Tag Archives: President Donald Trump

Trump vetoes major defense bill, despite strong backing in Congress

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON xx (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump vetoed a $740 billion bill setting policy for the Department of Defense on Wednesday, despite its strong support in Congress, raising the possibility that the measure will fail to become law for the first time in 60 years.

Trump said he vetoed the annual National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, because it “fails to include critical national security measures, includes provisions that fail to respect our veterans and our military’s history, and contradicts efforts by my Administration to put America first in our national security and foreign policy actions.”

“It is a ‘gift’ to China and Russia,” he said in a message to the House of Representatives.

Although his previous eight vetoes were all upheld thanks to support from Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress, advisers said this one looked likely to be overridden.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle, additional reporting by Steve Holland; editing by Philippa Fletcher and Rosalba O’Brien)

Trump veto threat raises the prospect of year-end government shutdown

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Washington on Wednesday faced the prospect of a year-end U.S. government shutdown during a raging pandemic after outgoing President Donald Trump threatened not to sign a $2.3 trillion package funding the government for another year.

The package, which includes $892 billion specifically responding to the COVID-19 virus, which has killed more than 323,000 Americans, was the result of months of negotiation between congressional Republicans and Democrats. It also funds government operations through September 2021.

Trump, in a video posted to social media on Tuesday evening, surprised some of his closest officials by demanding that the bill be revised to include $2,000 payments to each American, more than triple the $600 that Congress had been discussing publicly for almost a week before passing the bill.

A source familiar with the situation said aides thought they had talked Trump out of the $2,000 demand last week, only to learn he had not given up when he posted the video. That surprised even his Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, who took part in the talks and backed the $600 figure.

Current federal funding is due to expire on Monday if Trump, who is scheduled to leave for Florida on Wednesday, does not sign the bill into law.

That would furlough millions of federal workers and shut down wide swaths of the U.S. government at a time when it is rushing to distribute two coronavirus vaccines and contend with a massive hack that officials say was perpetrated by Russia.

Trump’s administration helped to craft the bill, and the White House said on Sunday that he would sign it.

In the video Trump demanded the bill be stripped of foreign aid, which is included in every annual federal spending bill.

He also objected to other elements of the 5,500-page bill, such as fish breeding and funding for the Smithsonian museums.

Trump did not say whether he would actually veto the legislation.

He has also set up a parallel fight with Congress that comes to a head on Wednesday, his deadline to decide whether to carry out his threat to veto the $740 billion National Defense Authorization Act. Trump dislikes the bill, which funds the military and has passed uninterrupted every year for decades, because it would strip the names of Confederate generals from military bases and because it does not repeal liability protections – unrelated to defense – for social media companies, such as Twitter and Facebook, that Trump considers unfriendly to conservatives.

The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and the Republican-controlled Senate passed the bill by wide, bipartisan margins, and could return to Washington to override his veto if necessary. The House of Representatives already plans to return on Dec. 28 if Trump vetoes the defense-policy bill. That is the same day government funding is due to expire.

Both measures passed with veto-proof majorities, but a veto would put Trump’s fellow Republicans in an awkward position.

Many of them opposed the $2,000 payments that Trump is now demanding, and they would have to either defy their party’s leader or change their position on those payments.

Democrats have supported the $2,000 payments sought by Trump, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Tuesday she was ready to vote on the proposal this week. She did not address Trump’s other concerns.

If Trump takes no action, the bill would normally become law after 10 days without his signature under the U.S. Constitution. However, that does not apply in this situation because Congress is due to adjourn at the end of the year.

Trump sparked a record 35-day government shutdown two years ago when he rejected a federal spending bill over what he said was insufficient funding for building a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan, additional reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Scott Malone and Steve Orlofsky)

After months of inaction, U.S. Congress approves $892 billion COVID-19 relief package

By Richard Cowan and Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Congress on Monday approved an $892 billion coronavirus aid package, throwing a lifeline to the nation’s pandemic-battered economy after months of inaction, while also keeping the federal government funded.

President Donald Trump is expected to sign the package into law.

Following days of furious negotiation, both legislative chambers worked deep into the night to pass the bill – worth about $2.3 trillion including spending for the rest of the fiscal year – with the House of Representatives first approving it and the Senate following suit several hours later in a bipartisan 92-6 vote.

The virus relief bill includes $600 payments to most Americans as well as additional payments to the millions of people thrown out of work during the COVID-19 pandemic, just as a larger round of benefits is due to expire on Saturday.

The stimulus package, the first congressionally approved aid since April, comes as the pandemic is accelerating in the United States, infecting more than 214,000 people every day and slowing the economic recovery. More than 317,000 Americans have died.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, said she supported the virus relief bill even though it did not include the direct aid for state and local governments that Democrats had sought.  The bill, she said, “doesn’t go all the way but it takes us down the path.”

Republican Representative Hal Rogers, who also supported the package, said “it reflects a fair compromise.”

At 5,593 pages, the wide-ranging bill that also spends $1.4 trillion on an array of federal programs through the end of the fiscal year in September, is likely to be the final major piece of legislation for the 116th Congress that expires on Jan. 3. Congress included a measure continuing current levels of government spending for seven days, ensuring no interruption to federal operations.

MCCONNELL CLAIMS VICTORY

It has a net cost of roughly $350 billion for coronavirus relief, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, adding that more than $500 billion in funding comes from unspent money Congress had authorized.

Both Democrats and Republicans claimed victory but McConnell argued that the final bill came close to what Democrats rejected months ago as insufficient.

The measure ended up far less than the $3 trillion called for in a bill that passed the Democratic-controlled House in May, which the Republican-controlled Senate ignored.

“Compare the shape of this major agreement with the shape of what I proposed all the way back in late July. Yes, some fine details are different,” McConnell said in a statement after the vote. “There is no doubt this new agreement contains input from our Democratic colleagues. It is bipartisan. But these matters could have been settled long ago.”

A months-long impasse on relief that played in the background of the U.S. presidential election was broken after a group of centrist lawmakers from both parties put forward a proposal that served as a framework for the final bill.

Even so, the bill was so unwieldy that it caused congressional computers to malfunction. It includes a hodgepodge of tax breaks and other proposals that failed to pass on their own, including two new Smithsonian museums and limits on surprise medical billing.

The legislation also renews a small-business lending program by about $284 billion and steers money to schools, airlines, transit systems and vaccine distribution.

PUBLIC COMPANIES EXCLUDED

The small-business loan and grant program, known as the Paycheck Protection Program, would exclude publicly traded companies from eligibility.

State and local governments, which are struggling to pay for the distribution of newly approved COVID-19 vaccines, would receive $8.75 billion from Washington, with $300 million of that targeted at vaccinations in minority and high-risk populations.

The deal, worked out in a rare weekend session of Congress, omits the thorniest sticking points, which included Republicans’ desire for a liability shield to protect businesses from coronavirus-related lawsuits as well as Democrats’ request for a large outlay of money for cash-strapped state and local governments.

If signed into law, the bill would be the second-largest stimulus package in U.S. history, behind the roughly $2 trillion aid bill passed in March. Experts said that money played a critical role as social-distancing measures shuttered wide swaths of the economy.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan and Andy Sullivan in Washington; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Lisa Lambert in Washington; Writing by James Oliphant; Editing by Scott Malone, Matthew Lewis and Peter Cooney)

Trump campaign will again ask U.S. high court to upend election results

By Jan Wolfe

(Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s campaign said on Sunday it would again ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn results from the Nov. 3 election.

In a statement issued by the campaign, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said the campaign had filed a petition asking the high court to reverse three rulings by a Pennsylvania state court interpreting the state’s rules for mail-in ballots.

“The Campaign’s petition seeks to reverse three decisions which eviscerated the Pennsylvania Legislature’s protections against mail ballot fraud,” Giuliani said in a statement.

Giuliani said the filing sought all “appropriate remedies,” including an order allowing Pennsylvania’s legislature to award the state’s 20 electoral votes to Trump.

The Supreme Court on Dec. 11 rejected a lawsuit filed by Texas and backed by Trump seeking to throw out voting results in four states, including Pennsylvania.

Several senior Republican U.S. senators, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have rejected the idea of overturning the 2020 presidential election in Congress.

A candidate needs 270 Electoral College votes to win the White House. Congress will count the electoral votes on Jan. 6.

U.S. House begins debate on $900 billion coronavirus package as funding deadline looms

By Richard Cowan and Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. House of Representatives on Monday began debate on a $900 billion coronavirus aid package meant to stimulate a pandemic-hit economy, which the leaders of both chambers of Congress aimed to pass in a marathon session.

The White House-backed bill includes $600 payments to most Americans as well as additional payments to the millions of people thrown out of work during the COVID-19 pandemic, just as a larger round of benefits is due to expire on Saturday.

The House of Representatives is expected to vote sometime Monday evening.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters at the Capitol that passage of the legislation in the Senate will “probably be late but we’re going to finish tonight.”

At 5,593 pages, the wide-ranging bill that also spends $1.4 trillion on an array of federal programs through next September, is likely to be the final major piece of legislation for the 116th Congress that expires on Jan. 3.

It has a net cost of roughly $350 billion for coronavirus relief, McConnell said, adding that more than $500 billion in funding comes from unspent money Congress had authorized.

The package, the first Congress-approved aid since March, comes as the pandemic is accelerating in the United States, infecting more than 214,000 people every day and slowing the economic recovery. More than 317,000 Americans have died.

The bill would be the second-largest stimulus package in U.S. history, behind only the $2.3 trillion aid bill passed this spring. Economists say that money played a critical role at a time when social-distancing measures shuttered wide swaths of the world’s largest economy.

The new bill reprises many of the key pillars of the earlier package, with some modifications. Small-business aid would be expanded to struggling news outlets and TV stations, while theaters and live-music venues would get dedicated support.

Unemployed workers would get an extra $300 per week through March, down from the $600 increase in the earlier bill. An eviction ban, due to expire at the end of the year, will be extended through January.

Lawmakers set aside issues that had frozen negotiations for months, including liability protections sought by Republicans and state and local government aid sought by Democrats. A last-minute dispute over emergency-lending programs administered by Federal Reserve was also resolved.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan; additional reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Robert Birsel)

U.S. Supreme Court throws out challenge to Trump census immigrant plan

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday threw out a lawsuit seeking to block President Donald Trump’s plan to exclude immigrants living illegally in the United States from the population count used to allocate congressional districts to states.

The 6-3 ruling on ideological lines, with the court’s six conservatives in the majority and three liberals dissenting, gives Trump a short-term victory as he pursues his hardline policies toward immigration.

“At present, this case is riddled with contingencies and speculation that impede judicial review,” the ruling said. The decision noted that the court was not weighing the merits of Trump’s plan.

Challengers led by New York state and the American Civil Liberties Union said Trump’s proposal would dilute the political clout of states with larger numbers of such immigrants, including heavily Democratic California, by undercounting state populations and depriving them of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“If the administration actually tries to implement this policy, we’ll sue. Again. And we’ll win,” said Dale Ho, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who represents the challengers.

The administration has not disclosed what method it would use to calculate the number of people it proposed to exclude or which subsets of immigrants would be targeted. Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall told the justices during the Nov. 30 oral argument in the case that the administration could miss a Dec. 31 statutory deadline to finalize a Census Bureau report to Trump containing the final population data, including the number of immigrants excluded.

During the oral argument, Wall told the justices that it is “very unlikely” the administration would amass data to exclude all immigrants in the country illegally. Instead, Wall said, it may propose excluding certain groups, such as the fewer than 100,000 in federal detention, and the total number may not be high enough to affect apportionment.

Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in a dissenting opinion that the government can currently try to exclude millions of individuals, including those who are in immigration detention or deportation proceedings, and the some 700,000 young people known as “Dreamers” who came to the U.S. illegally as children.

“Where, as here, the government acknowledges it is working to achieve an allegedly illegal goal, this court should not decline to resolve the case simply because the government speculates that it might not fully succeed,” Breyer added.

There are an estimated 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally. The challengers have argued that Trump’s policy violates both the Constitution and the Census Act, a federal law that outlines how the census is conducted.

The Constitution requires apportionment of House seats to be based upon the “whole number of persons in each state.” Until now, the U.S. government’s practice was to count all people regardless of their citizenship or immigration status.

By statute, the president is required to send Congress a report in early January with the population of each of the states and their entitled number of House districts.

The challengers have argued that Trump’s plan could leave several million people uncounted and cause California, Texas and New Jersey to lose House seats.

A three-judge panel in New York ruled against the administration in September.

The Supreme Court in June 2019 ruled against Trump’s effort to add a citizenship question to the census. Critics said the question was intended to frighten immigrants from taking part in the population count and artificially reduce population numbers in heavily Democratic areas.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; additional reporting by Andrew Chung; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Trump says he is not involved in potential prosecution of Biden’s son Hunter

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he had nothing to do with any potential prosecution of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, who has disclosed that his taxes are being investigated by a federal prosecutor in Delaware.

“I have NOTHING to do with the potential prosecution of Hunter Biden, or the Biden family. It is just more Fake News. Actually, I find it very sad to watch!” the Republican president wrote on Twitter.

His Twitter post came a day after Jeffrey Rosen, the incoming acting attorney general, declined to say in an interview with Reuters whether or not he would appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden and his foreign business dealings.

Hunter Biden on Dec. 9 disclosed that his tax affairs were under investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware, part of the Justice Department.

A person familiar with the matter told Reuters that the investigation has been ongoing for at least two years, but Attorney General William Barr managed to keep it under wraps ahead of the 2020 election.

An attorney for Hunter Biden could not immediately be reached for comment.

Trump and his allies have raised questions about potential conflicts of interest from Hunter Biden’s position on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma at the time his father was vice president under Democratic President Barack Obama. Trump and his allies also have called for investigations into Hunter Biden’s efforts to raise capital for a Chinese fund.

Among the most active in urging a criminal investigation into the Biden family has been Rudolph Giuliani. Barr set up a special intake process at the Justice Department to vet and investigate tips related to Ukraine, including evidence that Giuliani had gathered.

Giuliani and his attorney Robert Costello were invited on Jan. 29 to the FBI field office in Pittsburgh to meet with Scott Brady, the region’s U.S. attorney, and several other prosecutors and FBI agents to present evidence they had collected concerning Hunter Biden, Costello told Reuters in an interview this month.

“They had two FBI agents taking notes on their laptops,” Costello said, noting that Giuliani “did the vast majority of the speaking.”

Costello added that since that meeting, the top assistant in Brady’s office and he had followed up somewhere between six and 10 times.

It is unclear exactly what became of the information once it was handed to Brady’s office, and whether it was forwarded to the prosecutors in Delaware who are handling the Hunter Biden investigation.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Additional reporting by Pete Schroeder and Steve Holland; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.N. Security Council to talk Western Sahara after Trump policy switch

By Michelle Nichols

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.N. Security Council is planning to discuss Western Sahara on Monday, diplomats said, after U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over the disputed region in return for the kingdom normalizing ties with Israel.

Trump’s announcement last week was a departure from longstanding U.S. policy on Western Sahara. A closed-door U.N. Security Council meeting on the situation was requested by Germany, diplomats said.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Kelly Craft, sent a copy of Trump’s proclamation recognizing “that the entire Western Sahara territory is part of the Kingdom of Morocco” to U.N. chief Antonio Guterres and the Security Council on Tuesday.

The United States had supported a 1991 ceasefire between Morocco and the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, a breakaway movement that seeks to establish Western Sahara as an independent state. The ceasefire is monitored by U.N. peacekeepers.

The region has effectively been split by an earthen wall separating an area controlled by Morocco that it claims as its southern provinces, and territory controlled by the Polisario with a U.N.-mandated buffer zone between them.

U.N. talks have long failed to broker an agreement on how to decide on self-determination. Morocco wants an autonomy plan under Moroccan sovereignty. The Polisario wants a U.N.-backed referendum including on the question of independence.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “position remains unchanged,” said U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric last week.

“He remains convinced that a solution to the question of Western Sahara is possible, in accordance” U.N. Security Council resolutions, Dujarric said.

In October, the 15-member Security Council extended the U.N. peacekeeping mission, known as MINURSO, for one year, adopting a resolution that “emphasizes the need to achieve a realistic, practicable and enduring political solution to the question of Western Sahara based on compromise.”

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Robert Birsel)

New York nurse given COVID-19 vaccine as U.S. rollout begins

By Jonathan Allen and Gabriella Borter

NEW YORK (Reuters) -An intensive care unit nurse became the first person in New York state to receive the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Monday, marking a pivotal turn in the U.S. effort to control the deadly virus.

Sandra Lindsay, who has treated some of the sickest COVID-19 patients for months, was given the vaccine at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in the New York City borough of Queens, an early epicenter of the country’s COVID-19 outbreak, receiving applause on a livestream with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

“It didn’t feel any different from taking any other vaccine,” Lindsay said. “I feel hopeful today, relieved. I feel like healing is coming. I hope this marks the beginning of the end of a very painful time in our history. I want to instill public confidence that the vaccine is safe.”

Minutes after Lindsay received the injection, President Donald Trump sent a tweet: “First Vaccine Administered. Congratulations USA! Congratulations WORLD!”

Northwell Health, the largest health system in New York state, operates some of the select hospitals in the United States that were administering the country’s first inoculations of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine outside trials on Monday.

The vaccine, developed by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, won emergency-use approval from federal regulators on Friday after it was found to be 95% effective in preventing illness in a large clinical trial.

The first 2.9 million doses began to be shipped to distribution centers around the country on Sunday, just 11 months after the United States documented its first COVID-19 infections.

As of Monday, the United States had registered more than 16 million cases and nearly 300,000 deaths from the virus.

Health officials in Texas, Utah, South Dakota, Ohio and Minnesota said they also anticipated the first doses of the vaccine would be received at select hospitals on Monday and be administered right away.

LOGISTICAL CHALLENGE

The first U.S. shipments of coronavirus vaccine departed from Pfizer’s facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on Sunday, packed into trucks with dry-ice to maintain the necessary sub-Arctic temperatures, and then were transported to UPS and FedEx planes waiting at air fields in Lansing and Grand Rapids, kicking off a national immunization endeavor of unprecedented complexity.

The jets delivered the shipments to UPS and FedEx cargo hubs in Louisville and Memphis, from where they were loaded onto planes and trucks to be distributed to the first 145 of 636 vaccine-staging areas across the country. Second and third waves of vaccine shipments were due to go out to the remaining sites on Tuesday and Wednesday.

“This is the most difficult vaccine rollout in history. There will be hiccups undoubtedly but we’ve done everything from a federal level and working with partners to make it go as smoothly as possible. Please be patient with us,” U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams told Fox News on Monday, adding that he would get the shot as soon as he could.

The logistical effort is further complicated by the need to transport and store the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine at minus 70 Celsius (minus 94 Fahrenheit), requiring enormous quantities of dry ice or specialized ultra-cold freezers.

Workers clapped and whistled as the first boxes were loaded onto trucks at the Pfizer factory on Sunday.

“We know how much people are hurting,” UPS Healthcare President Wes Wheeler said on Sunday from the company’s command center in Louisville, Kentucky. “It’s not lost on us at all how important this is.”

MORE DOSES ON THE WAY

More than 100 million people, or about 30% of the U.S. population, could be immunized by the end of March, Moncef Slaoui, the chief advisor to the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed coronavirus vaccine initiative, said in an interview on Sunday.

Healthcare workers and elderly residents of long-term care homes will be first in line to get the inoculations of a two-dose regimen given about three weeks apart. That would still leave the country far short of the herd immunity that would halt virus transmission, so health officials have warned that masks and social distancing will be needed for months to control the currently rampaging outbreak. Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla told CNN in an interview on Monday that most of the 50 million vaccine doses the company will provide this year have been manufactured, adding that it plans on producing 1.3 billion doses next year. Approximately half will be allocated to the United States, he said. But Bourla said Pfizer is “working very diligently” to increase the amount of doses available because demand is very high. At the same time, he said, the company has not reached an agreement with the U.S. government on when to provide an additional 100 million doses next year. “We can provide them the additional 100 million doses, but right now most of that we can provide in the third quarter,” Bourla said. “The U.S. government wants them in the second quarter so are working very collaboratively with them to make sure that we can find ways to produce more or allocate the doses in the second quarter.” Slaoui said the United States hopes to have about 40 million vaccine doses – enough for 20 million people – distributed by the end of this month. That would include vaccines from both Pfizer and Moderna Inc. An outside U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel is scheduled to consider the Moderna vaccine on Thursday, with emergency use expected to be granted shortly after. On Friday, Moderna announced it had struck a deal with the U.S. government to deliver 100 million additional doses in the second quarter.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen, Gabriella Borter, Lisa Lambert, Lisa Baertlein and Brendan O’Brien; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Paul Simao)

U.S. Senate backs massive defense bill, despite Trump veto threat

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate on Friday threw its weight behind the annual National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, a $740 billion bill setting policy for the Department of Defense, passing the bill with a margin large enough to overcome President Donald Trump’s promised veto.

The Republican-controlled Senate backed the bill by 84 to 13, more than the two-thirds majority needed in the 100-member chamber to override a veto.

The Democratic-led House of Representatives backed the NDAA by 335 to 78 earlier this week, also more than the two-thirds majority needed.

Backers hope strong bipartisan support will prompt Trump to reconsider his threat to veto the annual bill, which sets policy for the U.S. military and has become law for 59 straight years.

The White House said earlier on Friday that Trump’s position had not changed. The president will have 10 days – minus Sundays – to issue a veto, sign it or allow it to become law without his signature.

Trump has threatened to veto the fiscal 2021 NDAA because of a provision to remove the names of Confederate generals from military bases.

He also objects because it does not repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects technology companies like Alphabet Inc’s Google, Twitter Inc and Facebook Inc from liability for what appears on their platforms, although that is not related to the military.

Trump also objects to some provisions in the legislation that could slow plans to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and Germany.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; editing by Franklin Paul, Jonathan Oatis and Philippa Fletcher)