Trump suggests 2-phase immigration deal for ‘Dreamers’
WASHINGTON (AP) – Searching for a bipartisan deal to avoid a government shutdown, President Donald Trump suggested Tuesday that an immigration agreement could be reached in two phases – first by addressing young immigrants and border security with what he called a “bill of love,” then by making comprehensive changes that have long eluded Congress.
Trump presided over a lengthy meeting with Republican and Democratic lawmakers seeking a solution for hundreds of thousands of young people who were brought to the U.S. as children and living here illegally. Trump last year ended the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which shielded more than 700,000 people from deportation and gave them the right to work legally. He gave Congress until March to find a fix.
Negotiations over the DACA program may be more complicated in light of a federal judge’s ruling Tuesday to block temporarily the administration’s decision to end the program. In doing so, U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco granted a request by California and other plaintiffs to let lawsuits over the administration’s decision play out in court.
The president, congressional Republicans and Democrats expressed optimism for a deal just 10 days before a government shutdown deadline. Trump said he was willing to be flexible in finding an agreement as Democrats warned that the lives of hundreds of thousands of immigrants hung in the balance.
“I think my positions are going to be what the people in this room come up with,” Trump said during a Cabinet Room meeting with a bipartisan group of nearly two dozen lawmakers, adding, “I am very much reliant upon the people in this room.” A group of journalists observed the meandering meeting for an extraordinary length of time – about 55 minutes – that involved Trump seeking input from Democrats and Republicans alike in a freewheeling exchange on the contentious issue.
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10 Things to Know for Wednesday
Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about Wednesday:
1. TRUMP SEEKS BIPARTISAN IMMIGRATION DEAL
The president, reaching across the aisle, suggests a two-phased immigration approach – first by addressing young immigrants and border security, then by making comprehensive changes that have long eluded Congress.
2. HOW TRUMP DOSSIER WOUND UP AT FBI
The founder of a firm that commissioned the dossier says its author took it to the agency because of a concern about “whether a political candidate was being blackmailed.”
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After Olympic deal, S. Korea floats summit with NKorea’s Kim
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – South Korea’s president said Wednesday he’s open to meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un if certain conditions are met, as he vowed to push for more talks and cooperation with the North to try to resolve the nuclear standoff.
President Moon Jae-in has previously floated the idea of a summit with Kim under conditions. But his latest comments came a day after the North agreed to send a delegation to next month’s Winter Olympics in South Korea and hold military talks on reducing animosities along their tense border – the measures that Moon’s government has been demanding.
The accords, reached at the rivals’ first meeting in about two years, were widely viewed as a positive step following a year of escalating tension over Kim’s advancing nuclear and missile programs. But critics cautioned against reading too much from the North’s moves because tensions could flare again quickly as Pyongyang still openly seeks to expand its weapons arsenal. They also say Kim may push for better ties with Seoul as North Korea feels the pain of U.S.-led international sanctions.
During a televised news conference in Seoul, Moon described the North’s Olympic participation as “very desirable,” but said that inter-Korean relations cannot be improved without progress in the nuclear standoff and vice versa.
Moon said North Korea will face harsher international sanctions and pressure if it resorts to fresh provocations, adding that “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is path to peace and our goal.”
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13 dead in Southern California as rain triggers mudslides
MONTECITO, Calif. (AP) – At least 13 people were killed and dozens of homes were swept away or heavily damaged Tuesday as downpours sent mud and boulders roaring down hills stripped of vegetation by a gigantic wildfire that raged in Southern California last month.
Helicopters were used to pluck more than 50 people from rooftops because downed trees and power lines blocked roads, and dozens more were rescued on the ground, including a mud-caked 14-year-old girl pulled from a collapsed Montecito home where she had been trapped for hours.
“I thought I was dead for a minute there,” the dazed girl could be heard saying on video posted by KNBC-TV before she was taken away on a stretcher.
Most deaths were believed to have occurred in Montecito, a wealthy enclave of about 9,000 people northwest of Los Angeles that is home to such celebrities as Oprah Winfrey, Rob Lowe and Ellen DeGeneres, said Santa Barbara County spokesman David Villalobos.
Twenty people were hospitalized and four were described as “severely critical” by Dr. Brett Wilson of Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
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Judge blocks Trump decision to end young immigrant program
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – A federal judge on Tuesday night temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s decision to end a program protecting young immigrants from deportation.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup granted a request by California and other plaintiffs to prevent President Donald Trump from ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program while their lawsuits play out in court.
Alsup said lawyers in favor of DACA clearly demonstrated that the young immigrants “were likely to suffer serious, irreparable harm” without court action. The judge also said the lawyers have a strong chance of succeeding at trial.
DACA has protected about 800,000 people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children or came with families who overstayed visas. The program includes hundreds of thousands of college-age students.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced in September that the program would be phased out, saying former President Barack Obama had exceeded his authority when he implemented it in 2012.
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US decision would hit families’ pocketbooks in El Salvador
SAN SEBASTIAN SALITRILLO, El Salvador (AP) – Every two weeks, Flor Tovar receives a lifeline in the form of cash wired from her husband living in the United States.
The money pays the $50 rent for her modest two-bedroom home in a low-income housing development about an hour northwest of El Salvador’s capital. It also covers school transportation for their two sons, the electricity, water and cable television.
Now a decision made in Washington to end temporary protected status for her husband and nearly 200,000 other Salvadorans in the U.S. has the 33-year-old Tovar and her sons wondering what a future without that income would look like. Salvadorans with the status have been given until Sept. 9, 2019, to leave the United States or face deportation.
“It is very worrisome. These people don’t have the resources to come back, and the crime is terrible here,” Tovar said Tuesday.
The change would affect only a fraction of the estimated 2 million Salvadorans living the United States. But the effects could be devastating for families like Tovar’s who depend on the money sent home by relatives.
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President Winfrey? No way, says Trump: “I’ll beat Oprah”
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Winfrey? No way, says political prognosticator Donald Trump.
“I’ll beat Oprah,” the president declared flatly at a White House meeting Tuesday – though he quickly added, “I don’t think she’s going to run.”
Asked about all the presidential speculation suddenly swirling around Winfrey, the typically pugilistic Trump steered clear of nasty nicknames and colorful insults while sizing up such a potential celebrity showdown.
“Oprah would be a lot of fun,” said Trump, who added that he knows her “very well.”
Trump appeared on Winfrey’s long-running talk show in 1988 and again with his family in 2011, during her final season.
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Bannon to exit Breitbart News Network after break with Trump
WASHINGTON (AP) – Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is stepping down as chairman of Breitbart News Network after a public break with President Donald Trump.
Breitbart announced Tuesday that Bannon would step down as executive chairman of the conservative news site, less than a week after Bannon’s explosive criticisms of Trump and his family were published in a new book.
A report on the Breitbart website quotes Bannon saying, “I’m proud of what the Breitbart team has accomplished in so short a period of time in building out a world-class news platform.”
Trump lashed out at Bannon for comments made in Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” which questions the president’s fitness for office. As Trump aides called him disloyal and disgraceful, the president branded his former chief strategist on Twitter as “Sloppy Steve,” an apparent reference to Bannon’s often unkempt appearance, and declared that “he lost his mind” when he was pushed out of the White House last August.
The president was livid about Bannon’s remarks – not just at the insults about his family, but also at his former strategist’s apparent intent to take credit for Trump’s election victory and political movement, according to a White House official and two outside advisers not authorized to speak publicly about internal conversations.
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Author of Trump dossier had concerns about Russian blackmail
WASHINGTON (AP) – The former British spy who compiled a dossier of allegations about Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia brought the document to the FBI in July 2016 because he was worried about “whether a political candidate was being blackmailed,” according to a congressional interview transcript released Tuesday.
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, revealed the transcript from an August closed-door interview with Glenn Simpson, a co-founder of the political opposition research firm Fusion GPS. The firm commissioned the dossier, which was initially paid for by a conservative website and then later by Democrats, including Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Feinstein made the transcript public over the objections of Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who called the move “confounding” in a statement shortly after Feinstein made it public. Grassley said the release could undermine attempts to interview other witnesses in the committee’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
In the transcript, Simpson said Christopher Steele, the former British spy who wrote the dossier, took it to the FBI and said his concern was “whether or not there was blackmail going on, whether a political candidate was being blackmailed or had been compromised.”
The dossier is a compilation of memos written by Steele during the 2016 campaign that contained allegations of connections between Trump and Russia, including that Trump had been compromised by the Kremlin.
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Trump administration says no oil drilling off Florida coast
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) – The Trump administration said Tuesday it would not allow oil drilling off the coast of Florida, abruptly reversing course under pressure from Republican Gov. Rick Scott.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said after a brief meeting with Scott at the Tallahassee airport that drilling would be “off the table” when it comes to waters in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean off Florida.
The change of course – just five days after Zinke announced the offshore drilling plan – highlights the political importance of Florida, where President Donald Trump narrowly won the state’s 29 electoral votes in the 2016 election and has encouraged Scott to run for Senate.
The state is also important economically, with a multibillion-dollar tourism business built on sunshine and miles and miles of white sandy beaches.
Zinke said Tuesday that “Florida is obviously unique” and that the decision to remove the state came after meetings and discussion with Scott.
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