The talk in the US is of constitutional crisis. It’s been looming for a while, thanks to the Mueller investigation into suspected collusion between the Trump campaign and Kremlin efforts to swing the 2016 election. At some point – perhaps when special counsel Robert Mueller issues a subpoena, demanding Donald Trump answers his questions – a clash was bound to come. But it may already be upon us.That’s because of a move Trump made within hours of seeing his party take a beating in the midterm elections, losing the House of Representatives as Democrats notched up what should be, once the final tally is in, their biggest gains since the post-Watergate landslide of 1974. The president fired his attorney-general and replaced him with a reliable partisan named Matt Whitaker, who has loyally echoed Trump’s denunciations of Mueller’s probe as a “witch-hunt”. It is this man who is now charged with fairly and impartially supervising the Mueller investigation. He will have access to all Mueller’s findings, which he could pass on to Trump, and has the power to block Mueller any way he likes, including by starving him of funds.Condemnation for the move has been swift, including by a pair of constitutional lawyers who wrote a New York Times op-ed denouncing it as “illegal” on the grounds that Whitaker had not gone through a Senate confirmation process for a senior role in the justice department. “Constitutionally, Matthew Whitaker is a nobody,” they wrote. To add extra piquancy, one of the authors is George Conway, husband of Kellyanne, the Trump adviser whose gift to the world was “alternative facts”.Such dissent is encouraging. But there’s a problem. For who has the power to make the crucial decisions on all this, either by confirming Whitaker in his post or by passing a law to to protect Mueller, including from being fired? The answer is the US Senate. And on Tuesday, Republicans retained their grip on that body.Similarly, what if the Mueller-Trump standoff ends up in court and ultimately the supreme court, as the great Watergate battles did 44 years ago? That body is also safely in the hands of Republican appointees, its conservative majority boosted by the recent arrival of Trump favourite Brett Kavanaugh. There is no easy consolation that a neutral referee stands ready to blow the whistle: there is no such person.This situation points to the true constitutional crisis that afflicts the United States. The fact that Trump is president and the fact that the Senate and supreme court are, if not in his hands, then at least likely to back him, are not the cause of this crisis – they are symptoms of it.Now, this may get technical but stick with it. Because what can seem mechanical and nerdy is shaping the most powerful country in the world - and affecting all of us in the process. The problem, stated simply, is a democratic deficit. Its most overt expression is Trump himself. In 2016 he won nearly 3m fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, yet he is in the White House and she is not. That was not a freak event. Four elections earlier, George W Bush won fewer votes than Al Gore, yet it was he who got to call himself Mr President. That’s because of America’s electoral college system, which awards the presidency to the winner of the right combination of states rather than the popular vote. That mechanism gives disproportionate power to smaller, rural states, which – as we saw again on Tuesday – are almost unvaryingly conservative.The same is truer still of the Senate, in which a nearly empty, rural state such as Wyoming – population 580,000 – has the same representation as California, home to 39 million people. Both get two seats. Which is how Democrats could win 11m more votes than Republicans in Tuesday’s Senate contests yet Republicans still come out ahead. That matters. It means a majority of Americans could oppose Kavanaugh, but he still had enough Senate votes to be elevated to the top court. And, in a month that has seen more horrific mass shootings, it’s worth recalling that the Republican-held Senate has regularly voted down even the mildest gun control measures. Compulsory background checks are favoured by 94% of Americans, but in 2013 the Senate rejected them 54 to 46. Defenders of the Senate say this is the price of a federal system, which must accord equal status to its constituent parts. They suggest it cannot be changed because it’s part of the near-sacred settlement devised by the US’s founders. But those men could see the dangers from the start. Alexander Hamilton, no less, was a fierce opponent of granting two senators to each state, regardless of population, accurately prophesying that “it may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America”.If Hamilton was offended by the imbalances back then, how much more appalled would he be now. In 1790 the most populous state, Virginia, was a mere 20 times larger than the least, Tennessee. Today, the equivalent ratio – Californians to Wyomingites – is 67 to 1. Besides, the Founding Fathers deliberately set out to make the Senate undemocratic, if not anti-democratic: it was meant as a “cooling saucer”, drawing the heat of the popular mood. Few would want to offer that defence now. Still, realistically, small states are not going to vote for a change that would diminish their influence. So democrats – and Democrats – may need to look beyond the Senate for remedy. There has rightly been a focus on combating voter suppression and gerrymandering in House contests. But other reforms are worth exploring, and would entail no great rewriting of the constitution. They relate to the electoral college.There are a range of options. States could allocate their electoral college votes not on today’s winner-takes-all basis, but in proportion to the popular vote in that state. So Trump would have got some of, say, Wisconsin’s electoral college votes in 2016 but not all of them – and not enough to win an election in which he got fewer actual votes than his opponent. Others suggest increasing the number of seats in the House to reflect the increase in US population since the chamber was last expanded a century ago. That would boost the more populous states and give them greater weight in the electoral college.There are a variety of moves Americans could make, but they need to move. A system that repeatedly gives power to the losing side – favouring the white, rural minority over the expanding and diverse majority – will soon lose legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens. That is America’s true constitutional crisis.• Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist Topics US politics Opinion Trump-Russia investigation US midterms 2018 Donald Trump US constitution and civil liberties Robert Mueller comment

“MATH” hats. Fox News. The Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Andrew Yang knows how to run an insurgent presidential campaign. The 44-year-old candidate, once barely known outside New York and Silicon Valley, is now leader of the “Yang Gang,” a growing following of online fans and IRL admirers rallying to Yang’s campaign cry of “humanity first.”Yang’s done it in part by stealing the most effective tactics from Trump’s electoral victory. Need a visible symbol for your followers? Sell $30 MATH hats (“Make America Think Harder”) and own the meme game. Need to vanquish better-known primary opponents? Flood every media outlet that will give you an interview. No one is talking about a controversial, radical idea? Turn it into your signature issue, rechristening universal basic income, a guaranteed payment to every American, as a $1,000 “freedom dividend” (and force primary rivals like Bernie Sanders and O’Rourke to come out against it). As other candidates play it safe, Yang doubles down on policies that no reasonable wonk would touch, and promotes them on Republican turf such as Fox News (a tactic his fellow long-shot candidates have adopted). Politically speaking, Yang presents himself as Trump’s antithesis. “The opposite of Donald Trump,” Yang told one of his rallies this year (paywall), “is an Asian man who likes math!” That may be true as far as his policies go. But his campaign strategy is an homage to America’s most unlikely president (without the racism and xenophobia). Yang is among the few to have effectively staked the outsider lane of the Democratic primary while making it look authentic. If Yang wins, the title of the most unlikely American president in modern history will pass to the Taiwanese-American and former test-prep CEO without a political office to his name.With little to lose, Yang just keeps saying things that make people believe. Nicholas Der, a 27-year-old financial coach, told Politico he had only learned of Yang a week before coming to his Iowa rally in May. There, Yang was selling his freedom dividend and warning against an automation apocalypse. “What are the truck drivers going to do when the robot trucks come and start driving themselves?” Yang asked (paywall). That was enough for Der. “Two minutes in, I was like, ‘I love this dude,’” Der said. “He is the truth.” The thirst for truth is found in many voters these days. After transitioning from the hopeful talk of the Obama era to the hangover of the Trump administration, some Democratic voters want a hard break from conventional politics. Yang has been happy to stake out such positions. His website has 80 policy proposals. If a position exists, you’re likely to find it there. Pay NCAA college athletes. Free marriage counseling. Empowering mixed martial arts fighters. Abolish the penny. Automatic voter registration. Make Puerto Rico a state. Revitalize American malls.Many sound like gimmicks. But his message boils down to the argument that the American social contract is broken. The old divide between socialism and capitalism no longer works. In an economy dominated by robots and software, he argues, we need to rethink everything. “The problem is the government is outdated and dysfunctional, and doesn’t have the ability to update itself,” he told Quartz last year. “You need to rewrite the operating system of the government.” Failing to do so, he said, is “a sure path to dystopia.”The thing about betting markets, say researchers, is they capture what political surveys often miss: early enthusiasm. It may be that most people simply haven’t heard of Yang yet. When they do on the Democrats’ primary debate stage on June 26, it’s anyone’s guess what will happen next.

The beginning of May marks the longest period of public silence from special counsel Robert Mueller’s team since his first charges last October—more than two months without any new plea deals, fresh indictments, or publicly “flipped” witnesses.At the same time, though, it’s been a period of aggressive moves that continue to illustrate an investigation that is far from complete, including the raid by federal prosecutors on Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s office, court evidence that shows Mueller’s team successfully sought permission to expand the scope of the probe, the release of former FBI director James Comey’s memos documenting his interactions with the president, continual hints that the special counsel is probing the UAE, the odd meeting by Blackwater founder Erik Prince in the Seychelles, and numerous other aspects of the complex, multi-part investigation.Recent weeks have also seen President Trump tweeting regularly about the investigation and the capital W, capital H “Witch Hunt,” and in his train wreck of a phone interview with Fox & Friends last week, he hinted that his patience is wearing thin, referring to “our Justice Department, which I try and stay away from, but at some point I won't.”“I’ve taken the position—and I don’t have to take this position and maybe I’ll change—that I will not be involved with the Justice Department. I will wait until this is over. It's a total, it's all lies and it’s a horrible thing that’s going on, a horrible thing,” he said. “They have a witch hunt against the President of the United States going on.”It’s clear that this is no made-up 'witch hunt.'Then, last night, the final hours of April held one final surprise: The New York Times published a list of questions that, according to Donald Trump’s legal team, Mueller’s office wants to ask the president. The more than four dozen questions span a spectrum from the Steele dossier to suspicious, Russia-friendly changes to the GOP’s party platform during the 2016 Cleveland convention, but most of the questions focus on the president’s own statements and reactions to various steps of the investigation, and his interactions with three key figures: former national security adviser Mike Flynn, attorney general Jeff Sessions, and Comey.Donald Trump himself tweeted about the questions early Tuesday, saying it was a “disgrace” that they leaked, but the Times story sources the leak to people on Trump’s side; Mueller’s team continues to operate almost entirely leak-free. It’s also hard to read the leaks as anything other than an attempt to bring public pressure on Trump to refuse an interview with Mueller’s team. (According to media reports, Trump has been keen to sit down with Mueller, but his legal team has advised against it.)Mueller’s proposed questions are primarily high-level—presumably the starting point for what would then be increasingly detailed follow-ups, backed up by specific emails, documents, telephone records, and other files Mueller’s team and FBI investigators have accumulated in an investigation stretching back more than two years. While the initial 49 questions are intriguing on their own, they primarily line up with what’s publicly known about the investigation so far. There’s nothing out of left field. Thus, the real mystery is the follow-ups: Why, precisely, is Mueller interested?Taken as a whole, the leaked questions help shape and underscore some key takeaways:1. Mueller always knows more than we think. Every single indictment has been deeper, broader, and more detailed than anyone anticipated. This “misunderestimating” of what Mueller knows has been true of both the public and media reports, and of his witnesses and targets: Both Rick Gates and Alex van der Zwaan were caught in lies by Mueller’s team, who have known far more specific information than their targets first realized. Presumably, Mueller’s questions to Trump are informed by even more evidence that we haven’t seen.

Since the publication of his attorney general’s short report on the outcome of the Mueller investigation, Donald Trump has looked like a president unleashed. He has attacked his enemies, demanded the resignation of journalists who he says peddled “fake news”, and advanced controversial policies on health and immigration. With a cloud over his presidency lifted, he is free to act like never before. Meanwhile, Democrats feel under pressure to move on to discussing other issues or risk looking like McCarthyite obsessives.Such, anyway, is the conventional wisdom. But what if it is wrong?When Trump is caught red-handed in a lie or scandal, he has a time-worn playbook for weathering it. First, he lies about the facts of the matter, attempting to create enough uncertainty to inoculate his base and a portion of the rest of the population against accepting the reality of what has happened. Second, he pivots to attacking his antagonists (which in the past have included a dead senator, the father of a fallen soldier, and judges of Mexican heritage). Finally, he tries to change the subject.Far from Trump emerging into a new phase of his presidency with the release of the Barr report, he has in fact lapsed into this age-old pattern. Phases one and two came quickly, with Trump and his surrogates claiming that the president had been completely exonerated even though Mueller explicitly did not make this judgment. They then accused the media and Democrats of corruptly conspiring to bring down the president.But it is the next part of the administration’s response, phase three, which is so uniquely Trumpian. The president has frequently managed to survive scandals that might have felled other politicians because he is so adept at changing the conversation by sparking a new furor, which eclipses the old one. The result has been a presidency of serial scandals which can easily induce a sense of numbness in his opponents, while making himself appear invulnerable to any particular one of the hundreds of controversies encircling him.Since the release of the Barr report, Trump has attempted to change the topic in two ways. The first is on healthcare. Last Monday, the Trump administration filed a letter in a Texas court declaring that it would like to see the entirety of the Affordable Care Act – also known as Obamacare – declared unconstitutional. Backing a wacky legal challenge that has been levied against the ACA, the administration is advocating stripping healthcare benefits from tens of millions of Americans with no plan for how to provide them with alternative coverage. Although the move is a sure political loser for Republicans, Trump charged ahead anyway.Second, Trump has stepped up his anti-immigrant rhetoric and threatened to close the US border with Mexico, another self-destructive move which would harm millions of Americans. Nearly $1.7bn in commerce flows over the border daily, and automakers and farmers – exactly the Americans who Trump claims to stand up for – would be most affected by the closure. It would also undermine cooperation with Mexico, which is necessary to handle the migrant crisis. For good measure, Trump announced last week that he would cut off aid to Central American countries that need it in order to stem the flow of refugees.Such self-destructive measures on healthcare and immigration demonstrate that what Trump is really after is headlines, not solutions. The fact that the president is so keen to change the subject now ought to make Democrats think twice about the wisdom of going along with his wishes. Instead, they need to stay focused on obtaining a full copy of the Mueller report and making its contents known to the public.In 2016, the integrity of America’s electoral process was attacked by a foreign power. Since that time, the president and his allies have engaged in a sinister and baffling pattern of behavior designed to hide their own connections to that power. All we know so far is that Mueller was not able to prove that they criminally colluded with Russia, and that he was unable to exonerate the president of criminally obstructing the inquiry. Before we can move on, we need to know much more.This is not about relitigating the 2016 election, as some Republicans claim. It is about establishing the principle that America has a president, not a king, and that the president is bound by the rule of law. It is about returning a bare modicum of accountability to American public life after years of congressional Republicans shirking their constitutional duty to hold the executive branch to account. It is about finding out exactly how American national security was compromised in 2016, and why the president and his surrogates are so keen to pretend it wasn’t. Finally, it is about restoring faith in American government among the public, who polls show are waiting for the final conclusions of Mueller’s investigation before they believe that the president is exonerated.Perhaps that’s why Donald Trump won’t just release the report, and instead wants to change the subject. Democrats shouldn’t let him. Andrew Gawthorpe is a lecturer in history and international studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Find him on Twitter @andygawt Topics Donald Trump Opinion Robert Mueller Trump-Russia investigation US politics comment

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Democrats are considering legal action over President Donald Trump’s appointment of a new acting attorney general, congressional sources said on Friday, as some outside experts called the move unconstitutional. Trump on Wednesday named Matthew Whitaker to replace former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was forced out after months of attacks by Trump for recusing himself from an ongoing probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The move made Whitaker supervisor of the investigation, which has hung over Trump’s presidency. Whitaker has criticized the probe in the past as too wide-ranging, which has raised concerns among Democrats that Sessions’ ouster and Whitaker’s appointment might be precursors to Trump moving to end it. Senate Democrats were considering suing Trump, the sources said, on the grounds that, in naming Whitaker, the president ignored a statutory line of succession at the Justice Department and deprived senators of their constitutional “advice and consent” role on some presidential appointments. “The only two paths to that office are regular succession, and advice (and) consent,” said a source close to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal told Reuters late on Friday he was “considering action that might be brought against an interim appointment that violates the normal statutory line of succession and raises very serious constitutional questions.” He said he was speaking only for himself and he hoped Republicans might join as plaintiffs if a lawsuit goes forward. The Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution states that some senior government officials, known as “principal officers,” must be confirmed by the Senate. A spokesman for Senate Judiciary chairman Chuck Grassley said Trump had the authority to appoint Whitaker as acting attorney general temporarily, even though he had not been confirmed by the Senate. Such appointments can be done for senior officials who have worked in the department for at least 90 days and can last for up to 210 days, spokesman George Hartmann said. As the minority party in the Senate, Democrats might need some Republican support to have legal standing to sue Trump under the Appointments Clause, said Andrew Wright, who was a White House lawyer under former President Barack Obama. The source close to the Senate Judiciary Committee said Democrats were unsure whether they would reach out to Republicans to join the lawsuit, but added it was “not likely.” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who earlier this year introduced legislation to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is conducting the probe, said Whitaker did not pose a threat to his work. FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump talks to reporters prior to departing for Paris, France from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, U.S., November 9, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo“Mueller will be allowed to do his job,” Graham said in a Friday interview on Fox News Radio. John Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, said “the Supreme Court made clear that the Attorney General is a principal officer” in a 1998 case. “Therefore, Whitaker cannot serve as acting Attorney General ... Any other officer in the Justice Department who was appointed through advice and consent can serve, including the Deputy AG, the solicitor general, and the assistant AGs,” said Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a career Justice Department official already confirmed by the Senate, should have been named the new attorney general. U.S. intelligence agencies have said Russia interfered in the 2016 election in an attempt to tip it towards Trump and away from his Democratic opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Republican Senator Susan Collins said Mueller must be allowed to complete his investigation into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Moscow. Trump has repeatedly said there was no collusion, and has slammed the probe as a “witch hunt.” Russia has denied interfering. “I am concerned about comments that Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker has made regarding the Special Counsel and the parameters of his investigation,” Collins said in a statement. “We should bring to the Senate floor legislation that would put restrictions on the ability of President Donald Trump to fire the Special Counsel.” Speaking to reporters at the White House before he left on a trip to Paris, Trump defended his choice of Whitaker, saying the former U.S. attorney for the southern district of Iowa had an excellent reputation and came highly recommended by former Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, who is now Trump’s ambassador to China. In a late night Tweet on Friday, Trump reiterated that he did not know Whitaker, but that he was very highly thought of by Iowa senators Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley and Branstad. “I feel certain he will make an outstanding Acting Attorney General!,” Trump said. Slideshow (5 Images)Trump said on Friday he had not discussed the Mueller probe with Whitaker before appointing him. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department has said Whitaker would oversee all matters under its jurisdiction, including the Mueller investigation. Democrats have called on Whitaker to recuse himself. Reporting by David Morgan and Jonathan Landay in Washington; Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton, Jan Wolfe, Susan Cornwell, Amanda Becker and Susan Heavey; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Paul Simao, Sonya Hepinstall and Nick MacfieOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The empress of soul, Gladys Knight, has defended her decision to perform the American national anthem at the Super Bowl, after receiving criticism from supporters of former quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who used football’s pre-game tradition to protest racial injustice, especially police brutality against people of color.But Knight, a 74-year-old native of Atlanta, where the game will be played, has agreed to sing “the Star Spangled Banner”, Reuters reports. Her decision was blasted on social media today by supporters of the “take a knee” stance championed by NFL players who kneel during the anthem as a form of activism. Donald Trump, who lobbied for rebels to be fired, has led a chorus of conservative voices calling such actions unpatriotic. Knight argued that she wanted to “give the anthem back its voice” in order to include Americans struggling for racial justice. She said she did not need to prove her commitment to civil rights. “I have fought long and hard for all my life, from walking back hallways, from marching with our social leaders, from using my voice for good,” the “Midnight Train to Georgia” singer said in a statement.She added: “I have been in the forefront of this battle longer than most of those voicing their opinions to win the right to sing our country’s anthem on a stage as large as the Super Bowl,” Knight added. The Super Bowl is on February 3 (which, lest we forget, is four days before Michael Cohen testifies to Congress)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A leading Senate Republican said on Monday he would ask Attorney General William Barr to appoint a special counsel to probe whether U.S. law enforcement officials made missteps in their investigation into possible collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia. A day after the attorney general said the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller found Trump’s campaign did not conspire with Russia, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said: “We will begin to unpack the other side of the story.” He said it was time to look at the origins of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant for former Trump adviser Carter Page, which was based in part on information in a dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who co-founded a private intelligence firm. Graham told reporters he planned to ask Barr to appoint a special counsel to investigate the FISA matter, which is already being probed by the Justice Department’s internal watchdog, Inspector General Michael Horowitz. A spokesman for Graham said later that Barr agreed to appear before the Judiciary Committee after he vets Mueller’s report. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on Graham’s request. Graham said he would use subpoena power if necessary, whether or not a special counsel is appointed. He added he also had lingering questions about the FBI’s probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was U.S. secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. Republican lawmakers have contended the FBI made serious missteps when it sought the warrant to monitor Page in October 2016 shortly after he left the Trump campaign. Page, a foreign policy adviser during Trump’s campaign, drew scrutiny from the FBI, which said in legal filings in 2016 that it believed he had been “collaborating and conspiring” with the Kremlin. Page met with several Russian government officials during a trip to Moscow in July 2016. He was not charged. Slideshow (3 Images)Fusion GPS, a Washington-based political research firm, was initially contracted to investigate Trump on behalf of Republicans who wanted to stop Trump’s bid for the party’s nomination. Fusion later hired Steele to investigate Trump, and the firm was paid for Steele’s dossier work by a law firm connected to Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. The top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein, said Graham had the prerogative as chairman to bring whatever he wants before the committee. But told of Graham’s interest in Clinton’s emails, Feinstein said to reporters: “Well, haven’t we had enough of it? Look how many years it’s been.” Former FBI Director James Comey said in August 2016 that no charges would be brought against Clinton over the matter. Reporting by Susan Cornwell and Doina Chiacu; Aadditional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, Mark Hosenball, David Morgan and Jonathan Landay; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Peter CooneyOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

WASHINGTON — President Trump went on the offensive on Monday a day after the special counsel investigation reported no conspiracy with Russia, suggesting that critics who pursued such suspicions were “treasonous,” guilty of “evil things” and should be investigated themselves.Grim faced and simmering with anger, Mr. Trump repeated his assertion that a collection of partisan foes had effectively conspired to try to disrupt or even end his presidency with false allegations about his campaign’s ties with Moscow in 2016.“There are a lot of people out there that have done some very, very evil things, some bad things, I would say some treasonous things against our country,” he told reporters during an Oval Office meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. “And hopefully people that have done such harm to our country — we’ve gone through a period of really bad things happening — those people will certainly be looked at.“I’ve been looking at them for a long time,” he added, “and I’m saying why haven’t they been looked at? They lied to Congress, many of them, you know who they are. They’ve done so many evil things.”The president’s comments expanded on the theme he expressed on Sunday after the Justice Department reported that the special counsel investigation by Robert S. Mueller III had wrapped up without finding a criminal scheme to influence the presidential election in tandem with Russia’s government. With the Mueller inquiry behind him, Mr. Trump seems intent on turning the tables on his foes.Mr. Trump took a softer line toward Mr. Mueller himself. Asked at an earlier appearance with Mr. Netanyahu on Monday whether Mr. Mueller had acted honorably, Mr. Trump said, “Yes, he did. Yes, he did.”Mr. Trump indicated that he would support releasing the full report by Mr. Mueller, as demanded by congressional Democrats. “Up to the attorney general,” he said. “Wouldn’t bother me at all.”But he brushed off a question about whether he was considering pardons of any of the associates who were convicted or pleaded guilty during Mr. Mueller’s inquiry. “Haven’t thought about it,” he said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s pick for acting attorney general, Matt Whitaker, is a close friend of Trump’s 2016 election campaign co-chair, and a former government ethics chief said the friendship makes Whitaker unable to oversee impartially a politically charged investigation into the campaign. Matthew Whitaker, named on Wednesday to replace Jeff Sessions, will directly oversee Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible links between Trump’s campaign team and Russian officials. Whitaker publicly criticized Mueller’s investigation before he was hired as Sessions’ chief of staff last year. Sam Clovis, who was co-chair of Trump’s 2016 campaign and has testified before the grand jury in the Mueller investigation, said he and Whitaker became good friends when they ran against each other as Republicans in a 2014 Senate primary campaign in Iowa. Whitaker also later served as the chairman of a Clovis campaign for state treasurer. In an interview with Reuters, Clovis said Whitaker is “a wonderful man” and “a dear friend.” He added that Whitaker was a “sounding board” for him when Clovis worked for Trump’s campaign. Walter Shaub, who was director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics for four years before resigning in July 2017, said the friendship between Whitaker and Clovis should disqualify Whitaker from supervising the Mueller investigation. “Whitaker has to recuse himself under DOJ’s regulation requiring recusal if you have a personal or political relationship with someone substantially involved in conduct that is the subject of the investigation or prosecution,” Shaub told Reuters. Department of Justice spokesperson Sarah Isgur Flores declined to comment. A DOJ regulation cited by Shaub states that employees “may not supervise prosecutions or investigations that involve someone with a personal or political relationship.” It says the possible conflict can be set aside if the employee’s supervisor judges that the relationship does not affect the official’s impartiality or create the public perception of a conflict. Trevor Potter, a former Republican commissioner on the Federal Election Commission who now leads the Campaign Legal Center, which advocates for more transparency in elections, said the question of whether Whitaker should recuse himself depends on Clovis’ status in the Mueller investigation. “If he has a close personal friendship with someone who is involved in the investigation because of his role in the Trump campaign, then that would present a recusal issue,” Potter said. Mueller has not publicly identified any of the targets of his investigation. Paul Rosenzweig, a fellow at the non-partisan R Street Institute which specializes in public policy, said he believed Whitaker’s friendship with Clovis is “probably not a problem” but that Whitaker should ask the DOJ’s Professional Responsibility and Accountability Office whether he has a conflict. While he still led the government ethics office, Shaub last year advised the Justice Department to require Sessions’ recusal from the Mueller probe because Sessions had been a senior adviser to Trump during the election campaign. Sessions’ decision to recuse himself infuriated Trump. After months of publicly criticizing his attorney general, Trump asked him to resign on Wednesday. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Whitaker’s selection by Trump as acting attorney general drew sharp criticism from Democratic lawmakers, who described it as an attempt by the president to undermine and possibly end Mueller’s investigation. Mueller’s team has netted convictions and guilty pleas from several Trump campaign staff members and advisers. Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion with Russia, and describes Mueller’s investigation as a “witch hunt.” FILE PHOTO: Chief of Staff to the Attorney General Matthew Whitaker attends a roundtable discussion with foreign liaison officers at the Justice Department in Washington, U.S., August 29, 2018. REUTERS/Allison Shelley/File PhotoMoscow has denied U.S. security agencies’ allegations that it interfered in the election in a bid to help Trump. A former U.S. attorney and conservative commentator, Whitaker last year wrote an opinion piece for CNN arguing that Mueller would be going too far if he investigated the Trump family’s finances. Two months after the article was published, Whitaker went to work at the Department of Justice. Editing by Kieran Murray and Cynthia OstermanOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Donald Trump will not answer federal investigators’ questions, in writing or in person, about whether he tried to block the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, his lawyer has said.Trump lawyer and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani said questions about obstruction of justice were a "no-go”.Giuliani’s statement, made in an interview with the Associated Press, was the most definitive rejection yet of special counsel Robert Mueller’s efforts to interview the president about any efforts to obstruct the investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and Russians.It signals that Trump’s lawyers are committed to protecting the president from answering questions about decisions the president took in office.It’s unclear if Giuliani’s public position has been endorsed by Trump, who has said he wants to answer questions under oath. Negotiations about the scope and format of an interview are continuing. If the legal team holds its stance, it could force Mueller to try to subpoena the president, probably triggering a standoff that would lead to the supreme court.Mueller’s office has previously sought to interview the president about the obstruction issue, including his firing last year of the former FBI director James Comey and his public attacks on Jeff Sessions, the attorney general. Trump’s legal team has argued that the president has the power to hire and fire appointees and the special counsel does not have the authority to ask him to explain those decisions.Giuliani said on Thursday the team was steadfast in that position."That’s a no-go. That is not going to happen," Giuliani said. "There will be no questions at all on obstruction."In a letter last week, Mueller’s team said it would accept written responses from Trump on questions related to Russian election interference. Giuliani suggested on Thursday that Trump’s lawyers had agreed to those terms but wanted to prohibit investigators from asking follow-up questions."It would be in written form and if you want to follow up on our answers, justify it. Show us why you didn’t get there the first time," Giuliani said.He said he was not categorically ruling out answering a second round of questions but the entire matter of whether there would be follow-up inquiries should be settled before the president answered anything at all."We aren’t going to let them spring it on us," said Giuliani, who has served as lawyer-spokesman for the president’s personal legal team, using television interviews and public comments as a tactic in the negotiations.He has repeatedly moved the goalposts on what would be required for a presidential interview and, at times, has been forced to clarify previous statements.In earlier interviews, Giuliani had suggested some obstruction questions could be allowed if prosecutors show necessity and preview the questions with the defense lawyers.Trump, in a Fox News interview taped before a Thursday night rally in Montana, was non-committal when asked about a possible Mueller interview.In the latest letter to the legal team, Mueller’s office did not address obstruction questions, indicating investigators would later assess what additional information they need from the president after receiving a response about the written submissions, according to a person familiar with the document.That person spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to publicly discuss the negotiations.Giuliani’s declaration drew a swift rebuke from Adam Schiff, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, who tweeted: "Trump’s legal team never had any intention of allowing him to be interviewed, knowing he is incapable of telling the truth. It’s past time to subpoena the President. No one is above the law."Though the president has publicly said he was eager to face questions from Mueller, his lawyers have been far more reluctant to make him available for an interview and have questioned whether Mueller has the right to ask him about actions that he is authorized, under the constitution, to take as president.Giuliani’s comments came just hours after Trump’s supreme court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, espoused a belief in an expansive view of executive powers and declined to say whether a president can be subpoenaed and forced to testify.Mueller’s team raised the prospect in March that it could subpoena the president, though this would unquestionably prompt a court fight.The supreme court has never definitively ruled on the question of whether a president can be forced to testify, though the justices did rule in 1974 that Richard Nixon had to produce recordings and documents that had been subpoenaed.In addition to questions about Comey and Sessions, Mueller has expressed interest in Trump’s role in drafting a statement to the New York Times about a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower attended by his son Donald Trump Jr and a Russian lawyer.Trump Jr took the meeting, emails show, after it was described as part of a Russian government effort to help his father’s campaign by providing derogatory information about Hillary Clinton.Trump has said he knew nothing about the meeting before it happened.Trump and Giuliani have led an onslaught of attacks on Mueller’s credibility, claiming that the special counsel was biased and that the entire investigation was a "witch-hunt”.Giuliani has also demanded that the investigation suspend its activities with the midterm elections approaching, but the former mayor said on Thursday he was not certain of Mueller’s intentions. Topics Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Russia Rudy Giuliani US politics Trump administration news

Donald Trump has ordered the release of classified documents as part of his effort to discredit the inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election and potential links with his campaign team.In a highly unusual move, the White House announced on Monday afternoon that the president had directed the justice department and Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, to publish material that was being kept secret.Trump hinted at the decision in a tweet on 6 September, predicting “maybe Declassification to find Additional Corruption” while attacking the so-called “Deep State” that he claims is working to undermine him.Trump requested the release of “all text messages relating to the Russia investigation” from several former senior FBI officials, including James Comey, the former director, and Andrew McCabe, his former deputy. Trump has made wild accusations against both men, claiming they were part of a politically motivated plot against him.The president also ordered the declassification of documents relating to the FBI’s investigation of Carter Page, an adviser to Trump’s 2016 election campaign who was suspected by federal agents of conspiring with officials in Moscow.In his request on Monday, Trump requested the release of 21 pages from an application made by the FBI in June 2017 to the foreign intelligence surveillance court for permission to continue surveilling Page. He also asked for the publication of “all FBI reports of interviews prepared in connection” with applications to the court relating to Page.Trump further ordered the declassification of “all FBI reports of interviews with Bruce G Ohr prepared in connection with the Russia investigation”.Ohr, a senior justice department official who specialises in investigating organised crime, has come under attack from Trump and Republicans because his wife has worked for Fusion GPS, a private intelligence firm that was involved in the production of a notorious “dossier” of allegations linking Trump to Russia.Ohr was also one of the senior officials whose text messages were ordered released by Trump on Monday. So too were Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, former FBI officials who have come under scrutiny for messages they exchanged that were critical of Trump. Topics Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Trump administration FBI US politics news

(Reuters) - The federal investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and potential collusion by Donald Trump’s campaign has targeted - directly or indirectly - a growing group of presidential associates. FILE PHOTO: Michael Cohen, personal attorney for U.S. President Donald Trump, arrives to appear before Senate Intelligence Committee staff as the panel investigates alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, U.S., September 19, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File PhotoAs Special Counsel Robert Mueller presses on with his Russia probe, the following is a list of people who have been indicted or are being investigated. The court documents related to Mueller's investigation are at www.justice.gov/sco. Trump has denied any collusion by his campaign and has long denounced the Mueller probe as a witch hunt. Mueller told Trump’s attorneys in March he was continuing to investigate the president but did not consider him a criminal target “at this point,” the Washington Post reported in early April. Trump has said he would sit down for an interview with Mueller’s office. ABC News, citing multiple sources close to the president, reported on April 10 that Trump was less inclined to be interviewed following an FBI raid targeting his personal lawyer. Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, is being investigated by federal prosecutors in Manhattan. Cohen’s lawyer, Stephen M. Ryan, said that U.S. prosecutors conducted a search on April 9 that was partly a referral by Mueller’s office. Federal prosecutors are investigating Cohen for possible bank and tax fraud, and for possible campaign law violation in connection with a payment to a porn actress and perhaps other matters having to do with foreign support to Trump’s 2016 campaign, a source familiar with the investigation said. Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser to Trump who was also a close campaign aide, pleaded guilty in December to lying to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents about his contacts with Russia and agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation. Paul Manafort, a former Trump election campaign chairman, is facing two indictments in different federal courts brought by Mueller. Charges against him include conspiring to launder money, failing to register as a foreign agent in connection with his lobbying for the previously pro-Russia Ukrainian government, bank fraud and filing false tax returns. Manafort has pleaded not guilty to all charges and has argued that Mueller has overstepped his authority. Rick Gates, a former deputy campaign chairman, pleaded guilty in February to conspiracy against the United States and lying to investigators, and agreed to cooperate with the Mueller probe. George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign adviser, pleaded guilty last fall to lying to FBI agents about his contacts with Russia. According to documents released with his guilty plea, Papadopoulos offered to help set up a meeting with then-candidate Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He is now cooperating with Mueller. Alex Van der Zwaan, a lawyer who once worked closely with Manafort and Gates, pleaded guilty in February to lying to Mueller’s investigators about contacts with an official in the Trump election campaign. Van der Zwaan, the Dutch son-in-law of one of Russia’s richest men, was sentenced on April 3 to 30 days in prison and fined $20,000. Thirteen Russians and three Russian entities were indicted in Mueller’s investigation in February, accused of tampering in the 2016 election to support Trump. The Russian government has repeatedly denied meddling in the election and Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova denounced the allegations as “absurd,” ridiculing the notion that so few Russian nationals could undermine U.S. democracy. Richard Pinedo, who was not involved with the Trump campaign, pleaded guilty in a case related to the Mueller probe in February to aiding and abetting interstate and foreign identity fraud by creating, buying and stealing hundreds of bank account numbers that he sold to individuals to use with large digital payment companies. Pinedo “made a mistake” but “had absolutely no knowledge” about who was buying the information or their motivations, his lawyer said. Sources familiar with the indictment said Pinedo was named as helping Russian conspirators launder money as well as purchase Facebook ads and pay for rally supplies. Compiled by Frances Kerry; Editing by Tom BrownOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said on Tuesday the extradition bill that sparked the Chinese-ruled city’s biggest crisis in decades is dead and that government work on the legislation had been a “total failure”, but critics accused her of playing with words. The bill, which would allow people in Hong Kong to be sent to mainland China to face trial in courts controlled by the Communist Party, sparked huge and at times violent street protests and plunged the former British colony into turmoil. In mid-June, Lam responded to protests that drew hundreds of thousands of people on to the streets by suspending the bill, but that did not stop demonstrations that shut government offices and brought parts of the financial center to a standstill. Her latest attempt to restore order did not satisfy many protesters who stood by demands that she completely withdraw the bill. “There are still lingering doubts about the government’s sincerity or worries whether the government will restart the process in the Legislative Council,” Lam told reporters on Tuesday. “So, I reiterate here, there is no such plan, the bill is dead.” The government’s work on the bill had been a “total failure”, she said. The bill triggered outrage across broad sections of Hong Kong society amid concerns it would threaten the much-cherished rule of law that underpins the city’s international financial status. Related CoverageMental health issues in Hong Kong surging amid tumultuous protests, experts sayExclusive: China's PLA signals it will keep Hong Kong-based troops in barracksLawyers and rights groups say China’s justice system is marked by torture, forced confessions and arbitrary detention, claims that Beijing denies. Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 with the promise of a high degree of autonomy, including an independent legal system and right to protest, but in recent years there has been growing concern about the erosion of those freedoms at the hands of Beijing. Critics of the extradition bill fear Beijing could use it to crack down on dissent. University students who have been out in force during the protests denounced Lam’s comments. “What we want is to completely withdraw the bill. She is playing word games,” said Chan Wai Lam William, general officer of the Student Union of Chinese University of Hong Kong. Demonstrators have also called for Lam to resign as Hong Kong chief executive, for an independent investigation into police actions against protesters, and for the government to abandon the description of a violent protest on June 12 as a riot. “It is not a simple thing for CE (chief executive) to step down, and I myself still have the passion and undertaking to service Hong Kong people,” Lam said when asked about the protesters’ demands. Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam speaks to media over an extradition bill in Hong Kong, China July 9, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu“I hope that Hong Kong society can give me and my team the opportunity and room to allow us to use our new governance style to response to people’s demand in economy and in livelihood.” China has called the protests an “undisguised challenge” to the “one country, two systems” model under which Hong Kong is ruled. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang, asked about Lam’s remarks, referred to the central government’s statement on June 15 supporting Hong Kong’s decision to shelve the extradition bill. He said he had nothing further to add. Fernando Cheung, a pro-democracy lawmaker who has been aligned with the protesters, said Lam’s response was insufficient. “She still doesn’t get it. If she doesn’t establish an independent inquiry commission, it’s the death of her administration, not just the bill. The crisis cannot be settled without some heads rolling,” he told Reuters. Jimmy Sham, convener of the Civil Human Rights Front, which has organized a series of protests, said Lam should meet the protesters’ demands and stop using “words to cheat the public”. Amnesty International also said in a statement Lam’s “refusal to acknowledge the consequences of the fatal flaws” of the extradition bill continues to “inflame the situation” in Hong Kong. It urged her to formally withdraw the bill and called for “an independent, impartial, effective and prompt investigation” into police actions on June 12. Chief executives of Hong Kong are selected by a small committee of pro-establishment figures stacked in Beijing’s favor and formally appointed by China’s central government. Lam’s resignation would require Beijing’s approval, experts say. Slideshow (3 Images)Lam said the June 12 protest, which saw police fire tear gas, rubber bullets and beanbag rounds at demonstrators, had not been given a label, but reiterated any decision to prosecute would be one for the justice department. “Any demand that we should run an amnesty at this stage, that we will not follow up on investigations and prosecutions of offenders is not acceptable, because that bluntly goes against the rule of law in Hong Kong,” she said. “...My sincere plea is: Please give us an opportunity, the time, the room, to take Hong Kong out of the current impasse and try to improve the current situation.” Additonal reporting by Farah Master and Vimvam Tong; Writing by John Ruwitch; Editing by Michael Perry and Nick MacfieOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Enlarge this image A special response team with Customs and Border Protection drills on the international bridge between Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, in the event that desperate migrants rush the port of entry. John Burnett/NPR hide caption toggle caption John Burnett/NPR A special response team with Customs and Border Protection drills on the international bridge between Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, in the event that desperate migrants rush the port of entry. John Burnett/NPR One day last week in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, a fearsome gun battle broke out on the main boulevard to the airport, as drivers careened off the thoroughfare in terror while rival narcos blasted away at each other. The Cartel of the Northeast operates with impunity here, cruising around town in armored, olive-drab pickups with Tropas del Infierno, Spanish for "Soldiers from Hell," emblazoned on the doors. And a pastor named Aaron Mendez remains missing after being kidnapped from the Love Migrant House, a shelter he operated. One news report says extortionists grabbed Mendez when he refused to turn over Cuban migrants they wanted to shake down.This is where the U.S. is sending migrants who have asked for asylum after crossing the Rio Grande near Laredo, Texas.More than 30,000 migrants have been sent back to Mexican border cities to await their day in U.S. immigration court under the "remain in Mexico" program. They are sent back from U.S. ports of entry and given a date — generally from two to four months in the future — to return and make their case for asylum before an immigration judge on a video link. About 4,500 of them have been sent to Nuevo Laredo, where mayhem is rampant and extorting migrants has become the cartel's latest income stream. The program is officially known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP. In Spanish, the acronym is PPM. "For me, it's P-M-M, or Plan of Lies to Migrants," says Father Julio Lopez, director of the Nazareth Migrant House. "Because there is no protection."Lopez is anxious these days. He won't talk about organized crime in his city — it's too risky. But he has plenty to say about MPP. He's seen firsthand the asylum-seekers who cower in fear in the city's six shelters, including his own, leaving only briefly to buy food. Mexico's National Immigration Institute has been providing migrants with free bus trips to Monterrey, 2½ hours away, and Tapachula, 36 hours away, to get them out of crime-ridden Nuevo Laredo. Enlarge this image Liceth and Leytan Morales, asylum-seekers from Honduras, have decided to return home after they were kidnapped for three weeks in Nuevo Laredo and their family in Texas paid $8,000 ransom for their freedom. John Burnett/NPR hide caption toggle caption John Burnett/NPR Liceth and Leytan Morales, asylum-seekers from Honduras, have decided to return home after they were kidnapped for three weeks in Nuevo Laredo and their family in Texas paid $8,000 ransom for their freedom. John Burnett/NPR But even that may not be safe. According to a witness account, several pickups full of mafiosos recently screeched to a stop in front of a government-contracted bus that had just left the central bus station. They ordered a dozen migrants off the bus, ordered them into their vehicles, and drove off, leaving the rest of the passengers shocked and frantic. Cesar Antunes was on an earlier bus that departed, just before the bus that was ambushed. Antunes said he learned what happened to the second bus when both buses arrived in Monterrey and he spoke with one of the remaining passengers who witnessed the abductions. Antunes related the terrifying tale to NPR on his mobile phone from a city in Northern Mexico. "Nuevo Laredo is more dangerous than San Pedro Sula, Honduras," Antunes says, "which is where I fled from." The Mexican government has been cooperating with Trump's immigration agenda after the president threatened that country with steep tariffs in June. In addition to accepting migrants returned under MPP, Mexico has deployed security forces to its own borders to block migrants from going north.Acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan called Mexico's help "a game changer." As a result, the number of migrants in U.S. Border Patrol custody has dropped dramatically in the past two months. Yet Morgan says he was unaware asylum-seekers waiting in Mexico are being disappeared and extorted by gangsters."I haven't heard anything like that," he said in a recent roundtable with reporters, "not with respect to the MPP program." National Asylum Officers: Trump's 'Remain In Mexico' Policy Is Against 'Moral Fabric' Of U.S. The CBP chief may be getting his misinformation from Mexican officials. The chief investigator for the Office for Disappeared Persons in Nuevo Laredo, Edwin Aceves Garcia, said in an interview: "We have received no reports of kidnappings and extortion of migrants. Those are just rumors. You can't believe everything those people say."As for the case of Aaron Mendez, the kidnapped pastor, a spokesman for the state prosecutor's office in Ciudad Victoria said he remains missing and the investigation continues.With the brazen crimes committed against migrants stuck in Nuevo Laredo, some of them are abandoning their asylum requests and returning home. "It's dangerous here. Lots of things can happen," says Liceth Morales, her lip trembling. The 40-year-old Honduran woman fled the city of Choluteca with her 6-year-old son, Leytan, when thugs repeatedly robbed her small store. Then, as she tells it, when they arrived at the Nuevo Laredo bus station last month, young men with tattoos and ball caps grabbed her and her son and held them prisoner for three weeks in a succession of safe houses. Ultimately, she says, her family in San Antonio paid $8,000 in ransom for her freedom. "When they released us, we immediately crossed the bridge to the U.S. to ask for asylum," she says. "But they sent me right back over here." Contemplating a two-month wait in this treacherous border city for her court hearing in Laredo, Liceth and Leytan Morales decided to go back to Choluteca via the free daily bus to southern Mexico. Lopez, the shelter operator, says most of the other migrants in his shelter are choosing to do the same — return home. The Mexican government points to crime and violence in Nuevo Laredo as a reason for migrants to consider leaving.Lopez and others said they believe the bus trips to Tapachula, a city near the Mexico-Guatemala border, are a transparent attempt by Mexican authorities to persuade migrants to return to their homes in Central America. Crime in Nuevo Laredo "is the perfect excuse to get rid of them because the government doesn't want them here," said the priest.

WASHINGTON/MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration pushed ahead with its attempts to crack down on migration at the southern border on Monday, defending in court a virtual ban it imposed on asylum seekers and issuing its second sweeping order within a week. A U.S. district judge in Washington heard arguments about whether to temporarily strike down the first new rule, which is designed to bar almost all immigrants from applying for asylum at the country’s southern border. The Trump administration unveiled the rule a week ago as part of an effort to end what it has called fraudulent asylum claims from an increasing number of migrants, mainly from the impoverished and violence-plagued Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, who pass through Mexico on their way to the United States. Judge Timothy Kelly in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia withheld ruling on whether to issue a temporary restraining order to block the rule on asylum seekers pending a trial, saying he would make that decision soon. Justice Department lawyer Scott Stewart told the judge that a temporary restraining order would prompt a dangerous surge on the border from migrants seeking to get into the United States while the case was being heard. The suit was brought by the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a similar suit in federal court in California, due for a hearing on Wednesday. As the asylum rule faced its first court fight, the Trump administration on Monday unveiled a new regulation that would order expedited deportations for tens of thousands of people who could be deprived of a review by an immigration judge. “For the past two and half years there has been one attack after another on immigrants but the pace has increased beyond anything we have seen just in the past few weeks,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants Rights Project. Ahead of a presidential race in 2020, Trump is seeking to show voters he has carried out pledges to take a tough stance on illegal immigration. Voters sent him to the White House in a 2016 campaign in which he promised to build a border wall and ban immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries. Democrats have blasted the policies as cruel, faulting the Trump administration for warehousing migrants in crowded and unsanitary detention facilities along the border and separating immigrant children from the adults with whom they had traveled. Single-adult male detainees wait along a fence inside a Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas, U.S. July 12, 2019. REUTERS/Veronica G. CardenasThe ACLU, which has filed suit to block numerous Trump immigration policies in court, vowed to challenge the expedited deportations as well. The Trump administration has had mixed results trying to implement its most restrictive immigration policies. It had to revise its attempt to ban most people from certain predominantly Muslim countries multiple times before the courts would allow it. The acting head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection is presuming the latest restriction on asylum will get rejected by the courts, according to an interview he gave to National Public Radio. “We’re actually anticipating the... regulation will be enjoined. And then we’ll have to go from there, as unfortunately, many times, this happens,” Mike Morgan told NPR last week. The new rule requires asylum seekers to first pursue safe haven in a third country through which they had traveled on their way to the United States. But the legal challenges contend that Trump cannot force those migrants to apply for asylum elsewhere unless the United States has a “safe third country” agreement with that country. Mexico, which would be most affected by the new rule, cut off discussions with the United States about reaching such an agreement, its foreign minister said on Monday. Slideshow (7 Images)The Trump administration had previously given Mexico until July 22 to significantly lower migration flows but the deadline passed without comment from Washington. Guatemala, another country that could be forced to process asylum claims of migrants headed for the United States, previously rejected U.S. entreaties on a similar deal. Reporting by Bryan Pietsch in Washington; Daina Beth Solomon, Miguel Angel Lopez and Rebekah F Ward in Mexico City; Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; and Mica Rosenberg in New York; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Rosalba O'BrienOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Aware that the burden of proof in a cancellation of removal case is high, Carlos’s lawyers brought up his previous taxes, social-work letters, letters of support and a psychological evaluation regarding past hardship. The prospect of Carlos’s being able to gather such documents while in detention is hard to fathom — especially given that phone calls to anyone except a lawyer can cost about 25 cents per minute. “It’s like an automatic deportation if you don’t have a lawyer,” Carlos said.For more than a year, Ms. Lauterback fought his case while he was in detention. During that time his father’s house burned down, destroying a lot of the necessary documentation, so the lawyers had to request copies from the respective federal agencies. The Executive Office for Immigration Review, an agency in the Justice Department that houses the courts, and ICE, which has attorneys acting as prosecutors in immigration cases, initially appreciated the public defender model in New York and helped facilitate the program. But since the beginning of the Trump administration, the program has come under threat. For example, ICE and the Executive Office for Immigration Review have made it harder for attorneys to perform intake on incoming detainees. Previously, when detainees who had not been represented at their initial hearing were brought into the court from the detention centers, attorneys would meet with them in a separate room with booths. The lawyers would question the detainees to get a sense of what forms of relief their prospective clients were eligible for and whether they met the financial requirements of the program, among other things.But last year, after an Occupy ICE protest at Varick Street, ICE began requiring all immigrants to appear for hearings via video teleconference, making it impossible for lawyers to meet potential clients. Almost a year after the protest ended, ICE still makes most detainees appear via video. In December, it surprised the attorneys by sending detained immigrants to the immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan for no apparent reason.Despite the recent difficulties, however, the program in New York has sparked inspiration and led the Vera Institute to expand it around the country. In November 2017, Vera introduced the Safety and Fairness for Everyone (SAFE) Network, which now includes 18 cities — six were added in July — in states such as Texas, Illinois and Maryland. Vera offered a one-time grant to help get the program off the ground and conduct consultations once it was running. The programs are smaller than New York City’s, which had a government commitment of more than $10 million. Most localities are offering only hundreds of thousands in funding.According to Vera, over 30 cities, counties and states around the country have now set up their own legal defense funds for immigrants, many of which are modeled after New York’s program; they include Los Angeles, Chicago, St. Paul and Ann Arbor, Mich. New York and New Jersey have established statewide funds.

Seven current and former US senators who called for the resignation of Al Franken in 2017 have said their actions were wrong.The disgraced former Minnesota senator and ex-Saturday Night Live star resigned amid huge pressure, including from his own party, after he was accused by eight women of groping or forcibly trying to kiss them at the height of the #MeToo scandal.More than a year and a half on, the Vermont senator Patrick Leahy, former North Dakota senator Heidi Heitkamp, Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth, Maine senator Angus King, Oregon senator Jeff Merkley, former Florida senator Bill Nelson and New Mexico senator Tom Udall all told the New Yorker they have regrets about the way the allegations were handled.Leahy, who was first elected to the Senate 45 years ago, told the magazine that calling for Franken’s departure was “one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made”.Heitkamp said: “If there’s one decision I’ve made that I would take back, it’s the decision to call for his resignation. It was made in the heat of the moment, without concern for exactly what this was.”Duckworth said the Senate ethics committee “should have been allowed to move forward”.In a tearful interview with the magazine, in which he said he has suffered from depression, the 68-year-old Franken said he “absolutely” regrets resigning and believes he should have appeared in front of an ethics committee hearing.Franken said: “I’m angry at my colleagues who did this. I think they were just trying to get past one bad news cycle.”In his resignation speech, Franken said “all women deserve to be heard and their experiences taken seriously” but claimed he had done nothing to bring “dishonour” on the Senate. Afterwards he said he stopped responding to calls or meetings with friends.“It got pretty dark,” he told the magazine. “I became clinically depressed. I wasn’t 100% cognitively. I needed medication.”While Franken claims to feel sorry for the women who accused him, he believes “differentiating different kinds of behaviour is important”.He said: “The idea that anybody who accuses someone of something is always right –that’s not the case. That isn’t reality.” Topics Al Franken US Senate Democrats news

Enlarge this image Ashley Tabaddor, a federal immigration judge in Los Angeles, is the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. Susan Walsh/AP hide caption toggle caption Susan Walsh/AP Ashley Tabaddor, a federal immigration judge in Los Angeles, is the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. Susan Walsh/AP The Trump administration is making changes to the agency that operates the nation's immigration court system, a move immediately denounced by the immigration judges' union as a power grab.The agency is called the Executive Office for Immigration Review and it is an arm of the Justice Department. Under the interim rule announced Friday, the agency's director will have the power to issue appellate decisions in immigration cases that have not been decided within an allotted timeframe. It also creates a new office of policy within EOIR to implement the administration's immigration policies.The head of the immigration judges' union accused the administration of trying to strip power away from judges and turn the immigration court system into a law enforcement agency."In an unprecedented attempt at agency overreach to dismantle the Immigration Court, the Department of Justice, Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) today published a new interim rule, effective next Monday, which takes steps to dismantle the Immigration Court system," Judge Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, said in a statement. "DOJ's action ends any transparency and assurance of independent decision making over individual cases."The new rule, first reported by The Associated Press, comes after the administration announced an effort to decertify the immigration judges' union. The judges, 440 in total, are employees of the Justice Department and not part of the independent judiciary. The Trump administration has also imposed quotas on judges in an effort to speed up deportations and reduce the backlog of more than 900,000 cases pending in immigration courts.Tabaddor said the administration is trying to concentrate its power over immigration proceedings."The new rule is a wolf in sheep's clothing," Tabaddor said. "While couched in bureaucratic language, the impact of this regulation is to substitute the policy directives of a single political appointee over the legal analysis of non-political, independent adjudicators."The EOIR did not respond to a call for comment.Earlier this week, the EOIR sent the immigration judges a newsletter containing a blog post from VDare, an anti-immigration website, which included an anti-Semitic reference, according to Tabaddor. After she protested, Justice Department officials said some information included with the newsletter had been compiled by a third-party contractor and should not have been distributed."The Department of Justice condemns anti-Semitism in the strongest terms," Kathryn Mattingly, a spokeswoman for EOIR told BuzzFeed.

But the opioid epidemic is not entirely white — and it’s a mistake to characterize it that way, given how opioids are harming nonwhite communities.According to statistics collected by the Kaiser Family Foundation, black people made up 12 percent of all opioid-related fatal overdose victims in 2017, with 5,513 deaths, more than double the number in 2015. (Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 78 percent of all victims — 37,113 deaths in total, a 37 percent increase from 2015 — and Hispanics 8 percent.)Twelve percent may not seem like a lot, but it is roughly proportional to the number of African-Americans in the United States population as a whole. In some areas, most victims of fatal overdoses are black, as in the District of Columbia, where black people make up more than 80 percent of opioid-related deaths. In Massachusetts, meanwhile, opioid death rates are going down for all other groups, but continue to rise for black people.Dr. Tom Gilson, a medical examiner in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, told the Boston NPR affiliate WBUR that there was a “Fourteen-fold increase in fentanyl deaths among African-Americans” in three years; most of those deaths involved fentanyl mixed with cocaine. A recent study found that between 2012 and 2015, black men died from cocaine overdose at rates as high as white men who died from opioids during that period. If fentanyl-laced cocaine becomes more common, overdoses among black Americans could get much worse.Native Americans have also been hit hard by the opioid crisis. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 1999 and 2015 Native Americans had the largest increase in overdose deaths compared to other groups. The C.D.C. also reported that in 2016, rates of prescription-opioid-related overdose were higher among both non-Hispanic whites and Native Americans than other groups. In response to this, several Native American tribes have filed lawsuits against the manufacturers and distributors of prescription opioids.