Tonya Couch, mother of 'affluenza' teen Ethan Couch, is back in jail
By Nichole Manna
Tonya Couch, the mother of a teen who caused a drunken-driving crash that killed four people and injured several others in 2013, is back in jail.
Couch, 52, is still awaiting trial on charges related to helping her son Ethan Couch escape to Mexico in 2015.
Couch has been in and out of jail over the last year after being accused of violating the terms of her release. She was arrested in March 2018 when she tested positive for a prohibited substance. She posted her $75,000 bond in May, but was accused of using methamphetamine and rearrested in June. During a bond reduction hearing in August, a judge told Couch she couldn't use drugs and denied the lowering of her bond. New bond conditions were filed in October, but Couch was still barred from using any substances.
She has been back in jail since Friday, according to Tarrant County jail booking reports. Court documents cite a positive urinalysis.
Couch and her son, Ethan Couch, garnered national attention after a witness at his trial said he suffered from "affluenza," meaning that his affluent upbringing and dysfunctional parents kept him from learning right from wrong.
Tonya Couch is accused of withdrawing $30,000 from a bank account and hiding with her son in Mexico after he missed a probation appointment in 2015.
Ethan Couch was sentenced to 10 years' probation in the case but had been jailed for violating the conditions of his probation.
He was released from jail in April 2018 after completing his two-year sentence for violating the terms of his probation. He was allowed to remove his GPS monitor in March of this year, but he still must comply with other conditions of his release, according to Tarrant County court documents.
April 30, 2019
A huge mess......
NRA has a huge mess on its hands
By John Avlon
Think you had a busy weekend?
Since Friday, the NRA had President Trump speak at its convention and moved to oust its own president, Oliver North, after his bitter feud with CEO Wayne LaPierre became public.
Saying he was only acting in the best interests of the NRA, North tried to get LaPierre to quit, accusing him of massive financial mismanagement. LaPierre called North's allegations "smears" and accused him of extortion.
This occurred on the same day that an alleged Russian agent was sentenced, after pleading guilty to infiltrating the NRA as a way to influence US politics, among other schemes.
At the same time, the New York Attorney General's Office announced it was investigating the gun rights group, while a gun safety group said it filed a complaint about the NRA's tax-exempt status.
And all on the same weekend that a 19-year-old used an AR-type weapon to attack worshippers at a synagogue outside San Diego.
Got all that?
Let's take a step back.
Since its founding by two union officers after the Civil War, the NRA has morphed from its mission to teach marksmanship and gun safety to becoming a political powerhouse, fundraising off fears about gun control and enflaming the culture wars.
In recent years, the NRA has been credited with stopping legislation to close background check loopholes supported by nearly 90% of the American people after Sandy Hook, and spending more than $30 million to support Donald Trump and Republicans in 2016.
At the same time they've been building out a media arm called NRA-TV, featuring conservative personalities like Dana Loesch, pushing odd stunts like portraying Thomas the Tank Engine in a KKK uniform, and uttering memorable lines like this: "The only way we save our country and our freedom is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth."
But if you really want to find the "clenched fist of truth," follow the money.
Audits of the NRA showed that, while spending more than $400 million in 2016, the group had a nearly $15 million deficit at the end of that year, and more than double that in '17.
This is big money. And a series of investigations and lawsuits is shedding light on where it all went, and why Oliver North warned that they could "threaten our nonprofit status."
The NRA is suing its longtime advertising firm Ackerman McQueen for refusing to justify billings of over $40 million per year, while some senior salaries at the NRA approached or exceeded $1 million, levels not generally associated with nonprofits.
Ackerman McQueen calls the lawsuit "frivolous" and "inaccurate."
At the same time, according to the Wall Street Journal, there are allegations of self-dealing and sweetheart deals among firms with ties to top officials, as well as moving money between different divisions.
The NRA says there is "nothing improper" about any of its business relationships.
All while donations have plummeted, annual dues increased, and NRA staffers had their free coffee taken away to save money.
Now that the New York attorney general has sent out subpoenas, this is a scandal the NRA probably won't be able to spin its way out of.
The Second Amendment is securely nestled in our Constitution, even as we debate the continuing epidemic of gun violence.
But the NRA's problems are a reminder of how people invested in the partisan economy like to talk about principles, while they profit from polarization.
Or, as Eric Hoffer wrote, "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket."
By John Avlon
Think you had a busy weekend?
Since Friday, the NRA had President Trump speak at its convention and moved to oust its own president, Oliver North, after his bitter feud with CEO Wayne LaPierre became public.
Saying he was only acting in the best interests of the NRA, North tried to get LaPierre to quit, accusing him of massive financial mismanagement. LaPierre called North's allegations "smears" and accused him of extortion.
This occurred on the same day that an alleged Russian agent was sentenced, after pleading guilty to infiltrating the NRA as a way to influence US politics, among other schemes.
At the same time, the New York Attorney General's Office announced it was investigating the gun rights group, while a gun safety group said it filed a complaint about the NRA's tax-exempt status.
And all on the same weekend that a 19-year-old used an AR-type weapon to attack worshippers at a synagogue outside San Diego.
Got all that?
Let's take a step back.
Since its founding by two union officers after the Civil War, the NRA has morphed from its mission to teach marksmanship and gun safety to becoming a political powerhouse, fundraising off fears about gun control and enflaming the culture wars.
In recent years, the NRA has been credited with stopping legislation to close background check loopholes supported by nearly 90% of the American people after Sandy Hook, and spending more than $30 million to support Donald Trump and Republicans in 2016.
At the same time they've been building out a media arm called NRA-TV, featuring conservative personalities like Dana Loesch, pushing odd stunts like portraying Thomas the Tank Engine in a KKK uniform, and uttering memorable lines like this: "The only way we save our country and our freedom is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth."
But if you really want to find the "clenched fist of truth," follow the money.
Audits of the NRA showed that, while spending more than $400 million in 2016, the group had a nearly $15 million deficit at the end of that year, and more than double that in '17.
This is big money. And a series of investigations and lawsuits is shedding light on where it all went, and why Oliver North warned that they could "threaten our nonprofit status."
The NRA is suing its longtime advertising firm Ackerman McQueen for refusing to justify billings of over $40 million per year, while some senior salaries at the NRA approached or exceeded $1 million, levels not generally associated with nonprofits.
Ackerman McQueen calls the lawsuit "frivolous" and "inaccurate."
At the same time, according to the Wall Street Journal, there are allegations of self-dealing and sweetheart deals among firms with ties to top officials, as well as moving money between different divisions.
The NRA says there is "nothing improper" about any of its business relationships.
All while donations have plummeted, annual dues increased, and NRA staffers had their free coffee taken away to save money.
Now that the New York attorney general has sent out subpoenas, this is a scandal the NRA probably won't be able to spin its way out of.
The Second Amendment is securely nestled in our Constitution, even as we debate the continuing epidemic of gun violence.
But the NRA's problems are a reminder of how people invested in the partisan economy like to talk about principles, while they profit from polarization.
Or, as Eric Hoffer wrote, "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket."
A funny historian
A funny historian outclassed Trump
By Dean Obeidallah
When White House Correspondents' Association President Olivier Knox announced in November that the 2019 White House Correspondents' Dinner would not feature a comedian, as it has done for many years, Trump praised the move on Twitter as a "good first step" and added, "Maybe I will go?"
But Trump ended up skipping the annual event for the third year in a row and instead attended a rally in Wisconsin. And, to be honest, Trump made the right choice.
I say that because presidential historian Ron Chernow, who gave a speech in lieu of a comedian, not only served up some stinging comedic jabs at the President, but he was also funnier than Trump could ever be. And both would've been too much for Trump to handle.
As a reminder, after last year's WHCD, where comedian Michelle Wolf tore into Trump and his press secretary Sarah Sanders, Trump took to Twitter to whine that Wolf was "filthy" and "bombed." But in that tweet, Trump revealed something much more about how deeply it hurts him to be laughed at. The President tweeted that Wolf "couldn't even deliver her lines-much like the Seth Meyers weak performance."
If you are asking why Trump is bringing up NBC's Seth Meyers, it's because when Trump attended the WHCD in 2011, Meyers comically fileted him with jokes like, "Donald Trump said recently that he has a great relationship with 'the blacks.' Although unless 'the blacks' are a family of white people, I bet he is mistaken." These many years later, Trump still feels the sting of that comedic takedown.
Chernow, the author of the Alexander Hamilton biography that inspired the massive hit musical "Hamilton," opened his remarks by joking about Trump's "edict" last Tuesday banning everyone in his administration from attending the dinner. Chernow playfully commented, "I was puzzled by this news, but then I learned a rumor was circulating in Washington that I was going to be reading from the redacted sections of the Mueller report and everything was explained."
Later Chernow, while referencing Trump's recent comment that America "is full" when speaking about immigration, joked that Hamilton was an immigrant who arrived, "thank God, before the country was full." He added, "Frankly I don't know why they let the guy in, clearly someone slipped up at the southern border."
The historian also took aim at Trump's recently reported comments that if George Washington were "smart," he would've put his name on Mount Vernon, with Trump noting, "You've got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you." Chernow remarked, "As best I can tell, Washington committed only one major blunder as President: He failed to put his name on Mount Vernon and thereby bungled an early opportunity at branding." He wryly added, "Clearly deficient at the art of the deal, the poor man had to settle at the lowly title of 'Father of his Country.'"
What a contrast to Trump's attempts at humor at his rally. Trump, like an old-time comedian too lazy to write new material, doled out his "classics" -- calling Sen. Elizabeth Warren "Pocahontas" and slamming Sens. Bernie Sanders as "Crazy Bernie." He even said, "Can you imagine any of these people up here doing what I'm doing. ... There'd be 200 people show up, if they were president. If they weren't president, nobody would show up, is that right?"
Another painful attempt at humor was when Trump said his press secretary is "becoming too popular, I'm jealous," as he then mimicked his catch phrase from his years on "The Apprentice" -- declaring, "Sarah, you're fired!"
And in between his attempts at humor, Trump served up his worn-out lines, going after Hillary Clinton for alleged criminal conduct and slamming the late Sen. John McCain for not repealing the Affordable Care Act -- "one man decided to vote against it."
I can only imagine how a rambling Trump at the WHCD would have been received. And making it worse would've been the contrast to Chernow's speech, which was not only funny but also cleverly called out Trump's attacks on the First Amendment, noting, "When you chip away at the press, you chip away at our democracy."
Chernow finished his speech by paraphrasing a line by Mark Twain: "Politicians and diapers must be changed often -- and for the same reason." And in the case of Trump, that tired, unfunny diaper is starting to sag.
By Dean Obeidallah
When White House Correspondents' Association President Olivier Knox announced in November that the 2019 White House Correspondents' Dinner would not feature a comedian, as it has done for many years, Trump praised the move on Twitter as a "good first step" and added, "Maybe I will go?"
But Trump ended up skipping the annual event for the third year in a row and instead attended a rally in Wisconsin. And, to be honest, Trump made the right choice.
I say that because presidential historian Ron Chernow, who gave a speech in lieu of a comedian, not only served up some stinging comedic jabs at the President, but he was also funnier than Trump could ever be. And both would've been too much for Trump to handle.
As a reminder, after last year's WHCD, where comedian Michelle Wolf tore into Trump and his press secretary Sarah Sanders, Trump took to Twitter to whine that Wolf was "filthy" and "bombed." But in that tweet, Trump revealed something much more about how deeply it hurts him to be laughed at. The President tweeted that Wolf "couldn't even deliver her lines-much like the Seth Meyers weak performance."
If you are asking why Trump is bringing up NBC's Seth Meyers, it's because when Trump attended the WHCD in 2011, Meyers comically fileted him with jokes like, "Donald Trump said recently that he has a great relationship with 'the blacks.' Although unless 'the blacks' are a family of white people, I bet he is mistaken." These many years later, Trump still feels the sting of that comedic takedown.
Chernow, the author of the Alexander Hamilton biography that inspired the massive hit musical "Hamilton," opened his remarks by joking about Trump's "edict" last Tuesday banning everyone in his administration from attending the dinner. Chernow playfully commented, "I was puzzled by this news, but then I learned a rumor was circulating in Washington that I was going to be reading from the redacted sections of the Mueller report and everything was explained."
Later Chernow, while referencing Trump's recent comment that America "is full" when speaking about immigration, joked that Hamilton was an immigrant who arrived, "thank God, before the country was full." He added, "Frankly I don't know why they let the guy in, clearly someone slipped up at the southern border."
The historian also took aim at Trump's recently reported comments that if George Washington were "smart," he would've put his name on Mount Vernon, with Trump noting, "You've got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you." Chernow remarked, "As best I can tell, Washington committed only one major blunder as President: He failed to put his name on Mount Vernon and thereby bungled an early opportunity at branding." He wryly added, "Clearly deficient at the art of the deal, the poor man had to settle at the lowly title of 'Father of his Country.'"
What a contrast to Trump's attempts at humor at his rally. Trump, like an old-time comedian too lazy to write new material, doled out his "classics" -- calling Sen. Elizabeth Warren "Pocahontas" and slamming Sens. Bernie Sanders as "Crazy Bernie." He even said, "Can you imagine any of these people up here doing what I'm doing. ... There'd be 200 people show up, if they were president. If they weren't president, nobody would show up, is that right?"
Another painful attempt at humor was when Trump said his press secretary is "becoming too popular, I'm jealous," as he then mimicked his catch phrase from his years on "The Apprentice" -- declaring, "Sarah, you're fired!"
And in between his attempts at humor, Trump served up his worn-out lines, going after Hillary Clinton for alleged criminal conduct and slamming the late Sen. John McCain for not repealing the Affordable Care Act -- "one man decided to vote against it."
I can only imagine how a rambling Trump at the WHCD would have been received. And making it worse would've been the contrast to Chernow's speech, which was not only funny but also cleverly called out Trump's attacks on the First Amendment, noting, "When you chip away at the press, you chip away at our democracy."
Chernow finished his speech by paraphrasing a line by Mark Twain: "Politicians and diapers must be changed often -- and for the same reason." And in the case of Trump, that tired, unfunny diaper is starting to sag.
Will be interesting to watch...
Ukraine's next president is already getting tough with Vladimir Putin
Analysis by Nathan Hodge
Ukrainian President-elect, Volodymyr Zelensky, might be a political novice, but he's also willing to stand up to the most experienced geopolitical player on the block: Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin declined to send congratulations to Zelensky after his landslide election victory earlier this month. But the Kremlin leader did throw down a challenge. Last week, he signed a decree simplifying Russian citizenship for Ukrainians living in the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine.
It was a provocative move that drew condemnation from the US. And over the weekend, Putin seemed to up the ante, saying the Russian government would consider streamlining the procedure for granting Russian citizenship to Ukrainian citizens -- not just those in separatist regions.
Russia and Ukraine have been locked in a proxy war since Moscow's annexation of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in 2014. Giving Russian passports to Ukrainians -- a measure Putin described last week as "purely humanitarian" -- could be seen as a pretext for further Russian meddling in Ukraine.
Zelensky, however, has countered Putin with his own offer to Ukraine's citizens.
"I would not advise the Russian authorities to waste time trying to tempt citizens of Ukraine with Russian passports," he said in a Facebook post late Saturday.
"The difference for Ukraine, in particular, lies in the fact that we, Ukrainians, have freedom of speech, free media and the Internet in our country. Therefore, we know perfectly well what a Russian passport actually provides. This is the right to be arrested for peaceful protest. It is the right not to have free and competitive elections. This is the right to forget about the existence of natural rights and freedoms."
Writing in both Russian and Ukrainian, Zelensky presented Ukraine as a bulwark against the Kremlin's brand of authoritarianism, saying his government will offer Ukrainian citizenship to those opposed to Putin's rule.
"Ukraine will not give up its mission to serve as an example of democracy for the post-Soviet countries," he said. "And part of this mission will be the provision of protection, asylum and Ukrainian citizenship to all who are ready to fight for freedom. We will provide shelter and assistance to everyone -- everyone who is ready to fight side by side with us for our freedom and yours."
That phrase -- "for our freedom and yours" -- has a particular historic resonance. Originally a slogan of Polish independence movements in the 19th century, it's a slogan that means that any struggle against despotism must be a shared struggle.
And that's a message that Zelensky is conveying to Russians, in their own language (and Ukrainians have also chimed in on social media, taunting Russians with visa-free travel they enjoy to Europe with their passports).
Zelensky is not set to take office until early June, so it's unclear how much of this back-and-forth will set the new tone for relations between Moscow and Kiev. But it's clear that for now, at least, Zelensky is willing to take on Putin at a rhetorical level.
And as yet, it's unclear whether the Kremlin will move forward with plans to offer Russian passports to all citizens of Ukraine.
"It's too early to talk about such modalities," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Monday.
Early, perhaps, but both Ukrainians and Russians will be watching the officials signals between their respective capitals in the weeks to come.
Analysis by Nathan Hodge
Ukrainian President-elect, Volodymyr Zelensky, might be a political novice, but he's also willing to stand up to the most experienced geopolitical player on the block: Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin declined to send congratulations to Zelensky after his landslide election victory earlier this month. But the Kremlin leader did throw down a challenge. Last week, he signed a decree simplifying Russian citizenship for Ukrainians living in the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine.
It was a provocative move that drew condemnation from the US. And over the weekend, Putin seemed to up the ante, saying the Russian government would consider streamlining the procedure for granting Russian citizenship to Ukrainian citizens -- not just those in separatist regions.
Russia and Ukraine have been locked in a proxy war since Moscow's annexation of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in 2014. Giving Russian passports to Ukrainians -- a measure Putin described last week as "purely humanitarian" -- could be seen as a pretext for further Russian meddling in Ukraine.
Zelensky, however, has countered Putin with his own offer to Ukraine's citizens.
"I would not advise the Russian authorities to waste time trying to tempt citizens of Ukraine with Russian passports," he said in a Facebook post late Saturday.
"The difference for Ukraine, in particular, lies in the fact that we, Ukrainians, have freedom of speech, free media and the Internet in our country. Therefore, we know perfectly well what a Russian passport actually provides. This is the right to be arrested for peaceful protest. It is the right not to have free and competitive elections. This is the right to forget about the existence of natural rights and freedoms."
Writing in both Russian and Ukrainian, Zelensky presented Ukraine as a bulwark against the Kremlin's brand of authoritarianism, saying his government will offer Ukrainian citizenship to those opposed to Putin's rule.
"Ukraine will not give up its mission to serve as an example of democracy for the post-Soviet countries," he said. "And part of this mission will be the provision of protection, asylum and Ukrainian citizenship to all who are ready to fight for freedom. We will provide shelter and assistance to everyone -- everyone who is ready to fight side by side with us for our freedom and yours."
That phrase -- "for our freedom and yours" -- has a particular historic resonance. Originally a slogan of Polish independence movements in the 19th century, it's a slogan that means that any struggle against despotism must be a shared struggle.
And that's a message that Zelensky is conveying to Russians, in their own language (and Ukrainians have also chimed in on social media, taunting Russians with visa-free travel they enjoy to Europe with their passports).
Zelensky is not set to take office until early June, so it's unclear how much of this back-and-forth will set the new tone for relations between Moscow and Kiev. But it's clear that for now, at least, Zelensky is willing to take on Putin at a rhetorical level.
And as yet, it's unclear whether the Kremlin will move forward with plans to offer Russian passports to all citizens of Ukraine.
"It's too early to talk about such modalities," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Monday.
Early, perhaps, but both Ukrainians and Russians will be watching the officials signals between their respective capitals in the weeks to come.
Democrat presses JPMorgan CEO
Freshman Democrat presses JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon over pay disparity
By Caroline Kelly
Freshman Rep. Katie Porter stumped multimillionaire JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon during a hearing Wednesday with a simple question: How are workers supposed to make ends meet?
The back-and-forth occurred during a House Financial Services Committee hearing featuring the CEOs of several major banks on Wednesday. Porter, a California Democrat, shared the story of a JPMorgan Chase employee -- making a fraction of what the company's top executives are paid -- who is running a $567 deficit each month because her salary is insufficient to cover basic expenses.
"How should she manage this budget shortfall while she's working full-time at your bank?" Porter asked Dimon.
"I don't know that all your numbers are accurate, that number is generally a starter job --" he said.
"She is a starting employee, she has a 6-year-old child, this is her first job," Porter said.
"You can get those jobs out of high school, and she may have my job one day," Dimon replied.
"She may, but Mr. Dimon, she doesn't have the ability right now to spend your $31 million," Porter said, referring to Dimon's 2018 pay package.
"I'm wholly sympathetic," Dimon replied.
"She's short $567, what would you suggest she do?" Porter pressed.
"I don't know, I'd have to think about that," he said.
"Would you recommend that she take out a JP Morgan Case credit card and run a deficit?" Porter asked.
Dimon repeated, "I don't know, I'd have to think about it."
"Would you recommend that she overdraft at your bank and be charged overdraft fees?" Porter asked.
"I don't know I'd have to think about it," Dimon said a third time, adding, "I'd love to call up and have a conversation about her financial affairs and see if we could be helpful."
"(To) see if you could find a way for her to live on less than the minimum that I've described?" Porter asked.
"Just (to) be helpful," Dimon replied.
"Well, I appreciate your desire to be helpful, but what I'd like you to do is provide a way for families to make ends meet," Porter said.
After the hearing, Porter tweeted a picture of a white board showing her calculations behind the numbers she referenced during the hearing.
"During my questioning, @jpmorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said he didn't know if all my numbers were accurate," she tweeted. "Here's the math so he can check."
Porter said Thursday that the bank teller she called "Patricia" during the hearing was actually a hypothetical person representing several stories of which her office had heard.
During the hearing, Porter described a real job listing posted on the job-finding platform Monster.com for a JPMorgan Chase position in Irvine, Califonia, paying $16.50 an hour, saying, "now this bank teller, her name is Patricia. She has one child who's 6 years old."
When asked by CNN's Brooke Baldwin whether the bank teller she described would want to communicate with Dimon, Porter replied, "Patricia is a representative of a number of constituents that we'd heard from."
"So there is no Patricia out there," Porter said, adding, "but in the other way, there are thousands and thousands, and tens of thousands of Patricias out there."
The California Democrat said that she checked apartment listings, the US Department of Agriculture's food cost plan, and a cost of living calculator to estimate the expenses, adding, "I am a single mom in Irvine, I know what it takes to make ends meet there."
Porter added that her office has received feedback from her own district and nationwide saying that the figures were "too conservative."
"I have people calling my office asking if they knew where she rented from, so that they wanted to get a one bedroom apartment for $1,600," she said.
By Caroline Kelly
Freshman Rep. Katie Porter stumped multimillionaire JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon during a hearing Wednesday with a simple question: How are workers supposed to make ends meet?
The back-and-forth occurred during a House Financial Services Committee hearing featuring the CEOs of several major banks on Wednesday. Porter, a California Democrat, shared the story of a JPMorgan Chase employee -- making a fraction of what the company's top executives are paid -- who is running a $567 deficit each month because her salary is insufficient to cover basic expenses.
"How should she manage this budget shortfall while she's working full-time at your bank?" Porter asked Dimon.
"I don't know that all your numbers are accurate, that number is generally a starter job --" he said.
"She is a starting employee, she has a 6-year-old child, this is her first job," Porter said.
"You can get those jobs out of high school, and she may have my job one day," Dimon replied.
"She may, but Mr. Dimon, she doesn't have the ability right now to spend your $31 million," Porter said, referring to Dimon's 2018 pay package.
"I'm wholly sympathetic," Dimon replied.
"She's short $567, what would you suggest she do?" Porter pressed.
"I don't know, I'd have to think about that," he said.
"Would you recommend that she take out a JP Morgan Case credit card and run a deficit?" Porter asked.
Dimon repeated, "I don't know, I'd have to think about it."
"Would you recommend that she overdraft at your bank and be charged overdraft fees?" Porter asked.
"I don't know I'd have to think about it," Dimon said a third time, adding, "I'd love to call up and have a conversation about her financial affairs and see if we could be helpful."
"(To) see if you could find a way for her to live on less than the minimum that I've described?" Porter asked.
"Just (to) be helpful," Dimon replied.
"Well, I appreciate your desire to be helpful, but what I'd like you to do is provide a way for families to make ends meet," Porter said.
After the hearing, Porter tweeted a picture of a white board showing her calculations behind the numbers she referenced during the hearing.
"During my questioning, @jpmorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said he didn't know if all my numbers were accurate," she tweeted. "Here's the math so he can check."
Porter said Thursday that the bank teller she called "Patricia" during the hearing was actually a hypothetical person representing several stories of which her office had heard.
During the hearing, Porter described a real job listing posted on the job-finding platform Monster.com for a JPMorgan Chase position in Irvine, Califonia, paying $16.50 an hour, saying, "now this bank teller, her name is Patricia. She has one child who's 6 years old."
When asked by CNN's Brooke Baldwin whether the bank teller she described would want to communicate with Dimon, Porter replied, "Patricia is a representative of a number of constituents that we'd heard from."
"So there is no Patricia out there," Porter said, adding, "but in the other way, there are thousands and thousands, and tens of thousands of Patricias out there."
The California Democrat said that she checked apartment listings, the US Department of Agriculture's food cost plan, and a cost of living calculator to estimate the expenses, adding, "I am a single mom in Irvine, I know what it takes to make ends meet there."
Porter added that her office has received feedback from her own district and nationwide saying that the figures were "too conservative."
"I have people calling my office asking if they knew where she rented from, so that they wanted to get a one bedroom apartment for $1,600," she said.
Roundup cancer cases
Roundup cancer cases could cost Germany's Bayer billions
By Julia Horowitz
A popular weedkiller is wreaking havoc at drugs and chemicals giant Bayer.
The inventor of aspirin is in the grip of a huge shareholder revolt after its $63 billion purchase of Roundup owner Monsanto put the German company at risk from thousands of US cancer lawsuits tied to the weedkiller.
Over 55% of voting shareholders did not endorse the actions of management during last Friday's annual meeting, a rebuke that Berenberg bank analyst Sebastian Bray described as "unprecedented" in Germany.
Investors have cause to be upset. Bayer's stock price has collapsed by 40% since the Monsanto deal closed in June 2018. The company is now only worth roughly what it paid for the US chemical maker.
While not binding, the shareholder vote increased pressure on CEO Werner Baumann and forced Bayer's supervisory board to issue a statement reiterating its support for the leadership team.
Roundup lawsuits
The purchase of Monsanto, which took almost two years for regulators to approve, didn't always look like a dud.
Dow (DWDP) and DuPont had already announced a tie-up in agrochemicals when the Monsanto deal was struck in September 2016. So had ChemChina and Switzerland's Syngenta. Bayer, the thinking went, needed to act in order to stay competitive.
But events over the past year have cast serious doubt on the wisdom of the purchase.
Two US juries have sided with men who claimed that glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup, caused them to develop cancer. Bayer is appealing both rulings, but could be on the hook for tens of millions of dollars in payouts.
That could be just the beginning. Bayer faces glyphosate lawsuits from roughly 13,400 US plaintiffs.
The company says that scientific research proves glyphosate is safe when used as directed, and is not carcinogenic. But it could still opt to settle the thousands of pending cases, according to analysts.
Damien Conover, an analyst who covers Bayer for Morningstar, estimates that it could wind up paying €2 billion ($2.2 billion) in costs related to glyphosate litigation.
In a worst-case scenario, Conover predicts costs could rise above €13 billion ($14.6 billion). It's hard to put an exact number on the liability without knowing more about the quality of the cases, he said.
Moody's said in a report Tuesday that settlement payments of €5 billion ($5.6 billion) would be manageable, but €20 billion ($22.4 billion) in payments could affect the company's credit rating.
The question from investors is whether management did their homework on Monsanto. Some believe it's time to consider dramatic structural changes, such as dividing up Bayer's pharmaceutical and agriculture businesses.
"They are of the opinion that US legal liabilities are difficult to quantify and unlikely to go away any time soon," Bray said.
Shareholder ire
Concerns about the company's legal exposure were on full display at last week's shareholder meeting.
Ingo Speich, who represented Deka Investment at the event, said he voted against the management because the Monsanto deal had been "value destroying."
Deka is demanding "far more transparency" on the potential financial impact of litigation, Speich said. "The biggest problem with the share price is uncertainty," he added.
Bayer Chairman Werner Wenning said in the statement of support for management that the "top priority" is to "vigorously and successfully defend the company" in court proceedings related to glyphosate.
Baumann, the CEO, acknowledged that the Roundup lawsuits and early verdicts had placed a "heavy burden" on the company and its investors. But he said market reaction had been "exaggerated."
He argued that the company was right to purchase Monsanto, and that the acquisition was already contributing to the company's bottom line.
Investors are unlikely to reward the company's performance before its legal liability becomes clear.
"The market is not apt to give the company much credit as clouds of uncertainty hang over the business," Bray said.
By Julia Horowitz
A popular weedkiller is wreaking havoc at drugs and chemicals giant Bayer.
The inventor of aspirin is in the grip of a huge shareholder revolt after its $63 billion purchase of Roundup owner Monsanto put the German company at risk from thousands of US cancer lawsuits tied to the weedkiller.
Over 55% of voting shareholders did not endorse the actions of management during last Friday's annual meeting, a rebuke that Berenberg bank analyst Sebastian Bray described as "unprecedented" in Germany.
Investors have cause to be upset. Bayer's stock price has collapsed by 40% since the Monsanto deal closed in June 2018. The company is now only worth roughly what it paid for the US chemical maker.
While not binding, the shareholder vote increased pressure on CEO Werner Baumann and forced Bayer's supervisory board to issue a statement reiterating its support for the leadership team.
Roundup lawsuits
The purchase of Monsanto, which took almost two years for regulators to approve, didn't always look like a dud.
Dow (DWDP) and DuPont had already announced a tie-up in agrochemicals when the Monsanto deal was struck in September 2016. So had ChemChina and Switzerland's Syngenta. Bayer, the thinking went, needed to act in order to stay competitive.
But events over the past year have cast serious doubt on the wisdom of the purchase.
Two US juries have sided with men who claimed that glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup, caused them to develop cancer. Bayer is appealing both rulings, but could be on the hook for tens of millions of dollars in payouts.
That could be just the beginning. Bayer faces glyphosate lawsuits from roughly 13,400 US plaintiffs.
The company says that scientific research proves glyphosate is safe when used as directed, and is not carcinogenic. But it could still opt to settle the thousands of pending cases, according to analysts.
Damien Conover, an analyst who covers Bayer for Morningstar, estimates that it could wind up paying €2 billion ($2.2 billion) in costs related to glyphosate litigation.
In a worst-case scenario, Conover predicts costs could rise above €13 billion ($14.6 billion). It's hard to put an exact number on the liability without knowing more about the quality of the cases, he said.
Moody's said in a report Tuesday that settlement payments of €5 billion ($5.6 billion) would be manageable, but €20 billion ($22.4 billion) in payments could affect the company's credit rating.
The question from investors is whether management did their homework on Monsanto. Some believe it's time to consider dramatic structural changes, such as dividing up Bayer's pharmaceutical and agriculture businesses.
"They are of the opinion that US legal liabilities are difficult to quantify and unlikely to go away any time soon," Bray said.
Shareholder ire
Concerns about the company's legal exposure were on full display at last week's shareholder meeting.
Ingo Speich, who represented Deka Investment at the event, said he voted against the management because the Monsanto deal had been "value destroying."
Deka is demanding "far more transparency" on the potential financial impact of litigation, Speich said. "The biggest problem with the share price is uncertainty," he added.
Bayer Chairman Werner Wenning said in the statement of support for management that the "top priority" is to "vigorously and successfully defend the company" in court proceedings related to glyphosate.
Baumann, the CEO, acknowledged that the Roundup lawsuits and early verdicts had placed a "heavy burden" on the company and its investors. But he said market reaction had been "exaggerated."
He argued that the company was right to purchase Monsanto, and that the acquisition was already contributing to the company's bottom line.
Investors are unlikely to reward the company's performance before its legal liability becomes clear.
"The market is not apt to give the company much credit as clouds of uncertainty hang over the business," Bray said.
Want lower health care costs
Most Americans want lower health care costs, not 'Medicare for All' or Obamacare repeal
By Tami Luhby
Washington may be obsessed with enacting "Medicare for All" or repealing Obamacare, but Americans have other priorities.
They want Congress to prioritize reducing health care costs and protecting those with pre-existing conditions, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Wednesday.
Roughly two-thirds of respondents ranked lowering drug prices and continuing protections for those with pre-existing conditions as a top priority, while half want lawmakers to address surprise medical bills, the poll found. But less than one-third put implementing Medicare for All or replacing the Affordable Care Act high on the to-do list.
The findings come at a time when 2020 Democratic presidential candidates are debating broadening health insurance coverage, potentially under a government-run plan called Medicare for All spearheaded by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent vying to win the Democratic primary.
On the flip side, the Trump administration has renewed efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. It is now siding with a federal judge in Texas who ruled that the law is invalid. The case is currently in an appellate court.
Some 54% of those polled do not want to see the Supreme Court overturn the landmark health care reform law, but Democrats and Republicans hold very different views. Some 83% of Democrats don't want the Supreme Court to rule against the law, while 73% of Republicans want the justices to invalidate it, according to Kaiser.
Overall, nearly two-thirds are worried they would not be able to afford coverage if the Affordable Care Act is found unconstitutional.
Meanwhile, the public's views on Medicare for All are becoming more partisan. Some 58% of Democrats now say they have a "very positive" reaction to the term, up from 49% in 2017. However, 51% of Republicans have a "very negative" reaction, compared to 42% in 2017. Overall, the share of people favoring Medicare for All remains steady at 56%.
When it comes to lowering health care costs, both parties are in agreement. Several bipartisan bills to reduce drug prices are working their way through the House and Senate.
By Tami Luhby
Washington may be obsessed with enacting "Medicare for All" or repealing Obamacare, but Americans have other priorities.
They want Congress to prioritize reducing health care costs and protecting those with pre-existing conditions, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Wednesday.
Roughly two-thirds of respondents ranked lowering drug prices and continuing protections for those with pre-existing conditions as a top priority, while half want lawmakers to address surprise medical bills, the poll found. But less than one-third put implementing Medicare for All or replacing the Affordable Care Act high on the to-do list.
The findings come at a time when 2020 Democratic presidential candidates are debating broadening health insurance coverage, potentially under a government-run plan called Medicare for All spearheaded by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent vying to win the Democratic primary.
On the flip side, the Trump administration has renewed efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. It is now siding with a federal judge in Texas who ruled that the law is invalid. The case is currently in an appellate court.
Some 54% of those polled do not want to see the Supreme Court overturn the landmark health care reform law, but Democrats and Republicans hold very different views. Some 83% of Democrats don't want the Supreme Court to rule against the law, while 73% of Republicans want the justices to invalidate it, according to Kaiser.
Overall, nearly two-thirds are worried they would not be able to afford coverage if the Affordable Care Act is found unconstitutional.
Meanwhile, the public's views on Medicare for All are becoming more partisan. Some 58% of Democrats now say they have a "very positive" reaction to the term, up from 49% in 2017. However, 51% of Republicans have a "very negative" reaction, compared to 42% in 2017. Overall, the share of people favoring Medicare for All remains steady at 56%.
When it comes to lowering health care costs, both parties are in agreement. Several bipartisan bills to reduce drug prices are working their way through the House and Senate.
Not surprising at all...
Mueller report reveals Kushner's contacts with a ‘pro-Kremlin’ campaign adviser
Dimitri Simes, who runs a Washington think tank, offered advice on Russia policy and even peddled rumors about the Clintons.
By NATASHA BERTRAND
Jared Kushner needed help.
It was March 2016 and Kushner’s father-in-law, Donald Trump, was steamrolling to the Republican presidential nomination. But the businessman-candidate was taking heat for his campaign’s lack of foreign policy expertise, something Kushner was trying to remedy.
That’s when he found a Russian willing to assist.
On March 14, 2016, according to special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, Kushner attended a lunch in Manhattan in honor of Henry Kissinger. Also in attendance was a tall, bearded Russian émigré with a booming voice. His name was Dmitri Simes, and for nearly 20 years he had been president and CEO of the Center for the National Interest, a Washington foreign policy think tank.
Simes had been a Washington fixture since he left the Soviet Union in the early 1970s, obtained U.S. citizenship, and served as an informal foreign policy adviser to President Richard Nixon. A longtime advocate of warmer U.S.-Russia relations, he was also dogged by criticism that he was notably sympathetic to Moscow’s views.
Kushner and Simes met at the lunch and began communicating, including in a meeting at Kushner’s office later that month. Although the Trump campaign never identified Simes as an adviser, he provided counsel to the Trump team, particularly with regard to Russia. In June 2016, Mueller found, he sent a memo to then-Senator Jeff Sessions, who headed up Trump’s foreign policy team, offering several policy recommendations, including “a new beginning with Moscow,” and in August he would send Kushner himself a “Russia policy memo.”
In April of that year, CNI hosted Trump’s first genuine foreign policy address, attended by Russia’s U.S. ambassador, in which the candidate offered a similar message. Mueller also discovered that Simes also offered Kushner disparaging information about former President Bill Clinton.
The Simes-Kushner relationship was outlined in detail by Mueller’s report, which mentions Simes over 100 times. While the report concluded that Simes did not act as a campaign intermediary with Moscow, and did not allege that he works at the behest of the Kremlin, it did note that Simes and CNI have “many contacts with current and former Russian government officials.”
To Simes’ allies the report was, as Trump might say, a total exoneration that should end the speculation over his Simes background and motivations: “I think what is in the report is very clear,” said Paul Saunders, a former CNI executive director and current board member. “They did not find evidence that he or the center were involved in passing any messages back and forth between the campaign and Russia. More than that, the report states that he advised the Trump campaign against hidden contacts with Russia.”
Even so, former U.S. officials and people who know Simes say Mueller’s report is a fresh reminder that he is at best a mysterious—and at worst alarming—player in Washington’s foreign policy community. Depending on who you ask, he is either a shrewd foreign policy realist dedicated to defusing tensions between his birth-nation and the one where he chose to make a life — or a Kremlin advocate who cloaks his true agenda in Washington, D.C.
“It’s very transparent what his agenda is,” said Michael Carpenter, a former adviser to Vice President Joe Biden and a top Pentagon official for Russia and Ukraine in the Obama administration. Carpenter said that while Simes positions himself as a pragmatic foreign policy realist, “he is completely pro-Kremlin and always has been.”
Simes’ allies reject such charges as unfair Russophobia. One Simes friend who has worked closely with him called allegations that Simes has a pro-Kremlin agenda “old, unfair, and unfounded.”
Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former senior Defense and State Department official who has known Simes since the 1970’s, said that Simes’s “body of work belies those who portray him as a secret Russian agent.”
Another Simes acquaintance believes his behavior stems more from a desire for access than from any kind of formalized relationship with the Kremlin. “He’s the ultimate realist,” this person said. “He’s only working for himself.”
Simes does not come across as a propagandist at CNI’s policy luncheons and other events, which regularly feature current and former U.S. officials as well as prominent journalists. His commentary on U.S. Russia-relations is often measured: “[A]ny responsible U.S. government should want to normalize the relationship with Moscow,” Simes wrote in late 2017, adding: “The objective should not be to become allies or friends, neither of which is possible or advisable.”
Simes, who declined to comment for this story, has also defended himself in pointed terms. In a tense exchange on Russian television last week, he confronted Ukrainian journalist Dmitry Gordon over Gordon’s decision to publish a piece late last year by the Russian-American historian Yuri Felshtinsky. In the article, Felshtinsky accused Simes of being a “handler” for Mariia Butina, the Russian gun-rights activist who pleaded guilty last year to acting as an unregistered agent of a Russian government official during the election.
Simes has been linked to Butina, who wrote an article for CNI’s magazine, The National Interest, arguing that U.S.-Russia relations could improve under a Republican administration. He also reached out repeatedly in 2015 to Butina’s associate Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia, to discuss a CNI board member’s financial problems, according to The Daily Beast. Simes has denied any wrongdoing.
“After what the Mueller investigation established, don’t you wish to apologize to me for the libelous material you published on your site?” he asked Gordon. Gordon defended Felshtinsky and his right to publish the article, but said he would re-examine it. “To be honest I personally have nothing more to discuss with you,” Simes shot back, before ordering the producers to cut off Gordon’s microphone.
Mueller found no evidence that Kushner had sought out Simes because of his Kremlin ties. But Simes did use the opportunity to influence the campaign’s posture toward Russia, acknowledging to Mueller that he “initiated all conversations” about Russia with Kushner.
“Jared was genuinely eager to cultivate relationships with foreign policy people,” said a campaign adviser at the time who has worked with Simes. “He was having a hard time early on when the foreign policy establishment was horrified by what Trump was doing. And he recognized in Dmitri someone who had serious foreign policy credentials and was sympathetic to the candidate.”
As someone who has long felt like an outsider to Washington’s foreign policy establishment, meanwhile, Simes felt a kinship with the blustering real-estate developer who pledged to “drain the swamp.”
He also saw an opportunity.
“A trait I observed with the true-believing Trump people is that they have this very bitter, resentful outlook on the world,” the former campaign adviser said. “Dmitri fit into that mold. He also saw that Trump was willing to buck a lot of conventional wisdom on Russia.”
Indeed, several people who know Simes say that while he was fairly ideologically aligned with Trump on several issues, he also saw the brash billionaire as a vehicle to drive the GOP toward his longtime project of improving U.S. relations with Moscow, despite Putin’s ongoing election interference.
“I think Simes found Trump as much as the campaign found him,” said the foreign policy veteran, pointing to Simes’ desire for political relevance.
It arguably paid off. Simes helped draft Trump’s CNI-hosted foreign policy speech in which Trump called for an “easing of tensions” with Russia, and was still advising Trump on “what to say about Russia” months later, according to Mueller. Although Trump made a point of publicly announcing a foreign policy advisory team in mid-2016, his campaign never openly discussed Simes’ quiet role.
Another memo Simes sent Kushner in August recommended that the campaign “downplay Russia as a U.S. foreign policy priority at this time” while adding that "some tend to exaggerate Putin's flaws,” according to Mueller. He also advised the campaign "not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy" with regard to Russia, Mueller’s report says, and made suggestions about how to handle Ukraine-related questions.
Despite his access, Simes had frustrations with the campaign and with Trump himself, whose cavalier attitude he found “maddening,” the former campaign adviser said. “So he tried to take Trump’s intuitions and turn them into something coherent.”
Simes told Mueller that he had warned Kushner against establishing “hidden Russian contacts” that might look bad for the campaign. Kushner heeded that counsel, at least initially, advising the campaign to “pass” on a proposed meeting with an officer at a Russian state-owned bank in May 2016. (The officer is not identified in Mueller’s report but appears to be Alexander Torshin, a Butina associate then trying to arrange a meeting with Trump on the sidelines of the NRA’s annual convention.)
Even so, the following month, Kushner joined Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump’s son Donald Jr. for an infamous meeting at Trump Tower with Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Nor was Simes himself above peddling anti-Clinton dirt. With Clinton criticizing Trump’s friendly posture toward Putin in mid-August 2016, according to Mueller, Simes met with Kushner and offered him information he claimed to have received from a former CIA official: rumors within the U.S. intelligence community that Russia had intercepted President Bill Clinton’s sexually explicit phone calls with Monica Lewinsky and was blackmailing him, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Kushner told Mueller that he didn’t receive any information from Simes that could be “operationalized” against Clinton, and the relationship appears to have cooled by the end of the campaign. Several people familiar with Simes’ thinking at the time said he was disappointed that some longtime associates who he’d recommended for administration jobs, including Saunders and former U.S. ambassador Richard Burt, were not hired.
FBI agents interviewed several Washington’s foreign policy insiders about Simes’ background and contacts last year, according to three of the people interviewed. They said that those agents gave no indication one way or the other about whether they were affiliated with Mueller’s team. In March a Russian media outlet reported that sources who know Simes said the bureau had questioned them about his ties to Butina.
David Rivkin, an attorney at BakerHostetler who represents CNI, said he is unaware of FBI interviews concerning Simes beyond the confines of Mueller's probe. “There was an investigation that looked at hundreds and hundreds of people and institutions within the context of the special counsel’s mandate, and we know what it found—that neither Simes nor the center did anything wrong, and as far as proffering foreign policy advice to a presidential campaign, that is what academics and think tanks are supposed to do.”
Meanwhile, Simes' story has delivered a new plot twist: he has been spending a large amount of time back in his home city of Moscow, making regular appearances on the hugely popular Russian television show, “The Great Game.” Simes co-hosts the program, which airs most weeknights on Russia’s state-owned Channel One, alongside one Vyacheslav Nikonov—the staunchly pro-Kremlin grandson of the Soviet diplomat and Stalin protege Vyacheslav Molotov.
Simes’ defenders say he is simply using the show as a platform to represent the American perspective on U.S.-Russia relations, and infuse it into mainstream Russian thought. But his critics see more evidence of pro-Russian sympathies.
On a recent episode, for example, Simes implied that the former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko—a frequent target of Kremlin propaganda who recently called it his “strategic mission” to secure Ukraine’s membership in the European Union and NATO—was “taking orders from Washington.” Poroshenko took power after Russia invaded eastern Ukraine and forcibly annexed Crimea in 2014, and subsequently strengthened ties with the west.
Simes also framed Poroshenko’s election defeat earlier this month as a rejection of his defiant stance towards Moscow—an assertion that John Herbst, the former ambassador to Ukraine and the director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, disagreed with when he appeared on the show last week. “The voters were generally supportive of Poroshenko’s foreign policy,” he told Simes. Herbst and many other veteran Ukraine-watchers say that a much larger factor was Poroshenko’s inability to rein in corruption in Kiev.
Felshtinsky, the Russian-American historian and fierce Simes critic, told POLITICO that he has always found Simes’s “pro-Russian” stance “very unusual for a former Soviet citizen who emigrated to the United States.” He also pointed to the peculiarity of Simes’s high-level Kremlin relationships and noted his ability to address Putin directly at high-level public forums, like at the Valdai International Discussion Club in 2014—where the head of a modest Washington think tank was flanked by Germany’s former defense minister and France and Italy’s former prime ministers.
When it comes to Simes, Felshtinksy said, “I think we only know the tip of the iceberg.”
Dimitri Simes, who runs a Washington think tank, offered advice on Russia policy and even peddled rumors about the Clintons.
By NATASHA BERTRAND
Jared Kushner needed help.
It was March 2016 and Kushner’s father-in-law, Donald Trump, was steamrolling to the Republican presidential nomination. But the businessman-candidate was taking heat for his campaign’s lack of foreign policy expertise, something Kushner was trying to remedy.
That’s when he found a Russian willing to assist.
On March 14, 2016, according to special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, Kushner attended a lunch in Manhattan in honor of Henry Kissinger. Also in attendance was a tall, bearded Russian émigré with a booming voice. His name was Dmitri Simes, and for nearly 20 years he had been president and CEO of the Center for the National Interest, a Washington foreign policy think tank.
Simes had been a Washington fixture since he left the Soviet Union in the early 1970s, obtained U.S. citizenship, and served as an informal foreign policy adviser to President Richard Nixon. A longtime advocate of warmer U.S.-Russia relations, he was also dogged by criticism that he was notably sympathetic to Moscow’s views.
Kushner and Simes met at the lunch and began communicating, including in a meeting at Kushner’s office later that month. Although the Trump campaign never identified Simes as an adviser, he provided counsel to the Trump team, particularly with regard to Russia. In June 2016, Mueller found, he sent a memo to then-Senator Jeff Sessions, who headed up Trump’s foreign policy team, offering several policy recommendations, including “a new beginning with Moscow,” and in August he would send Kushner himself a “Russia policy memo.”
In April of that year, CNI hosted Trump’s first genuine foreign policy address, attended by Russia’s U.S. ambassador, in which the candidate offered a similar message. Mueller also discovered that Simes also offered Kushner disparaging information about former President Bill Clinton.
The Simes-Kushner relationship was outlined in detail by Mueller’s report, which mentions Simes over 100 times. While the report concluded that Simes did not act as a campaign intermediary with Moscow, and did not allege that he works at the behest of the Kremlin, it did note that Simes and CNI have “many contacts with current and former Russian government officials.”
To Simes’ allies the report was, as Trump might say, a total exoneration that should end the speculation over his Simes background and motivations: “I think what is in the report is very clear,” said Paul Saunders, a former CNI executive director and current board member. “They did not find evidence that he or the center were involved in passing any messages back and forth between the campaign and Russia. More than that, the report states that he advised the Trump campaign against hidden contacts with Russia.”
Even so, former U.S. officials and people who know Simes say Mueller’s report is a fresh reminder that he is at best a mysterious—and at worst alarming—player in Washington’s foreign policy community. Depending on who you ask, he is either a shrewd foreign policy realist dedicated to defusing tensions between his birth-nation and the one where he chose to make a life — or a Kremlin advocate who cloaks his true agenda in Washington, D.C.
“It’s very transparent what his agenda is,” said Michael Carpenter, a former adviser to Vice President Joe Biden and a top Pentagon official for Russia and Ukraine in the Obama administration. Carpenter said that while Simes positions himself as a pragmatic foreign policy realist, “he is completely pro-Kremlin and always has been.”
Simes’ allies reject such charges as unfair Russophobia. One Simes friend who has worked closely with him called allegations that Simes has a pro-Kremlin agenda “old, unfair, and unfounded.”
Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former senior Defense and State Department official who has known Simes since the 1970’s, said that Simes’s “body of work belies those who portray him as a secret Russian agent.”
Another Simes acquaintance believes his behavior stems more from a desire for access than from any kind of formalized relationship with the Kremlin. “He’s the ultimate realist,” this person said. “He’s only working for himself.”
Simes does not come across as a propagandist at CNI’s policy luncheons and other events, which regularly feature current and former U.S. officials as well as prominent journalists. His commentary on U.S. Russia-relations is often measured: “[A]ny responsible U.S. government should want to normalize the relationship with Moscow,” Simes wrote in late 2017, adding: “The objective should not be to become allies or friends, neither of which is possible or advisable.”
Simes, who declined to comment for this story, has also defended himself in pointed terms. In a tense exchange on Russian television last week, he confronted Ukrainian journalist Dmitry Gordon over Gordon’s decision to publish a piece late last year by the Russian-American historian Yuri Felshtinsky. In the article, Felshtinsky accused Simes of being a “handler” for Mariia Butina, the Russian gun-rights activist who pleaded guilty last year to acting as an unregistered agent of a Russian government official during the election.
Simes has been linked to Butina, who wrote an article for CNI’s magazine, The National Interest, arguing that U.S.-Russia relations could improve under a Republican administration. He also reached out repeatedly in 2015 to Butina’s associate Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia, to discuss a CNI board member’s financial problems, according to The Daily Beast. Simes has denied any wrongdoing.
“After what the Mueller investigation established, don’t you wish to apologize to me for the libelous material you published on your site?” he asked Gordon. Gordon defended Felshtinsky and his right to publish the article, but said he would re-examine it. “To be honest I personally have nothing more to discuss with you,” Simes shot back, before ordering the producers to cut off Gordon’s microphone.
Mueller found no evidence that Kushner had sought out Simes because of his Kremlin ties. But Simes did use the opportunity to influence the campaign’s posture toward Russia, acknowledging to Mueller that he “initiated all conversations” about Russia with Kushner.
“Jared was genuinely eager to cultivate relationships with foreign policy people,” said a campaign adviser at the time who has worked with Simes. “He was having a hard time early on when the foreign policy establishment was horrified by what Trump was doing. And he recognized in Dmitri someone who had serious foreign policy credentials and was sympathetic to the candidate.”
As someone who has long felt like an outsider to Washington’s foreign policy establishment, meanwhile, Simes felt a kinship with the blustering real-estate developer who pledged to “drain the swamp.”
He also saw an opportunity.
“A trait I observed with the true-believing Trump people is that they have this very bitter, resentful outlook on the world,” the former campaign adviser said. “Dmitri fit into that mold. He also saw that Trump was willing to buck a lot of conventional wisdom on Russia.”
Indeed, several people who know Simes say that while he was fairly ideologically aligned with Trump on several issues, he also saw the brash billionaire as a vehicle to drive the GOP toward his longtime project of improving U.S. relations with Moscow, despite Putin’s ongoing election interference.
“I think Simes found Trump as much as the campaign found him,” said the foreign policy veteran, pointing to Simes’ desire for political relevance.
It arguably paid off. Simes helped draft Trump’s CNI-hosted foreign policy speech in which Trump called for an “easing of tensions” with Russia, and was still advising Trump on “what to say about Russia” months later, according to Mueller. Although Trump made a point of publicly announcing a foreign policy advisory team in mid-2016, his campaign never openly discussed Simes’ quiet role.
Another memo Simes sent Kushner in August recommended that the campaign “downplay Russia as a U.S. foreign policy priority at this time” while adding that "some tend to exaggerate Putin's flaws,” according to Mueller. He also advised the campaign "not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy" with regard to Russia, Mueller’s report says, and made suggestions about how to handle Ukraine-related questions.
Despite his access, Simes had frustrations with the campaign and with Trump himself, whose cavalier attitude he found “maddening,” the former campaign adviser said. “So he tried to take Trump’s intuitions and turn them into something coherent.”
Simes told Mueller that he had warned Kushner against establishing “hidden Russian contacts” that might look bad for the campaign. Kushner heeded that counsel, at least initially, advising the campaign to “pass” on a proposed meeting with an officer at a Russian state-owned bank in May 2016. (The officer is not identified in Mueller’s report but appears to be Alexander Torshin, a Butina associate then trying to arrange a meeting with Trump on the sidelines of the NRA’s annual convention.)
Even so, the following month, Kushner joined Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump’s son Donald Jr. for an infamous meeting at Trump Tower with Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Nor was Simes himself above peddling anti-Clinton dirt. With Clinton criticizing Trump’s friendly posture toward Putin in mid-August 2016, according to Mueller, Simes met with Kushner and offered him information he claimed to have received from a former CIA official: rumors within the U.S. intelligence community that Russia had intercepted President Bill Clinton’s sexually explicit phone calls with Monica Lewinsky and was blackmailing him, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Kushner told Mueller that he didn’t receive any information from Simes that could be “operationalized” against Clinton, and the relationship appears to have cooled by the end of the campaign. Several people familiar with Simes’ thinking at the time said he was disappointed that some longtime associates who he’d recommended for administration jobs, including Saunders and former U.S. ambassador Richard Burt, were not hired.
FBI agents interviewed several Washington’s foreign policy insiders about Simes’ background and contacts last year, according to three of the people interviewed. They said that those agents gave no indication one way or the other about whether they were affiliated with Mueller’s team. In March a Russian media outlet reported that sources who know Simes said the bureau had questioned them about his ties to Butina.
David Rivkin, an attorney at BakerHostetler who represents CNI, said he is unaware of FBI interviews concerning Simes beyond the confines of Mueller's probe. “There was an investigation that looked at hundreds and hundreds of people and institutions within the context of the special counsel’s mandate, and we know what it found—that neither Simes nor the center did anything wrong, and as far as proffering foreign policy advice to a presidential campaign, that is what academics and think tanks are supposed to do.”
Meanwhile, Simes' story has delivered a new plot twist: he has been spending a large amount of time back in his home city of Moscow, making regular appearances on the hugely popular Russian television show, “The Great Game.” Simes co-hosts the program, which airs most weeknights on Russia’s state-owned Channel One, alongside one Vyacheslav Nikonov—the staunchly pro-Kremlin grandson of the Soviet diplomat and Stalin protege Vyacheslav Molotov.
Simes’ defenders say he is simply using the show as a platform to represent the American perspective on U.S.-Russia relations, and infuse it into mainstream Russian thought. But his critics see more evidence of pro-Russian sympathies.
On a recent episode, for example, Simes implied that the former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko—a frequent target of Kremlin propaganda who recently called it his “strategic mission” to secure Ukraine’s membership in the European Union and NATO—was “taking orders from Washington.” Poroshenko took power after Russia invaded eastern Ukraine and forcibly annexed Crimea in 2014, and subsequently strengthened ties with the west.
Simes also framed Poroshenko’s election defeat earlier this month as a rejection of his defiant stance towards Moscow—an assertion that John Herbst, the former ambassador to Ukraine and the director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, disagreed with when he appeared on the show last week. “The voters were generally supportive of Poroshenko’s foreign policy,” he told Simes. Herbst and many other veteran Ukraine-watchers say that a much larger factor was Poroshenko’s inability to rein in corruption in Kiev.
Felshtinsky, the Russian-American historian and fierce Simes critic, told POLITICO that he has always found Simes’s “pro-Russian” stance “very unusual for a former Soviet citizen who emigrated to the United States.” He also pointed to the peculiarity of Simes’s high-level Kremlin relationships and noted his ability to address Putin directly at high-level public forums, like at the Valdai International Discussion Club in 2014—where the head of a modest Washington think tank was flanked by Germany’s former defense minister and France and Italy’s former prime ministers.
When it comes to Simes, Felshtinksy said, “I think we only know the tip of the iceberg.”
Cuomo hits back
Andrew Cuomo hits back at Trump over probe of NRA
The New York governor released a statement saying 'the only thing illegal is the gun lobby's insurance scheme.'
By NICK NIEDZWIADEK
Gov. Andrew Cuomo struck back at President Donald Trump on Monday in an escalating war of words over the New York attorney general's recently launched investigation of the National Rifle Association.
In a pair of morning tweets, Trump said the NRA was "under siege by Cuomo and the New York State A.G." and accused them of abusing their legal authority to target the group.
"So much litigation. The NRA should leave and fight from the outside of this very difficult to deal with (unfair) State!" Trump said in his follow-up tweet.
In response, Cuomo released a statement saying "the only thing illegal is the gun lobby's insurance scheme," and noting the incidence in mass gun violence over the past several years.
"You have done nothing but tweet about it," Cuomo said. "The scourge of gun violence is a national crisis plaguing our country and killing our children. It demands action. And action, Mr. President, requires true leadership."
Attorney General Tish James' office announced on Friday that it was investigating the NRA over allegations of self-dealing that potentially threaten the organization's nonprofit status. James often spoke of taking legal action against the Trump administration during her campaign last year.
“Attorney General Letitia James is focused on enforcing the rule of law," her office said in a statement. "In any case we pursue, we will follow the facts wherever they may lead. We wish the President would share our respect for the law.”
James previously drew the president’s ire in March, when her office subpoenaed a pair of banks tied to Trump’s real estate business.
The Cuomo administration is engaged in a legal battle with the NRA stemming from the Department of Financial Service's attempts to penalize companies that offered an NRA-backed insurance product that's illegal in the state.
The NRA itself has been roiled by internal tensions, leading its president, Oliver North, to resign over the weekend after losing a power struggle with longtime Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre, who was reelected to his position on Monday.
Trump also took a separate swipe at Cuomo, taunting him over the 2017 tax reform law’s $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions that the governor has condemned as an act of "economic civil war."
“... People are fleeing New York State because of high taxes and yes, even oppression of sorts,” Trump wrote. “They didn’t even put up a fight against SALT — could have won.”
New York was among a handful of states that filed a lawsuit last summer challenging the cap. The Trump administration in March argued the suit should be dismissed and characterized it as “classically political.”
The New York governor released a statement saying 'the only thing illegal is the gun lobby's insurance scheme.'
By NICK NIEDZWIADEK
Gov. Andrew Cuomo struck back at President Donald Trump on Monday in an escalating war of words over the New York attorney general's recently launched investigation of the National Rifle Association.
In a pair of morning tweets, Trump said the NRA was "under siege by Cuomo and the New York State A.G." and accused them of abusing their legal authority to target the group.
"So much litigation. The NRA should leave and fight from the outside of this very difficult to deal with (unfair) State!" Trump said in his follow-up tweet.
In response, Cuomo released a statement saying "the only thing illegal is the gun lobby's insurance scheme," and noting the incidence in mass gun violence over the past several years.
"You have done nothing but tweet about it," Cuomo said. "The scourge of gun violence is a national crisis plaguing our country and killing our children. It demands action. And action, Mr. President, requires true leadership."
Attorney General Tish James' office announced on Friday that it was investigating the NRA over allegations of self-dealing that potentially threaten the organization's nonprofit status. James often spoke of taking legal action against the Trump administration during her campaign last year.
“Attorney General Letitia James is focused on enforcing the rule of law," her office said in a statement. "In any case we pursue, we will follow the facts wherever they may lead. We wish the President would share our respect for the law.”
James previously drew the president’s ire in March, when her office subpoenaed a pair of banks tied to Trump’s real estate business.
The Cuomo administration is engaged in a legal battle with the NRA stemming from the Department of Financial Service's attempts to penalize companies that offered an NRA-backed insurance product that's illegal in the state.
The NRA itself has been roiled by internal tensions, leading its president, Oliver North, to resign over the weekend after losing a power struggle with longtime Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre, who was reelected to his position on Monday.
Trump also took a separate swipe at Cuomo, taunting him over the 2017 tax reform law’s $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions that the governor has condemned as an act of "economic civil war."
“... People are fleeing New York State because of high taxes and yes, even oppression of sorts,” Trump wrote. “They didn’t even put up a fight against SALT — could have won.”
New York was among a handful of states that filed a lawsuit last summer challenging the cap. The Trump administration in March argued the suit should be dismissed and characterized it as “classically political.”
$5T to fight climate change
Beto O'Rourke calls for $5T to fight climate change
By ZACK COLMAN
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke labeled climate change "the greatest threat we face" as he called for $5 trillion to be spent over the next decade with the goal of neutralizing carbon emissions in the U.S. by mid-century.
The former Texas congressman's plan is among the most detailed of the crowded Democratic 2020 field, but it does not define how it would achieve dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Its goal for getting the U.S. to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 also aligns with the ambitious aims of the Green New Deal, a lofty set of climate priorities advanced by activists and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).
O'Rourke said he wanted the government and private sector to spend $5 trillion over 10 years on clean energy infrastructure, framing the investment as a way to limit significant future economic and health costs caused by climate change while also bridging racial, generational and economic inequities.
"The stakes are clear: We are living in a transformed reality, where our longstanding inaction has not only impacted our climate but led to a growing emergency that has already started to sap our economic prosperity and public health — worsening inequality and threatening our safety and security," O'Rourke said on his campaign website.
That urgency largely reflects the comprehensive template Green New Deal supporters have put forward, which envisions a massive infrastructure and investment program designed to green the economy while consciously involving marginalized communities in the process.
"Climate change has a distressingly disproportionate impact on poor and minority communities across the United States and around the world. Race is the number one indicator for where toxic and polluting facilities are today," O'Rourke's website said.
Environmentalists were generally pleased with O'Rourke's plan, which drew praise from groups ranging from Greenpeace to the League of Conservation Voters. Many called it thorough and progressive, especially for a candidate like O'Rourke who hails from the nation's leading producer of oil and natural gas.
His plan calls for a "legally enforceable standard" and says it will "harness the power of the market" to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, with a goal of getting "halfway there" by 2030. That suggests O'Rourke would pursue some form of carbon pricing, but leaves open whether that would come through a tax or cap-and-trade program or some other mechanism.
O'Rourke also joined a growing list of Democratic contenders who want to end new fossil fuel leasing on federal onshore and offshore land. He said he'd set a net-zero carbon emissions standard for federal lands by 2030 and update royalty rates to reflect the costs of climate change.
Still, some environmental and progressive activists have criticized O'Rourke for what they perceive as closeness with the oil and gas industry. O'Rourke has received some criticism from activists for refusing to sign a pledge to reject large contributions from fossil fuel companies, political action committees and executives while Democratic presidential competitors Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee have.
O'Rourke would pay for some of the $5 trillion spending he envisions by ending favorable tax treatment for fossil fuel companies. He said those "tens of billions of dollars of tax breaks" would comprise a portion of a plan to transform the tax code to "ensure corporations and the wealthiest among us pay their fair share," which he said would generate $1.5 trillion in revenue.
As part of that $1.5 trillion from changes to the tax code — which he said would be his first piece of legislation — O'Rourke suggested $300 billion in tax credits and $300 billion in direct spending could generate $4 trillion of investment.
O'Rourke also said he wants to set a trajectory for deploying zero-emissions vehicles, tighten pollution rules for power plants, boost building and appliance efficiency standards and rely on the federal government's size to "decarbonize across all sectors." He also would re-enter the Paris climate agreement, from which President Donald Trump has said he will withdraw.
The plan shows O'Rourke is "moving in the right direction," said David Turnbull, strategic communications director with Oil Change U.S., the group that has pushed Democrats to shun fossil fuel industry money. Still, he said, agreeing to forego those donations was a "prerequisite" because "the fossil fuel industry is going to pull out all the stops," he said.
Julian NoiseCat, the Green New Deal strategic director with progressive think tank Data for Progress, said O'Rourke's plan included "strong echoes of the Green New Deal."
"It's also quite relevant that he comes from an oil-producing state in Texas [since] taking a stand on these issues if you're from New York, Vermont or Massachusetts is not necessarily the same high-stakes politics as if you're a politician from the great state of Texas," he said.
Not all activists were satisfied. Sunrise Movement, the youth-led environmental group at the heart of the Green New Deal, said O'Rourke "gets a lot right," but that he backtracked on comments he made in Iowa earlier this month to strive for net-zero emissions by about 2030.
"Beto claims to support the Green New Deal, but his plan is out of line with the timeline it lays out and the scale of action that scientists say is necessary to take here in the United States to give our generation a livable future," Varshini Prakash, the group's executive director, said in a statement.
Jenny Marienau, political campaign manager with environmental group 350 Action, said there were many positives to O'Rourke's plan,
but it still likely leaves him behind Sanders, Inslee, Warren and Gillibrand on her group's scorecard.
“We’d like to see more from him on his own personal commitment by refusing to taking money from the fossil fuel industry,” Marienau said, who echoed concerns that O'Rourke's timeline for curbing emissions wasn't sufficient.
By ZACK COLMAN
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke labeled climate change "the greatest threat we face" as he called for $5 trillion to be spent over the next decade with the goal of neutralizing carbon emissions in the U.S. by mid-century.
The former Texas congressman's plan is among the most detailed of the crowded Democratic 2020 field, but it does not define how it would achieve dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Its goal for getting the U.S. to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 also aligns with the ambitious aims of the Green New Deal, a lofty set of climate priorities advanced by activists and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).
O'Rourke said he wanted the government and private sector to spend $5 trillion over 10 years on clean energy infrastructure, framing the investment as a way to limit significant future economic and health costs caused by climate change while also bridging racial, generational and economic inequities.
"The stakes are clear: We are living in a transformed reality, where our longstanding inaction has not only impacted our climate but led to a growing emergency that has already started to sap our economic prosperity and public health — worsening inequality and threatening our safety and security," O'Rourke said on his campaign website.
That urgency largely reflects the comprehensive template Green New Deal supporters have put forward, which envisions a massive infrastructure and investment program designed to green the economy while consciously involving marginalized communities in the process.
"Climate change has a distressingly disproportionate impact on poor and minority communities across the United States and around the world. Race is the number one indicator for where toxic and polluting facilities are today," O'Rourke's website said.
Environmentalists were generally pleased with O'Rourke's plan, which drew praise from groups ranging from Greenpeace to the League of Conservation Voters. Many called it thorough and progressive, especially for a candidate like O'Rourke who hails from the nation's leading producer of oil and natural gas.
His plan calls for a "legally enforceable standard" and says it will "harness the power of the market" to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, with a goal of getting "halfway there" by 2030. That suggests O'Rourke would pursue some form of carbon pricing, but leaves open whether that would come through a tax or cap-and-trade program or some other mechanism.
O'Rourke also joined a growing list of Democratic contenders who want to end new fossil fuel leasing on federal onshore and offshore land. He said he'd set a net-zero carbon emissions standard for federal lands by 2030 and update royalty rates to reflect the costs of climate change.
Still, some environmental and progressive activists have criticized O'Rourke for what they perceive as closeness with the oil and gas industry. O'Rourke has received some criticism from activists for refusing to sign a pledge to reject large contributions from fossil fuel companies, political action committees and executives while Democratic presidential competitors Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee have.
O'Rourke would pay for some of the $5 trillion spending he envisions by ending favorable tax treatment for fossil fuel companies. He said those "tens of billions of dollars of tax breaks" would comprise a portion of a plan to transform the tax code to "ensure corporations and the wealthiest among us pay their fair share," which he said would generate $1.5 trillion in revenue.
As part of that $1.5 trillion from changes to the tax code — which he said would be his first piece of legislation — O'Rourke suggested $300 billion in tax credits and $300 billion in direct spending could generate $4 trillion of investment.
O'Rourke also said he wants to set a trajectory for deploying zero-emissions vehicles, tighten pollution rules for power plants, boost building and appliance efficiency standards and rely on the federal government's size to "decarbonize across all sectors." He also would re-enter the Paris climate agreement, from which President Donald Trump has said he will withdraw.
The plan shows O'Rourke is "moving in the right direction," said David Turnbull, strategic communications director with Oil Change U.S., the group that has pushed Democrats to shun fossil fuel industry money. Still, he said, agreeing to forego those donations was a "prerequisite" because "the fossil fuel industry is going to pull out all the stops," he said.
Julian NoiseCat, the Green New Deal strategic director with progressive think tank Data for Progress, said O'Rourke's plan included "strong echoes of the Green New Deal."
"It's also quite relevant that he comes from an oil-producing state in Texas [since] taking a stand on these issues if you're from New York, Vermont or Massachusetts is not necessarily the same high-stakes politics as if you're a politician from the great state of Texas," he said.
Not all activists were satisfied. Sunrise Movement, the youth-led environmental group at the heart of the Green New Deal, said O'Rourke "gets a lot right," but that he backtracked on comments he made in Iowa earlier this month to strive for net-zero emissions by about 2030.
"Beto claims to support the Green New Deal, but his plan is out of line with the timeline it lays out and the scale of action that scientists say is necessary to take here in the United States to give our generation a livable future," Varshini Prakash, the group's executive director, said in a statement.
Jenny Marienau, political campaign manager with environmental group 350 Action, said there were many positives to O'Rourke's plan,
but it still likely leaves him behind Sanders, Inslee, Warren and Gillibrand on her group's scorecard.
“We’d like to see more from him on his own personal commitment by refusing to taking money from the fossil fuel industry,” Marienau said, who echoed concerns that O'Rourke's timeline for curbing emissions wasn't sufficient.
Huge Strategic Mistake
Washington Is Dismissing China’s Belt and Road. That’s a Huge Strategic Mistake.
The project presents a unique opportunity for the U.S. to ensure Eurasia stays multipolar.
By PARAG KHANNA
Last week, leaders and officials representing more than three dozen countries from across the world gathered in Beijing for the second Belt and Road summit. The event marks the two-year anniversary since China first convened its flagship initiative to coordinate trillions of dollars of infrastructure across Eurasia and the Indian Ocean in a broad effort to recreate the old Silk Roads.
One nation that was missing from the summit: The U.S.
The fashionable position in Washington today is to dismiss the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a power play that won’t last—an attempt at neo-colonial debt trap diplomacy, in which China uses unpayable debts to control less powerful states, that is ultimately destined to collapse under the weight of financially spurious projects. On the other hand, there are also those who view BRI as a serious threat—a sign of China’s continued quest for global hegemony and the presence of a new “Cold War” between the U.S. and China.
Either way, the U.S. position so far has been to shrug at China’s new initiative. In this, Washington is making a grave mistake.
Membership in BRI is growing, whether the U.S. comes to the table or not, and this past week’s Beijing gathering indicates that China is willing to accommodate the concerns of its partners to maintain momentum. Though American critics tend to see it either as a doomed scheme or a strategic threat, what’s really happening with the Belt and Road plan is more complicated—and even offers the United States the chance of a payoff, regardless of China’s success. It is already opening new and expanding markets to American companies. And, diplomatically, it presents an opportunity to help steer countries clear of excessive dependence on China. Belt and Road, then, might well bring about the outcome least expected: a Eurasia that is more multipolar rather than less—if, that is, America engages rather than sitting on the sidelines.
The Belt and Road Initiative has already begun having effects across the region, and not always the ones China intended. It has catalyzed modernization drives from Pakistan to Myanmar, investments that can actually help countries diversify their economies and achieve investment grade status. At the same time, it has awakened countries to the dangers of taking on too much debt without delivering growth, and thus becoming ensnared in China’s political orbit. Importantly, this has given rise to a welcome “infrastructure arms race” in which Japan, India, Europe and even, belatedly, the U.S. are starting to actively compete with China to finance productive infrastructure and help BRI members to eventually resist Chinese dominance.
But much more needs to be done. If the United States and its Western allies want to encourage robust economic development in Eurasia, they should recognize that neither BRI’s collapse nor China’s hegemony is foreordained—and develop strategies to shape Belt and Road into a forum for fair competition. BRI is already changing Eurasia, but American diplomats and business executives—if they get involved—have power, along with their European allies, to demand that the initiative adhere to its stated principles of promoting free enterprise, and in the process reshaping geopolitics for the coming decades.
***
To understand how significant the Belt and Road Initiative is, one has to compare the trajectory of West and East since the fall of the Berlin Wall nearly thirty years ago. Western narratives of the post-Cold War era focus on crises and milestones, such as the Yugoslav wars, NATO expansion, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Arab Spring. From the Asian point of view, the past three decades look very different—they have been characterized predominately by an Eastern trade revolution that has connected the Eurasian and Indian Ocean spaces—what historians of the pre-colonial world call “Afroeurasia”—in unprecedented ways.
Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, China began advancing westward with pipelines to the oil-rich Caspian Sea. Meanwhile, Persian Gulf countries shifted the majority of their oil exports towards the fast-growing markets of the Indo-Pacific like India and China. All the while, enhanced trade agreements allowed Asians to capitalize on each other’s comparative advantages in energy, food, industrial goods, technology and more. By the time of the 2008 financial crisis, Asians were already trading more with each other than with the rest of the world, insulating them considerably from the demand shock.
In the decade since, China has taken the lead both diplomatically and commercially in promoting the cause of infrastructure as a global priority, and BRI is its latest effort to do so. And as vital as infrastructure is as a public good, China’s rapid success in building connectivity as far as Africa and Latin America has stoked fears that China is more determined to build an empire than improve quality of life in other countries. As U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton put it in 2018, “China uses bribes, opaque agreements, and the strategic use of debt to hold states in Africa captive to Beijing’s wishes and demands.”
There is no doubt that China has first-mover advantage in building the new Silk Roads, but the reality is that China is far from alone in sharing in the benefits. According to World Bank and EU data, annual Afroeurasian trade today is more than $2 trillion (compared with $1.1 trillion in trans-Atlantic trade) and growing steadily. In other words, Afroeurasia and its nearly six billion citizens is now the center of gravity of the world economy. As ports and pipelines, railways and fiber Internet cables, trade and customs agreements, diplomatic gatherings and student exchanges all proliferate across the Afroeurasian realm, countries that once aspired to a future convergent with the West—Saudi Arabia, Russia and Turkey—have become significant and enthusiastic players in these new economic networks, seeing themselves as Eurasian or Indian Ocean powers and bridges. Russia, through which most trans-Eurasian rail cargo passes, is a Belt and Road enthusiast, viewing Chinese investment as a catalyst for a long-neglected overhaul of major Siberian provinces rich in natural resources and economic potential. Turkey is working with China to connect its freight railways all the way to China. And Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia is following in King Salman’s footsteps with weighty state visits and investment agreements with India and China.
Even China’s rivals in Asia—including America’s key allies—see the potential of Eurasian integration. South Korea is fully on board with Belt and Road as a vehicle to boost its heavy industries; major South Korean companies Daewoo and Hyundai have gained big contracts from Saudi Arabia to Uzbekistan. Japan has yet to join BRI, but Nissin Corporation launched its first trial of railbound cargo transshipment to Europe with China’s Sinotrans in October. India boycotted the first BRI summit in 2017, yet it is the second-largest shareholder and largest recipient of loans from the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a multilateral body that translates BRI visions into project finance. Clearly, whether or not countries have signed a memorandum of understanding with China to join the BRI is all but irrelevant to their engagement with it.
An important recent study by the RAND corporation of the impact of new transportation routes on multiple pairs of Eurasian countries literally echoes Xi Jinping in concluding that Belt and Road has been “win-win.” Even more significantly, another American institution, Citigroup, just published an analysis titled “China’s Belt & Road at Five” that documents how Belt and Road is graduating from a Sino-centric “one-to-many” model to a more multi-directional and inclusive “many-to-many” pattern. India is working with Iran, the Caucasus countries and Russia on a north-south Silk Road axis, while the former Soviet republics of Central Asia have launched new power and rail projects among themselves and declared a “Silk visa” for free mobility among them, to name just a few of the new Silk Road vectors that are non-Sino-centric.
Even in Belt and Road countries where China is most active, there is no linear or assured pathway to their becoming Chinese dominions. China is much more connected to its Asian neighbors than the Soviet Union was during the Cold War, and Chinese infrastructure finance brings far more benefits than Soviet military hegemony. For example, a change in government and fresh infrastructure investment from China are helping landlocked Uzbekistan expand trade in all directions. But as these countries attain sovereign credit ratings and higher investment grade status—as Uzbekistan did in February—they actually gain the confidence to resist Chinese dominance. Already Malaysia and Pakistan have substantially reduced their exposure to China in order to manage debt levels. From Nigeria to Kazakhstan to Mongolia, key resource hubs have pushed back to prevent any foreign country from owning controlling stakes in their utilities and industries. In Africa, while Chinese industrial parks and railways have helped Ethiopia raise textile exports to sustain its double-digit growth boom, numerous factories have been handed over to Indian firms due to dissatisfaction with Chinese management.
These examples are just early hints at how Eurasia is not inevitably falling under China’s sway like falling dominoes. Rather, as for most of recorded history, Asia is returning to its natural state of multipolarity among greater and lesser powers with none able to truly dominate. Indeed, while China’s forays claim the headlines, they have also unleashed an acute case of geostrategic “fear of missing out,” sparking an infrastructure arms race that will challenge China’s blitzkrieg diplomacy. Japan and India have launched their own “Connectivity Corridors” to finance and build strategic infrastructure in third world countries, and the European Union has established its own “Asia Connectivity Initiative” to capitalize on growth on the other side of Eurasia. Whether these compete with or counter China’s initiatives, they indicate that the continent’s future is far from set in stone.
Europe’s growing confidence in dealing with China is a case in point. The EU has just toughened its stance on Chinese trade policy and IP theft, even calling China a “systemic rival.” But it would be a mistake to believe that Europe has fallen into line with Washington’s trade war. European countries trade well over $500 billion more per year with Asia than they do with the U.S., and thus have more at stake in trans-Eurasian integration. Neither Germany, France or the UK has joined BRI, but all three joined the multilateral Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in 2015 over the Obama administration’s objections. Germany’s Trade and Investment Association and chambers of commerce have formulated strategies to compete for more BRI business, with Siemens signing dozens of agreements for projects with Chinese partners. The UK-China “Infrastructure Alliance” aims to put British business front and center as vendors in third world countries where Chinese investment is growing, while UK Export Finance is subsidizing more than $25 billion worth of British industry projects along its trade routes to the east. Beyond Europe’s major powers, more than a dozen mostly southern European countries have joined BRI, including most recently Italy.
Europe is showing how to engage with China while competing with it at the same time. It is precisely because Europeans have so much to gain from BRI that they successfully wrested concessions from China on cutting industrial subsidies and forced technology transfer before signing the final communique at the April 9 EU-China Summit in Brussels with Chinese premier Li Keqiang. And as Europe pursues free trade agreements with Japan, ASEAN and India, BRI will give European countries better access to Asia’s other wealthy markets as well. Each year, eastbound trains to Asia are catching up to westbound trains from China in volume. The more connected Europe becomes to Asia, the more it can compete commercially and diplomatically to dilute Chinese influence across the region.
***
The U.S. needs a similar approach to Belt and Road, and to China in general. Simply declaring that there is a “new Cold War” between the U.S. and China—as everyone from prominent foreign policy pundits to the Washington Post’s editorial board have—fails to denote any actual American strategy and hasn’t inspired any allies to join its side. And, as the fall-out from the trade war suggests, it will also risk hurting the U.S. economy by weakening U.S. exports to China.
After all, BRI serves American business objectives. The primary user of the main freight rail line from Chongqing to Duisberg, Germany, is Hewlett-Packard. For American companies, BRI member countries collectively represent the next wave of global growth that they cannot afford to miss. Take engineering contractors, who face anemic U.S. infrastructure spending—and a project pipeline that increasingly points to Asia. General Electric, Honeywell International and Caterpillar all have decades of traction in Asia and are actively seeking roles as subcontractors to major Chinese firms involved in BRI-related contracts. American industry needs to promote its competitive advantages in logistics, energy services and other sectors across Asian markets—especially in South and Southeast Asia, where populations are younger and growth is accelerating.
This won’t happen on its own. The only way American firms can be induced to compete in these risky markets is if projects offer lucrative scale and risk insurance—precisely what the growing number of official entities linking up with BRI, such as the World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, provide—as well as fair commercial arbitration, which Singapore will provide in BRI courts. But naturally, such services will favor and benefit countries within BRI rather than non-members. By not joining TPP, the U.S. now has less leverage in shaping market regulations in Asia, while members such as Canada and Japan enjoy preferential access across the region. In the same way, America’s failure to engage with BRI will mean BRI member nations will dominate the lucrative contracts, while American companies will be left out.
U.S. involvement in Belt and Road will have political dividends as well as economic ones. If the U.S. is serious both about wanting to limit Chinese influence and promote multipolarity in Asia, it needs to do more than take potshots at China from outside the tent. Though at the moment BRI is merely a loose network of countries coordinating with China, it is becoming more formalized with the creation of a ministerial “Leading Group” housed within China’s State Council to liaise with other members’ foreign ministers. This presents an opportunity to weaken China’s unilateral grip on the BRI agenda. As BRI diplomacy becomes more structured, the U.S. can work behind the scenes with allies South Korea and the UAE, both active BRI members, to shape its priorities. America continues to have more influence over these and numerous other BRI states than China does—for now.
Consider how Russia successfully lobbied for India to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in 2017, diluting China’s influence in a strategic body it itself founded. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has recently been in India lobbying for it to reconsider its opposition to BRI on similar grounds. America has been on the receiving end of this shrewd tactic at the World Bank and IMF, U.S.-founded bodies from the post-war era where developing countries now have a strong voice. Now it should work with emerging powers involved in BRI to apply the same principle to China.
Importantly, influencing BRI from within does not preclude the U.S. from continuing to compete from outside as well. Last year in Papua New Guinea, for instance, the U.S., Australia, Japan, and New Zealand teamed up to win a $1.7 billion contract to build the country’s electricity grid over Chinese competitors—even though Papua New Guinea had just joined the BRI. Such a mature coalition can help structure bankable projects in basket case economies that heretofore only China has paid attention to, and is evidence of just how important the role of Western know-how is in promoting good governance in nations such as Laos, Tajikistan or Djibouti whose debts to China have mounted since joining BRI but who have little ability to stand up to China. However, to repeat the Papua New Guinea example across dozens of fragile states requires working with well-governed BRI members such as Singapore, where capital allotments from Chinese banks enable $100 billion in lending to companies that can implement high-standard projects on commercial terms. Such coalitions will be necessary to give the many weak states in the Afroeurasian realm the confidence they need to maintain sovereignty amidst China’s advances.
Weaning countries off Chinese loans requires more than just denouncing debt-trap diplomacy. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation will launch later this year, cobbling together existing U.S. aid and investment programs. But the capital it can actually deploy—at most $60 billion—will be a fraction of what developing countries need, especially compared with the lending offered by Chinese state-backed banks and funds. The recently approved Asia Reassurance Act is similarly more talk than action. Vice President Mike Pence recently said that the U.S. offers “a better way” than dealing with China, but billions of people in Asia need hard infrastructure, not soft promises.
***
The greatest fallacy permeating geopolitical discourse today is the notion that the 21st century world must choose between American or Chinese leadership. The world has already voted, and the winner is neither. America’s share of the global economy and trade is shrinking, its military is over-stretched, and its credibility is in tatters due to a combination of the Iraq war, financial crisis, and Trump.
But that doesn’t mean China is taking over. In 1945, when the U.S. emerged from World War II as the world’s sole superpower, it represented fully 50 percent of the world economy. Today China represents barely 15 percent of global GDP and its economy is decelerating and its population plateauing. India is already growing more quickly than China and its younger population will soon be larger than China’s. Simply put: China is rising into a world that is already multipolar; it doesn’t displace incumbent powers such as America and Europe—whose economies are still equal or larger than China’s—and cannot prevent the rise of India nor easily subdue Japan, South Korea or Australia.
These simple geographic, historical, and economic facts are precisely why Belt and Road is a foremost national priority for China, so much so that it is now enshrined in the constitution. China existentially feels the need to diversify its trade routes to Europe, the Middle East and Africa in order to survive. Rather that perpetually vilify China, therefore, we should make sense of its fears and interests and use those to shape its future behavior. BRI is a good place to start. Its mission is perfectly laudable: To promote commerce and people-to-people exchange among almost one hundred postcolonial and post-Soviet republics. The West should strongly support this mission, for if executed correctly, it would result in greater prosperity across the developing world, enhanced Western commercial opportunities in fast-growing markets, and bring about more multipolar Asia. If the world—and the U.S.—can steer BRI correctly, the project should actually help diffuse power, not concentrate it in China’s hands.
This is entirely consistent with a smart US grand strategy of seeking a world order in which it does not have to intervene everywhere but rather balances itself, while providing greater opportunities for America to benefit from global economic growth on the other side of the planet. Remember that China did not dominate the ancient Silk Roads and will not dictate their future even as it has taken a lead role in rebuilding them. Beijing is building roads, but all roads won’t lead to Beijing.
The project presents a unique opportunity for the U.S. to ensure Eurasia stays multipolar.
By PARAG KHANNA
Last week, leaders and officials representing more than three dozen countries from across the world gathered in Beijing for the second Belt and Road summit. The event marks the two-year anniversary since China first convened its flagship initiative to coordinate trillions of dollars of infrastructure across Eurasia and the Indian Ocean in a broad effort to recreate the old Silk Roads.
One nation that was missing from the summit: The U.S.
The fashionable position in Washington today is to dismiss the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a power play that won’t last—an attempt at neo-colonial debt trap diplomacy, in which China uses unpayable debts to control less powerful states, that is ultimately destined to collapse under the weight of financially spurious projects. On the other hand, there are also those who view BRI as a serious threat—a sign of China’s continued quest for global hegemony and the presence of a new “Cold War” between the U.S. and China.
Either way, the U.S. position so far has been to shrug at China’s new initiative. In this, Washington is making a grave mistake.
Membership in BRI is growing, whether the U.S. comes to the table or not, and this past week’s Beijing gathering indicates that China is willing to accommodate the concerns of its partners to maintain momentum. Though American critics tend to see it either as a doomed scheme or a strategic threat, what’s really happening with the Belt and Road plan is more complicated—and even offers the United States the chance of a payoff, regardless of China’s success. It is already opening new and expanding markets to American companies. And, diplomatically, it presents an opportunity to help steer countries clear of excessive dependence on China. Belt and Road, then, might well bring about the outcome least expected: a Eurasia that is more multipolar rather than less—if, that is, America engages rather than sitting on the sidelines.
The Belt and Road Initiative has already begun having effects across the region, and not always the ones China intended. It has catalyzed modernization drives from Pakistan to Myanmar, investments that can actually help countries diversify their economies and achieve investment grade status. At the same time, it has awakened countries to the dangers of taking on too much debt without delivering growth, and thus becoming ensnared in China’s political orbit. Importantly, this has given rise to a welcome “infrastructure arms race” in which Japan, India, Europe and even, belatedly, the U.S. are starting to actively compete with China to finance productive infrastructure and help BRI members to eventually resist Chinese dominance.
But much more needs to be done. If the United States and its Western allies want to encourage robust economic development in Eurasia, they should recognize that neither BRI’s collapse nor China’s hegemony is foreordained—and develop strategies to shape Belt and Road into a forum for fair competition. BRI is already changing Eurasia, but American diplomats and business executives—if they get involved—have power, along with their European allies, to demand that the initiative adhere to its stated principles of promoting free enterprise, and in the process reshaping geopolitics for the coming decades.
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To understand how significant the Belt and Road Initiative is, one has to compare the trajectory of West and East since the fall of the Berlin Wall nearly thirty years ago. Western narratives of the post-Cold War era focus on crises and milestones, such as the Yugoslav wars, NATO expansion, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Arab Spring. From the Asian point of view, the past three decades look very different—they have been characterized predominately by an Eastern trade revolution that has connected the Eurasian and Indian Ocean spaces—what historians of the pre-colonial world call “Afroeurasia”—in unprecedented ways.
Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, China began advancing westward with pipelines to the oil-rich Caspian Sea. Meanwhile, Persian Gulf countries shifted the majority of their oil exports towards the fast-growing markets of the Indo-Pacific like India and China. All the while, enhanced trade agreements allowed Asians to capitalize on each other’s comparative advantages in energy, food, industrial goods, technology and more. By the time of the 2008 financial crisis, Asians were already trading more with each other than with the rest of the world, insulating them considerably from the demand shock.
In the decade since, China has taken the lead both diplomatically and commercially in promoting the cause of infrastructure as a global priority, and BRI is its latest effort to do so. And as vital as infrastructure is as a public good, China’s rapid success in building connectivity as far as Africa and Latin America has stoked fears that China is more determined to build an empire than improve quality of life in other countries. As U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton put it in 2018, “China uses bribes, opaque agreements, and the strategic use of debt to hold states in Africa captive to Beijing’s wishes and demands.”
There is no doubt that China has first-mover advantage in building the new Silk Roads, but the reality is that China is far from alone in sharing in the benefits. According to World Bank and EU data, annual Afroeurasian trade today is more than $2 trillion (compared with $1.1 trillion in trans-Atlantic trade) and growing steadily. In other words, Afroeurasia and its nearly six billion citizens is now the center of gravity of the world economy. As ports and pipelines, railways and fiber Internet cables, trade and customs agreements, diplomatic gatherings and student exchanges all proliferate across the Afroeurasian realm, countries that once aspired to a future convergent with the West—Saudi Arabia, Russia and Turkey—have become significant and enthusiastic players in these new economic networks, seeing themselves as Eurasian or Indian Ocean powers and bridges. Russia, through which most trans-Eurasian rail cargo passes, is a Belt and Road enthusiast, viewing Chinese investment as a catalyst for a long-neglected overhaul of major Siberian provinces rich in natural resources and economic potential. Turkey is working with China to connect its freight railways all the way to China. And Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia is following in King Salman’s footsteps with weighty state visits and investment agreements with India and China.
Even China’s rivals in Asia—including America’s key allies—see the potential of Eurasian integration. South Korea is fully on board with Belt and Road as a vehicle to boost its heavy industries; major South Korean companies Daewoo and Hyundai have gained big contracts from Saudi Arabia to Uzbekistan. Japan has yet to join BRI, but Nissin Corporation launched its first trial of railbound cargo transshipment to Europe with China’s Sinotrans in October. India boycotted the first BRI summit in 2017, yet it is the second-largest shareholder and largest recipient of loans from the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a multilateral body that translates BRI visions into project finance. Clearly, whether or not countries have signed a memorandum of understanding with China to join the BRI is all but irrelevant to their engagement with it.
An important recent study by the RAND corporation of the impact of new transportation routes on multiple pairs of Eurasian countries literally echoes Xi Jinping in concluding that Belt and Road has been “win-win.” Even more significantly, another American institution, Citigroup, just published an analysis titled “China’s Belt & Road at Five” that documents how Belt and Road is graduating from a Sino-centric “one-to-many” model to a more multi-directional and inclusive “many-to-many” pattern. India is working with Iran, the Caucasus countries and Russia on a north-south Silk Road axis, while the former Soviet republics of Central Asia have launched new power and rail projects among themselves and declared a “Silk visa” for free mobility among them, to name just a few of the new Silk Road vectors that are non-Sino-centric.
Even in Belt and Road countries where China is most active, there is no linear or assured pathway to their becoming Chinese dominions. China is much more connected to its Asian neighbors than the Soviet Union was during the Cold War, and Chinese infrastructure finance brings far more benefits than Soviet military hegemony. For example, a change in government and fresh infrastructure investment from China are helping landlocked Uzbekistan expand trade in all directions. But as these countries attain sovereign credit ratings and higher investment grade status—as Uzbekistan did in February—they actually gain the confidence to resist Chinese dominance. Already Malaysia and Pakistan have substantially reduced their exposure to China in order to manage debt levels. From Nigeria to Kazakhstan to Mongolia, key resource hubs have pushed back to prevent any foreign country from owning controlling stakes in their utilities and industries. In Africa, while Chinese industrial parks and railways have helped Ethiopia raise textile exports to sustain its double-digit growth boom, numerous factories have been handed over to Indian firms due to dissatisfaction with Chinese management.
These examples are just early hints at how Eurasia is not inevitably falling under China’s sway like falling dominoes. Rather, as for most of recorded history, Asia is returning to its natural state of multipolarity among greater and lesser powers with none able to truly dominate. Indeed, while China’s forays claim the headlines, they have also unleashed an acute case of geostrategic “fear of missing out,” sparking an infrastructure arms race that will challenge China’s blitzkrieg diplomacy. Japan and India have launched their own “Connectivity Corridors” to finance and build strategic infrastructure in third world countries, and the European Union has established its own “Asia Connectivity Initiative” to capitalize on growth on the other side of Eurasia. Whether these compete with or counter China’s initiatives, they indicate that the continent’s future is far from set in stone.
Europe’s growing confidence in dealing with China is a case in point. The EU has just toughened its stance on Chinese trade policy and IP theft, even calling China a “systemic rival.” But it would be a mistake to believe that Europe has fallen into line with Washington’s trade war. European countries trade well over $500 billion more per year with Asia than they do with the U.S., and thus have more at stake in trans-Eurasian integration. Neither Germany, France or the UK has joined BRI, but all three joined the multilateral Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in 2015 over the Obama administration’s objections. Germany’s Trade and Investment Association and chambers of commerce have formulated strategies to compete for more BRI business, with Siemens signing dozens of agreements for projects with Chinese partners. The UK-China “Infrastructure Alliance” aims to put British business front and center as vendors in third world countries where Chinese investment is growing, while UK Export Finance is subsidizing more than $25 billion worth of British industry projects along its trade routes to the east. Beyond Europe’s major powers, more than a dozen mostly southern European countries have joined BRI, including most recently Italy.
Europe is showing how to engage with China while competing with it at the same time. It is precisely because Europeans have so much to gain from BRI that they successfully wrested concessions from China on cutting industrial subsidies and forced technology transfer before signing the final communique at the April 9 EU-China Summit in Brussels with Chinese premier Li Keqiang. And as Europe pursues free trade agreements with Japan, ASEAN and India, BRI will give European countries better access to Asia’s other wealthy markets as well. Each year, eastbound trains to Asia are catching up to westbound trains from China in volume. The more connected Europe becomes to Asia, the more it can compete commercially and diplomatically to dilute Chinese influence across the region.
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The U.S. needs a similar approach to Belt and Road, and to China in general. Simply declaring that there is a “new Cold War” between the U.S. and China—as everyone from prominent foreign policy pundits to the Washington Post’s editorial board have—fails to denote any actual American strategy and hasn’t inspired any allies to join its side. And, as the fall-out from the trade war suggests, it will also risk hurting the U.S. economy by weakening U.S. exports to China.
After all, BRI serves American business objectives. The primary user of the main freight rail line from Chongqing to Duisberg, Germany, is Hewlett-Packard. For American companies, BRI member countries collectively represent the next wave of global growth that they cannot afford to miss. Take engineering contractors, who face anemic U.S. infrastructure spending—and a project pipeline that increasingly points to Asia. General Electric, Honeywell International and Caterpillar all have decades of traction in Asia and are actively seeking roles as subcontractors to major Chinese firms involved in BRI-related contracts. American industry needs to promote its competitive advantages in logistics, energy services and other sectors across Asian markets—especially in South and Southeast Asia, where populations are younger and growth is accelerating.
This won’t happen on its own. The only way American firms can be induced to compete in these risky markets is if projects offer lucrative scale and risk insurance—precisely what the growing number of official entities linking up with BRI, such as the World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, provide—as well as fair commercial arbitration, which Singapore will provide in BRI courts. But naturally, such services will favor and benefit countries within BRI rather than non-members. By not joining TPP, the U.S. now has less leverage in shaping market regulations in Asia, while members such as Canada and Japan enjoy preferential access across the region. In the same way, America’s failure to engage with BRI will mean BRI member nations will dominate the lucrative contracts, while American companies will be left out.
U.S. involvement in Belt and Road will have political dividends as well as economic ones. If the U.S. is serious both about wanting to limit Chinese influence and promote multipolarity in Asia, it needs to do more than take potshots at China from outside the tent. Though at the moment BRI is merely a loose network of countries coordinating with China, it is becoming more formalized with the creation of a ministerial “Leading Group” housed within China’s State Council to liaise with other members’ foreign ministers. This presents an opportunity to weaken China’s unilateral grip on the BRI agenda. As BRI diplomacy becomes more structured, the U.S. can work behind the scenes with allies South Korea and the UAE, both active BRI members, to shape its priorities. America continues to have more influence over these and numerous other BRI states than China does—for now.
Consider how Russia successfully lobbied for India to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in 2017, diluting China’s influence in a strategic body it itself founded. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has recently been in India lobbying for it to reconsider its opposition to BRI on similar grounds. America has been on the receiving end of this shrewd tactic at the World Bank and IMF, U.S.-founded bodies from the post-war era where developing countries now have a strong voice. Now it should work with emerging powers involved in BRI to apply the same principle to China.
Importantly, influencing BRI from within does not preclude the U.S. from continuing to compete from outside as well. Last year in Papua New Guinea, for instance, the U.S., Australia, Japan, and New Zealand teamed up to win a $1.7 billion contract to build the country’s electricity grid over Chinese competitors—even though Papua New Guinea had just joined the BRI. Such a mature coalition can help structure bankable projects in basket case economies that heretofore only China has paid attention to, and is evidence of just how important the role of Western know-how is in promoting good governance in nations such as Laos, Tajikistan or Djibouti whose debts to China have mounted since joining BRI but who have little ability to stand up to China. However, to repeat the Papua New Guinea example across dozens of fragile states requires working with well-governed BRI members such as Singapore, where capital allotments from Chinese banks enable $100 billion in lending to companies that can implement high-standard projects on commercial terms. Such coalitions will be necessary to give the many weak states in the Afroeurasian realm the confidence they need to maintain sovereignty amidst China’s advances.
Weaning countries off Chinese loans requires more than just denouncing debt-trap diplomacy. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation will launch later this year, cobbling together existing U.S. aid and investment programs. But the capital it can actually deploy—at most $60 billion—will be a fraction of what developing countries need, especially compared with the lending offered by Chinese state-backed banks and funds. The recently approved Asia Reassurance Act is similarly more talk than action. Vice President Mike Pence recently said that the U.S. offers “a better way” than dealing with China, but billions of people in Asia need hard infrastructure, not soft promises.
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The greatest fallacy permeating geopolitical discourse today is the notion that the 21st century world must choose between American or Chinese leadership. The world has already voted, and the winner is neither. America’s share of the global economy and trade is shrinking, its military is over-stretched, and its credibility is in tatters due to a combination of the Iraq war, financial crisis, and Trump.
But that doesn’t mean China is taking over. In 1945, when the U.S. emerged from World War II as the world’s sole superpower, it represented fully 50 percent of the world economy. Today China represents barely 15 percent of global GDP and its economy is decelerating and its population plateauing. India is already growing more quickly than China and its younger population will soon be larger than China’s. Simply put: China is rising into a world that is already multipolar; it doesn’t displace incumbent powers such as America and Europe—whose economies are still equal or larger than China’s—and cannot prevent the rise of India nor easily subdue Japan, South Korea or Australia.
These simple geographic, historical, and economic facts are precisely why Belt and Road is a foremost national priority for China, so much so that it is now enshrined in the constitution. China existentially feels the need to diversify its trade routes to Europe, the Middle East and Africa in order to survive. Rather that perpetually vilify China, therefore, we should make sense of its fears and interests and use those to shape its future behavior. BRI is a good place to start. Its mission is perfectly laudable: To promote commerce and people-to-people exchange among almost one hundred postcolonial and post-Soviet republics. The West should strongly support this mission, for if executed correctly, it would result in greater prosperity across the developing world, enhanced Western commercial opportunities in fast-growing markets, and bring about more multipolar Asia. If the world—and the U.S.—can steer BRI correctly, the project should actually help diffuse power, not concentrate it in China’s hands.
This is entirely consistent with a smart US grand strategy of seeking a world order in which it does not have to intervene everywhere but rather balances itself, while providing greater opportunities for America to benefit from global economic growth on the other side of the planet. Remember that China did not dominate the ancient Silk Roads and will not dictate their future even as it has taken a lead role in rebuilding them. Beijing is building roads, but all roads won’t lead to Beijing.
Ruling against Stone associate
Mueller wins again with appeals court ruling against Stone associate
By DARREN SAMUELSOHN, NATASHA BERTRAND and JOSH GERSTEIN
Special counsel Robert Mueller notched yet another legal victory on Monday even though his Russia investigation is over, as a federal appeals court rejected a bid to reexamine a lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of his appointment.
In a one-sentence order, a three-judge panel from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals turned back a request for a rehearing of a case it decided in February arguing that Mueller should have been nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Separately, the D.C. Circuit on Monday also denied a petition for a rehearing before the full court.
At issue is a case challenging Mueller’s authority brought by Andrew Miller, who refused to testify before a federal grand jury under subpoena about his former employer, the longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone.
Miller’s attorneys moved to quash the subpoena by citing alleged flaws in Mueller’s appointment but lost in a unanimous opinion that found no flaw in Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s May 2017 decision to put the special counsel on the job investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Miller’s attorneys all along have said their primary goal in fighting the Mueller subpoena was to score an audience before the Supreme Court, but the clock may have run out in the process. The special counsel indicted Stone in January on charges of witness tampering and lying to congressional investigators, and then last month concluded his overall Russia investigation.
The court orders issued Monday rejected Miller’s attempt to have the court inquire into whether the dispute might be moot because the grand jury is no longer seeking testimony from the former Stone aide.
Paul Kamenar, a lawyer for Miller, has said that prosecutors told him the wind-down of Mueller’s office did not change the posture of the case and that the grand jury still needed Miller’s testimony.
And since grand juries are not supposed to be used to investigate pending cases, the stance suggests that the grand jury is still investigating something beyond the already-filed false statement and obstruction of justice charges against Stone.
The appeals court’s actions put Miller closer to a choice between going to jail and complying with the grand jury subpoena seeking his testimony. Unless he secures relief from the D.C. Circuit or the Supreme Court, the District Court’s contempt order could effectively kick in in one week.
In an interview Monday after the D.C. Circuit orders came out, Kamenar said he’d be filing a motion seeking a stay while he tries to interest the Supreme Court in the case. He also said he’d reach out to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington to see whether it still wanted Miller to appear and whether it would issue a new grand jury subpoena.
“It’s still too early to tell how this can shake out,” he said.
Mueller had a run of court victories while probing Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election and whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice to stymie the investigation. The chief judge of the U.S. District Court in D.C. also rejected Miller’s arguments. And federal judges in D.C. and Alexandria, Va., also dismissed narrower challenges to Mueller’s authority during the criminal trial of Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman.
Judge Greg Katsas, who served as a deputy White House counsel for Trump before being nominated to the bench, recused himself from the order Monday denying full court review. Trump’s other appointee on the D.C. Circuit, Neomi Rao, joined in the decision.
By DARREN SAMUELSOHN, NATASHA BERTRAND and JOSH GERSTEIN
Special counsel Robert Mueller notched yet another legal victory on Monday even though his Russia investigation is over, as a federal appeals court rejected a bid to reexamine a lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of his appointment.
In a one-sentence order, a three-judge panel from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals turned back a request for a rehearing of a case it decided in February arguing that Mueller should have been nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Separately, the D.C. Circuit on Monday also denied a petition for a rehearing before the full court.
At issue is a case challenging Mueller’s authority brought by Andrew Miller, who refused to testify before a federal grand jury under subpoena about his former employer, the longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone.
Miller’s attorneys moved to quash the subpoena by citing alleged flaws in Mueller’s appointment but lost in a unanimous opinion that found no flaw in Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s May 2017 decision to put the special counsel on the job investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Miller’s attorneys all along have said their primary goal in fighting the Mueller subpoena was to score an audience before the Supreme Court, but the clock may have run out in the process. The special counsel indicted Stone in January on charges of witness tampering and lying to congressional investigators, and then last month concluded his overall Russia investigation.
The court orders issued Monday rejected Miller’s attempt to have the court inquire into whether the dispute might be moot because the grand jury is no longer seeking testimony from the former Stone aide.
Paul Kamenar, a lawyer for Miller, has said that prosecutors told him the wind-down of Mueller’s office did not change the posture of the case and that the grand jury still needed Miller’s testimony.
And since grand juries are not supposed to be used to investigate pending cases, the stance suggests that the grand jury is still investigating something beyond the already-filed false statement and obstruction of justice charges against Stone.
The appeals court’s actions put Miller closer to a choice between going to jail and complying with the grand jury subpoena seeking his testimony. Unless he secures relief from the D.C. Circuit or the Supreme Court, the District Court’s contempt order could effectively kick in in one week.
In an interview Monday after the D.C. Circuit orders came out, Kamenar said he’d be filing a motion seeking a stay while he tries to interest the Supreme Court in the case. He also said he’d reach out to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington to see whether it still wanted Miller to appear and whether it would issue a new grand jury subpoena.
“It’s still too early to tell how this can shake out,” he said.
Mueller had a run of court victories while probing Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election and whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice to stymie the investigation. The chief judge of the U.S. District Court in D.C. also rejected Miller’s arguments. And federal judges in D.C. and Alexandria, Va., also dismissed narrower challenges to Mueller’s authority during the criminal trial of Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman.
Judge Greg Katsas, who served as a deputy White House counsel for Trump before being nominated to the bench, recused himself from the order Monday denying full court review. Trump’s other appointee on the D.C. Circuit, Neomi Rao, joined in the decision.
Pittsburgh campaign kickoff
Biden tears into Trump at Pittsburgh campaign kickoff
At his first official rally, the former veep sends a message he plans to run a general election strategy from the start.
By MARC CAPUTO
In his first official event as a 2020 presidential candidate, Joe Biden skipped past the primary on Monday and went right to the general election.
From the atmospherics of his first campaign rally to the substance of his speech, the former vice president delivered a carefully calibrated message: While his rivals are chasing the Democratic nomination, Biden plans to pursue a mission focused on Donald Trump.
“If I’m going to be able to beat Donald Trump in 2020, it’s going to happen here,” Biden told a packed crowd at the Teamsters Local 249 banquet hall.
Biden offered an economic message tailored for western Pennsylvania, where he praised organized labor and denigrated Wall Street CEOs and companies that used the Trump tax cuts to buy back stocks while laying off workers. He singled out the president by name, and at other times made implicit references that left no question about whom he was talking about.
“Donald Trump is the only president who has decided not to represent the entire country. We need a president who will work for all Americans,” Biden said, standing in front of a sign that read Biden Works for America.
“The only thing that can tear America apart is America itself. But folks, everybody knows who Donald Trump is,” he said, urging the crowd to chose “hope over fear, unity over division and, most importantly, truth over lies.”
While other Democratic contenders criticize the president in varying degrees, few have focused their attention so squarely on him. Biden announced his candidacy last week via an unorthodox video announcement aimed directly at Trump’s response to violent demonstrations in Charlottesville in 2017. And Biden’s decision to base his campaign in Philadelphia — and kick it off with a rally at the other end of the state in Pittsburgh — underscore his connection to Pennsylvania, a key industrial swing state Trump unexpectedly captured in 2016.
On Monday, Biden sought to remind those who filled the hall of his unique qualifications to wrest back working-class voters in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — two other Midwestern states Trump won in 2016 after decades in the Democratic fold in presidential elections.
“If you worry about Donald Trump being elected and he won Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin, I don’t think it’s bad at all for Biden to announce his candidacy in Pennsylvania and say, ‘I can beat him here and in those places,’” said Joe Trippi, a veteran of multiple Democratic presidential campaigns.
“Electability is important,” he said. “And it’s probably more important than, say, our differences on health care. The Democrats all want to get to the same place on health care. But you have to win to do that.”
The strategic focus on the general election is to some degree a luxury granted by Biden’s status as a front-runner and former vice president. There’s no need to establish name recognition or attempt to differentiate himself from the 19 other candidates — the party is already well-acquainted with him, for better and for worse.
And by positioning against Trump, Biden highlights one of his strengths as a candidate — the perception of electability that surrounds him. A Morning Consult/POLITICO poll earlier this month showed Biden with an 8-point lead over Trump in the general election.
“Biden is not a nuanced policy guy and he’s not a ‘blow up the world and create a new system’ candidate. He’s an institutionalist. That’s his bread and butter,” said Aren Platt, a veteran Pennsylvania Democratic consultant. “A top concern for Democrats is they want someone who can win in November and Biden can make that case and I think that’s why, for the moment, he’s not so interested in bridging the gap between old and new Democrats.”
The general election positioning is already delivering some dividends. Biden’s Charlottesville announcement video was panned by many Democrats, but it proved effective in provoking Trump to comment on the controversy and engage in an ongoing verbal tussle that only bolsters Biden’s case that he’s well-suited to take on the president.
Platt and others caution, however, that basing a primary campaign on November electability can be risky — falter in an early state after being the front-runner, and the electability argument starts to evaporate.
After his Pittsburgh event, Biden will make four stops in Iowa on Tuesday and Wednesday, travel to South Carolina over the weekend , then head to Nevada and California before returning to Philadelphia.
Joel Benenson, a top adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and President Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns, said it was clear why Biden went right after Trump in his announcement video — because no one else had.
But, Benenson noted, since Trump has been the first president in the history of the Gallup Poll not to reach 50 percent approval at this point in his term, Democrats might consider most of their candidates as good matchups against the president.
“Running as the guy to beat Trump makes sense, but on the other hand, if [Trump is] that weakened, is that really the best argument to make in a field of more than a dozen largely, very talented people?” Benenson asked. “Elections are about big things, not small things. They’re about the future and not the past.”
Benenson said he loves Biden and the help he gave Obama in the White House and on the ticket in 2008 and 2012, but whether he has a clear appeal to white working-class or other voters in 2020 is yet to be determined.
Trump also paid attention to Biden’s event, and his possible standing in Pennsylvania, by tweeting that he would beat the Democrat in the state. Trump also said the leadership of “Dues Crazy union leadership” is out of touch with its members who “love Trump. They look at our record economy, tax & reg cuts, military etc. WIN!”
Hours later, when he gave his speech, Biden said he’s “sick of this President badmouthing unions.”
Biden’s blue-collar bona fides aren’t all that he is relying on. As the other campaigns move more to the left, Biden insiders say it creates a space for him to win the forgotten, moderate voters who have a significant voice in Democratic primaries.
“The Democratic Party and the primary isn’t progressive Twitter,” said one Democrat helping Biden’s campaign. “What you see on social media is distorted.”
Harold Schaitberger, general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said his union decided to endorse Biden as soon as he got out of the starting gate because they believe he can win and that he reflects the sensibilities of their working-class members.
“Joe Biden is the candidate in our view that has the voice and the connection with the workers in middle America that abandoned the Democratic candidate in 2016,” Schaitberger said. “I’m very concerned about a Democratic Party lurching too far to the left. They might have high-minded ideals that sound good. But in our view, he’s someone who has the skill set to stay on that middle lane or middle road. He can win. That’s the real bottom line. Who can win?”
At his first official rally, the former veep sends a message he plans to run a general election strategy from the start.
By MARC CAPUTO
In his first official event as a 2020 presidential candidate, Joe Biden skipped past the primary on Monday and went right to the general election.
From the atmospherics of his first campaign rally to the substance of his speech, the former vice president delivered a carefully calibrated message: While his rivals are chasing the Democratic nomination, Biden plans to pursue a mission focused on Donald Trump.
“If I’m going to be able to beat Donald Trump in 2020, it’s going to happen here,” Biden told a packed crowd at the Teamsters Local 249 banquet hall.
Biden offered an economic message tailored for western Pennsylvania, where he praised organized labor and denigrated Wall Street CEOs and companies that used the Trump tax cuts to buy back stocks while laying off workers. He singled out the president by name, and at other times made implicit references that left no question about whom he was talking about.
“Donald Trump is the only president who has decided not to represent the entire country. We need a president who will work for all Americans,” Biden said, standing in front of a sign that read Biden Works for America.
“The only thing that can tear America apart is America itself. But folks, everybody knows who Donald Trump is,” he said, urging the crowd to chose “hope over fear, unity over division and, most importantly, truth over lies.”
While other Democratic contenders criticize the president in varying degrees, few have focused their attention so squarely on him. Biden announced his candidacy last week via an unorthodox video announcement aimed directly at Trump’s response to violent demonstrations in Charlottesville in 2017. And Biden’s decision to base his campaign in Philadelphia — and kick it off with a rally at the other end of the state in Pittsburgh — underscore his connection to Pennsylvania, a key industrial swing state Trump unexpectedly captured in 2016.
On Monday, Biden sought to remind those who filled the hall of his unique qualifications to wrest back working-class voters in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — two other Midwestern states Trump won in 2016 after decades in the Democratic fold in presidential elections.
“If you worry about Donald Trump being elected and he won Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin, I don’t think it’s bad at all for Biden to announce his candidacy in Pennsylvania and say, ‘I can beat him here and in those places,’” said Joe Trippi, a veteran of multiple Democratic presidential campaigns.
“Electability is important,” he said. “And it’s probably more important than, say, our differences on health care. The Democrats all want to get to the same place on health care. But you have to win to do that.”
The strategic focus on the general election is to some degree a luxury granted by Biden’s status as a front-runner and former vice president. There’s no need to establish name recognition or attempt to differentiate himself from the 19 other candidates — the party is already well-acquainted with him, for better and for worse.
And by positioning against Trump, Biden highlights one of his strengths as a candidate — the perception of electability that surrounds him. A Morning Consult/POLITICO poll earlier this month showed Biden with an 8-point lead over Trump in the general election.
“Biden is not a nuanced policy guy and he’s not a ‘blow up the world and create a new system’ candidate. He’s an institutionalist. That’s his bread and butter,” said Aren Platt, a veteran Pennsylvania Democratic consultant. “A top concern for Democrats is they want someone who can win in November and Biden can make that case and I think that’s why, for the moment, he’s not so interested in bridging the gap between old and new Democrats.”
The general election positioning is already delivering some dividends. Biden’s Charlottesville announcement video was panned by many Democrats, but it proved effective in provoking Trump to comment on the controversy and engage in an ongoing verbal tussle that only bolsters Biden’s case that he’s well-suited to take on the president.
Platt and others caution, however, that basing a primary campaign on November electability can be risky — falter in an early state after being the front-runner, and the electability argument starts to evaporate.
After his Pittsburgh event, Biden will make four stops in Iowa on Tuesday and Wednesday, travel to South Carolina over the weekend , then head to Nevada and California before returning to Philadelphia.
Joel Benenson, a top adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and President Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns, said it was clear why Biden went right after Trump in his announcement video — because no one else had.
But, Benenson noted, since Trump has been the first president in the history of the Gallup Poll not to reach 50 percent approval at this point in his term, Democrats might consider most of their candidates as good matchups against the president.
“Running as the guy to beat Trump makes sense, but on the other hand, if [Trump is] that weakened, is that really the best argument to make in a field of more than a dozen largely, very talented people?” Benenson asked. “Elections are about big things, not small things. They’re about the future and not the past.”
Benenson said he loves Biden and the help he gave Obama in the White House and on the ticket in 2008 and 2012, but whether he has a clear appeal to white working-class or other voters in 2020 is yet to be determined.
Trump also paid attention to Biden’s event, and his possible standing in Pennsylvania, by tweeting that he would beat the Democrat in the state. Trump also said the leadership of “Dues Crazy union leadership” is out of touch with its members who “love Trump. They look at our record economy, tax & reg cuts, military etc. WIN!”
Hours later, when he gave his speech, Biden said he’s “sick of this President badmouthing unions.”
Biden’s blue-collar bona fides aren’t all that he is relying on. As the other campaigns move more to the left, Biden insiders say it creates a space for him to win the forgotten, moderate voters who have a significant voice in Democratic primaries.
“The Democratic Party and the primary isn’t progressive Twitter,” said one Democrat helping Biden’s campaign. “What you see on social media is distorted.”
Harold Schaitberger, general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said his union decided to endorse Biden as soon as he got out of the starting gate because they believe he can win and that he reflects the sensibilities of their working-class members.
“Joe Biden is the candidate in our view that has the voice and the connection with the workers in middle America that abandoned the Democratic candidate in 2016,” Schaitberger said. “I’m very concerned about a Democratic Party lurching too far to the left. They might have high-minded ideals that sound good. But in our view, he’s someone who has the skill set to stay on that middle lane or middle road. He can win. That’s the real bottom line. Who can win?”
Barr standoff
House Democrats set the stage for a Barr standoff
The White House says Democrats are being 'childish' with their demands.
By DARREN SAMUELSOHN and ANDREW DESIDERIO
A key House committee with the power to impeach President Donald Trump is moving ahead with a Thursday hearing to question Attorney General William Barr about the Mueller report, even if the attorney general doesn’t show.
The standoff took its latest turn Monday when the Judiciary Committee formally announced plans to hold a Wednesday morning vote that would authorize the panel’s Democratic and GOP counsels to split an hour of additional questioning about the special counsel’s findings on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible obstruction of justice by Trump.
DOJ officials have objected to committee staff questioning Barr in public about the Mueller report, setting the stage for an explosive hearing Thursday. Democrats have threatened to issue a subpoena if Barr refuses to show up on Thursday.
By sticking with their proposed format for the hearing, Democrats are essentially daring the Justice Department to cave or fight back.
“Administration witnesses — or any witnesses — have to come in and be examined as the committee sees fit, not as they see fit,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
“He is supposed to show up on Thursday. And we will take whatever action to take if he doesn’t,” Nadler added.
DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said Barr was the one who volunteered to testify before Congress about the Mueller report. “Therefore, members of Congress should be the ones doing the questioning,” she said. “He remains happy to engage with members on their questions regarding the Mueller report.”
But Democrats view the Justice Department’s latest posturing as simply a continuation of the Trump administration’s attempts to stonewall their myriad investigations targeting the president and his White House. Lawmakers said allowing staff lawyers to question Barr would serve as a complement to their own grilling on Thursday morning.
“The attorney general seems to want to dictate the internal decision-making of the House Judiciary Committee. That’s plainly unacceptable to us,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of that panel, said in an interview. “We obviously can’t and don’t tell him how to run his meetings. And he can’t tell us how to run our meetings.”
“The attorney general of the United States should not be afraid of questioning by a lawyer,” Raskin added.
At the White House, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters “we’re looking at all this.” She insisted that the administration wants “to be as cooperative as possible.”
“But at the same time,” Sanders added, “you have to look at the outrageous behavior particularly of the House Democrats who ... are asking for things they know they can’t have, that they know they have no legal authority to have and frankly, they're just acting really childish.”
Republicans on the Judiciary Committee are taking Barr’s side, arguing there’s no precedent for committee staffers to question an attorney general.
A GOP aide said it would be “disrespectful to the office” of the attorney general to have staffers question Barr.
But Democrats have pointed to past instances in which a Cabinet official has taken questions from aides during a hearing, most notably when then-Attorney General Edwin Meese was questioned on Capitol Hill about the Iran-Contra scandal in 1987.
Democrats said committee staffers have questioned witnesses during the Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton impeachment hearings, too; and last year, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee used an outside counsel to question Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who came forward during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation process to accuse the then-judge of sexual misconduct.
Staffers also participated in interviews of former FBI Director James Comey and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch when Republicans controlled the House for the first two years of the Trump presidency.
As of Monday evening, lawmakers were not certain whether Barr would commit to attending Thursday’s hearing.
The House hearing is one of two scheduled appearances for Barr this week on Capitol Hill.
The GOP-led Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning gets the first opportunity to question the attorney general, a session that will include its own share of theatrics with three Democrats running for the White House — Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris — serving on the panel.
The 2020 hopefuls will share the stage with Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), an outspoken Trump ally who drew criticism on Sunday when he said he doesn’t care if the president told then-White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller during the early stages of the Russia probe — one of a dozen instances of potential obstruction of justice involving the president that the special counsel examined.
Sanders praised the Senate hearing as “the way the process should work” — an open hearing featuring questions from lawmakers.
Mueller’s redacted findings released earlier this month included reams of evidence about the president’s efforts to thwart or end the Mueller investigation, even as the special counsel also concluded there was no criminal conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and the Russian government to influence the 2016 election.
So far, Democratic leaders have pumped the brakes on using the Mueller report as grounds to formally launch impeachment proceedings, though they continue to press for more evidence and information from the special counsel’s investigators.
A Judiciary Committee subpoena already issued to DOJ demands access by Wednesday to the unredacted Mueller report, as well as its underlying grand jury evidence and testimony.
“We expect the department to adhere to the subpoena,” Nadler said Monday. “As with any subpoena, we are open to negotiating certain things to make an accommodation with the executive branch.”
Nadler said the Justice Department’s current offer — to permit only select lawmakers and staffers to view a less-redacted version of the report in a closed setting — remains inadequate.
“It’s totally unacceptable,” Nadler said. “It’s useless.”
Trump on Monday also added to the partisan tension by praising Barr for his handling of the Mueller probe.
“Bob Mueller was a great HERO to the Radical Left Democrats,” the president posted on Twitter. “Now that the Mueller Report is finished, with a finding of NO COLLUSION & NO OBSTRUCTION (based on a review of Report by our highly respected A.G.), the Dems are going around saying, ‘Bob who, sorry, don’t know the man.”
The White House says Democrats are being 'childish' with their demands.
By DARREN SAMUELSOHN and ANDREW DESIDERIO
A key House committee with the power to impeach President Donald Trump is moving ahead with a Thursday hearing to question Attorney General William Barr about the Mueller report, even if the attorney general doesn’t show.
The standoff took its latest turn Monday when the Judiciary Committee formally announced plans to hold a Wednesday morning vote that would authorize the panel’s Democratic and GOP counsels to split an hour of additional questioning about the special counsel’s findings on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible obstruction of justice by Trump.
DOJ officials have objected to committee staff questioning Barr in public about the Mueller report, setting the stage for an explosive hearing Thursday. Democrats have threatened to issue a subpoena if Barr refuses to show up on Thursday.
By sticking with their proposed format for the hearing, Democrats are essentially daring the Justice Department to cave or fight back.
“Administration witnesses — or any witnesses — have to come in and be examined as the committee sees fit, not as they see fit,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
“He is supposed to show up on Thursday. And we will take whatever action to take if he doesn’t,” Nadler added.
DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said Barr was the one who volunteered to testify before Congress about the Mueller report. “Therefore, members of Congress should be the ones doing the questioning,” she said. “He remains happy to engage with members on their questions regarding the Mueller report.”
But Democrats view the Justice Department’s latest posturing as simply a continuation of the Trump administration’s attempts to stonewall their myriad investigations targeting the president and his White House. Lawmakers said allowing staff lawyers to question Barr would serve as a complement to their own grilling on Thursday morning.
“The attorney general seems to want to dictate the internal decision-making of the House Judiciary Committee. That’s plainly unacceptable to us,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of that panel, said in an interview. “We obviously can’t and don’t tell him how to run his meetings. And he can’t tell us how to run our meetings.”
“The attorney general of the United States should not be afraid of questioning by a lawyer,” Raskin added.
At the White House, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters “we’re looking at all this.” She insisted that the administration wants “to be as cooperative as possible.”
“But at the same time,” Sanders added, “you have to look at the outrageous behavior particularly of the House Democrats who ... are asking for things they know they can’t have, that they know they have no legal authority to have and frankly, they're just acting really childish.”
Republicans on the Judiciary Committee are taking Barr’s side, arguing there’s no precedent for committee staffers to question an attorney general.
A GOP aide said it would be “disrespectful to the office” of the attorney general to have staffers question Barr.
But Democrats have pointed to past instances in which a Cabinet official has taken questions from aides during a hearing, most notably when then-Attorney General Edwin Meese was questioned on Capitol Hill about the Iran-Contra scandal in 1987.
Democrats said committee staffers have questioned witnesses during the Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton impeachment hearings, too; and last year, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee used an outside counsel to question Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who came forward during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation process to accuse the then-judge of sexual misconduct.
Staffers also participated in interviews of former FBI Director James Comey and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch when Republicans controlled the House for the first two years of the Trump presidency.
As of Monday evening, lawmakers were not certain whether Barr would commit to attending Thursday’s hearing.
The House hearing is one of two scheduled appearances for Barr this week on Capitol Hill.
The GOP-led Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning gets the first opportunity to question the attorney general, a session that will include its own share of theatrics with three Democrats running for the White House — Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris — serving on the panel.
The 2020 hopefuls will share the stage with Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), an outspoken Trump ally who drew criticism on Sunday when he said he doesn’t care if the president told then-White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller during the early stages of the Russia probe — one of a dozen instances of potential obstruction of justice involving the president that the special counsel examined.
Sanders praised the Senate hearing as “the way the process should work” — an open hearing featuring questions from lawmakers.
Mueller’s redacted findings released earlier this month included reams of evidence about the president’s efforts to thwart or end the Mueller investigation, even as the special counsel also concluded there was no criminal conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and the Russian government to influence the 2016 election.
So far, Democratic leaders have pumped the brakes on using the Mueller report as grounds to formally launch impeachment proceedings, though they continue to press for more evidence and information from the special counsel’s investigators.
A Judiciary Committee subpoena already issued to DOJ demands access by Wednesday to the unredacted Mueller report, as well as its underlying grand jury evidence and testimony.
“We expect the department to adhere to the subpoena,” Nadler said Monday. “As with any subpoena, we are open to negotiating certain things to make an accommodation with the executive branch.”
Nadler said the Justice Department’s current offer — to permit only select lawmakers and staffers to view a less-redacted version of the report in a closed setting — remains inadequate.
“It’s totally unacceptable,” Nadler said. “It’s useless.”
Trump on Monday also added to the partisan tension by praising Barr for his handling of the Mueller probe.
“Bob Mueller was a great HERO to the Radical Left Democrats,” the president posted on Twitter. “Now that the Mueller Report is finished, with a finding of NO COLLUSION & NO OBSTRUCTION (based on a review of Report by our highly respected A.G.), the Dems are going around saying, ‘Bob who, sorry, don’t know the man.”
Chuck and Nancy’s rematch
‘I hope he has learned his lesson’: Chuck and Nancy’s rematch with Trump
The Democratic leaders see if they can find common ground with the president.
By HEATHER CAYGLE and BURGESS EVERETT
The last time Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer met with Donald Trump it was an unequivocal disaster, culminating in the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.
Now, more than four months later, the Democratic leaders and Trump say they are seeking a reset with a big infrastructure bill. But it’s more than just the future of America’s bridges and roads at stake — the White House meeting Tuesday morning is likely to reveal whether anything at all can get done in Washington over the next 18 months.
Cooperation will not be easy. A bipartisan disaster aid bill has stalled over Trump’s resistance to giving Puerto Rico more relief. Both parties talk a big game about bringing down prescription drug prices but aren’t anywhere near a deal. And a multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure package would require tax increases or other painful compromises.
“Isn’t that ironic? We’re talking about an infrastructure bill of construction for generations to come in the future and we can’t solve the current disaster bill, which is something that needs to be funded now,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said.
Trump and House Democrats, meanwhile, are engaged in a bitter constitutional clash over the sprawling investigations into the president, his administration and his personal finances. Democratic leaders are also weighing how harshly to condemn Trump — including the possibility of impeachment — after special counsel Robert Mueller presented damning evidence that the president repeatedly attempted to obstruct the Russia probe.
Democrats head into the meeting with hopes of accomplishing two goals, according to an aide. First, they want to demonstrate their ability to work across party lines even as they investigate Trump. And leadership wants to allow House members, particularly Democrats in swing districts, to pursue legislation that isn’t destined for the graveyard of the GOP-led Senate.
Democrats are also preparing for an unpredictable Trump. The president surprised them in December by allowing television cameras to roll during the entire meeting, capturing a dramatic tit for tat between the House speaker, Senate minority leader and president over Trump’s proposed wall on the southern border.
“I hope he has learned his lesson” after televising that meeting, Pelosi said in a leadership huddle Monday night, according to a source in the room.
Democrats are unsure whether Tuesday’s gathering will be open to the cameras and huddled Monday night to strategize ahead of their meeting with the president. Pelosi and Schumer will also be accompanied by several senior House and Senate Democrats who will have a say in any infrastructure deal.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said “everybody loves infrastructure in the abstract” but that paying for such a bill is always a challenge.
Even if the policy details were simpler a bipartisan Rose Garden signing ceremony seems far off. Pelosi and Schumer laid out a series of hefty of demands Monday in a move that could blow up the talks before they even begin. Democrats say Trump must consider rolling back some of the 2017 Republican tax cuts — his signature legislative accomplishment — to pay for new investments.
“Working people shouldn’t take another big financial hit in order to be able to get to work,” Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said. “Particularly not when the big multinational companies, which are causing most of the wear and tear to the infrastructure, got all these big tax breaks.”
The White House meeting is the first since the blow-up over government funding in January and one of a handful of times Pelosi and Trump have been in the same room since she reclaimed the speaker's gavel. Since then, she’s repeatedly challenged Trump amid growing partisan recriminations.
Both sides publicly insist they’re eager to reach a deal on a major piece of legislation before the 2020 campaign consumes Washington next year and grinds Congress to a halt.
“We’ll have to hold hands and jump together,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said of a big infrastructure package. “As long as everybody views it as a collective win, I think it will be doable.”
Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 House Democrat, said in an interview that both sides recognize they need each other to get a major deal done and that that could override bad feelings over the House investigations.
“Obviously he can’t get infrastructure on his own. We can’t get it done on our own,” Hoyer said after a Democratic leadership meeting Monday night. “And therefore, if we’re going to get it done, we need to sit down and talk.”
The politics of a bipartisan infrastructure deal are complicated. House Democratic leaders might be eager to help their vulnerable freshmen notch a win. But they may be reluctant to do the same for Trump as he gears up for reelection.
The subject is already taking on a partisan sheen, and the two parties start far apart.
In their letter to Trump, Pelosi and Schumer said any deal would have to fulfill several Democratic priorities — including how to come up with potentially trillions of dollars in federal funding, an issue that has vexed leaders of both parties for decades.
Trump and Senate Republicans are unlikely to agree to renegotiate their tax law, leaving it unclear how to pay for any bipartisan infrastructure bill. Lawmakers have refused to raise the gas tax to fund the nation’s highways and transit systems since it was last increased more than 25 years ago.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called the meeting a “good first step" on Monday but declined to say what, if anything, Trump would propose to Democrats.
“Certainly, it is a big step that both sides who, frankly, had a lot of hostility toward one another over the last couple months are sitting down at the table and discussing an issue that has to be addressed,” she told reporters.
The meeting comes after Pelosi requested it in a phone call the first week of April. Trump and Pelosi have not spoken since that phone call, according to the White House.
Sanders also suggested that Trump could dive into another thorny issue that has repeatedly divided the two parties: immigration.
There are no plans for Trump to discuss the Mueller report or the House’s investigations, but Trump has repeatedly railed against Democrats for “presidential harassment.”
If challenged, Pelosi would almost certainly stand firm against Trump. House Democrats are moving forward on an array of probes into the president, simultaneously threatening to damage Trump’s presidency while vowing they can work with him on areas of agreement.
House Democrats are expected to hear from Attorney General William Barr this week on his handling of the Mueller report, assuming he shows up, as well as a former top official on potential security clearance abuses inside the administration. House Democrats have repeatedly sparred with top administration officials over the parameters of such hearings and their refusal to testify or provide documents.
Senate Democrats will press Barr at a hearing on Wednesday.
Asked about Trump’s relationship with Democrats ahead of the infrastructure meeting, Durbin wasn’t sure where to start: “The state of it? Adversarial in many aspects.”
Trump “never calls, you know?” Durbin added. “I know he has my number.”
The Democratic leaders see if they can find common ground with the president.
By HEATHER CAYGLE and BURGESS EVERETT
The last time Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer met with Donald Trump it was an unequivocal disaster, culminating in the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.
Now, more than four months later, the Democratic leaders and Trump say they are seeking a reset with a big infrastructure bill. But it’s more than just the future of America’s bridges and roads at stake — the White House meeting Tuesday morning is likely to reveal whether anything at all can get done in Washington over the next 18 months.
Cooperation will not be easy. A bipartisan disaster aid bill has stalled over Trump’s resistance to giving Puerto Rico more relief. Both parties talk a big game about bringing down prescription drug prices but aren’t anywhere near a deal. And a multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure package would require tax increases or other painful compromises.
“Isn’t that ironic? We’re talking about an infrastructure bill of construction for generations to come in the future and we can’t solve the current disaster bill, which is something that needs to be funded now,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said.
Trump and House Democrats, meanwhile, are engaged in a bitter constitutional clash over the sprawling investigations into the president, his administration and his personal finances. Democratic leaders are also weighing how harshly to condemn Trump — including the possibility of impeachment — after special counsel Robert Mueller presented damning evidence that the president repeatedly attempted to obstruct the Russia probe.
Democrats head into the meeting with hopes of accomplishing two goals, according to an aide. First, they want to demonstrate their ability to work across party lines even as they investigate Trump. And leadership wants to allow House members, particularly Democrats in swing districts, to pursue legislation that isn’t destined for the graveyard of the GOP-led Senate.
Democrats are also preparing for an unpredictable Trump. The president surprised them in December by allowing television cameras to roll during the entire meeting, capturing a dramatic tit for tat between the House speaker, Senate minority leader and president over Trump’s proposed wall on the southern border.
“I hope he has learned his lesson” after televising that meeting, Pelosi said in a leadership huddle Monday night, according to a source in the room.
Democrats are unsure whether Tuesday’s gathering will be open to the cameras and huddled Monday night to strategize ahead of their meeting with the president. Pelosi and Schumer will also be accompanied by several senior House and Senate Democrats who will have a say in any infrastructure deal.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said “everybody loves infrastructure in the abstract” but that paying for such a bill is always a challenge.
Even if the policy details were simpler a bipartisan Rose Garden signing ceremony seems far off. Pelosi and Schumer laid out a series of hefty of demands Monday in a move that could blow up the talks before they even begin. Democrats say Trump must consider rolling back some of the 2017 Republican tax cuts — his signature legislative accomplishment — to pay for new investments.
“Working people shouldn’t take another big financial hit in order to be able to get to work,” Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said. “Particularly not when the big multinational companies, which are causing most of the wear and tear to the infrastructure, got all these big tax breaks.”
The White House meeting is the first since the blow-up over government funding in January and one of a handful of times Pelosi and Trump have been in the same room since she reclaimed the speaker's gavel. Since then, she’s repeatedly challenged Trump amid growing partisan recriminations.
Both sides publicly insist they’re eager to reach a deal on a major piece of legislation before the 2020 campaign consumes Washington next year and grinds Congress to a halt.
“We’ll have to hold hands and jump together,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said of a big infrastructure package. “As long as everybody views it as a collective win, I think it will be doable.”
Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 House Democrat, said in an interview that both sides recognize they need each other to get a major deal done and that that could override bad feelings over the House investigations.
“Obviously he can’t get infrastructure on his own. We can’t get it done on our own,” Hoyer said after a Democratic leadership meeting Monday night. “And therefore, if we’re going to get it done, we need to sit down and talk.”
The politics of a bipartisan infrastructure deal are complicated. House Democratic leaders might be eager to help their vulnerable freshmen notch a win. But they may be reluctant to do the same for Trump as he gears up for reelection.
The subject is already taking on a partisan sheen, and the two parties start far apart.
In their letter to Trump, Pelosi and Schumer said any deal would have to fulfill several Democratic priorities — including how to come up with potentially trillions of dollars in federal funding, an issue that has vexed leaders of both parties for decades.
Trump and Senate Republicans are unlikely to agree to renegotiate their tax law, leaving it unclear how to pay for any bipartisan infrastructure bill. Lawmakers have refused to raise the gas tax to fund the nation’s highways and transit systems since it was last increased more than 25 years ago.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called the meeting a “good first step" on Monday but declined to say what, if anything, Trump would propose to Democrats.
“Certainly, it is a big step that both sides who, frankly, had a lot of hostility toward one another over the last couple months are sitting down at the table and discussing an issue that has to be addressed,” she told reporters.
The meeting comes after Pelosi requested it in a phone call the first week of April. Trump and Pelosi have not spoken since that phone call, according to the White House.
Sanders also suggested that Trump could dive into another thorny issue that has repeatedly divided the two parties: immigration.
There are no plans for Trump to discuss the Mueller report or the House’s investigations, but Trump has repeatedly railed against Democrats for “presidential harassment.”
If challenged, Pelosi would almost certainly stand firm against Trump. House Democrats are moving forward on an array of probes into the president, simultaneously threatening to damage Trump’s presidency while vowing they can work with him on areas of agreement.
House Democrats are expected to hear from Attorney General William Barr this week on his handling of the Mueller report, assuming he shows up, as well as a former top official on potential security clearance abuses inside the administration. House Democrats have repeatedly sparred with top administration officials over the parameters of such hearings and their refusal to testify or provide documents.
Senate Democrats will press Barr at a hearing on Wednesday.
Asked about Trump’s relationship with Democrats ahead of the infrastructure meeting, Durbin wasn’t sure where to start: “The state of it? Adversarial in many aspects.”
Trump “never calls, you know?” Durbin added. “I know he has my number.”
Calls for changes to asylum....
Trump calls for changes to toughen path to asylum
The president’s memo includes orders to limit work authorizations, impose application fees and speed up court decisions.
By TED HESSON and WESLEY MORGAN
President Donald Trump is calling on top immigration officials to take steps that toughen and accelerate the process for seeking asylum in the United States.
In a memo issued Monday evening, Trump ordered the development of regulations to bar certain asylum seekers from obtaining work authorization, impose fees on applications, speed up court decisions and limit access to other forms of relief.
The measures — framed as a response to a surge of migrants at the southwest border — would represent a further escalation of Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda. However, they will not immediately go into effect. Instead, the president called on the secretaries of the Homeland Security and Justice departments to “take all appropriate actions“ to implement the restrictive goals within 90 days.
Still, the prospective regulations called for in Monday’s memo — if and when they are issued — will almost certainly face court challenges.
The Trump administration has experimented with a range of policies to discourage the arrival of Central American families and children at the border, but without much discernible success. Federal courts have sidelined several high-profile initiatives, including an attempt late last year to block migrants who cross between ports of entry from seeking asylum.
Meanwhile, the number of border arrests — a metric used to estimate crossings — have risen in recent months. In March, the U.S. Border Patrol arrested nearly 93,000 people at the border, a monthly tally on par with higher immigration levels of the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s.
Kirstjen Nielsen resigned as Homeland Security secretary earlier this month as border arrests skyrocketed. White House senior adviser Stephen Miller reportedly pressed for a broader DHS shake-up to forge ahead with more aggressive immigration efforts.
Now the task of carrying out Trump’s agenda is left to acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan, who will testify before two separate congressional committees this week to defend the administration’s budget request for the coming year.
Trump regularly portrays immigrants arriving at the border as criminals and declared a national emergency in February to access roughly $6.7 billion for a border wall. The president said in the memo issued Monday that the latest measures would “strengthen asylum procedures to safeguard our system against rampant abuse.”
He followed up the memo with a post on Twitter about the dangers he sees at the border.
“The Coyotes and Drug Cartels are in total control of the Mexico side of the Southern Border,” he wrote. “They have labs nearby where they make drugs to sell into the U.S. Mexico, one of the most dangerous country’s in the world, must eradicate this problem now. Also, stop the MARCH to U.S.”
The push to toughen the asylum process followed news earlier in the day that acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan will send 320 more troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to help transport and care for migrants, bringing the total number of active-duty military personnel to just over 3,200.
The new deployment, at the request of DHS, is meant to free up Customs and Border Protection agents by ferrying migrants and “providing administrative support, including providing heating, meal distribution and monitoring the welfare of individuals in CBP custody,” Army Lt. Col. Jamie Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement.
The Pentagon is also dispatching additional military lawyers to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“DoD personnel will not perform any law enforcement functions,” Davis stressed. “In any situation that requires DoD personnel to be in proximity to migrants, DHS law enforcement personnel will be present to conduct all custodial and law enforcement functions, and provide force protection of military personnel.”
In a separate move, ICE announced Monday that it would deploy more officers to the border to root out migrants fraudulently posing as family members.
The Trump administration’s controversial reliance on the active-duty military for the border mission began last fall, peaking just below 6,000 in December as Army soldiers and Marines installed barrier fencing. About half that many were extended through Sept. 30, 2019, when the new deployment will also expire.
Some 2,000 part-time National Guard troops have also been deployed to the Southwest since last spring.
The plans for additional troops were first revealed last week by The Washington Post, which reported that the troops would be granted waivers to come into contact with detained migrants — like members of the military who are already providing emergency medical care.
In the asylum memo issued Monday, Trump called for his administration to put out regulations that ensure asylum petitions before an immigration judge are resolved within 180 days, “absent exceptional circumstances.”
In addition, the president ordered federal officials to develop regulations that add a fee to asylum applications and bar immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally from receiving work authorization while their applications are pending.
The memo calls for the reassignment of federal personnel to “improve the integrity” of the credible-fear interview process, the first step in certain asylum claims.
The White House also calls for regulations that would place asylum seekers who pass a credible-fear interview or demonstrate a credible fear of torture into asylum-only proceedings. Such a change would keep them from seeking other forms of relief during the process.
Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, praised the prospective asylum measures in a written statement.
“Our asylum system is broken and human smugglers and criminals are profiting from its weaknesses and flaws,” he said. “President Trump is doing everything within his power to address the crisis.”
The president’s memo includes orders to limit work authorizations, impose application fees and speed up court decisions.
By TED HESSON and WESLEY MORGAN
President Donald Trump is calling on top immigration officials to take steps that toughen and accelerate the process for seeking asylum in the United States.
In a memo issued Monday evening, Trump ordered the development of regulations to bar certain asylum seekers from obtaining work authorization, impose fees on applications, speed up court decisions and limit access to other forms of relief.
The measures — framed as a response to a surge of migrants at the southwest border — would represent a further escalation of Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda. However, they will not immediately go into effect. Instead, the president called on the secretaries of the Homeland Security and Justice departments to “take all appropriate actions“ to implement the restrictive goals within 90 days.
Still, the prospective regulations called for in Monday’s memo — if and when they are issued — will almost certainly face court challenges.
The Trump administration has experimented with a range of policies to discourage the arrival of Central American families and children at the border, but without much discernible success. Federal courts have sidelined several high-profile initiatives, including an attempt late last year to block migrants who cross between ports of entry from seeking asylum.
Meanwhile, the number of border arrests — a metric used to estimate crossings — have risen in recent months. In March, the U.S. Border Patrol arrested nearly 93,000 people at the border, a monthly tally on par with higher immigration levels of the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s.
Kirstjen Nielsen resigned as Homeland Security secretary earlier this month as border arrests skyrocketed. White House senior adviser Stephen Miller reportedly pressed for a broader DHS shake-up to forge ahead with more aggressive immigration efforts.
Now the task of carrying out Trump’s agenda is left to acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan, who will testify before two separate congressional committees this week to defend the administration’s budget request for the coming year.
Trump regularly portrays immigrants arriving at the border as criminals and declared a national emergency in February to access roughly $6.7 billion for a border wall. The president said in the memo issued Monday that the latest measures would “strengthen asylum procedures to safeguard our system against rampant abuse.”
He followed up the memo with a post on Twitter about the dangers he sees at the border.
“The Coyotes and Drug Cartels are in total control of the Mexico side of the Southern Border,” he wrote. “They have labs nearby where they make drugs to sell into the U.S. Mexico, one of the most dangerous country’s in the world, must eradicate this problem now. Also, stop the MARCH to U.S.”
The push to toughen the asylum process followed news earlier in the day that acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan will send 320 more troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to help transport and care for migrants, bringing the total number of active-duty military personnel to just over 3,200.
The new deployment, at the request of DHS, is meant to free up Customs and Border Protection agents by ferrying migrants and “providing administrative support, including providing heating, meal distribution and monitoring the welfare of individuals in CBP custody,” Army Lt. Col. Jamie Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement.
The Pentagon is also dispatching additional military lawyers to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“DoD personnel will not perform any law enforcement functions,” Davis stressed. “In any situation that requires DoD personnel to be in proximity to migrants, DHS law enforcement personnel will be present to conduct all custodial and law enforcement functions, and provide force protection of military personnel.”
In a separate move, ICE announced Monday that it would deploy more officers to the border to root out migrants fraudulently posing as family members.
The Trump administration’s controversial reliance on the active-duty military for the border mission began last fall, peaking just below 6,000 in December as Army soldiers and Marines installed barrier fencing. About half that many were extended through Sept. 30, 2019, when the new deployment will also expire.
Some 2,000 part-time National Guard troops have also been deployed to the Southwest since last spring.
The plans for additional troops were first revealed last week by The Washington Post, which reported that the troops would be granted waivers to come into contact with detained migrants — like members of the military who are already providing emergency medical care.
In the asylum memo issued Monday, Trump called for his administration to put out regulations that ensure asylum petitions before an immigration judge are resolved within 180 days, “absent exceptional circumstances.”
In addition, the president ordered federal officials to develop regulations that add a fee to asylum applications and bar immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally from receiving work authorization while their applications are pending.
The memo calls for the reassignment of federal personnel to “improve the integrity” of the credible-fear interview process, the first step in certain asylum claims.
The White House also calls for regulations that would place asylum seekers who pass a credible-fear interview or demonstrate a credible fear of torture into asylum-only proceedings. Such a change would keep them from seeking other forms of relief during the process.
Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, praised the prospective asylum measures in a written statement.
“Our asylum system is broken and human smugglers and criminals are profiting from its weaknesses and flaws,” he said. “President Trump is doing everything within his power to address the crisis.”
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