014, when the audit, with accompanying to-and-fro comments from management, finally appeared after a long period  in the U.N.’s back rooms.
The same goes for “provisions for operational accountability of implementing partners, including the disclosure of main sub-contractors in agreements” -- these are also supposed to take effect in early 2015, OCHA said.
OCHA declined to provide Fox News with a list of all the “implementing partners,” meaning U.N. agencies and non-government organizations that were involved in the Fund’s work during the long, lax period examined by the U.N. audit.
The drawn curtain is necessary “so as not to compromise the security of those partners,” OCHA’s spokesman told Fox News.
Disclosing those beneficiaries of its funding “would be highly irresponsible,” OCHA’s spokesman added. “Somalia remains an extremely difficult and dangerous place for aid workers. Armed groups continue to carry out targeted attacks against aid workers and ongoing military operations disrupt the delivery of humanitarian assistance.”
Yet despite those avowed safety concerns on OCHA’s part, a provisional list of the Common Humanitarian Fund’s projects for 2014 -- including project locations, and the acronyms, and sometimes names,  of implementing partners -- currently appears on the agency’s website.

Gruber's contract with Vermont ends after missteps on ObamaCare pile up

WASHINGTON –  Following an embarrassing string of missteps, Vermont has stopped paying controversial economist Jonathan Gruber for his work on the Affordable Care Act.
A spokesman for Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin said Wednesday that the state would no longer pay the ObamaCare architect.
“As the Governor and I have said, the comments by Mr. Gruber are offensive, inappropriate and do not reflect the thinking of this administration or how we do things in Vermont,” Lawrence Miller, said Wednesday in a statement. “As we have also said, we need solid economic modeling in order to move forward with health care reform.”
Miller continued that he told Gruber, “that I expect his team to complete the work that we need to provide the legislature and Vermonters with a public health care financing plan. I’ve informed Mr. McGruber that we will not be paying him any further for his part in completing that work.”
Gruber’s original contract with the state was worth more than $400,000. He’s already been paid $160,000.
The news about Gruber was made public at an informational session for Vermont’s legislators.
Last week, the state’s Senate Minority Leader, Joe Benning, called on Shumlin to terminate Gruber’s contract following the release of videos showing the MIT professor intentionally deceived the public in drafting the Affordable Care Act.
“I join with my Senate colleague, Sen. Kevin Mullin, in urging the governor to terminate his contract,” Benning, R-Caledonia, told Vermont Watchdog. “If the powers that be attempted to trick them like that, then those people should be immediately removed from positions of authority, be they elected officials or hired contractors.”
Benning is the second member of the Vermont Senate to call for Gruber’s termination. Last week, Mullin, R-Rutland, a member of the Health Care Oversight Committee, told Vermont Watchdog the governor should “terminate his contract immediately.”
Over the weekend, Lawrence Miller, chief of health care reform for the Shumlin administration, announced Gruber would continue to serve as financing consultant for single-payer health care.
According to the contract obtained from the Agency of Administration, Vermont was paying Gruber $400,000 for “policy expertise, research, and economic modeling related to the implementation of Green Mountain Care.” Gruber’s work will be presented to the Legislature on Jan. 15.

'I had promised': Obama to announce executive action on immigration Thursday in primetime speech

President Obama, following through on his vow to sidestep Congress, will announce in a prime-time TV speech Thursday the executive actions he will take to change U.S. immigration law.
Obama will make his announcement, expected to protect roughly 5 million illegal immigrants from deportation, from the White House at 8 p.m. EST.
The president will go ahead with his plan despite widespread opposition from Capitol Hill Republicans, who have asked him to wait until next year when the GOP controls the House and Senate to try to reform the country’s broken immigration system.
Obama is also under intense pressure from Hispanics and much of his liberal base to act now, after promising to act by September, then disappointing them by waiting until after the midterms.
Immigration lawyer Margaret Wong released a statement saying that she had been invited to the White House for a holiday party Wednesday night and that Obama had told her "I had promised. I had promised."
"He was actually very proud that he's been able to keep his word," Wong said. 
At least some of the estimated 5 million illegal immigrants who would be spared from deportation are also expected to be made eligible for work permits. But the eligible immigrants would not be entitled to federal benefits -- including health care tax credits -- under the plan, administration officials said Wednesday.
Late Wednesday, the United Farm Workers announced that Obama had told union President Arturo Rodriguez that at least 250,000 unionized farm workers would be eligible for deportation relief, with at least half that eligible number based in California.
The president in 2012 used executive action to delay deportation for some of the millions of young people brought the U.S. illegally by their parents.
House Speaker John Boehner has warned Obama that taking executive action on the immigration issue before January would be tantamount to "playing with fire."
And on Wednesday before the announcement, Boehner aide Michael Steel referred to the president and attempt to govern alone as “Emperor Obama.”
The Democrat-controlled Senate last year passed bipartisan, comprehensive immigration-reform legislation. However, the GOP-controlled House has not passed such a bill.
“We've been waiting for a year for House Republicans to come to a vote,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday. “We're confident it would pass with bipartisan support.”
He also said the president chose to act because the House has indicated it will not address immigration reform in the next Congress.
Congressional Republicans are already working on a strategy to stop Obama from using executive action, including a plan to submit a temporary spending bill that would cut any funding for related efforts like issuing Social Security cards for those to be protected under the Obama change.
The federal government technically runs out of money by December 11. So the president and Congress failing to promptly reach a budget deal could result in a partial government shutdown. However, Republicans have said they do not intend to submit a budget that Obama would veto and result in a shutdown.
"What I'm going to be laying out is the things that I can do with my lawful authority as president to make the system better, even as I continue to work with Congress and encourage them to get a bipartisan, comprehensive bill that can solve the entire problem," Obama said in a video posted on Facebook on Wednesday.
Obama is scheduled to host a White House dinner before the speech for 18 congressional Democrats to talk about immigration and other second-term priorities, then travel to Las Vegas to tout his changes.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is expected to join the president in his home state of Nevada.
Reid said Tuesday that Obama should take executive action as quickly as possible, a shift from last week when he said the president should wait to act until Congress had completed work on the must-pass spending legislation.
"I believe that when the president decides to do his executive order, he should go big, as big as he can," Reid said, adding that he had spoken with Obama on Monday. "I said he should do something as quickly as he can."
However, other Democrats still want Obama to wait on unilateral action for fear such a move will poison spending-bill negotiations.
"I wish he would let the process work for a few months before he did this," said Sen. Jon Tester, D-Montana.