1UA TV

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security terminated a program on Wednesday that allowed minors fleeing violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to settle in the United States, ending travel hopes for more than 2,700 children awaiting approval.

In a notice published in the Federal Register, the government said it was ending the practice of granting parole under the Central American Minors (CAM) program, which was offered to children even if they had been denied refugee status.

The program started at the end of 2014 under the administration of former President Barack Obama as a response to tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors and families from Central America who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border seeking entry into the United States.

An executive order on border security signed by U.S. President Donald Trump days after he took office in January triggered a review of the program, putting on hold applications of more than 2,700 children who had been conditionally approved for entry into the United States. Now those applications will be canceled. The bulk of the children approved for the program were from El Salvador.

Other means of entry

Immigration advocacy group Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) said that canceling the program would lead to more children to try to find other means to enter the United States.

“These children have been repeatedly told by the U.S. government, including the Trump administration, not to migrate to the United States due to safety concerns,” the organization said in a statement. “Now this administration is cutting off the only authorized channel and leaving children no choice but to make the perilous journey to the United States.”

The program allowed children under 21 years old with parents lawfully living in the United States to apply for a refugee resettlement interview before making the journey to the United States.

As of August 4, more than 1,500 children and eligible family members had arrived in the United States as refugees under the CAM program, according to the State Department.

Children who did not qualify for refugee status and had no other means of reuniting with their parents in the United States could also apply for entry under the program.

They would be approved for parole for two years, allowing them to travel and stay in the United States and apply for work permits.

1,400-plus granted parole

Since the program’s inception, more than 1,400 children were granted parole and allowed to travel to the United States. They included 1,110 from El Salvador, 324 from Honduras and 31 from Guatemala, according to a spokesman from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

Now, they will have to reapply for parole once their two-year term expires but will be able to have it renewed only if they can demonstrate “an urgent humanitarian or a significant public benefit reason” for them to stay, the federal register said.

Parole decisions would be determined on a case-by-case basis.

More than 13,000 people have applied for the program since it began, the State Department said. Around 1 percent of applicants were denied both for refugee status and parole, according to the USCIS spokesman.

The refugee portion of the program will not be affected by Wednesday’s termination, and children stranded abroad can still apply as refugees.
…

The deadly white nationalist demonstration in Virginia has brought new attention to an anti-fascist movement whose black-clad, bandana-wearing members have been a regular presence at protests around the country in the last year.

Members of the “antifa” movement were among those protesting the Charlottesville rally last weekend. During a combative news conference Tuesday, President Donald Trump did not mention antifa by name but said there was blame “on both sides” for the violence. He said the counter-demonstrators charged at white nationalists with clubs and suggested they also had a hand in escalating the violence.

“You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent, and nobody wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now,” Trump said.

Here are some facts about the antifa movement and those who protested the rally:

What is “antifa?”

“Antifa” is short for anti-fascists and emulates historic anti-fascist actors in Europe.

It’s an umbrella term covering different groups that organize largely on the internet, said Mark Smith, political science professor at the University of Washington. According to websites and Facebook posts, people who affiliate with the term take a militant approach against fascism and white nationalism that doesn’t necessarily shy away from violence.

A website that appears to have been created by a group of anti-fascists in Sacramento, California, says anti-fascism opposes the power structures of white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism and strives to dismantle all systems that promote prejudice and oppression.

The site also says they have no leaders, official members or spokespeople.

In April, pro-Trump demonstrators at a planned Ann Coulter talk in Berkeley called for antifa to be declared a terrorist organization. Others disagree with that assessment.

“There’s extremist ideology and then there’s extremist tactics,” said Oren Segal, the director of Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. His organization does not directly track antifa groups but says they come up in their work because of their opposition to the hate groups they do track, he said.

The ADL opposes antifa’s use of violence in part because “it helps the white supremacist narrative of victimization become a more effective talking point,” he said.

Smith rejects the claim that both sides are equal, saying the movements of neo-Nazis and white nationalists are at least in part what’s driving the antifa movement.

What did antifa do in Charlottesville?

Both sides did engage in violence Saturday. For nearly an hour, fights broke out among a crowd of hundreds of people who gathered in the street before the rally was set to start.

Antifa members were among those protesting the white nationalists, along with Black Lives Matter protesters, clergy members and others. In the mass of hundreds of people, it was not always possible to see who was instigating the fights.

In a combative news conference at Trump Tower, the president acknowledged that there were “some very bad people” among those who gathered to protest Saturday. But he added, “You also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”

He also said he had “no doubt” that blame laid with both groups.

The comments drew a swift rebuke from political leaders of both parties.

Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer said Wednesday that he did not think it was fair for the president to equate the actions of those protesting racism and fascism to the white nationalists.

“The spark for that whole event was Nazis and KKK members choosing to launch a public event with the intent of inciting mayhem. I place the blame for the entire event at their feet,” he said.

What about the so-called “alt-left?”

In recent weeks, conservatives have described violent protesters who have been clashing with conservatives at political rallies as the “alt-left” or “alternative left.” Trump used the newly coined term several times Tuesday.

The “alt-left” seems to encompass far-left-leaning militant groups that disrupt or resist what they see as fascist activity, countering neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations and other events.

The “alt-right” movement has been described as a mix of racism, white nationalism, populism and anti-Semitism. It emphasizes preserving and protecting the white race in the United States.

Where else has antifa protested?

In the hundreds of protests against Trump since his election, there have been rare, scattered incidents of violence. Those episodes usually involve select anarchists or members of the anti-fascist movement that see violence as a way to fight the state and protect the vulnerable.

Yong Jung-Cho of the activist group All of Us said in June that only “a real small percentage of people” on the left engage in violence.

“This is the challenge of large social movements – there’s a lot of people in them.”

A group identified as anti-fascists demonstrated in Portland, Oregon, in June – many wearing masks and black clothing – during a larger rally with other counter-protesters that was organized by a pro-Trump conservative group. Police used flash-bang grenades and pepper spray to disperse the anti-fascist crowd. They said protesters hurled bricks and other objects at officers.

A prominent San Francisco Bay Area anti-fascist leader, Yvonne C. Felarca, was recently arrested on charges stemming from a state Capitol brawl last year between white nationalist groups and counter-protesters.

Felarca has been prominent at several clashes in Berkeley involving the Occupy movement and more recently between supporters and opponents of Trump and conservative leaders.

The first time Smith heard the word antifa, he said, was in connection with the January shooting by a purported Trump supporter of a man protesting an appearance by right-wing speaker Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of Washington.

That protest involved people wearing black clothing and bandanas and carrying signs that said “Make Fascists Afraid Again,” among other slogans. The look and actions were not new to the Pacific Northwest, a region that Seattle Police Department spokesman Sean Whitcomb said has always had a strong anarchist presence.

“The two groups are not dissimilar,” he said.
…

For many in the southern U.S. city of Charlottesville, Virginia, Tuesday was a day of somber reflection and grief. In the wake of violence that left three dead, many are contemplating the nature of public discourse about America’s present, and perhaps more importantly, its past. VOA’s Robert Raffaele has more.
…

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson singled out seven countries for an array of religious freedom abuses, but leveled his harshest criticism at Islamic State militants for carrying out a reign of violence against religious and ethnic minorities. Tillerson’s remarks came Tuesday upon the release of the State Department’s annual religious freedom report. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
…

Former U.S. President Barack Obama tweeted a photo Saturday after deadly violence broke out in the city of Charlottesville, Virginia. It is now the most liked tweet ever on the social media platform.

The photo shows Obama with his hand on a windowsill and his suit jacket slung over one shoulder, looking up at a group of babies of different races looking out at him from an open window.

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion…” Obama wrote along with the picture, quoting former South African President Nelson Mandela.

His tweet came after a day in which white nationalists gathered in Charlottesville to protest the city’s decision to remove the statue of a general who led rebel forces in the 1861-65 U.S. Civil War. Counterprotesters also gathered to denounce the groups, and a man plowed a car into that crowd, killing a woman.

As of early Wednesday, Obama’s tweet had been liked about 2.8 million times, surpassing a tweet that American pop singer Ariana Grande sent after a terrorist attack at one of her concerts in Britain earlier this year.

Obama’s successor, President Donald Trump, has faced criticism for his response to the events in Charlottesville.

 
…

First it was the leader of a major U.S. pharmaceutical, then the CEO of an athletic gear company, and before the day had ended, the chief executive of a $170 billion tech giant. Three of the nation’s top executives resigned from a federal panel created years ago to advise the U.S. president.

Now, others are pushing for more executives to refuse to serve President Donald Trump after what many believe to be an inadequate response to a rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left one dead and dozens injured.

Announcing his resignation Monday, Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier cited the president’s failure to explicitly rebuke the white nationalists.

He wrote on Twitter that “America’s leaders must honor our fundamental values by clearly rejecting expressions of hatred, bigotry and group supremacy, which runs counter to the American ideal that all people are created equal.”

The response from the president was swift, throwing a jab at Frazier, a highly respected executive and one of only four African Americans to head a Fortune 500 company, according to the Executive Leadership Council.

Trump tweeted that at least Frazier will now “have more time to LOWER RIPOFF DRUG PRICES!”

The response, and the speed in which it arrived, caught many off guard.

William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said he couldn’t “think of a parallel example” of any president responding as viciously as Trump to a CEO departing an advisory council.

“Usually, certain niceties are observed to smooth over a rupture,” said Galston, who served as a domestic policy aide in the Clinton administration.

Within hours, Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank, who has felt some blowback for his support of the president, resigned from the same panel, saying his company “engages in innovation and sports, not politics.”

Plank did not specifically mention Trump or Charlottesville, but said his company will focus on promoting “unity, diversity and inclusion” through sports.

But Intel CEO Brian Krzanich was more specific when he resigned a short time later, writing that while he had urged leaders to condemn “white supremacists and their ilk,” many in Washington “seem more concerned with attacking anyone who disagrees with them.”

The president followed up later in the day, tweeting that Merck “is a leader in higher & higher drug prices while at the same time taking jobs out of the U.S. Bring jobs back & LOWER PRICES!”

Drugmakers have come under withering criticism for soaring prices in the U.S., including by Trump, though he has yet to act on a promise to contain them.

The exchange lit up social media, with many people lauding Frazier and blasting the president. There was also a push online seeking more resignations from the remaining executives on the same panel, just over 20 of them.

Trump eventually made a statement condemning bigotry Monday afternoon at a press conference, but already, other executives came to Frazier’s support.

Unilever CEO Paul Polman wrote on Twitter, “Thanks @Merck Ken Frazier for strong leadership to stand up for the moral values that made this country what it is.”

Frazier was not the first executive to resign from advisory councils serving Trump.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk resigned from the manufacturing council in June, and two other advisory groups to the president, after the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.

Walt Disney Co. Chairman and CEO Bob Iger resigned for the same reason from the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum, which Trump established to advise him on how government policy impacts economic growth and job creation.

The manufacturing jobs council had 28 members initially, but it has shrunk since it was formed earlier this year as executives retire, are replaced, or, as with Frazier, Musk, Plank and Krzanich, resign.

“We’ve learned that as president, Mr. Trump is behaving exactly as he did as a candidate,” Galston said. “He knows only one mode: When attacked, hit back harder.”

 
…

President Donald Trump is back in the New York skyscraper that bears his name as the furor over his reaction to race-fueled clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend shows few signs of dying down.

Protesters on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue tried to spoil Trump’s homecoming Monday night with signs bearing messages like “stop the hate, stop the lies” and chanting “shame, shame, shame” and “not my president!”

After two days of public equivocation and internal White House debate, the president condemned white supremacist groups by name on Monday, declaring “racism is evil.”

In a hastily arranged statement at the White House, Trump branded members of the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists who take part in violence as “criminals and thugs.”

The groups are “repugnant to everything that we hold dear as Americans,” he said.

Calls for removal of White House aides

The move didn’t quiet the uproar, however. The leaders of four minority House caucus groups wrote a letter to Trump calling for the removal of White House staff aides Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka.

The heads of the black, Hispanic, Asian and progressive caucuses are calling in the letter for the firings of the Trump administration officials in the wake of a violent, racist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The letter asserts their continuing presence in the White House is emboldening a resurgent white supremacist movement in America.

This came a day after Anthony Scaramucci, who was fired as White House communications director after a less than two-week stay, called for Bannon’s ouster.

In his initial remarks on the violence Saturday, Trump did not single out the groups and instead bemoaned violence on “many sides.” Those remarks prompted stern criticism from fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, who urged him to seize the moral authority of his office to condemn hate groups.

Trump’s softer statement Saturday had come as graphic images of a car plowing into a crowd in Charlottesville were playing continually on television. White nationalists had assembled in the city to protest plans to take down a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, and counter-protesters gathered in opposition. Fights broke out, and then a man drove into the opponents of the white supremacists. One woman was killed and many more badly hurt. Twenty-year-old James Alex Fields Jr. of Ohio is charged with second-degree murder and other counts.

Loath to appear to be admitting a mistake, Trump was reluctant to adjust his remarks.

The president had indicated to advisers before his initial statement Saturday that he wanted to stress a need for law and order, which he did. He later expressed anger to those close to him about what he perceived as the media’s unfair assessment of his remarks, believing he had effectively denounced all forms of bigotry, according to outside advisers and White House officials.

Rising tide of criticism

Several of Trump’s senior advisers, including new chief of staff John Kelly, had urged him to make a more specific condemnation, warning that the negative story would not go away and that the rising tide of criticism from fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill could endanger his legislative agenda, according to two White House officials.

The outside advisers and officials demanded anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Aides were dispatched to Sunday talk shows but struggled to explain the president’s position. A stronger statement was released – but attributed only to an unnamed spokesperson.

Tougher condemnations began Sunday night with Vice President Mike Pence, traveling in South America, declaring that “these dangerous fringe groups have no place in American public life.”

On Monday, Trump had planned to interrupt his 17-day working vacation at his New Jersey golf club to travel to Washington for an announcement he hoped would showcase some tough talk on China’s trade practices.

But by the time he arrived at midmorning, it was clear all other messages would be drowned out until he said more about Charlottesville.

Trump returned to a White House undergoing a major renovation. With the Oval Office unavailable, he worked from the Treaty Room as aides drafted his remarks.

Reading from a teleprompter, he made a point of beginning with an unrelated plug for the strength of the economy under his leadership. Then, taking pains to insist “as I said on Saturday,” Trump denounced the hate groups and called for unity.

“We must love each other, show affection for each other and unite together in condemnation of hatred, bigotry and violence,” he said.

Trump for the first time mentioned Heather Heyer by name as he paid tribute to the woman killed by the car.

At the trade event later in the day, he was asked why it took two days for him to offer an explicit denunciation of the hate groups.

“They have been condemned,” Trump responded before offering a fresh criticism of some media as “fake news.”

He followed with a tweet declaring “the #Fake News Media will never be satisfied.”
…

The Afghan Taliban on Tuesday released an “open letter” to President Donald Trump, reiterating their calls for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan after 16 years of war.

In a long and rambling note in English that was sent to journalists by Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, the insurgents said Trump has recognized the errors of his predecessors by seeking a review of the U.S. strategy for Afghanistan.

However, Mujahid said Trump should not hand control of the U.S. Afghan policy to the military but rather announce the withdrawal of U.S. forces – and not an increase in troops as the administration has planned.

The 1,600-word note said a U.S. withdrawal would “truly deliver American troops from harm’s way” and bring about “an end to an inherited war.”

The United States now has about 8,400 troops in Afghanistan.

Trump has so far resisted the Pentagon’s recommendations to send almost 4,000 more to expand training of Afghan military forces and bolster U.S. counterterrorism operations. The deployment has been held up amid broader strategy questions, including how to engage regional powers in an effort to stabilize Afghanistan.

What is evident is that the Afghan government has struggled to halt Taliban advances on its own and is now also battling an Islamic State affiliate that has carved out a foothold mostly in eastern Afghanistan. In its most recent report, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said the Taliban hold sway in nearly 50 percent of the country.

The Taliban letter sought to flatter Trump for initiating the Afghan policy review while warning against handing it to “warmongering generals.”

“We have noticed that you have understood the errors of your predecessors and have resolved to thoroughly rethinking your new strategy in Afghanistan,” it said, addressing Trump. “You must also not hand over the Afghan issue to warmongering generals, but must make a decision where history shall remember you as an advocate of peace.”

The letter also offered a long list of complaints against Afghanistan’s U.S.-orchestrated unity government and referenced a newly formed coalition of disgruntled warlords formed at a meeting last month in Turkey as an opposition bloc to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

Ghani has been under pressure from critics who have described him as divisive and accused him of stoking ethnic rivalries.

The opposition bloc includes Uzbek warlord and Afghanistan’s first vice president, Rashid Dostum, who has been criticized by the U.S. for human rights abuses and is currently living in Turkey. Atta Mohammed Noor, a Tajik warlord and governor of northern Balkh province and Mohammed Mohaqiq, an ethnic Hazara lawmaker are also in the bloc.
…

An unarmed Iranian drone shadowed a U.S. aircraft carrier at night and came close enough to F-18 fighter jets to put the lives of American pilots at risk, the Navy said Tuesday, reporting the second such tense encounter within a week.

The Iranian Sadegh drone flew without any warning lights during the encounter Sunday night with the USS Nimitz, said Lt. Ian McConnaughey, a spokesman for the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet.

The drone did not respond to repeated calls over the radio and came within 1,000 feet (300 meters) of U.S. fighters, he said.

‘Dangerous situation’

That “created a dangerous situation with the potential for collision and is not in keeping with international maritime customs and laws,” McConnaughey said in a statement.

The drone was unarmed, the lieutenant said, though that model can carry missiles.

Iran’s military and state-run media did not immediately report the incident, which came after a similar encounter Aug. 8, in which the Navy said an Iranian drone came within 100 feet (30 meters) of an F-18 preparing to land on the Nimitz. Iranian vessels and U.S. warships have also had tense encounters in recent months.

U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to renegotiate the nuclear deal struck by his predecessor amid new sanctions targeting Iran over its ballistic missile tests.

14 encounters during 2017

So far this year, the Navy has recorded 14 instances of what it describes as “unsafe and/or unprofessional” interactions with Iranians forces. It recorded 35 in 2016 and 23 in 2015.

The incidents at sea almost always involved Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary force that reports only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Some analysts believe the incidents are meant in part to squeeze moderate President Hassan Rouhani’s administration after the 2015 nuclear deal.

Of the incidents at sea last year, the worst involved Iranian forces capturing and holding overnight 10 U.S. sailors who strayed into the Islamic Republic’s territorial waters.

Iranian forces in turn accuse the U.S. Navy of unprofessional behavior, especially in the Strait of Hormuz, the mouth of the Persian Gulf, through which a third of all oil traded by sea passes.

 
…

…

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday denounced the white supremacists who staged last weekend’s deadly rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, saying that their “racism is evil.”

Trump said the neo-Nazi groups, the racist Ku Klux Klan, white nationalists and other hate groups that organized the demonstration “are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”

President Trump: Racism is evil

Trump vowed that anyone who committed “racist violence” in Charlottesville would be held accountable.  “Justice will  be delivered,” he said.

He said the hatred and bigotry on display in Charlottesville “has no place in America and as I have said many times before, no matter the color of our skin we all live under the same laws.  We all salute the same great flag.  And we are all made by the same, almighty God.”

Direct criticism

Trump’s comments followed two days of intense criticism from across the U.S. political spectrum for his failure to explicitly condemn the white nationalists and other groups who organized Saturday’s rally. Many critics praised the president Monday for directly criticizing the groups, but also lamented that it took days for him to call them out by name.  

During a televised statement at the White House Monday, Trump paid tribute to the three people who lost their lives, including Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal who had gone to the rally to protest against the white nationalists. She was killed when she was hit by a speeding car driven into a group of counter-protesters.

Two Virginia state police troopers who had been watching the protest from the air were also killed when their helicopter crashed.

Trump spoke after being briefed on the investigation of the rally by two of his top law enforcement officials, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Christopher Wray, newly installed as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the country’s top criminal investigative agency. The Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation into Saturday’s violence, marked by hours of street fights between the white nationalists and counter-protesters.

Numerous U.S. political figures, both Republicans and Democrats, had assailed Trump for two days for not specifically denouncing the white nationalists, neo-Nazis and other groups that staged the Charlottesville rally to protest the city’s planned removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee. Lee was the leader of the Confederate forces in the 19th century Civil War that was fought over the issue of slave ownership in the southern U.S. and statues of him, usually on horseback, have become a flashpoint for demonstrations in several U.S. cities.

The 20-year-old driver of the car that hit Heyer, James Alex Fields Jr., from the midwestern state of Ohio, was arrested and charged with murder and other offenses.

Fields, reported by U.S. news accounts to have voiced Nazi sympathies in recent years, made his first court appearance Monday, but a Charlottesville judge refused to grant him bond, keeping him jailed pending more legal proceedings later this month.

Initial reaction

On Saturday, as street fights between the white nationalists and counter-protesters escalated at the rally 160 kilometers southwest of Washington, Trump denounced “in the strongest possible terms this degree of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides.”

But at the time he declined to say whether he was rejecting political support from white supremacists, many of them Trump voters in last year’s presidential election.

Trump’s tepid initial response to the violence seemed to blame the unrest on both the white nationalists and counter-protesters.

On Sunday, the White House said the president “condemns all forms of violence, bigotry and hatred and of course that includes white Supremacists,” the racist Ku Klux Klan, “neo-Nazi and all extremist groups. He called for national unity and bringing all Americans together.”

But Trump, who frequently posts his thoughts on his Twitter account, has not offered any more commentary on the Charlottesville unrest until he spoke Monday.

Hours earlier, Sessions told ABC News, “You can be sure we will charge and advance the investigation towards the most serious charges that can be brought, because this is an unequivocally unacceptable and evil attack that cannot be accepted in America.”

In another interview, he told CBS News, “We will not allow these extremist groups to obtain credibility.”

Merck CEO resigns from Trump panel

Kenneth Frazier, the chief executive of Merck, a major U.S. pharmaceutical company, quit Trump’s advisory manufacturing council because of Trump at first not “clearly rejecting expressions of hatred, bigotry and group supremacy, which run counter to the American ideal that all people are created equal.”

Trump, in a Twitter response within an hour, said that since Frazier had quit the manufacturing council, he would now “have more time to LOWER RIPOFF DRUG PRICES!”

On Sunday, Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, said says the deadly Charlottesville violence “meets the definition of terrorism.”

McMaster, in an interview on ABC News, described the car’s ramming into a crowd of counter-protesters as “a criminal act that may be motivated by this hatred and bigotry.”

Vigils and protests

The victims were remembered at a vigil Sunday in Charlottesville, while people in multiple cities across the U.S. gathered to protest the violence and criticize Trump’s response for not explicitly condemning far-right groups.

In New York, marchers gathered at Trump Tower to voice their displeasure, while hundreds of people rallied against white nationalist groups in Los Angeles. About 1,000 people gathered at another anti-hate rally in Denver.

A Seattle rally planned by a conservative pro-Trump group before the events in Charlottesville was met by counter-protesters, and police used pepper spray to break up crowds after fireworks were thrown at officers.

 
…