Tag Archives: President Donald Trump

Trump White House restarts tours, with pandemic restrictions

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration will restart tours of the White House on Sept. 12 with new restrictions aimed at limiting the spread of the coronavirus, according to an announcement released on Tuesday.

Tours at the usually bustling White House complex, where Trump lives and works, were suspended after COVID-19 began spreading throughout the country. At the same time, some White House officials have tested positive for the disease, which has killed more than 180,000 people in the United States, and media organizations have limited the number of journalists showing up each day.

On Thursday, though, Trump opened the White House to more of the public, hosting the last night of his Republican party’s national convention on its South Lawn. He gave his renomination acceptance speech in front of more than 1,000 people sitting close together, most of them without face coverings.

The resumed public tours will only take place on Friday and Saturday mornings, with roughly a fifth of the usual number of guests allowed in.

Guests must wear face coverings and follow dots on the floor to remain socially distant when they check in. Federal employees along the self-guided tour route will wear face coverings and gloves, and hand sanitizer will be available, according to the announcement.

The White House has generally welcomed the public, but access has been reduced over the years to protect its residents. Famously, President Andrew Jackson, who has served as an inspiration for Trump, hosted 20,000 people for his Inauguration Day party in 1829, serving whiskey in bathtubs on the lawn. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, visitors have had to reserve tours months in advance through a member of Congress and undergo background checks.

Public tours of the Library of Congress and the U.S. Capitol remain suspended, according to their websites.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

White House says Senate Republicans may take up COVID-19 bill next week

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senate Republicans are likely to take up their COVID-19 relief bill next week offering $500 billion in additional federal aid, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said on Tuesday, adding that the administration was still weighing help for U.S. airlines.

In an interview on CNBC, Meadows said he expected Senate Republicans’ legislation would be “more targeted” than House Democrats’ offer and could either be used as a building block or be passed on its own while negotiations continue.

Congressional negotiations on further federal intervention amid the novel coronavirus pandemic remain at a standstill after the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives passed its $3.4 trillion measure back in May.

Republican President Donald Trump and his administration have said they could support a $1 trillion bill. Democrats offered to split the difference with a roughly $2 trillion compromise, but there has been little movement.

Meadows told CNBC the administration “was nowhere close” to Democrats’ $2 trillion offer but added: “We’ll get there in the end.”

It was unclear whether Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell planned to take up the bill next week. Republican Senator John Barrasso said a conference call with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and the White House was scheduled for later on Tuesday to discuss the matter.

Asked about efforts to aid airlines, which have furloughed or laid off thousands of workers and curtailed flights as the outbreak had upended travel, Meadows said any aid “remains an open question” and that the administration is “looking closely at a number of executive actions.”

Meadows said he and Mnuchin met with Trump late on Monday and that the president tasked them “to get as creative as we can within the confines of the law to put forth as much money as we can so we can keep this economy going.”

(Reporting by Susan Heavey and David Morgan; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)

U.S. House panel to subpoena DeJoy seeking Postal Service documents

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The chairwoman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee said Monday she plans to subpoena Postmaster General Louis DeJoy seeking documents he has been withholding from Congress.

Representative Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat, said DeJoy has not turned over any additional documents after a hearing last week on the Postal Service. DeJoy told lawmakers last week he planned to resume some cost-cutting measures that have factored in widespread service delays after the November election, defying Democratic lawmakers who have sought to block his changes.

Maloney also sent a document request Monday to Postal Service Board of Governors Chairman Robert Duncan.

A Postal Service spokesman did not immediately comment, but DeJoy said in a letter to the committee that staff are “working with the Oversight committee to identify and provide materials requested during the hearing.”

DeJoy also said last week he would keep in place a management reshuffle he implemented after assuming his job in June.

DeJoy has sought to assure Americans that widespread delays caused by his cost-cutting efforts would not cause their ballots to go uncounted in November’s election, when up to half of U.S. voters could cast ballots through the mail.

DeJoy, who has donated $2.7 million to President Donald Trump and other Republicans since 2016, has rejected charges of political interference. Trump has claimed, without evidence, that absentee voting is unreliable, even though he has voted that way himself.

DeJoy has refused to bring back mail-sorting machines and mailboxes pulled from service in recent weeks, saying they were routine responses to changes in mail volume that were under way before he took office.

The House this month voted to prevent DeJoy from taking action that would impede service until January, and also to provide $25 billion in funding. That legislation is not expected to advance in the Republican-controlled Senate and the White House has threatened to veto it.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Damaged WTO now leaderless as chief Azevedo steps down

By Emma Farge and Philip Blenkinsop

GENEVA/BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The World Trade Organization’s director-general Roberto Azevedo steps down on Monday, leaving the already-damaged global watchdog leaderless as it faces the biggest crisis in its 25-year history.

As the WTO’s influence seeps away, rising international tensions and protectionism during a COVID-induced slowdown, most obviously between China and President Donald Trump’s U.S. administration, make reform of global trade rules ever more urgent.

“This is indeed a new – though alas not unsurprising – low point for the WTO,” said Rohinton Medhora, president of the Center for International Governance Innovation. “The organization has been directionless for some time, several years in fact, and will now be functionally leaderless.”

In particular, the WTO appeals court, which rules on international trade disputes, has been paralyzed by Washington’s blockade on the appointment of new judges.

Azevedo, a Brazilian, is heading for a job at PepsiCo Inc and eight candidates are vying to replace him.

In 1999, a four-month gap leadership vacuum was widely seen as damaging, and guidelines to prevent a repeat envisaged the 164 members selecting a temporary replacement from among four current deputies. But Washington’s insistence on its candidate prevented agreement, leaving a vacuum that will last for months.

U.S. ELECTION

In theory, a winner should be selected by Nov. 7, under an agreed elimination process that seeks to have a new director-general appointed by consensus.

In practice, trade sources say the uncertainty around the presidential election on Nov. 3 in the United States, which has not said publicly which candidate it prefers, could delay matters further. The 2021 budget, due to be set at the end of the year, which Washington might question, could also be a hurdle.

The U.S. administration of President Donald Trump says the WTO, which took almost 20 years to broker its first global agreement, has failed for years to hold China – the world’s second largest economy after the United States – accountable for unfair trade practices. It also says the wider WTO tariff system is unfair to the U.S.

Trump has even suggested quitting the WTO, although no firm plans have been announced.

Peter Ungphakorn, a former WTO staff member who now writes blogs on trade, said there was a risk of a similar “messy selection” of the next full-time chief, citing trade tensions and members’ unwillingness to compromise over the acting director-general.

In theory, day-to-day operations can be handled by the deputies, including the director-general’s key role of selecting panelists to adjudicate on trade disputes.

Negotiations to reduce fishing subsidies in particular are supposed to conclude by the end of the year.

But David Tinline, a former adviser to Azevedo, noted that the red-tape-cutting Trade Facilitation Agreement had needed Azevedo’s interventions to get over the line in 2013.

“What we are not going to have is that galvanizing force of the DG (director-general), pushing people to solve specific problems,” Tinline said.

(Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Portland mayor urges restraint, renunciation of violence after fatal shooting

By Steve Gorman and Maria Caspani

(Reuters) – Officials in Portland, Oregon, said on Sunday they were braced for an escalation of protest-related violence that has convulsed the city for three months, citing social media posts vowing revenge for a fatal shooting amid weekend street clashes between supporters of President Donald Trump and counter-demonstrators.

“For those of you saying on Twitter this morning that you plan to come to Portland to seek retribution, I’m calling on you to stay away,” Mayor Ted Wheeler told an afternoon news conference, urging individuals of all political persuasions to join in renouncing violence.

He also lashed out at Trump for political rhetoric that he said “encouraged division and stoked violence,” and brushed aside a flurry of weekend Twitter posts from the president criticizing Wheeler and urging the mayor to request help from the federal government to restore order.

“It’s an aggressive stance. It’s not collaborative,” Wheeler said of Trump’s tweets. “I’d appreciate it if the president would support us or stay the hell out of the way.”

Wheeler and Police Chief Chuck Lovell said investigators were still working to establish the sequence of events leading to the fatal shooting late Saturday in downtown Portland, and they provided few new details about the investigation.

Lovell said it remained to be determined whether the shooting was connected to skirmishes that night between a caravan of protesters driving through the city’s downtown district in pickup trucks waving pro-Trump flags and counter-protesters on the streets.

Video on social media showed individuals in the beds of the pickups firing paint-balls and spraying chemical irritants at opposing demonstrators as they rode by, while those on the street hurled objects at the trucks and tried to block them.

Authorities have not identified the shooting victim. But the New York Times reported the man gunned down was wearing a hat with the insignia of the right-wing group Patriot Prayer. On Sunday, the leader of the group, Joey Gibson, appeared to confirm that the victim was a Patriot Prayer member whom he knew.

“We love Jay, and he had such a huge heart. God bless him and the life he lived,” Gibson wrote on social media. “I’m going to wait to make any public statements until after the family can.”

Trump later re-tweeted a photo of a man identified as Jay Bishop and described in that post as “a good American that loved his country and Backed the Blue,” an apparent reference to police. “He was murdered in Portland by ANTIFA.”

Trump wrote, “Rest in Peace Jay!” in his retweet.

UNDER FIRE FROM TWO SIDES

The mayor also came under renewed fire from several left-wing Oregon-based civil rights and community organizations that have been at odds with Wheeler and called for his resignation in an open letter on Sunday.

“Amid 94 days and nights of protests against police brutality, Mayor Wheeler has fundamentally failed in his responsibilities to the residents of Portland,” the letter said.

Police warned against individuals taking to Twitter on the basis of misinformation.

“There are many who are sharing information on social media who are jumping to conclusions that are not based on facts,” Lovell said.

He said the shooting was preceded by a “political rally involving a vehicle caravan that traveled through Portland for several hours.” He said those vehicles had departed from a prescribed protest route that was supposed to funnel them along Interstate 5, outside Portland, to the site of the rally in neighboring Clackamas County.

He said that by the time the shooting took place, the caravan had already cleared that section of downtown, and that there were no police at the spot when it happened.

Protests, which have grown violent at times, have roiled downtown Portland every night for more than three months following the May 25 killing of George Floyd, the Black man who died under the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis.

The demonstrators, demanding reforms of police practices they view as racist and abusive, have frequently clashed with law enforcement and on occasion with counter-protesters associated with right-wing militia groups.

The Trump administration in July deployed federal forces to Portland to crack down on the protests, drawing widespread criticism that the presence of federal agents in the city only heightened tensions.

On Sunday’s broadcast of ABC’s “This Week” program, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said, “All options continue to be on the table” to resolve Portland’s unrest.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman and Maria Caspani; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

Trump willing to sign a $1.3 trillion coronavirus relief bill: Meadows

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump is willing to sign a $1.3 trillion coronavirus relief bill, a top Trump aide said on Friday, marking a $300 billion increase from an initial $1 trillion offer from the White House and Senate Republicans.

Three weeks to the day after talks on Capitol Hill broke down without a deal on legislation to help Americans suffering from the coronavirus pandemic, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said Trump was “right now willing to sign something at $1.3 trillion.”

But the new White House amount is still $900 billion less than the $2.2 trillion that House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has demanded that the Trump administration accept before negotiations can resume.

The $1.3 trillion has been offered in private, Meadows said. Negotiations have involved Pelosi, Meadows, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.

Meadows and Pelosi spoke by phone for 25 minutes on Thursday without a breakthrough, and afterward the Democrat said the conversation showed that the White House “continues to disregard the needs of the American people.”

Pelosi told reporters that Democrats could not go lower than $2.2 trillion, saying the figure would allow both sides to “meet in the middle.”

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert and David Morgan; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Remnants of Hurricane Laura drench Arkansas as storm heads east

(Reuters) – The remnants of Hurricane Laura were dousing Arkansas on Friday morning and due to bring rain to the East Coast over the weekend.

Now a tropical depression, Laura had proved less damaging than feared, despite arriving in Louisiana this week as one of the most powerful hurricanes recorded in the United States.

The storm killed at least six people in Louisiana, including four who were killed when trees fell into homes, damaged buildings in Louisiana and Texas and knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of residents.

U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to head to the Gulf Coast over the weekend to survey the damage.

The storm was forecast to drop heavy rain over Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri and Kentucky as it headed out to the East Coast, the National Weather Service said.

At its peak upon making landfall on Thursday morning, Laura had maximum sustained winds of 150 miles per hour (241 km per hour), faster than even Hurricane Katrina, which sparked deadly levee breaches in New Orleans in 2005 after arriving with wind speeds of 125 mph.

What would have been a dangerous 20-foot (6-m) storm surge that forecasters had predicted could move 40 miles (64 km) inland was avoided when Laura tacked east just before landfall, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said. That meant a mighty gush of water was not fully pushed up the Calcasieu Ship Channel, which would have given the storm surge an easy path far inland.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

White House says Trump could act unilaterally to avoid U.S. airline layoffs

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump could take executive action to avoid massive layoffs at U.S. airlines, while the coronavirus pandemic weighs on air travel and talks on a new COVID-19 stimulus bill remain stall in Congress, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said on Wednesday.

“We’re looking at other executive actions,” Meadows said in an online interview with Politico. “If Congress is not going to work, this president is going to get to work and solve some problems. So hopefully, we can help out the airlines and keep some of those employees from being furloughed.”

His remarks came a day after American Airlines said its workforce will shrink by 40,000, including 19,000 involuntary cuts, in October without an extension of government aid.

Meadows said he has spoken to American Airlines, as well as United Airlines, which has warned that 36,000 jobs are on the line, and to Delta Air Lines, which announced furloughs of nearly 2,000 pilots on Monday.

“So we’ve raised this issue. It would take a CARES package, I believe, to do it,” Meadows said, referring to a $3 trillion coronavirus relief package that Congress passed earlier this year.

Talks between Meadows, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer ended in early August, with top Democrats and the administration far apart on new legislation. Meadows told Politico that he is not optimistic that negotiations will restart soon.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Alistair Bell)

Mnuchin to testify Sept. 1 before House coronavirus panel

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will face lawmakers’ questions over stalled coronavirus aid negotiations between the Trump administration and Congress next week when he testifies before a House of Representatives panel, lawmakers said on Wednesday.

The Sept. 1 hearing “will examine the urgent need for additional economic relief for children, workers, and families and the Administration’s implementation of key stimulus programs,” the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis said in a statement.

The hearing will be Mnuchin’s first congressional testimony since talks on a new round of $1 trillion to $3 trillion in federal coronavirus aid collapsed in early August.

No intensive talks between Mnuchin, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer have taken place since then.

President Donald Trump subsequently signed an executive order partially extending supplemental unemployment benefits and deferring payment of some payroll taxes, but implementation details are unclear.

The focus of congressional action also shifted to the U.S. Postal Service, with House Democrats last Saturday passing a $25 billion funding bill aimed at thwarting planned service cuts and ensuring delivery of mail-in ballots for the November election. Republicans have declared the measure dead.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey and David Lawder; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Nick Macfie)

U.S. rejects U.N. rights panel upholding access to abortions during pandemic

An exam room at the Planned Parenthood South Austin Health Center is shown in Austin, Texas, U.S. June 27, 2016. REUTERS/Ilana Panich-Linsman

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United States on Wednesday hit back at a U.N. women’s rights panel that said some U.S. states limited access to abortions during the COVID-19 pandemic, rejecting its interference and the notion of “an assumed right to abortion”.

“The United States is disappointed by and categorically rejects this transparent attempt to take advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to assert the existence of such a right,” the U.S. mission in Geneva said in a release posted on Twitter.

“This is a perversion of the human rights system and the founding principles of the United Nations,” it said, citing an Aug. 11 letter it sent to the U.N. experts responding to the “spurious allegations”.

The U.N. working group on discrimination against women and girls said on May 27 that some U.S. states “appear to be “manipulating the COVID-19 crisis to curb access to essential abortion care”.

The panel of five independent U.N. experts said that states including Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Iowa, Ohio, Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee had issued COVID-19 emergency orders suspending procedures not deemed immediately medically necessary to restrict access to abortion.

“This situation is also the latest example illustrating a pattern of restrictions and retrogressions in access to legal abortion care across the country,” Elizabeth Broderick, panel vice-chair, said at the time.

The U.S. statement cited allegations of forced abortions and sterilizations in China’s western region of Xinjiang and urged the panel to focus on “actual human rights abuses”.

A lack of comment on such issues was “one of the reasons that the United States and others increasingly see the U.N.’s human rights system as utterly broken”.

U.S. President Donald Trump, seeking re-election in November, works closely with evangelical Christians and puts their causes of restricting abortion and preserving gun ownership at the top of his policy agenda.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Nick Macfie)