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Harold Brown, who as defense secretary in the Carter administration championed cutting-edge fighting technology during a tenure that included the failed rescue of hostages in Iran, has died at age 91.

Brown died Friday, said the Rand Corp., the California-based think tank at which Brown served as a trustee for more than 35 years. His sister, Leila Brennet, said he died at his home in Rancho Santa Fe, California.

Brown was a nuclear physicist who led the Pentagon to modernize its defense systems with weapons that included precision-guided cruise missiles, stealth aircraft, advanced satellite surveillance and improved communications and intelligence systems. He successfully campaigned to increase the Pentagon budget during his term, despite skepticism inside the White House and from Democrats in Congress.

Turbulent times, tight budgets

That turbulent period included the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian hostage crisis. An effort in April 1980 to rescue the hostages failed when one of the helicopters on the mission struck a tanker aircraft in eastern Iran and crashed, killing eight U.S. servicemen.

“I considered the failed rescue attempt my greatest regret and most painful lesson learned,” Brown wrote in his book “Star Spangled Security.”

Brown faced numerous obstacles when he took the job as Pentagon chief, including pressure to reduce the defense budget both from within the administration and from influential congressional Democrats.

“When I became secretary of defense in 1977, the military services, most of all the army, were disrupted badly by the Vietnam War. There was general agreement that the Soviet Union outclassed the West in conventional military capability, especially in ground forces in Europe,” he wrote later.

Wary of the growing Soviet threat, Brown sought to withstand the pressure to cut defense and, gradually, managed to increase spending.

“The constant Cold War competition raged hot during the Carter administration and preoccupied me throughout the four years,” Brown wrote. He noted later that “the Defense Department budget in real terms was 10 to 12 percent more when we left than when we came in,” which he said was not an easy accomplishment.

Modern weapons of war

And he cited the technological advances in defense systems, especially weapons systems such as precision-guided cruise missiles, stealth aircraft and advanced satellite surveillance.

“Some of these came to visible fruition 10 years later during Desert Storm, which reversed Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait,” he wrote. “The Carter administration initiated and developed these programs, the Reagan administration paid for their acquisition in many cases, and the George H.W. Bush administration employed them.”

Brown later maintained that his extensive work with the Soviets on the arms race was not wasted.

“We also reached a specific strategic arms control agreement with the Soviet Union,” he wrote. “Though never formally ratified, the agreement was adhered to by both parties and limited Soviet threats that our other conventional and nuclear weapons programs were designed to counter.”

The acting defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan, said in a statement Saturday that Brown’s “steady leadership piloted our nation through a consequential segment of the Cold War. His focus on deterrence through a strong nuclear triad facilitated long-term peace and stability in the United States and Europe.” Shanahan praised Brown for his “devoted leadership and lifetime of service.”

Early background

Brown was born in New York City on Sept. 19, 1927, attended public schools and went to Columbia University on an accelerated wartime schedule, receiving an undergraduate degree in physics in 1945 “when I was not quite 18,” then going to graduate school at Columbia, receiving a doctorate in physics.

Not long after graduation, he moved to California and went to work on projects that related to the development of plutonium. He then went to work at a nuclear weapons lab. He worked his way up to director of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at Livermore in 1960.

In 1961, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara invited him to be director of defense research and engineering in the Kennedy administration. In 1965 he became secretary of the Air Force during the Johnson administration and, as he described it later, “served in that role through some of the most difficult and divisive parts of the Vietnam War.”

After the 1968 election put a Republican, Richard Nixon, back in the White House, Brown accepted the position of president at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena serving until he went back into government work and was a delegate to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in the 1970s.

Carter nominated Brown to be defense secretary in 1977. He was quickly confirmed and served throughout Carter’s term. During the 1980 campaign Brown actively defended the Carter administration’s policies, speaking frequently on national issues in public.

After leaving the Pentagon, he remained in Washington, joining the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies as a visiting professor and later the university’s Foreign Policy Institute as chairman. He remained active in matters of national security, including service on the Defense Policy Board, which meets quarterly to offer perspectives to the current secretary of defense. He served as a consultant to many corporations, often serving as a member of the board of directors.

Honors and peace

Carter awarded Brown the Presidential Medal of Freedom. President Bill Clinton gave him the Energy Department’s Enrico Fermi Award for achievement in science and technology.

At a farewell address from his job as defense secretary, Brown said: “Most satisfying of all is that for four years our nation remained at peace despite the world tensions and turmoil that constantly pose challenges to our interest and peace.”
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U.S. Senate and House leaders are to continue negotiations with the White House late Saturday morning in an effort to end the partial government shutdown.

Democrats have said flat out that there will be no funding in any deal to end the shutdown for a wall that President Donald Trump wants to construct at the U.S. border with Mexico.

Trump said Friday he is willing to drag out negotiations “for months or even years” until he gets the $5.6  billion he says is needed to start building the wall.

He also threatened Friday to bypass Congress and declare a national emergency in order to get the wall built.   

Trump said the hundreds of thousands of federal workers affected by the shutdown want him to “keep going” for border security.  It was not immediately clear if he had actually talked to any of the 800,000 workers affected by the shutdown.  

When asked about how workers are expected to manage without a financial safety net, the president replied: “The safety net is going to be having a strong border because we’re going to be safe.”

Trump said Friday he had a “very productive” meeting with congressional leaders to resolve the partial shutdown that was triggered by disagreement over $5.6 billion in funding to build the wall.

But Democratic congressional leaders characterized the White House meeting differently.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who assumed leadership of the newly sworn in House Democratic majority Thursday, called the almost two-hour-long meeting “contentious.” She continued her oft-repeated assertion that agreement on the wall’s funding “cannot be resolved until we open up the government.”

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer told reporters the president threatened to keep the government closed for “a very long period of time . . .”   

Despite comments from the Democratic lawmakers that little progress was made, Trump said, “we’re on the same path” to reopen the government. He touted the benefits of “a solid steel or concrete structure” along the border.

The House passed a bill Thursday to reopen shuttered federal government agencies. The measure did not, however, include the $5.6 billion the president has demanded to build a wall at the U.S. border with Mexico.

“We’re not doing a wall,” Pelosi vowed on Thursday. She suggested that the money could better be used for border security technology and hiring more border agents.

However, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called the House plan to end the shutdown “political theater.”

The Senate, however, passed an identical bill last month, while Republicans still controlled both chambers of Congress.

On Friday, the Pentagon said it had received a request from DHS for additional help securing the U.S. southern border.

A defense official told VOA the Pentagon is now reviewing the DHS formal request, which calls for “additional capabilities at the border.” The official would not elaborate on what specific capabilities DHS requested from the Defense Department on Friday.

DHS is among the government agencies left unfunded due to the shutdown, but Congress has funded the Defense Department through September 30, 2019.

VOA’s Carla Babb contributed to this report.
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For the past 50 years, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington has been telling America’s story with images of people who helped shape the history and culture of the United States.

Telling America’s story

Each November, the Gallery selects a number of portraits to add to its collection. This year, it added 28 more pictures in an effort to tell a more diverse and complete story of American society.

While the display features well-known personalities such as former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, it also sheds light on some lesser-known “hidden figures.”

Ann Shumard, senior curator of photographs at the Gallery, said this year’s selections represent a wide range of fields in a variety of formats, “ranging from paintings to prints to photographs to sculpture. It’s really quite a wonderful panoply of objects.”

Among the portraits is astronomer Edwin Hubble.  

“He was really one of the premier astronomers in the 20th century,” Shumard said. “And in the image, you see him looking through the eyepiece of a state-of-the-art telescope from 1949.  It was being used to survey the northern sky into a complete photographic survey of the sky.” The Hubble Space Telescope was named to honor him.

There’s a photo of beloved children’s book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, best known for his book “Where the Wild Things Are,” first issued in 1963.

“From an early age, he enjoyed reading and drawing, and that really translated ultimately into a career for him,” Shumard said.

African American presence

The exhibit also features portraits of some of the most prominent African-American figures in recent history, such as media executive Oprah Winfrey.

“She’s really a much broader influence than simply through her media work,” Shumard pointed out. “She’s of course an actress, having appeared in ‘The Color Purple’ and ‘Beloved.’ She has the magazine, and her book club did so much to foster interest in reading on the part of her viewers.”

Theater director and producer Ellen Stewart, who founded an experimental theater company, is another inductee.

“Stewart was working as a freelance theatrical costume designer when she realized how difficult it was for fledgling playwrights to find performance spaces in New York City. So, she founded a non-commercial performance space in a basement in the East Village that became known as the La MaMa Experimental Theater,” Shumard explained.

“It has inspired similar kinds of theatrical venues all over the world,” she said, “and really fostered the careers of many significant actors and playwrights.”

In 1945, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and classical pianist George Walker was the first black artist to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra, when segregation often blocked opportunities for African Americans, Shumard said. “So, he turned to teaching and composing, and developed into one of the foremost contemporary classical composers.”

“He scored all of his compositions by hand,” Shumard said. “In the diptych, we see two images of him — one framed by his piano in his home, and the other using his hands as he is scoring his Symphonia No. 5, which will have its world premiere next year.”

Other subjects in the exhibit include author and political activist Helen Keller, who was the first deaf and blind person to earn a bachelor’s degree, actress Phylicia Rashad and American businessman Julius Fleischmann.

Latin American influence

There are also many Latino figures in the exhibit, said Taína Caragol, curator of painting and sculpture and Latino art and history at the Gallery.

“We have a wonderful color photograph by Alexis Rodriguez-Duarte and Tico Torres of salsa queen Celia Cruz,” she said. “We have two wonderful portraits by Harry Gamboa Jr. of Rodolfo Acuña, the father of Chicano Studies, and musician Louie Pérez of Los Lobos.”

There are also two portraits by Freddy Rodriguez of former New York Yankee Alex “A-Rod” Rodriguez, and David “Big Papi” Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox.  Each is in what Caragol describes as the “silhouette technique.”

Diverse collection

Shumard said she hopes people will see figures that are familiar to them, such as Winfrey, “but also figures that they may not know much about, and be intrigued to learn more about that individual’s biography and contribution.”

“I think as you look at the works in the show, you can see how many different fields of endeavor are represented, whether it’s the fine arts, sports, science. There’s just a wonderful range, and I think it speaks to the diversity of achievement in the United States.”

These new acquisitions join more than 23,000 works in the Portrait Gallery’s collection and will be on view through November 2019.
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For the past 50 years, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington has been telling America’s story with images of people who helped shape the history and culture of the United States. It recently added 28 pictures in an effort to tell a more diverse and more complete story of U.S. society. The display features well-known people like baseball player Alex Rodriguez and former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy — and sheds light on some “hidden figures.” VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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On Thursday, the first Muslim women to serve in Congress, Democrats Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan were sworn into office, as inspired young Muslim Americans and refugees watched closely.

In the evening, a group of young Muslim men and women from Minnesota, Ohio and the Washington metropolitan area, were buzzing about the news as they gathered at an event in McLean, Virginia to celebrate Omar’s journey from Somali refugee to U.S. congresswoman.

At the event, Omar told the celebrating crowd the story of her arrival in the United States from the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya 23 years ago.

Suud Olat, 28, a Somali-American, journalist and a refugee advocate, came to the U.S. five years ago as a refugee, escaping hopelessness and poverty in the same camps in Kenya where Omar spent four years before coming to America.

“In Trump era, when anti-immigrant and Muslim rhetoric is high, to witness Ilhan Omar who shares the same values and background with me, sitting in the Capitol Hill and celebrate with her was an amazing moment and inspirational for me,” he said.

Kowthar Yabarow, a 24-year-old of Somali heritage who chose to wear the hijab, sees the news of Omar as a reflection of her faith, community and belonging.

“Although my parents came from Somalia to this country, I was born and raised here as a Muslim girl and to see a hijabi Muslim woman like me in Congress is a big reflection,” she said.

Omer Arain, a 23-year-old Pakistani American, said, “It is very reassuring for young Muslim Americans like me that they can be in such positions of power.”

Parents’ pride

Ibrahim Ismail is a father of four. Like Omar, he came to the United States as a refugee in 1996 after fleeing the conflict in Somalia. His oldest daughter is now in a training school for new Virginia police recruits. He said the news about the two Muslim congresswomen meant something special for him.

“It is an inspiration and special for me that I can show, finally, to my daughter that, there is a Muslim woman like Ilhan Omar, an immigrant and a woman of color, a Somali, who is able to stand up for Muslim values, share them with the American public through a strong voice in the Congress,” he said.

“I am so proud to see people with my value like Omar and Tlaib being leaders in this country and I am happy that my daughter will grow up in an era where to have Muslim leaders in the U.S. politics is not news but a normal,” said Tahira Khanana, a 38-year-old mother of three with the Cincinnati chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

At Omar’s celebration, she focused on other issues. She noted that her celebration comes at a time the federal government remains partially shut down, and her homeland, Somalia, is still affected by Trump-imposed limits on immigration.

“I came from a country under our president’s immigration ban. If this was happening 23 years ago, I would not represent all of you in Congress today,” she said struggling to hide her tears.

She said one of her first tasks as a representative in Congress is to fight to end the shutdown.

“I came to Washington when our federal government remains shut down over “a silly border wall. I have to join the fight to reopen it,” she said.
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Editor’s note: Voice of America is following two new U.S. lawmakers — Democratic Representative Katie Porter, representing California’s 45th congressional district, and Republican Representative Pete Stauber, representing Minnesota’s 8th congressional district — as they learn the ropes as freshman lawmakers in the 116th U.S. Congress. Through their eyes, we hope to offer VOA audiences a deeper insight into the inner workings of one of the three branches in the American system of government. In the coming months, VOA will be reporting on the lawmakers’ experiences and challenges during their first year in the House of Representatives.

Katie Porter’s birthday took a back seat to something more important this year. On the day she turned 45, she was sworn in as California’s 45th district’s U.S. Representative.

Newly elected Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi congratulated her from the speaker’s seat shortly after Pelosi swore in this year’s 116th Congress. But Democrat Porter’s first day was filled with official business, including meetings, getting identification badges and parking permits, and greeting her supporters.

A family celebration was saved for the evening. “My kids were very excited that there [were] cupcakes and cake and cookies and sugary drinks — all at the same event,” Porter said.

She is one of a record number of 102 female lawmakers in this year’s U.S. House of Representatives. They make up nearly 24 percent of the 435 representatives, whereas women outnumber men in the general U.S. population, 51 percent to 49 percent.

Also taking the oath of office Thursday were the first Muslim, Native American, Somali and Palestinian women, as well as the youngest and oldest representatives elected to the House, making the 116th Congress the most diverse in history.

From professor to politician

Prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Porter was better known as Professor Porter, a tenured and published law professor at the University of California, Irvine campus.

Her focus on consumer bankruptcy stemmed from what she experienced as a child in Iowa during the 1980s farm crisis, when thousands of family farmers defaulted on loans and lost their land. She said she witnessed what happened when the local bank was shut down and the government did not step in.

Porter studied law at Harvard University under Elizabeth Warren, now a senator from Massachusetts who this week announced a plan to run for president in 2020.

Porter, a single mother, was joined in her sparse office this week by her three children–ages 12, 10, and 7– who munched on pizza and played games as she prepared.

“This Lego piggy bank was a present from a friend that knows I want to work on financial services,” she said pointing to a toy.

Representative Maxine Waters, a fellow Democrat from California, is the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, which means Porter may have a shot at being assigned to the committee.

Beginnings of campaign

On election night, Nov. 8, 2016, Porter was ready to head to Washington, having been asked to join Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s transition team. She would be involved in housing policy.

But Clinton lost the election, and Porter felt she had lost a job.

The day after the election, however, a friend said, “You don’t have to wait for other people to create opportunity for you,” which was the impetus to run for office herself, she said.

Two years later, on Nov. 6, 2018, she unseated two-term incumbent Representative Mimi Walters, a Republican.

Hockey pucks, police shootings

Like Porter, Republican Pete Stauber was sworn in Thursday, representing Minnesota’s 8th congressional district.

Stauber had two successful careers — in hockey and law enforcement — before he turned to politics.

As a college hockey player, he captained the Lake Superior State University men’s team to a 1988 national championship. The team was invited to the White House and met with then-President Ronald Reagan.

He also played professional hockey with the Detroit Red Wings Organization.

After hockey, he joined the Duluth (Minnesota) Police Department, where he was shot in the head by a criminal suspect in 1995. He retired as an area police commander in 2017.

A year later, he ran as a Republican who supports the rights of gun owners, and was able to win Minnesota’s 8th — a staunch Democratic district. He became only its second Republican in 71 years.

He and his wife, Jodi, an Iraqi war veteran, have four children, three teenaged sons ages 16,17 and 18, and a 12-year-old daughter.

Stauber joins the House as the majority shifts to Democrats. He said his priorities are jobs and the economy, and noted that “67 percent of the legislation passed on a bipartisan basis in the last Congress.”

“We are going to do it again,” he said.

About an hour before he was sworn in, Stauber showed a visitor to his office his new lapel pin, which identified him as a U.S. representative. “Look at you! You’re official,” the visitor exclaimed.

Challenges of new job, new city

Finding a place to live has always been a challenge for legislators who have to budget staff, flights to and from their home states to Washington, and high housing costs around the Capitol.

Stauber is choosing to live with three other congressmen in a townhouse, as his wife stays with the children in Minnesota. Describing his Washington bedroom as the size of a shed, he said it is furnished with a bunk bed so one child can visit at a time.

Porter has arranged child care for her three children in California until the end of the school year, when they might move to the nation’s capital.

Meanwhile, she is renting a one-room studio apartment with a “tiny, tiny little kitchen.”

Porter said when her children visit, she will pull out a sofa bed that touches her bed, creating “one big place” to sleep — kind of “like camping out.”

Except within distance of one of the most powerful lawmaking institutions in the world.
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A U.S. immigration judge has halted deportation proceedings against a mentally disabled Hispanic man living in Pennsylvania whose case received media attention because of the circumstances surrounding his 2017 detention and interrogation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  

Immigration judge John Carle ordered the termination of removal proceedings against Guillermo Peralta Martinez because of concerns over the “reliability of the information” in the statements he made to ICE given his mental incapacity.

Specifically, Carle said the government could not provide “clear and convincing evidence” that Peralta was a Mexican national as asserted, because of “numerous inconsistencies” in the sworn statements contained in the standard form filed by ICE after an arrest. The judge, however, did allow the ICE account to be entered into the record.

The judge’s ruling in late December brings an end to a case that began in February 2017 when Peralta, who has no criminal record, was detained by ICE agents in the small rural town of York Springs, Pennsylvania, where he lives. Peralta was going to work when agents stopped him while looking for an undocumented Hispanic man suspected of committing crimes. Peralta was questioned, then held for two months in a detention facility in nearby York until his neighbors collected enough money to post his $5,000 bail.  

Since January 2017, when the Trump administration took office, ICE agents have stepped up enforcement efforts against foreigners living in the United States illegally.

According to data released by ICE in December, 159,000 undocumented immigrants were arrested during the 2018 fiscal year that ended September 30, an increase of 11 percent from the previous year. Just over 256,000 were deported, a 13 percent increase from fiscal year 2017. Even those who have no criminal records have been detained and deported, a policy change from the last years of the Obama administration, when those who had not committed serious crimes were released after being picked up.

Media attention

Peralta’s case drew media attention because of his mental impairment. VOA and the Philadelphia Inquirer both reported on Peralta’s detention and subsequent court case as an example of ICE overreach in its enforcement policy.

Peralta, a stocky man who appears to be in his mid-30s, has no idea know how old he is, where he was born or how long he has lived in Pennsylvania.

Interviewed by VOA a few months after his release from jail, he spoke haltingly in Spanish, suffering from a speech impediment that made the few words and short sentences he uttered almost unintelligible. Asked to recall his arrest, he simply remembered that, “They took my keys and threw my lunch away.”

An expert in forensic neuropsychology who later examined Peralta testified to Judge Carle’s court that Peralta suffers from cognitive loss and mild-to-moderate mental retardation.

‘Appropriate oversight’ needed

Craig Shagin, an immigration lawyer in Pennsylvania who has been handling Peralta’s case on a pro-bono basis, welcomed Carle’s decision as “an appropriate act of justice” by the immigration court. 

“The court did its job and Judge Carle came up with a good opinion,” Shagin told VOA.

However, he expressed disappointment that there was “no judicial examination of ICE’s practices” in this case, which he described as an example of overzealous action by ICE agents. “What people should be thinking about instead of calling for abolishing ICE is how to develop appropriate oversight of its activities.” 

Because of the partial U.S. government shutdown, ICE was unavailable for comment. In previous statements, ICE has dismissed criticism over its enforcement actions, saying they “are conducted with integrity and professionalism.”

In his defense brief, Shagin pointed out that there was no evidence Peralta was doing anything suspicious when the agents detained him. “It is unlikely he would have been questioned regarding his citizenship but for Guillermo’s Hispanic appearance,” Shagin wrote.

As his case proceeded through the immigration court system, Guillermo Peralta continued living in his small basement apartment in York Springs, supporting himself by working at odd jobs in the region. There has been no immediate reaction to the court’s ruling by neighbors who watch out for him.     
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Mexico has formally asked the United States for an “an exhaustive investigation” into a Jan. 1 incident in which U.S. agents fired non-lethal weapons into Mexico to stop migrants from breaching the border. 

In a statement released Thursday, the Mexican Foreign Ministry said it lamented any violent acts along its border and repeated its call for an investigation into a similar incident on Nov. 25. 

Rock throwing leads to tear gas

Early on New Year’s Day, U.S. border agents fired tear gas and pepper spray across the border to stop about 150 migrants trying to breach the border fence near San Diego. 

At the time, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the migrants tried to climb over or crawl under the fence, but the agency said that the tear gas had been used against migrants throwing rocks, different from those trying to cross into the United States.

“No agents witnessed any of the migrants at the fence line, including children, experiencing effects of the chemical agents, which were targeted at the rock throwers further away,” the statement released Tuesday said. 

The migrants trying to breach the fence are a part of the caravans that brought more than 7,000 Central Americans to the Mexican border city of Tijuana. 

Trump’s hardline stance

U.S. President Donald Trump and members of his administration have taken a hardline stance toward the Central American migrants escaping poverty and violence, telling his supporters at a rally that the migrants should turn around and go home because they will not be allowed into the United States. 

He also deployed thousands of troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and is demanding Congress approve funding for his desired border wall.

There have been protests in Tijuana against the migrants, as well as clashes between the migrants and authorities from both Mexico and the United States as they protest the long wait times and some try to cross the border.
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A report released by a special safety commission in Parkland, Fla. — the site of a high school shooting last year — recommended arming teachers to secure schools.

On Feb. 14, 2018, a shooter killed 17 people with a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle. While the massacre drew national attention to the larger question of gun control in the United States, it also prompted a months-long local investigation into how the shooter was able to perpetrate the mass slaying, and how similar events may be prevented in the future.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission released over 400 pages covering details of the shooting, identifying security problems and making recommendations.

Among the recommendations was the expansion of a program that allows teachers and staff members to carry concealed firearms to defend students in the event of an active shooter.

“School districts and charter schools should permit the most expansive use of the Guardian Program under existing law to allow personnel — who volunteer, are properly selected, thoroughly screened and extensively trained — to carry concealed firearms on campuses for self-protection and the protection of other staff and students,” the report read.

The current Guardian Program, signed into law by outgoing Republican Gov. Rick Scott shortly after the shooting last year, currently only allows administrators or non-teaching staff to receive firearm training.

In April 2018, the Broward County School Board voted against adopting the program, which would have given Broward County schools over $67 million to train and arm teachers, according to the Eagle Eye, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School’s newspaper.

This week’s report also recommended a full internal investigation of the Broward County sheriff’s office, which responded first to the shooting, to “address all of the actions or inactions of personnel on February 14th, 2018.”

The committee, which includes sheriffs, state politicians and parents of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas victims, among others, first met in April 2018, setting January 2019 as its deadline to submit a preliminary report. During the second half of 2018, the commission held monthly meetings interviewing witnesses and reviewing “a massive amount of evidence,” according to the report.
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The Trump administration is considering Jim Webb, a former Democratic senator from Virginia who also served as Navy secretary under Republican President Ronald Reagan, to be the next defense secretary, The New York Times reported Thursday.

Citing an unnamed official, the Times said Vice President Mike Pence and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney had reached out to Webb. It said what it described as a senior Defense Department official confirmed Webb’s name had been circulating at the White House.

Jim Mattis stepped down as secretary of defense Tuesday, and President Donald Trump said a day later he had essentially fired Mattis, a retired Marine general whose letter of resignation was seen as a sharp rebuke to the Republican president.

Mattis resigned after Trump’s surprise decisions to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria and half of the 14,000-strong contingent in Afghanistan. Trump has named Patrick Shanahan, a former Boeing Co. executive who was Mattis’ deputy, as acting defense secretary.

The Times said Webb could potentially allow Trump to bypass “more hawkish Republicans whose names have been floated to replace Jim Mattis.” 

It said Republican Sens. Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham and former Republican Sen. Jim Talent had also been mentioned as possible replacements for Mattis.

The White House declined to comment on the Times report.

The Times said Webb did not respond to a request for comment. 

Webb, 72, is a decorated war veteran who served in the Vietnam War, the author of 10 books and an Emmy Award-winning journalist and filmmaker.

A former U.S. senator from Virginia, Webb ran a long-shot campaign for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. 

“Americans don’t like the extremes to which both parties have moved in recent years and, quite frankly, neither do I,” he said in October 2015 when announcing he was dropping his bid.
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