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Trump riles up conservative crowd over illegal immigration, sanctuary cities

Kicking off a busy week of campaigning, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump Monday got a sizeable crowd at Dallas’ American Airlines Center riled up over hot-button issues that he says anger conservative voters.
Trump received the most applause for his position on illegal immigration, which many voters in the crowd say the federal government is handling poorly. “It’s a massive problem we have to stop illegal immigration,” he explained. “It’s disgusting what is happening to our country, we are a dumping ground for the rest of the world.”
The crowd erupted when Trump went on the attack over sanctuary cities, in particular, the murder of Kate Steinle allegedly by an illegal immigrant, Francisco Sanchez. “Kate in San Francisco - this magnificent young woman shot in the back by a guy that was sent over here, probably pushed over, who knows but it was an illegal immigrant came over went to San Francisco - we have to end this sanctuary cities.”
Trump told the crowd that a wall would go a long way to contain illegal immigration. “We have to build a wall folks, and a wall works … we are going to have a great border, they are all over the place, we want people to be in our country legally.”
One voter in the crowd, who went by “John” explained to FoxNews.com that his family’s concerns over U.S. immigration policy is a main reason he’s rallying behind Trump.
Trump also went on the attack over American companies like Ford Motor Company opening up operations in Mexico. The U.S. car manufacturer announced earlier this year they would spend $2.5 billion on new engine and transmission plants in Mexico.
“A Ford plant is being built in Mexico for cars and trucks and everything and it’s actually not a bad idea, and they will save a fortune,” he explained.
If elected, Trump explained, he would impose a high tax on those imported cars. Thus, he says, “I would get a call from the head of Ford and I guarantee you after I tell them all no, they will call up and decide to move their plant back to the United States.”

Seattle sued over recycling inspectors keeping tabs on residents' trash

When it comes to garbage, the city of Seattle has launched a waste war. 
Nine full-time solid waste inspectors have been hired as part of a controversial program to check city trash to make sure people are recycling. Additionally, contracted waste haulers have been effectively deputized as trash police, given the authority to tag bins when people fail to recycle and compost enough.
The program is now the subject of a lawsuit, as residents fume over what some call an intrusive government program.
“I understand people have noble goals,” said Keli Carender, who got tagged two weeks in a row, an offense that soon could bring a fine. “But at some point we have to say, you can’t violate my rights to achieve this noble goal.”
Carender is among 14,000 residential and commercial customers this year to get tagged. The sticker warns them that more than 10 percent of their trash content should have been recycled or put into compost bins.
She and several other so-called landfill scofflaws have sued the city, claiming it’s an invasion of their privacy. While the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled garbage, once left at the curb, is not protected private property under the 4^th Amendment of the Constitution, residents have additional privacy protections in the Evergreen State.
“The Supreme Court of Washington state went the other direction,” said Ethan Blevins, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation who filed the lawsuit. “[It] said our state Constitution provides better protection, and we believe that people expect that our garbage is going to be protected from prying eyes.”
Blevins cites a ruling in which a criminal conviction was overturned on the grounds that the police found a key piece of evidence in the suspect’s trash without first obtaining a search warrant.
Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes issued a defense of the policy in a written response to the lawsuit. He said he believes the policy upholds the state Constitution and civil liberties because, “there is no intention of opening trash bags. Containers are only tagged if the contamination is clearly visible.”
The mandatory composting ordinance calls for fines ranging from $1 to $50 starting Jan. 1. There isn’t an appeals process, because the evidence is hauled away to the landfill.

Obama’s revamped college evaluation site ripped as ‘misleading,’ unnecessary

President Obama has launched a scaled-back college evaluation website that does not include what some in the higher-ed world had feared -- a government rating system of America’s roughly 7,000 colleges and universities.
But the site still has Washington asking questions about why the Department of Education is doing it in the first place.
Among the concerns is why spend taxpayer dollars when such for-profit operations as Barron's, The Princeton Review and U.S. News & World Report have for years been providing similar information and rankings.
“It’s definitely a government overreach, though less than they had talked about,” Neal McCluskey, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, told FoxNews.com on Monday. “The federal government shouldn’t be involved in assessing whether a college is good or bad.”
He also said underlying problems included little context about such factors as student bodies and suggested the federal government felt compelled to make the assessments given the roughly $150 billion it gives out annually in grants and loans.
Obama said in announcing a draft plan in 2013 that the administration would design a ratings system to judge colleges and universities on affordability and return on investment.
However, the ranking idea immediately encountered a backlash from congressional Republicans, who called it government overreach, and from many in higher education who feared it would be arbitrary and unfair.
Terry Hartle, the American Council on Education's senior vice president for government and public affairs, suggested the project is well intended, considering Americans want more information about the economic returns of going to a particular school.
However, he argued the scorecard has several “weaknesses,” including that it measures only students receiving financial aid, fails to break out the data according to school departments or majors and counts dropouts as wells as graduates.
“I think it’s incomplete and misleading,” Hartle said. “I hope people who look at it don’t read too much into it.”
The Department of Education did not return a request Monday for information about the cost of the project or keeping it updated.
After scrapping the rating idea, the administration announced earlier this summer that the scorecard would instead offer more data to help students and their families make better choices -- and draw their own conclusions.
The scorecard indeed provides innovative information like how much debt students leave with and what percentage can repay their loans.
And it offers the first comprehensive look at after-college earnings for students who attended all types of undergraduate institutions, based on tax records.
"Everyone should be able to find clear, reliable, open data on college affordability and value," Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio address. "

Cold War weaponry and modern military hardware: Inside the ISIS arsenal

In January the U.S. Central Command announced that U.S. and coalition airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria destroyed some 184 Humvees, 58 tanks and nearly 700 other vehicles. The number of ISIS military vehicles destroyed may seem significant, but is really just a drop in the bucket compared to the militants' overall firepower.
While specific numbers are difficult to come by, reports suggest that ISIS has a huge fleet of vehicles – including tanks - its possession. Last year, for example, the jihadists captured 2,300 Humvees from Iraqi forces when they captured the city of Mosul, some of which were then converted to armored vehicles.
Unlike traditional nation states ISIS doesn't produce tanks or other weapons in factories, and unlike past insurgent forces that were supported by a nation state ISIS isn't being armed or equipped by a major power either. Yet the group's fleet of vehicles continues to grow. In May ISIS captured U.S.-built equipment, including M1A1 tanks after the group took control of the town of Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad. The militants’ haul reportedly included about 100 wheeled vehicles and dozens of tracked vehicles.
Related: Historic tanks in pictures
There should be concern that ISIS has become so well armed, experts warn. In addition to modern military hardware, militants have also captured Cold War-era weaponry from Syrian forces. The nation was supported throughout the Cold War by the Soviet Union and built up vast quantities of Warsaw Pact armaments. Today those weapons – everything from AK-47 assault rifles to T-72 main battle tanks – are being utilized by all sides in the ongoing Syrian Civil War.
"Syrian rebel groups probably make the most extensive use of heavy equipment at the moment, thanks largely to battlefield successes," Jeremy Binnie, Middle East/Africa Editor for IHS Jane's Defence Weekly, told FoxNews.com. "But that is also a product of the Syrian military's vast inventory of Soviet-era weapons and equipment, (as well as) its inability to destroy this materiel after it has been captured."
Many of these Syrian rebels likely served in the military at some point and this may provide them with the knowledge to operate and, more importantly, maintain the equipment.

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File photo - Militant Islamist fighters take part in a military parade along the streets of northern Raqqa province June 30, 2014. (REUTERS/Stringer)

There is a growing concern that these weapons have allowed groups to operate more like an actual army than merely as insurgents. This has enabled them to take and actually hold ground. ISIS has not only tanks but towed field guns and artillery pieces, which allow the group to conduct shelling against Iraqi military targets from a great distance; as well as fixed anti-aircraft guns and even shoulder-mounted anti-aircraft weapons. Each of these presents serious problems. While the fixed anti-aircraft guns threaten coalition aircraft, shoulder-mounted anti-aircraft weapons could take down a commercial airliner.
"Rocket-fired grenades and shoulder-launched missiles have long been available in black markets in the Middle East and Africa, but this higher-end stuff is coming from other sources," Seth Jones, director of international security and defense policy center at the RAND Corp. told FoxNews.com. "This really shows that conventional weapons are a reason for concern. In many ways we're largely past the stage of nuclear proliferation unless it was provided by a state, and that isn't likely to happen. However, these anti-aircraft weapon systems of all sizes are still a reason for concern."
Armored vehicles are increasingly a problem as well, and one factor is that tanks – especially Soviet era ones – aren't that difficult to maintain and are difficult to destroy.
"Modest investment in an old tank can become a successful weapons platform," David Willey, curator of The Tank Museum in the U.K., told FoxNews.com. "Today's modern anti-tank weapons now cost as much as what an old tank costs on the black market, so it makes destroying a tank an expensive proposition."
Related: High-tech military gear
The cost factor is largely because western doctrine in destroying a tank is far different to the likely tactics of a rebel force. "There is the cost of flying a combat aircraft and its weapons system," Robert Farley, assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, told FoxNews.com.
Rebel groups might just as easily use a gasoline bomb – much like the Finnish-devised "Molotov Cocktail" of World War II – or other IED (improvised explosive device) added Farley. It may be rare that such improvised weapons could truly take out a tank but it would certainly put the crew at risk, especially if they are not locked inside the tank.
ISIS and other rebel groups, have largely, not attempted their own aerial sorties, despite the fact that combat aircraft from Iraq and Syria have also been captured.
"There are number of reasons why ISIS hasn't taken to the sky, even as there are reports that they do have people who could fly," Farley told FoxNews.com. "In the case of Iraq there are Sunni pilots who are likely fighting with ISIS, and the group even likely has maintenance crews who could prepare the planes for flight."
However, there are logistics to overcome, including the lack of proper fuel, not to mention spare parts. There is also the fact that a single plane can only do so much.
"You drive a tank down the road, and if it breaks you still have a tank that you can repair and the crew, which can still fight," Farley added. "If you put a vintage Soviet Mig21 in the air and it crashes it doesn't make a lot of sense."
The final equation for why ISIS aircraft remains grounded is likely a psychological, according to Farley, "ISIS knows that there are American fighter jocks who want nothing more than to put an ISIS flag on the cockpit and have a combat air kill. It is quick death for anyone who gets into an ISIS plane."
In fact, ISIS is just one of several group that have built up powerful arsenals that include weapons that were typically only fielded by major powers.
"The extent to which non-government forces use heavy weapons typically depends on the level of external support they receive, the local availability of such equipment, and their ability to maintain it," Binnie told FoxNews.com. “The Polisario Front [in Western Sahara] has numerous Soviet-era armored vehicles thanks to Algerian support rather than victories over the Moroccan military.”
Related: 11 stunning F-22 fighter jet images
Other nations such as Libya and Iran have been the alleged suppliers of weapons to groups such as Al-Shabaab in Somalia and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Since the downfall of Muammar Gaddafi large quantities of weapons have flown out of Libya and across the region. This included not only Gaddafi's vast caches of convention weapons but also small arms and other weapons intended to be used by the Libyan rebels. Now some of these weapons are reportedly in the hands of Al Qaeda-linked militants and other radicalized groups.
"It is certainly unhelpful to the west that a range of rebel groups in Africa, the Middle East and as far away as South East Asia have acquired everything from small arms to tanks," added Rand Corp.’s Jones. "It has facilitated their ability to achieve their objectives and there isn't enough emphasis that this access to weapons has given rise to rebel groups."
Al Qaeda, ISIS, Al-Shabaab and other groups certainly could have gotten weapons on the black market, but the lack of stable governments in Libya and Syria have made it easier for these groups to get armed – and with weapons past insurgents might have only dreamt of possessing.
"The collapse of the Libyan military in 2011 has allowed many of the militias in that country to obtain heavy equipment," added Binnie. "The same is true in Iraq after the military collapse in 2014, although the ISIS struggles to keep that equipment operational due to coalition airstrikes and probably a lack of spares and familiarity with U.S. equipment."
While the ISIS arsenal remains an ongoing concern for the U.S. and its allies in Operation Inherent Resolve, other shadows of the Cold War remain visible in the Middle East. The Pentagon, for example, has been warily eyeing a Russian military buildup in Syria as Moscow protects its interests in the civil-war ravaged country.

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Insider vs. Outsider Matchup Finds Clinton, Trump Near Even

 

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump run essentially evenly among registered voters in a head-to-head matchup for president in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, testament to the strength of party loyalty as well as to Trump’s anti-establishment profile and anti-immigration views.

The hypothetical contest stands at 46-43 percent, Clinton-Trump, a gap that's within the survey's margin of sampling error. That compares to a clear Clinton lead among all adults, 51-39 percent, indicating her broad support in groups that are less apt to be registered to vote, such as young adults and racial and ethnic minorities.

See PDF with full results, charts and tables here.

The close result in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, says as much about partisanship as it does about the candidates. Registered voters divide 45-40 percent between identifying themselves as Democrats, or leaning that way, vs. Republicans or GOP leaners. And 82 percent of leaned Democrats say they’d support Clinton, while 76 percent of leaned Republicans say they'd back Trump, were they the party nominees.

That said, Trump also is tapping factors including discontent with the political system, anti-immigration attitudes and dissatisfaction with the Obama administration. He leads Clinton by a broad 64-25 percent among registered voters who prefer a candidate from outside the political establishment and by 49-38 percent among those who strongly distrust politicians.
Trump also leads Clinton by 73-14 percent among those who favor his controversial views on immigration, 74-13 percent among those who disapprove of President Obama’s job performance, 68-22 percent among political conservatives and 52-36 percent among whites, a broadly pro-GOP group in recent years. (They favored Mitt Romney over Obama by 20 percentage points in 2012.) Among evangelical white Protestants, a core GOP group, Trump leads Clinton by 67-22 percent.
This analysis is the first slice of a new ABC/Post poll on the 2016 election. More detailed results on the primaries, views of candidate attributes and attitudes about the political system overall will be released Monday morning.
There are some important provisos in evaluating these results. Early polls are not predictive. They seek to measure preferences if the election were today, but the election is not today, and if it were, voters would have had a full campaign’s worth of information on which to base their choices – including whether to vote in the first place. Campaigns clearly do matter; front-runners have failed in past elections and single-digit candidates have surged to victory. Polls at this stage, then, are best used to understand attitude formation, not eventual election choices.
Statistical analysis shows which factors best predict Clinton vs. Trump preferences, holding all else equal. The biggest by far is whether or not registered voters support Trump’s positions on immigration. That’s followed by partisanship, preferring experience vs. a political outsider, ideology, race and gender.

Groups

Notably, in the general election matchup, Trump leads by 52-37 percent among men, while Clinton leads by 55-34 percent among women. Fifty-three percent of women in this survey say they're Democrats or lean that way, compared with 36 percent of men.
The results produce a vast 36-point gender gap -– Trump +15 points among men, Clinton +21 among women. The average in general election exit polls since 1976 has been 13 points; the biggest was 22 points in the Gore-Bush contest of 2000. The Clinton-Trump gender gap is more than twice as big as the Clinton-Jeb Bush gender gap in an ABC/Post poll in July, presumably reflecting Trump's controversial remarks about women.
Clinton's support among women is based on her overwhelming backing from college-educated women, 68-20 percent. By contrast, Trump leads Clinton by a broad 55-34 percent among men who aren't college graduates. He runs about evenly with Clinton among women without a college degree and among men who've graduated from college.
The education gap, like the gender gap, is outsized. In exit polls since 1980, there has been little difference in candidate support among those with a college degree vs. non-graduates, an average of just 2 points; the biggest gap was 11 points in 1996, when Bill Clinton's support was higher among non-grads (+14 points) than among college graduates (+3 points). In the Clinton-Trump matchup, there's a vast 35-point gap; it's 57-31 percent, Clinton-Trump, among those with a college degree, vs. 49-40 percent, Trump-Clinton, among those without one. Indeed, even among college-educated leaned Republicans, Trump’s support slips to 67 percent, vs. 80 percent among those without a degree.
This reflects a challenge in Trump's support profile; while he does much better with less-educated registered voters, they're less likely actually to vote.
At the same time, Trump has a 20-point lead over Clinton among senior citizens, 55-35 percent, while Clinton has an even broader advantage among adults under 30, 63-27 percent. In this case it's Trump’s group that has a higher propensity to vote.
Clinton also does vastly better than Trump among nonwhites, 72-19 percent; they’re a core Democratic group and a growing share of the electorate. And there's a strong regional effect, with much better results for Clinton in the Northeast and West, with Trump ahead in the Midwest and South. Again, it's largely partisanship that leads the way.

Methodology

This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Sept. 7-10, 2015, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,003 adults, including 821 registered voters. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 points for the full sample and 4.0 for registered voters, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 33-22-35 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents, among all adults, and 34-25-33 percent among registered voters.

The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates of New York, N.Y., with sampling, data collection and tabulation by Abt-SRBI of New York, N.Y. See details on the survey’s methodology here.

Congress now turns to spending bill to keep government open, avoiding shutdown over Planned Parenthood

With the Iran nuclear deal debate essentially over, Congress now turns to several other pressing issues, particularly agreeing on a temporary spending bill to avoid a partial government shutdown on Oct. 1.
Leaders of the Republican-controlled Congress have vowed to avoid an unpopular government shutdown. But the party’s most conservative caucus could still create problems, especially if members attempt to link the spending bill to de-funding Planned Parenthood.
With Congress being officially in session just a handful of days before the potential shutdown deadline, GOP leaders haven't said how they will handle conservatives' demands while also rounding up enough votes to prevent a shutdown.
Conservatives’ longstanding opposition to Planned Parenthood and abortion was re-ignited this summer by the release of secretly recorded videos showing group officials offhandedly discussing how they sometimes provide tissue from aborted fetuses for medical researchers.
So efforts to de-fund the group will likely help the Republicans Party secure votes from its base in the 2016 presidential election cycle. But more moderate and independent voters would likely blame Republicans for a shutdown, as they have in the past.
Such a bill probably would pass the GOP-run House. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., recently acknowledged that he lacks the votes in his chamber and said President Obama would veto it anyway.
The public mostly blamed Republicans in 2013 when a partial shutdown lasted 16 days after they tried dismantling Obama's health care law in exchange for keeping agencies open.
"Having charged up the hill once and been shot down, why would you want to do that again?" said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., an ally of House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. "I'm pretty convinced we're not going to shut down the government."
Planned Parenthood gets more than $500 million in federal and state funds annually, virtually none of which can be used for abortions, and says it's done nothing wrong. 
Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., has collected 31 signatures from conservative lawmakers pledging to oppose any bill funding government if it includes money for Planned Parenthood.
And Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a presidential contender, is circulating a comparable letter. Many of the other GOP presidential contenders are also urging Congress to slash Planned Parenthood's funds.
But GOP aides say Cruz has won little support among Senate Republicans. 
Congressional leaders' immediate problem is Mulvaney. If his group of 31 holds and Boehner wants to pass a bill preventing a shutdown and funding Planned Parenthood, he'd need Democratic votes.
Boehner needed and got Democratic backing to end the 2013 shutdown and a brief closure this year of the Homeland Security Department in an immigration fight with Obama.
But no leader likes to rely on the other party to pass crucial legislation.
Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith said the speaker "is focused on ensuring that our team is exposing Planned Parenthood's barbaric methods to the world, saving more babies" and that he "is not going anywhere."
It's unclear if an effort to remove Boehner would succeed, but it would be embarrassing.
Instead of a fall shutdown, GOP leaders will likely seek to temporarily finance government and perhaps set up a Christmas showdown over 2016 spending and Planned Parenthood.
Meanwhile, the House plans votes next week on bills by Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., halting Planned Parenthood's federal funds for a year and by Franks protecting infants born alive during abortions. Both would likely pass the House but face long Senate odds.
The Senate is expected to vote this month on a measure by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a presidential hopeful, barring most late-term abortions. It faces likely defeat.
A vote on another bill cutting off Planned Parenthood's money could come later this year.
Though Obama has enough votes to secure the Iran deal, some Republicans are vowing to continue to block the effort.
Other pending issues before Congress include how to avoid sequester, the automatic budget cuts that are the result of a hard-fought deal Obama signed in 2011 and that hit the Defense Department the hardest.
Members will also try to increase the government's borrowing authority and avoid a first-ever federal default; extend roughly 50 tax breaks; pass a defense policy bill that Obama has threatened to veto; renew the Federal Aviation Administration's authority to spend money and finally pass a long-term highway funding bill.
Congress was working under a late-October deadline for transportation.
However, the Transportation Department said earlier this month that the Highway Trust Fund has enough money to pay for projects into next year.