Tag Archives: President Trump

Two ex-Trump aides charged in Russia probe, third pleads guilty

Two ex-Trump aides charged in Russia probe, third pleads guilty

By Sarah N. Lynch and Karen Freifeld

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Federal investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election charged President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and another aide, Rick Gates, with money laundering on Monday.

A third former Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty in early October to lying to the FBI, it was announced on Monday.

It was a sharp escalation of U.S. Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s five-month-old investigation into alleged Russian efforts to tilt the election in Trump’s favor and into potential collusion by Trump aides.

Manafort, 68, a longtime Republican operative, and Gates were arraigned at a federal courthouse in Washington.

Both men pleaded not guilty to the charges in a 12-count indictment, ranging from money laundering to acting as unregistered agents of Ukraine’s former pro-Russian government.

The judge ordered house arrest for both men, and set a $10 million unsecured bond for Manafort and a $5 million unsecured bond for Gates. With unsecured bonds, they are released without having to pay but will owe money if they fail to appear in court. There will be another hearing on Thursday.

The developments in the Mueller probe weighed on the U.S. dollar, which slipped 0.5 percent against a basket of currencies.

Mueller’s investigation and others by congressional committees into alleged Russian efforts to influence the election have cast a shadow over Trump’s first nine months in office.

U.S. intelligence agencies say Russia interfered in the election by hacking and releasing embarrassing emails and disseminating propaganda via social media to discredit Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Russia denies the allegations and Trump denies any collusion.

Neither Trump nor his campaign was mentioned in the indictment against Manafort and Gates. The charges, some going back more than a decade, center on Manafort’s work for Ukraine.

The indictment includes accusations of conspiracy against the United States, failure to report foreign bank accounts to the U.S. government and conspiracy to launder money, a count that carries a 20-year maximum prison sentence.

A White House spokeswoman said the indictment had nothing to do with Trump or his campaign and showed no evidence of collusion between the campaign and Russia.

“We’ve been saying from Day One there’s no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, and nothing in the indictment today changes that at all,” spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told a news briefing.

Manafort’s attorney, Kevin Downing said in a statement that there was no evidence the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government. Downing said Manafort’s work for the Ukrainians ended in 2014, two years before he joined the Trump campaign.

Downing accused Mueller of using a “novel” legal theory to prosecute Manafort under a law requiring lobbyists to register with the Department of Justice when they are doing work for a foreign government.

GUILTY PLEA

In a development directly related to Trump’s 2016 election campaign, it emerged on Monday that Papadopoulos, a former campaign adviser, pleaded guilty earlier this month to making false statements to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents.

Mueller’s office said Papadopoulos lied to FBI agents about the timing of contact between him and a professor in London who claimed to have information that would hurt Clinton.

Papadopoulos, a little-known former foreign policy adviser in the campaign, made a plea bargain that stated he had since “met with the Government on numerous occasions to provide information and answer questions,” according to a court document.

Sanders, the White House spokeswoman, said Papadopoulos’ role in the campaign was “extremely limited” and that he was a volunteer.

“He asked to do things (and) he was basically pushed back or not responded to in any way,” she said.

In a May 4 email quoted in the Papadopoulos indictment, a Trump campaign employee forwarded a message from Papadopoulos proposing a meeting between Trump and the Russian government to another campaign official.

The employee included a note, according to the indictment, that read: “Let’s discuss. We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.”

A source in Washington, who did not want to be identified and who has seen the email, said the sender was Manafort and the recipient was Gates.

Manafort ran the Trump campaign from June to August of 2016 before resigning amid reports he might have received millions of dollars in illegal payments from a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.

FRUSTRATION

Trump reiterated his frustration on Monday with the Mueller probe, which he has called “a witch hunt.”

“Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren’t Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????,” Trump wrote on Twitter, referring to Clinton.

Mueller has been investigating Manafort’s financial and real estate dealings and his prior work for a political group, the Party of Regions, which backed former pro-Kremlin Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich.

Both Manafort and Gates generated tens of millions of dollars of income from Ukraine work and laundered money through scores of U.S. and foreign entities to hide payments from American authorities, the indictment said.

They concealed from the United States their work and revenue as agents of Ukrainian political parties and used their wealth to lead a “lavish lifestyle” without paying taxes on the income, it said.

The indictment said Manafort owned properties in Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Hamptons, Arlington, Virginia, and elsewhere.

Prosecutors said Manafort spent almost $1 million on eight rugs in two years and more than $1.3 million on clothes from shops in Beverly Hills, California, and New York City. They also said he had been making payments on four Range Rovers and a Mercedes-Benz.

Gates was a longtime business partner of Manafort and has ties to Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs. He also served as deputy to Manafort during his brief tenure as Trump’s campaign chairman.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Karen Freifeld; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, Susan Heavey, Steve Holland and Mark Hosenball in Washington and Jan Wolfe, Megan Davies and Emily Flitter in New York.; Writing by Alistair Bell and Caren Bohan; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney)

Iran fulfilling nuclear deal commitments: IAEA chief

Iran fulfilling nuclear deal commitments: IAEA chief

ABU DHABI (Reuters) – Iran is fulfilling its commitments under the nuclear deal with world powers and U.N. inspectors are facing no problems in their verification efforts, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director-general said on Monday.

U.S. President Donald Trump said earlier this month that he would not continue to certify the multinational 2015 agreement, reached under his predecessor Barack Obama, and warned that he might ultimately terminate it.

Iran would abandon the agreement if it were deemed not be serving its national interests, President Hassan Rouhani said in reaction to Trump’s decision. But he also said, “No president can revoke an international deal…(and) Iran will continue to honour its commitments under the deal.”

The other parties to the accord – Britain, Germany, France, Russia, China and the European Union have all reaffirmed their commitment to it and urged the United States not to back out.

IAEA chief Yukiya Amano, whose inspectors are tasked with monitoring compliance with the deal, reiterated that Iran was adhering to it.

“The IAEA can state that such nuclear-related commitments are being implemented,” Amano told a news conference in Abu Dhabi following a trip to Iran on Sunday where he met with Rouhani and other officials.

“I requested that Iran … fully implement the nuclear-related commitments. This (was) the main thrust of the meeting in Iran … Regarding the activities of our inspectors, they are discharging their responsibility without problem,” he said.

Under the agreement, Iran undertook to restrict its nuclear programme to help ensure it could not be put to developing atomic bombs in exchange for the lifting of trade and financial sanctions that had hobbled its oil-based economy.

Amano added that he had told Iranian officials the nuclear deal was a “significant gain for verification”.

Speaking on the sidelines of an international conference on nuclear power in the United Arab Emirates, Amano declined comment on U.S. policy towards Iran and on Iran’s absence from the meeting, which draws together IAEA member states.

(Reporting by Sylvia Westall and Stanley Carvalho; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Democrats want a law to stop Trump from bombing North Korea

Democrats want a law to stop Trump from bombing North Korea

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic U.S. senators introduced a bill on Tuesday they said would prevent President Donald Trump from launching a nuclear first strike on North Korea on his own, highlighting the issue days before the Republican’s first presidential trip to Asia.

The measure would stop Trump, or any U.S. president, from launching an attack on North Korea, or spending any money on a military strike, without congressional approval, unless North Korea has first attacked the United States.

Tensions between Washington and Pyongyang have been building after a series of nuclear and missile tests by North Korea and bellicose verbal exchanges between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The CIA has said North Korea could be only months away from developing the ability to hit the United States with a nuclear weapon, a scenario Trump has vowed to prevent.

“I worry that the president’s enthusiasm will not be checked by the advisers around him,” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, the legislation’s lead sponsor, told reporters on a conference call.

Some Republicans have also expressed concern about Trump’s rhetoric, but none co-sponsored the bill, which is backed by seven Democrats and Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent.

Republicans control majorities in both the Senate and House, and there has been no indication that congressional leaders would allow a vote. Similar measures introduced earlier this year have also failed to advance.

However, backers said they might try to pass it later this year by introducing it as an amendment to legislation such as a as a must-pass spending bill.

“I have confidence that if this came to a vote on the floor of the Senate, it would prevail,” Murphy said.

Lawmakers have been trying to take back more control over foreign policy from the White House.

Congress passed a bill in July barring the president from lifting sanctions on Russia without lawmakers’ approval, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Monday held a hearing on a new authorization for the use of military force, or AUMF, to exert some authority over the campaign against Islamic State and other militant groups.

At that hearing, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said Trump does not have the authority to use force against North Korea without an imminent threat, but they did not define what such a threat would be.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

U.S. judge extends deadline for bank records of firm behind Trump dossier

By Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal judge has given an unnamed bank more time to respond to a congressional subpoena for financial records of the Washington research firm that hired a former British spy to compile a dossier on presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Trump and other Republicans have alleged that Russians paid Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, for research on their own dealings with Trump and his campaign. The Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee has sought Fusion’s bank records in an effort to pursue those allegations.

In a closed-door hearing with Senate Judiciary Committee investigators, Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson said there was no connection between the firm’s work on the dossier and its legal research on a lawsuit involving Russians who attended a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law and close aide, Jared Kusher, and former campaign chief Paul Manafort, sources familiar with the hearing said.

It has been widely reported that supporters of Republican Jeb Bush, a primary opponent of Trump, initially paid for the firm’s research, and the law firm Perkins Coie, which represented Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, confirmed on Tuesday that it hired Fusion GPS in April 2016.

U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan had set a Thursday evening deadline for the unnamed bank to give the committee its last two years of records on Fusion GPS. But in an order posted on the court docket late on Thursday, she extended the deadline until Monday morning.

The decision indicates that lawyers for Fusion and the House committee are negotiating in an effort to settle their dispute out of court, sources familiar with the matter said.

Joshua Levy, a lawyer for Fusion, declined to comment, and the House of Representatives lawyer on the case did not respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting By Mark Hosenball; Editing by John Walcott and Tom Brown)

Trump releases some JFK files, blocks others under pressure

Trump releases some JFK files, blocks others under pressure

By Steve Holland and Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered the unveiling of 2,800 documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy but yielded to pressure from the FBI and CIA to block the release of other records to be reviewed further.

Congress had ordered in 1992 that all remaining sealed files pertaining to the investigation into Kennedy’s death should be fully opened to the public through the National Archives in 25 years, by Oct. 26, 2017, except for those the president authorized for further withholding.

Trump had confirmed on Saturday that he would allow for the release of the final batch of once-classified records, amounting to tens of thousands of pages, “subject to the receipt of further information.”

But as the deadline neared, the administration decided at the last minute to stagger the final release over the next 180 days while government agencies studied whether any documents should stay sealed or redacted.

The law allows the president to keep material under wraps if it is determined that harm to intelligence operations, national defense, law enforcement or the conduct of foreign relations would outweigh the public’s interest in full disclosure.

More than 2,800 uncensored documents were posted immediately to the National Archives website on Thursday evening – a staggering, disparate cache that news outlets began poring through seeking new insights into a tragedy that has been endlessly dissected for decades by investigators, scholars and conspiracy theorists.

The rest will be released “on a rolling basis,” with “redactions in only the rarest of circumstances,” by the end of the review on April 26, 2018, the White House said in a statement.

In a memo to government agency heads, Trump said the American people deserved as much access as possible to the records.

“Therefore, I am ordering today that the veil finally be lifted,” he wrote, adding that he had no choice but to accept the requested redactions for now.

A Central Intelligence Agency spokesman told Reuters that every single one of approximately 18,000 remaining CIA records in the collection would ultimately be released, with just 1 percent of the material left redacted.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo was a lead advocate in arguing to the White House for keeping some materials secret, one senior administration official said.

While Kennedy was killed over half a century ago, the document file included material from investigations during the 1970s through the 1990s. Intelligence and law enforcement officials argued their release could thus put at risk some more recent “law enforcement equities” and other materials that still have relevance, the official said.

Trump was resistant but “acceded to it with deep insistence that this stuff is going to be reviewed and released in the next six months,” the official added.

QUELLING CONSPIRACY THEORIES?

Academics who have studied Kennedy’s slaying on Nov. 22, 1963, said they expected nothing in the final batch of files would alter the official conclusion of investigators that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin who fired on the president’s open limousine that day in Dallas from an upper window of the Texas Book Depository building overlooking the motorcade route.

They likewise anticipated that the latest releases would do little to quell long-held conspiracy theories that the 46-year-old Democratic president’s killing was organized by the Mafia, by Cuba, or a cabal of rogue agents.

Of the roughly 5 million pages of JFK assassination-related records held by the National Archives, 88 percent have been available to the public without restriction since the late 1990s, and 11 percent more have been released with sensitive portions redacted. Only about 1 percent have remain withheld in full, according to the National Archives.

Thousands of books, articles, TV shows and films have explored the idea that Kennedy’s assassination was the result of an elaborate conspiracy. None have produced conclusive proof that Oswald, who was fatally shot by a nightclub owner two days after killing Kennedy, worked with anyone else, although they retain a powerful cultural currency.

“My students are really skeptical that Oswald was the lone assassin,” said Patrick Maney, a professor of history at Boston College. “It’s hard to get our minds around this, that someone like a loner, a loser, could on his own have murdered Kennedy and changed the course of world history. But that’s where the evidence is.”

Kennedy’s assassination was the first in a string of politically motivated killings, including those of his brother Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., that stunned the United States during the turbulent 1960s. He remains one of the most admired U.S. presidents.

(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington and Scott Malone in Boston; Editing by Peter Cooney and Michael Perry)

Mattis talks diplomacy on North Korea ahead of Trump’s Asia tour

Mattis talks diplomacy on North Korea ahead of Trump's Asia tour

By Phil Stewart

PANMUNJOM, South Korea (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis emphasized diplomatic efforts to resolve the North Korean missile and nuclear crisis as he stood at the tense and heavily fortified border between North and South on Friday, saying: “Our goal is not war.”

His remarks came before U.S. President Donald Trump – who has threatened to destroy the North if necessary – leaves on his first trip to Asia next week, including a stop in South Korea to meet President Moon Jae-in.

For his part, Moon, after talks with Mattis, said the “aggressive deployment” of U.S. strategic assets in the region, which have included overflights by U.S. bombers, had been effective in deterring the North Korean threat.

Tension between North Korea and the United States has been building after a series of nuclear and missile tests by Pyongyang and bellicose verbal exchanges between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, stoking fears any miscalculation could lead to an armed confrontation.

“North Korean provocations continue to threaten regional and global security despite unanimous condemnation by the United Nations Security Council,” Mattis said in prepared remarks as he visited the demilitarized zone (DMZ).

“As Secretary of State Tillerson has made clear, our goal is not war, but rather the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”

Standing alongside Mattis, South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo said: “We together will continue to defend peace through strong will and strong might.”

TRUMP VISIT LOOMS

Ahead of Trump’s visit to Asia, Mattis has emphasized diplomatic efforts to find a peaceful solution to the crisis during his week-long trip to the region.

“That’s really what it was all about – to keep the (North Korea) effort firmly in the diplomatic lane for resolution,” Mattis said earlier this week after three days of meetings with Asian defense chiefs in the Philippines.

At the same time, the U.S. and South Korean militaries are looking for ways to deter Pyongyang and bolster the South’s defenses.

Washington’s top military officer, Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with his South Korean counterpart, General Kyeong Doo Jeong, a U.S. military statement said. Dunford renewed U.S. warnings of retaliation to further provocations.

“(Dunford) reaffirmed that any attack by North Korea would be met with a response that will be overwhelming and effective, using the full range of U.S. military capabilities,” the statement said.

The United States flew Air Force bombers over waters east of North Korea last month in a show of force. The U.S. Navy, in what it says was a long-planned maneuver, will have three U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups in the Pacific in the coming days.

Last week, CIA chief Mike Pompeo said North Korea could be only months away from developing the ability to hit the United States with nuclear weapons, a scenario Trump has vowed to prevent.

U.S. intelligence experts say Pyongyang believes it needs the weapons to ensure its survival and have been skeptical about diplomatic efforts, focusing on sanctions, to get Pyongyang to denuclearize.

The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on seven North Korean individuals and three entities for “flagrant” human rights abuses, including killings, torture, forced labor and the hunting down of asylum seekers abroad.

In a speech last month at the United Nations, Trump threatened to destroy North Korea if necessary to defend the United States and allies. Kim has blasted Trump as “mentally deranged.”

Despite the rhetoric, White House officials say Trump is looking for a peaceful resolution. But all options, including military ones, are on the table.

“Do we have military options in defense for attack, if our allies are attacked? Of course we do. But everyone is out for a peaceful resolution,” Mattis told reporters traveling with him this week.

“No one’s rushing for war.”

Separately, North Korea released a South Korean fishing boat which had been found to be in North Korean waters illegally, state media said.

The crew of 10 – seven South Koreans and three Vietnamese – were released on Friday evening, a spokesman for South Korea’s coastguard told Reuters. The return of the boat, which had been reported as missing from Saturday, may have eased already strained relations between North and South.

The two sides are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. The North regularly threatens to destroy the South and the United States.

(Additional reporting by Christine Kim and James Pearson; Writing by Lincoln Feast; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Nick Macfie)

Trump declares opioids a U.S. public health emergency

Trump declares opioids a U.S. public health emergency

By Yasmeen Abutaleb and Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency on Thursday, stopping short of a national emergency declaration he promised months ago that would have freed up more federal money.

Responding to a growing problem wreaking havoc in rural areas, Trump’s declaration will redirect federal resources and loosen regulations to combat opioid abuse, senior administration officials said on a conference call with reporters.

But it does not mean there will be more money to combat the crisis. Some critics, including Democratic lawmakers, said the declaration was meaningless without additional funding.

“This epidemic is a national health emergency,” Trump said at the White House. “Nobody has seen anything like what’s going on now. As Americans, we cannot allow this to continue.”

The announcement disappointed some advocates and experts in the addiction fight, who said it was inadequate to fight a scourge that played a role in more than 33,000 deaths in 2015, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The death rate has kept rising, estimates show.

Opioids, primarily prescription painkillers, heroin and fentanyl, are fueling the drug overdoses. More than 100 Americans die daily from related overdoses, according to the CDC.

A White House commission on the drug crisis had urged Trump to declare a national emergency. On Wednesday, the president told Fox Business Network he would do so.

Officials told reporters on the conference call that Federal Emergency Management Agency funds that would have been released under a national emergency are already exhausted from recent storms that struck Puerto Rico, Texas and Florida.

The administration would have to work with Congress to help provide additional funding to address drug abuse, they added.

Under Thursday’s declaration, treatment would be made more accessible for abusers of prescription painkillers, heroin and fentanyl, while ensuring fewer delays in staffing the Department of Health and Human Services to help states grapple with the crisis.

‘BAD ACTORS’

Trump said he would discuss stopping the flow of fentanyl, a drug 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine, with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his visit to Asia next month.

In his remarks, Trump said the U.S. Postal Service and Department of Homeland Security were “strengthening the inspection of packages coming into our country to hold back the flood of cheap and deadly fentanyl, a synthetic opioid manufactured in China.”

He added he would consider bringing lawsuits against “bad actors” in the epidemic. Several states have sued opioid manufacturers for deceptive marketing. Congress is investigating the business practices of manufacturers.

The president also said the government should focus on teaching young people not to take drugs. “There is nothing desirable about drugs. They’re bad,” he said.

Thursday’s declaration also allows the Department of Labor to issue grants to help dislocated workers affected by the crisis. HIV/AIDS health funding would also be prioritized for those who need substance abuse treatment, officials said.

As a candidate, Trump promised to address the crisis, including by building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border to stop the flow of illicit drugs, which he touched on in his speech.

Additional actions under the move would be announced in coming weeks by various agencies, officials said.

(Additional reporting by James Oliphant, Susan Heavey and Jason Lange; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Peter Cooney)

House narrowly passes measure paving way for Trump tax cuts

House narrowly passes measure paving way for Trump tax cuts

By David Morgan and Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives helped pave the way on Thursday for deep tax cuts sought by President Donald Trump and Republican leaders, but barely overcame a revolt within party ranks that could foreshadow trouble ahead for the tax overhaul.

The Republican-controlled House voted 216-212 to pass a budget blueprint for the 2018 fiscal year. The measure will enable the tax legislation, due to be introduced next week, to win congressional approval without any Democratic votes.

But House Republican leaders came within two votes of failure. Democrats were unified in their opposition, and 20 Republicans voted against the bill, many to express disapproval of a provision in Trump’s tax outline that would repeal an income tax deduction for state and local taxes.

Discord is also looming over a potential provision to scale back a popular tax-deferred U.S. retirement savings program. Both those provisions are aimed at offsetting revenue losses that would result from the planned sweeping tax cuts, particularly for companies.

Democrats have called the tax plan a giveaway to the rich and corporations that would swell the federal deficit.

Republicans are traditionally opposed to letting the deficit grow. But in a stark reversal of that stance, the party’s budget resolution, previously passed by the Senate, called for adding up to $1.5 trillion to federal deficits over the next decade to pay for the tax cuts.

The outline of the Republican plan announced last month would cut the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent, the small business rate to 25 percent from up to 39.6 percent and the top individual rate to 35 percent from 39.6 percent.

Trump, who promised major tax cuts as a candidate last year, has asked Congress to pass the tax legislation by the end of the year. Even though his fellow Republicans control both the House and Senate, the president has been unable to secure passage of major legislation, having failed to secure a promised repeal of the Obamacare law.

Republicans are also looking for a signature achievement to tout as the 2018 congressional election year approaches.

“Big News – Budget just passed!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, who has said he wants the House to pass the tax overhaul by the Nov. 23 Thanksgiving holiday, said passage of the budget resolution was an “enormous step” toward that goal.

But he declined to take a position on the possibility of capping annual contributions into 401(k) plans, which for four decades have helped millions of Americans save for retirement by offering tax savings.

Trump and Kevin Brady, the Republican chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means committee, reopened the door to the possibility of such caps on Wednesday as Republicans scramble to find sources of revenue to cover the tax cuts.

Brady said he planned to introduce the tax bill next Wednesday and to begin committee deliberations on it the following week, on Nov. 6.

REVOLT FROM HIGH-TAX STATES

A meeting after the budget vote between Brady and Republicans opposing the elimination of the deduction for state and local taxes ended without a compromise, though Brady said he would work to find a solution.

“They made it clear. They need this problem solved before they vote ‘yes’ on tax reform,” Brady added.

Eliminating the deduction would hit middle-class voters in high-tax states like California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Republican Representative John Katko of New York, leaving the meeting with Brady, said supporters of the deduction “stood firm, saying no as a group today to let them know we’re not kidding, and we also are going to let the Senate know if they try and take it (the deduction) out, they’re going to have a problem.”

The budget plan passed on Thursday will enable the 100-seat Senate to pass tax legislation with a simple majority rather than a 60-vote super-majority that would be tough to reach given solid Democratic opposition. While Republicans hold a comfortable majority in the House they have just a 52-48 margin in the Senate.

The White House and congressional Republicans excluded Democrats as they developed the plan, and it appeared unlikely a significant number of Democrats would get behind the proposal.

“Right here before our eyes, in this House, the Republicans are replacing the great American ladders of opportunity with the silver spoon of plutocracy and aristocracy. Their agenda raises taxes on the middle class. That is the fact,” top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi said during the debate on the budget measure.

Independent analysts forecast last month that corporations and the wealthiest Americans would benefit the most and many upper middle-income people would face higher taxes under the tax outline unveiled by the Republicans.

The proposal would cut taxes for companies and individuals by up to $6 trillion over the next decade, the analysts said.

(Reporting by David Morgan and Susan Cornwell; Additional reporting by Richard Cowan and Amanda Becker; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Trump says Russia hurting U.S. efforts on North Korea nuclear issue

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks before awarding the Medal of Honor to Vietnam War Veteran, retired Army Capt. Gary Rose, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., October 23, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that Russia was hurting U.S. efforts to rid North Korea of nuclear weapons while China had been helpful.

In an interview with Fox Business Network, Trump said it would be easier to resolve the North Korea nuclear issue if the United States had a better relationship with Russia.

“China is helping us and maybe Russia’s going through the other way and hurting what we’re getting,” Trump said of the North Korea situation.

A series of weapons tests by North Korea and a string of increasingly bellicose exchanges between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have ratcheted up tensions.

Trump has pressed China to help rein in North Korea’s nuclear program. China, North Korea’s sole major ally, accounts for more than 90 percent of trade with the isolated country.

Trump said in a tweet that he spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday and the conversation included North Korea.

U.S.-Russia relations have been strained over allegations Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and its backing of the Syrian government.

“I think we could have a good relationship” with Russia, Trump said. “I think that North Korean situation would be easier settled.”

Trump said during last year’s campaign he hoped to improve relations with Moscow.

 

 

(Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Peter Cooney)

 

Trump to issue emergency declaration next week on opioids

Trump to issue emergency declaration next week on opioids

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would declare next week a national emergency on opioid abuse, a move that could give states access to federal funds to fight the drug crisis.

The United States is battling a surge in opioid-related deaths, including 33,000 lives lost in 2015, more than any year on record, according to federal data.

“The opioid is a tremendous emergency,” Trump told Fox Business Network. “Next week, I’m going to (be) declaring an emergency, (a) national emergency on drugs.”

Trump is expected to provide a preview of his plans for tackling drug demand and the opioid crisis in remarks on Thursday.

Trump said in August that he would declare opioid abuse a national emergency.

Opioids, primarily prescription painkillers, heroin and fentanyl – a drug 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine – are fueling the drug overdoses.

The declaration by Trump could help unlock more support and resources to address the drug overdose epidemic, such as additional funding and expanded access to various forms of treatment, and it gives the government more flexibility in waiving rules and restrictions to expedite action.

(Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Peter Cooney)