Month: March 2019

Another Central American migrant caravan is reportedly forming, but its final destination is not the U.S.-Mexico border, according to immigration activists and Mexican media.

As many as 15,000 people could travel in the migrant caravan scheduled to leave Honduras Jan. 15, according to reports cited by The San Diego Union-Tribune.

“We assume that this caravan … will pick up more people in El Salvador and Guatemala. But their aim is to arrive in Chiapas and request work there,” Irma Garrido of migrant advocate group Reactiva Tijuana Foundation said according to a story by Mexico News Daily Monday.

President Donald Trump tweeted about the caravan Friday morning and discussed closing the U.S.-Mexico border and ending U.S. foreign aid to Central American countries.

“Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are doing nothing for the United States but taking our money. Word is that a new Caravan is forming in Honduras and they are doing nothing about it. We will be cutting off all aid to these 3 countries – taking advantage of U.S. for years!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

His tweet came just a few weeks after the U.S. promised $5.8 billion in aid and investment Dec. 18, reported The Associated Press.

But the migrants may not try to make it to the U.S. and instead are interested in working on railroad and reforestation projects announced by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, reported Mexico Daily News.

Many asylum seekers are still on the Mexico side of the border and have been for months because of the Trump administration’s new directive of requiring them to wait in Mexico while their claims are processed. The directive is likely to be challenged in court by immigration-rights groups who argue it violates international laws and the Constitution’s guarantee of due process.

Thousands of caravan members are temporarily staying in the Mexican city of Tijuana and costing the city roughly $28,000 a day, Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum revealed.

Several caravans of Central American migrants headed for the U.S. border have made their way north in 2018. One caravan was set to arrive around the time of the November midterm elections and ignited a firestorm of debate on both the left and the right.

News of the potential 2019 caravan comes as Congress is at a stalemate over a government shutdown triggered by Democrats’ refusal to support funding for Trump’s border wall.

French police arrested hundreds of protesters associated with the so-called Yellow Vest movement as France is now dealing with more fallout from a failed set of carbon taxes designed to tackle climate change.

Police arrested more than 700 people Saturday morning and searched protesters for items like the now-famed yellows vests they wear to signify allegiance to the country’s working class. Four people have died and scores more wounded during the weeks-long protests, which began in mid-November.

Protesters attempted to set a drugstore ablaze on the Champs-Élysées, placing burning Christmas trees against the building. A trove of riot police eventually dispersed the crowd and knocked down barricades the crowd placed in front of the buildings Officials hoped French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to nix an unpopular carbon tax might help defuse the situation.

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Those hopes were dashed on Saturday. “We drove all night,” Julien Lezer, an electrician from a resort town in France, told The New York Times. “We don’t agree with the current system anymore; it doesn’t represent us. It’s not in the regions that things change; it’s in Paris. It’s when the people from the regions go to Paris that the politicians listen.”

Others shared similar concerns about the direction Macron is attempting to take France.

Axelle Cavalheiro, who traveled to Paris from a rural section of France known for its agriculture, told reporters. “We are overtaxed; there are taxes on everything, gas,” he said. “At the Élysée, they spend 300,000 euros on carpeting, 10,000 a month for the hairdresser,” Cavalheiro noted, referring to the presidential palace.

Another demonstrator named John Schiltz, a train-track worker, promised to keep protesting until Macron resigns. “He has to go,” he told reporters, referring to the former banker-turned French president. “He’s adding all these taxes without helping us at all, it’s just tax, tax, tax.”

The protesters are growing louder as Macron’s approval rating dwindles. Still, the number of protesters has fallen since the demonstrations began in November; nearly 300,000 people turned out Nov. 17, and less than half of that on Dec. 1, according to French authorities. Officials have relied on armored vehicles to patrol Paris, which hasn’t happened since WWII.

Some are worried that the Yellow Vest movement could spread elsewhere. Police used extraordinary means to put down copycat protests in Belgium, another country seeking to enact stiff taxes on carbon. About 100 people were arrested as the police used tear gas and water cannons against Belgium protesters.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Sunday that he will “absolutely” investigate allegations made in a controversial BuzzFeed article even though the report has been directly disputed by the special counsel’s office.

“Absolutely. Absolutely,” Schiff told CBS’s “Face the Nation” when asked whether he would investigate allegations laid out in a BuzzFeed article published on Thursday.

“Congress has a fundamental interest in two things. First, getting to the bottom why this witness came before us and lied, and who else was knowledgeable that this was a lie,” the California Democrat added.

But in a rare move, the special counsel issued an on-the-record statement disputing the key allegations made in the BuzzFeed story.

“BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate,” Peter Carr, a spokesman for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, said in a statement on Friday night.

Schiff said that he assumed the Mueller statement was prompted by the reaction to the BuzzFeed story.

“Also it may have to do with the special council wanting to use Michael Cohen as a witness in further prosecutions and wanted to make sure that the public didn’t have the perception he was saying more than he was saying, at least to the special council,” Schiff said.

A recent profile piece has identified several progressive institutions that are funding the Sunrise Movement, a nascent environmentalist organization that is quickly wielding influence in Washington, D.C.

Founded in April 2017, the Sunrise Movement is a newcomer among the many green organizations that have already been established for generations. However, the youth-led climate group has quickly garnered national attention and high-dollar donations from across the country. Between its 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) entities, the group was able to raise just shy of $1 million during 2018 — and members intend to raise $2.5 million in 2019.

Despite growing attention from the media, it’s been difficult to pinpoint exactly who is funding the Sunrise Movement. The group is not legally required to disclose their donors. However, a recent report from Inside Philanthropy, an outlet focused on philanthropic groups and their big donors, shed some light.

The Rockefeller Fund, the Wallace Global Fund and the Winslow Foundation are core funders of Sunrise Movement. The three groups have continued to finance a large portion of Sunrise’s operations, with institutional funders making up 55 percent of the group’s 2018 budget. Thirty-five percent of its budget came from individual donors, and the rest came from non-profit partners.

Sunrise’s core funders have a long history of bankrolling left-wing activities.

The Global Wallace Fund has given nearly $7 million to population control groups since the 1990s. The Rockefeller Family Fund has led a war against ExxonMobil, acknowledging that it has colluded with Democratic attorneys general and funded negative media coverage against the oil company.

“What’s been nice about [the past month] is that our impact is incredibly clear and everybody is seeing it, because of the way we’ve been able to put truly ambitious and truly equitable climate action on the map in a way that nobody expected,” William Lawrence, co-founder and development director for Sunrise, stated. “That’s opened some doors that might have been closed before, because people are seeing the value of movement building.”

Sunrise, which has been an ardent supporter of the Green New Deal, protested outside Nancy Pelosi’s office late last year, demanding the Speaker-in-waiting take more action on climate change. Their efforts received widespread attention when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — now a New York Democratic congresswoman — joined them in protest.

The group enjoyed a surge in donations after the protest.

At least some of the salaries for Sunrise Movement staffers, according to Inside Philanthropies, are not based on conventional compensation agreements, but on what members claim they need to support themselves.

Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis signed the “National Popular Vote Act” into law Friday in an effort to elect the next U.S. president by popular vote.

This makes Colorado the 13th jurisdiction (12 states, plus the District of Columbia) enacting similar legislation to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC).

The law, having made its way through both legislative chambers without one Republican vote, commits Colorado’s nine electoral votes to the presidential candidate who achieves the majority of votes of the aggregate states regardless of how Colorado actually votes.

The NPVIC is an agreement between states to pool their electoral votes and voting results together into one aggregate pot. The candidate with the majority receives all electoral votes, regardless of individual state results. States who have formally joined the compact represent 181 electoral votes. The compact becomes official when that number hits 270, or enough votes to elect the president.

Jurisdictions that have joined include (electoral votes in parens): California (55), New York (29), Illinois (20), New Jersey (14), Washington (12), Massachusetts (11), Maryland (10), Colorado (9), Connecticut (7), Hawaii (4), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), and the District of Columbia (3). All of them carried former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The current Electoral College works like this: Colorado cast 2,780,247 votes in the 2016 presidential election. Of those, 1,338,370 were for Clinton, 1,202,484 were for Donald Trump and 238,893 were for other candidates. Consequently, Colorado awarded all nine of its electoral votes to Clinton, which is what electors do in winner-take-all states (every state except Maine and Nebraska).

Popular opposition to the NPVIC claims it abolishes the Electoral College, which it doesn’t technically do, since that would require amending the Constitution (which requires two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the states). Rather, by binding electors to vote for candidates achieving a plurality outside their own state, it achieves the results of a popular vote while leaving the

The impact of voter fraud would also increase exponentially, according to opponents.

“Currently, a fraudulent vote is counted only in the district in which it was cast and therefore can affect the electoral votes only in that particular state” said Michael Norton, president of the Colorado Freedom Institute, in an op-ed for the Colorado Springs Gazette. “Under the NPV, however, vote fraud in any state would affect the aggregate national vote. It is obvious that there would be a drastic increase in the potential benefit obtained from casting fraudulent ballots in larger states.”

NPVIC will likely be challenged in the courts.

“I think the reason you’ve seen nothing so far is it’s not actionable yet,” John Samples, vice president of Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., told The Washington Free Beacon. “The compact is designed in such a way that it doesn’t come into existence until you get that state that provides the [270 vote] majority. So you have to have states with a majority of Electoral College votes before the compact exists. So it doesn’t now, and presumably anyone that sued to stop this would lack standing.”

Currently, two more bills wait for a governor’s signature — one in Delaware and another in New Mexico. This will bring the total electoral votes to 189. Legislation has been introduced in Nevada (6), Oregon (7) and Maine (4) — all states with Democratic governing “trifectas,” or control of all three branches of state government.

Work is expected to begin next year on a long-planned expansion of Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, the cemetery’s executive director told Congress.

The cemetery now occupies about 625 acres of land near the nation’s capital and is the final resting place of more than 400,000 service members and their family members.

But, after more than 150 years of service, the cemetery is running out of room.

“The expansion will add 37 acres of burial space and extend the cemetery’s active life,” Karen Durham-Aguilera said during a hearing of the House Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on military construction, veterans affairs and related agencies.

Arlington National Cemetery lies on the former Arlington Estate — land that once belonged to George Washington Parke Custis, grandson of Martha Washington and stepgrandson of George Washington.

By the start of the Civil War, the property had passed into the family of Robert E. Lee through marriage. In May 1861, Union troops occupied the estate after the Lee family fled south.

The property served as a Union Army camp and headquarters throughout the war, and starting in 1863, as the site of Freedman’s Village, a home for freed slaves that provided housing, education, training and medical care to help former slaves transition to freedom.

The first military burial at Arlington, for William Henry Christman, was made on May 13, 1864. By war’s end, more than 16,000 soldiers had been buried there.

Today, the cemetery holds funeral services Monday through Saturday (except federal holidays), conducting between 27 and 30 services each weekday and between six and eight services each Saturday. Information on burial eligibility and military honors is available on the cemetery’s website.

Source: Department of Defense

The majority whip of the House of Representatives raised the possibility of giving into President Donald Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion in border security, but with the caveat that it not go toward construction of a wall.

“We see ourselves fulfilling that request” with a “smart wall,” Democratic South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn said to reporters Wednesday, according to Reuters.

Clyburn suggested a compromise bill that could include funding for more border patrol agents, x-rays, sensors and drones. However, the house majority whip said such legislation would bar funding for a border wall.

The proposal, if passed in the House, would likely die in the Republican-controlled Senate and would certainly not be signed if it reached Trump’s desk.

The president has stood firm in his demand for a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. However, the $5.7 billion he’s requesting goes toward much more than just wall construction. Trump’s border security package also includes $675 million for increased inspection technology; $571 million for an another 2,000 law enforcement agents; $563 million to fund 75 more immigration judges and staff to handle the backlogged immigration courts; and $211 million to hire an additional 750 Border Patrol agents.

While the offer would likely not suffice Trump’s demands, Clyburn’s proposal is a major shift from statements he recently made.

“[U]ntil the President releases his hostages — federal workers and the American people — there will be no negotiation,” the South Carolina Democrat said after Trump’s address Saturday. “End the shutdown now, and we can consider how a compromise giving lasting protections for Dreamers and TPS recipients may lead to a deal on border security.”

The Democratic leader’s pivot comes as the partial government shutdown entered its 33rd day Wednesday, the longest shutdown in U.S. history.

The president offered a “common-sense compromise” Saturday, an offer that includes funding for the border wall in exchange for DACA protections for Dreamers and extended legal status for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders. However, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi immediately rejected the compromise.

The Supreme Court will consider the Trump administration’s request to intervene in the ongoing legal fight over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program on Friday.

DACA is an Obama-era amnesty initiative that extends temporary legal status to 700,000 foreign nationals who arrived in the U.S. as children.

The Trump administration took steps to terminate DACA in September 2017. Those moves were immediately challenged in federal court. U.S. District Judge William Alsup ordered the government to continue administering the program on Jan. 9, 2018. The Department of Justice broke with normal judicial procedure and asked the Supreme Court to overturn that decision, bypassing the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The high court rejected that petition in February 2018, but ordered the 9th Circuit to “proceed expeditiously” in its review of Alsup’s decision. After months passed without a ruling from the 9th Circuit, the Justice Department returned to the Supreme Court on Nov. 5, 2018 and again asked the justices to take their case. Three days later on Nov. 8, the 9th Circuit issued a decision upholding Alsup’s order.

“More than ten months later, the court of appeals’ judgment is here and the Court is presented the opportunity it anticipated in February,” Solicitor General Noel Francisco — the government’s Supreme Court lawyer — wrote in court papers. “The Court should now grant At Trump’s Request, The Supreme Court May Soon Decide On Dismantling DACA

The Supreme Court will consider the Trump administration’s request to intervene in the ongoing legal fight over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program on Friday. DACA is an Obama-era amnesty initiative that extends temporary legal status to 700,000 foreign nationals who arrived in the U.S. as children. The Trump administration took steps to terminate DACA in September 2017. Those moves were immediately challenged in federal court. U.S. District Judge William Alsup ordered the government to continue administering the program on Jan. 9, 2018. The Department of Justice broke with normal judicial procedure and asked the Supreme Court to…

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and resolve this important dispute this term.”

Other challenges to DACA’s repeal are pending before appeals courts in New York and Washington, D.C.

The Trump administration urged the justices to take its case because the 9th Circuit’s ruling conflicts with a prior decision of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) program.

Like DACA, DAPA is an Obama-era policy which provides benefits to illegal aliens whose children are U.S. citizens or permanent residents. When multiple appeals courts disagree over the same question of federal law, the high court is much more likely to step in.

The government also said that it will be forced to abide widespread disregard for immigration laws if the Supreme Court rejects its petition.

“The district court’s nationwide injunction commands the government to preserve a policy that affirmatively sanctions the ongoing violation of federal law by 700,00 aliens who have no lawful immigration status and no right to the policy’s continuation,” Francisco told the justices in court filings. “Absent this Court’s intervention, the government will be required to maintain the policy nationwide for years after DHS and the Attorney General determined that it should end.”

Some Republican lawmakers have floated the prospect of enacting DACA protections as part of a grand bargain to implement comprehensive immigration reform and reopen the government. Vice President Mike Pence said that the White House will not consider a deal which includes DACA until the Supreme Court decides on its legality during a gaggle with reporters on Thursday afternoon.

The justices could announce a decision to take the case as soon as Friday afternoon.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller will not issue any additional indictments in the Russia investigation and has not filed any charges under seal, a senior Justice Department official told news outlets Friday.

The revelation would seem to be a positive sign for President Donald Trump and several Trump associates who faced legal jeopardy in the Mueller probe. It also means that no Trump associates will face charges related to the main focus of the special counsel’s investigation: whether Trump of members of his campaign conspired with Russians to influence the 2016 election.

Mueller was appointed special counsel on May 17, 2017. In those 22 months, Mueller has indicted or obtained guilty pleas from six Trump associates, most recently on Jan. 24 against Roger Stone. None of the Trump associates faced charges related to contacts with Russia.

Mueller provided a report of his investigation on Friday to Attorney General William Barr, signaling the end of the probe. Barr notified the leaders of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees that he had received the report and would likely provide more details to Congress over the weekend.

Trump critics have long speculated that Mueller would release a slew of indictments prior to or shortly after submitting his final report. Others asserted that Mueller had filed a batch of sealed indictments that would be released at some point during the probe.

None of those predictions proved accurate.

Ron Rockwell Hansen, 58, a resident of Syracuse, Utah, and a former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) officer, pleaded guilty today in the District of Utah in connection with his attempted transmission of national defense information to the People’s Republic of China.

Hansen retired from the U.S. Army as a Warrant Officer with a background in signals intelligence and human intelligence.  He speaks fluent Mandarin-Chinese and Russian.  DIA hired Hansen as a civilian intelligence case officer in 2006.  Hansen held a Top Secret clearance for many years, and signed several non-disclosure agreements during his tenure at DIA and as a government contractor.

As Hansen admitted in the plea agreement, in early 2014, agents of a Chinese intelligence service targeted Hansen for recruitment and he began meeting with them regularly in China.  During those meetings, the Chinese agents described to Hansen the type of information that would interest the Chinese intelligence service.  During the course of his relationship with the agents of the Chinese intelligence service, Hansen received hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation for information he provided them, including information he gathered at various industry conferences.  Between May 24, 2016 and June 2, 2018, Hansen solicited from an intelligence case officer working for the DIA national defense information that Hansen knew the Chinese intelligence service would find valuable.  Hansen agreed to act as a conduit to sell that information to the Chinese.  Hansen advised the DIA case officer how to record and transmit classified information without detection, and explained how to hide and launder any funds received as payment for classified information.  The DIA case officer reported Hansen’s conduct to the DIA and subsequently acted as a confidential human source for the FBI.

As Hansen further admitted in the plea agreement, Hansen met with the DIA case officer on June 2, 2018, and received from that individual documents containing national defense information that Hansen previously solicited.  The documents Hansen received were classified. The information in the documents related to the national defense of the United States in that it related to United States military readiness in a particular region and was closely held by the United States government.  Hansen reviewed the documents, queried the DIA case officer about their contents, and took written notes about the materials relating to the national defense information.  Hansen advised the DIA case officer that he would remember most of the details about the documents he received that day and would conceal some notes about the material in the text of an electronic document that Hansen would prepare at the airport before leaving for China.  Hansen intended to provide the information he received to the agents of the Chinese intelligence service with whom he had been meeting, and Hansen knew that the information was to be used to the injury of the United States and to the advantage of a foreign nation.

Hansen pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to gather or deliver national defense information to aid a foreign government.  The plea agreement calls for an agreed-upon sentence of 15 years.