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Washington’s political establishment is reeling a day after President Trump blindsided Republican Congressional leaders, siding with Democrats on a three-month debt ceiling extension that puts his own party in an awkward spot with mid-term elections little more than a year away.

Republican reaction to the deal has veered from bewilderment to anger to cautious endorsement of an agreement they see as playing into Democratic hands.

“It’s just a betrayal of everything we’ve been talking about for years as Republicans,” influential former Senator Jim DeMint said in an interview with Politico.

The chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Mark Meadows was more conciliatory. At a Bloomberg News breakfast meeting Thursday with Congressional reporters, Meadows said Trump had told him he had cut the debt ceiling deal so he could focus attention on tax reform.  He is “myopically focused on trying to get tax reform,” Meadows said.

The deal left Republican Congressional leaders, House Majority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell land House Speaker Paul Ryan, in an embarrassing position. Hours before meeting Trump with other Congressional leaders at the White House Wednesday, Ryan had called the idea of a three-month debt extension “ridiculous,” telling reporters it was “disgraceful that they [Democrats] want to play politics with the debt ceiling.”

‘Shrewd move’

But many Trump supporters cheered the president’s rebuke of the Republican leadership. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, in an interview with Fox News, called the deal a “shrewd move” designed to put pressure on his own party to deliver legislative victories that voters had expected when they elected Republicans to control both houses of Congress.

“They’re [voters] not as unhappy with the president as the American people are unhappy with this Republican Congress,” Huckabee said. “There is outrage for not being able to deliver to a president. I think there’s an extraordinary exasperation on the part of the public.”

Democrats were exultant at the deal. Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer called it a “positive step forward” that would avoid default and get money quickly to hurricane victims in Texas and Louisiana. “The nation can breathe a sigh of relief,” Schumer said Thursday on the Senate floor.

Several Senate Republicans tried to put the best face they could on the deal. “The Senate will soon consider legislation that will keep the government’s lights on until December 8 and increase the nation’s borrowing capacity, said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn. “That’s important, because without lifting the debt limit, we couldn’t actually vote for and send aid to the victims of Harvey.”

Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse mocked the deal in a news release, however, calling on fellow Republicans to reject it. “Yesterday we saw Washington’s swamp continue to rise: Chuck Schumer wrote the art of the steal by taking hurricane relief hostage to guarantee a December showdown that favors Democratic spending priorities,” Sasse said.

Kicking ‘a hornet’s nest’

Speaker Ryan was more reflective at a meeting with reporters Thursday, saying the president had made clear he was looking for a “bipartisan moment,” with the country facing two hurricanes, when he agreed to the three-month debt ceiling extension. Ryan said his objection was based more on the effect the deal would have on financial markets.  

“I was making an economic point,” Ryan said, “which is that with respect to the credit markets, stability and longevity are key.”

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a statement confirming that Trump held early morning conversations Thursday with senators McConnell and Schumer, as well as Speaker Ryan and Minority Leader Pelosi. “The president is committed to working across the aisle and doing what is needed to best serve the American people.”

Presidential scholar Dan Mahaffee of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress said Trump’s decision to work with Congressional Democrats had “kicked a hornet’s nest.”

“It reflects the outcome of eight months of frustration for President Trump in working with Congress and the GOP Congressional leadership,” Mahaffee said. “Trump is now feeling out what deals might be made with Democrats, and how that might be able to make up for the GOP’s inability to find consensus on important policy goals.”

Trump’s newly chummy relationship with Democrats appeared to take another twist Thursday when he acceded to another request from the opposition leadership. After a phone conversation with minority leader Pelosi, the president issued a tweet advising those affected by the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that they have nothing to worry about.  Pelosi confirmed to reporters that she had asked Trump to issue the tweet.  

 
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The United States is expressing deep concerns and says it is in close contact with Myanmar’s government on the situation in that country’s northwestern Rakhine State, where tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have been forced to flee across the border to Bangladesh.

“We have publicly and privately discussed this issue at the highest levels.  We are also in touch with Burma’s neighbors and other international partners,” a spokesperson from the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific affairs told VOA on Wednesday. Myanmar is also known as Burma.

“We remain deeply concerned by sustained reports of significant violence and the impact on civilian populations, including the Rohingya community,” he added.

The State Department, however, said it welcomed indications Myanmar’s government is committed to providing access to humanitarian aid via the Red Cross.

Fleeing violence

The latest round of violence began August 25 when a group of Rohingya insurgents attacked police posts and an army base in what they said was an effort to protect their ethnic minority from persecution.  Rakhine State is home to most of the Rohingya minority group.

Subsequent clashes and a military counter-offensive have killed at least 400 people and triggered the latest exodus of Rohingya villagers to Bangladesh.

U.N. Refugee agency Asia spokeswoman Vivian Tan in Bangladesh told VOA Burmese that aid workers estimate there are now some 164,000 new arrivals in Bangladesh.   

The United Nations says some 146,000 people have crossed the border into Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazaar district since August 25.

Officials say the U.N. World Food Program has provided tens of thousands of people with food, including high-nutrient porridge, to women and children who are arriving in Bangladesh hungry and malnourished. The agency says that it needs $11.3 million to support the influx of people, in addition to those already living in camps.

The United States had strongly condemned the August 25 deadly attacks on security posts by a group called Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) and urged all ethnic groups in Myanmar to “work toward peace and stability.”

Myanmar’s de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been criticized over her response to the violence. Many observers say she has played down reports of the Burmese military’s brutal treatment of Rohingya civilians. Aung San Suu Kyi maintains there has been “a huge iceberg of misinformation” about the Rohingya crisis and violence in Rakhine following the August 25 insurgents attacks on security posts.

A series of Twitter photos that allegedly showed dead Rohingya people were later proved to be unrelated to the current violence, according to a statement posted on Facebook by Aung San Suu Kyi’s office.

The Nobel Peace laureate said “fake information” was used to promote the interests of “terrorists,” a word she used to describe ARSA insurgents.

International pressure

But human rights advocates are urging the Burmese government to stop the violence.  

“The governments of the world have to press very hard on Aung San Suu Kyi and also the Burma military to stop the violence,” Human Rights Watch’s Deputy Asia Director Phil Robertson told VOA, adding independent monitors should be granted access to assess allegations of serious human rights violations committed by ethnic Rohingya refugees who have fled into Bangladesh.

Robertson urged the United States and the international community to provide more humanitarian relief and medical assistance to the refugees.

“So far we have seen very little comments from the Trump administration about the situation which is quite shocking,” said Robertson, “There is a massive humanitarian crisis in a country which, until recently, the United States spent a great deal of time trying to understand them and work with the government on various developments and trade,” Robertson said.

Abuses against and restrictions on members of the Rohingya population were cited as one of the leading human rights problems in Myanmar, according to State Department’s 2016 Human Rights Report.

The Rohingya are one of Myanmar’s many ethnic minorities in the Buddhist-majority nation. The Myanmar government considers the Rohingya to be economic migrants from Bangladesh, and has never granted them citizenship, even though most can show their families have been in the country for generations.

VOA’s Burmese Service contributed to this report.
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Twitter Inc should provide an analysis of recent Russian activity on its social media platform, similar to the one Facebook Inc provided, the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee told reporters on Thursday.

Speaking one day after Facebook said it had uncovered an operation likely based in Russia that bought thousands of U.S. ads with divisive messages, Senator Mark Warner said that finding was likely just the beginning, and that Twitter should

also examine the issue.

 
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Fifteen states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit on Wednesday challenging President Donald Trump’s decision to end protections and benefits for young people who were brought into the United States illegally as children.

The multistate lawsuit filed by a group of Democratic attorneys general to protect beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program argues their state economies will be hurt if residents lose their status.

The lawsuit seeks to block Trump’s decision and maintain DACA.

The lawsuit claims Trump’s decision was “motivated, at least in part, by a discriminatory motive” against Mexicans, who are the largest beneficiary of the program. It points to his statements from the 2016 presidential campaign.

The attorneys general also argue the government has not guaranteed DACA recipients that their application information will not be used “for purposes of immigration enforcement, including identifying, apprehending, detaining or deporting noncitizens.”

New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman took the lead, filing the case in the Eastern District of New York. He said that 42,000 New Yorkers participate in DACA, and that the end of the program would be “devastating” for them and would cause “huge economic harm” to the state.

Ready to defend

In commenting on the suit, the U.S. Department of Justice noted that DACA was an administrative program begun during the Obama administration and was not done through congressional action.

“While the plaintiffs in today’s lawsuits may believe that an arbitrary circumvention of Congress is lawful, the Department of Justice looks forward to defending this administration’s position,” spokesman Devin M. O’Malley said.

Trump’s decision Tuesday to end the five-year-old program resulted in uncertainty for almost 800,000 young people known as “Dreamers,” based on never-passed proposals in Congress called the DREAM Act that would have provided similar protections for young immigrants. The president’s move drew criticism from business and religious leaders, mayors, governors, Democratic lawmakers, unions and civil liberties advocates.

Trump, who delayed the end of the program until March 5, shifted responsibility to a Congress controlled by his fellow Republicans, saying it was now up to lawmakers to pass immigration legislation that could address the fate of those protected by DACA.

But the governor of Washington, whose state joined the lawsuit, criticized Trump for distancing himself from a final decision on the program.

Trump said Tuesday that he still had “great heart” for the Dreamers.

“The president has tried to shirk responsibility for this, but let’s be clear: It is his hand on the knife in these people’s backs,” said Washington Governor Jay Inslee at a news conference announcing the suit. “He can’t just put it on Congress. It is his responsibility to fix this.”

Other claims in the lawsuit are based on the Administrative Procedure Act, arguing the White House did not follow the correct process in changing the policy.

Legal experts have said that court challenges to Trump’s actions could face an uphill battle, since the president typically has wide authority when it comes to implementing immigration policy.
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An Iraqi student jet fighter pilot was killed when an F-16 jet crashed during a training mission in southeastern Arizona, authorities said Wednesday.

The Iraqi air force identified the pilot as Capt. Noor Faleh Rassan Al-Khazali, but it didn’t list an age or hometown.

Al-Khazali was killed Tuesday when his Fighting Falcon jet went down in the southern Arizona desert during what an Arizona Air National Guard official called a routine training mission. The U.S. Air Force has activated a team to investigate the crash about 80 miles (129 kilometers) northwest of Tucson, the Air Guard’s 1st Lt. Lacey Roberts of the 162nd Wing said.

The Iraqi defense ministry said it will join in the investigation.

Roberts could not immediately say what type of training was being conducted. The F-16 is used in both air-to-air and air-to-ground combat missions.  

Al-Khazali’s death was the second involving an Iraqi pilot flying an F-16 in Arizona in recent years.

Roberts said the plane belonged to the Iraqi air force and that the training mission was being conducted in conjunction with the 162nd Wing, which is based at Tucson International Airport.

The jet crashed in desert terrain, leaving a crater and scattered debris, Graham County Undersheriff Carl “Jeff” McCormies said.

The U.S. military is training Iraqi pilots to fly F-16s at the request of Iraq’s government, Roberts said.

In July 2015, an Iraqi brigadier general flying from the 162nd died when his F-16, a newer model recently delivered to the Iraqi air force, crashed during night training near Douglas.

In January 2016, a Taiwanese pilot on a training flight from Luke Air Force Base near Phoenix was killed when his F-16 went down in Yavapai County.

The 162nd Wing is the Air Guard’s biggest F-16 training operation and conducts training missions across southern and central Arizona military ranges.

The wing, which has hosted training since 1990, has trained pilots from Iraq, Singapore, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Oman, Belgium and the Netherlands.
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The outgoing U.S. ambassador to Russia, John Tefft, has defended the expulsion of Russian diplomats from seized consular property in the United States amid an increasing strain in diplomatic ties.

In a joint interview Wednesday in Moscow with the Russian services of VOA News and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Tefft rejected statements in Russian media that the seizing of diplomatic property in San Francisco, New York and Washington was done in what Russian President Vladimir Putin called a “boorish and unprecedented” fashion.

Putin accused U.S. authorities of threatening to “break down the entrance door” of the Russian Consulate in San Francisco after Washington set a September 2 deadline for the premises to be evacuated.

“Nobody broke down doors. Nobody put undue pressure on people. It was all done very, very carefully — and, in compliance with the Vienna Conventions,” Tefft said.

Court battle

Speaking in China on Tuesday, Putin said, “Let’s see how well the much-praised American legal system works in practice.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in a telephone call on Wednesday that Russia had initiated legal proceedings for what was a “violation of international law.”

U.S. President Donald Trump reduced Russia’s consular facilities this month after the Kremlin demanded the U.S. cut its diplomatic staff in Russia to 455 people.

Russia said it was imposing the demand as a countermeasure to new U.S. sanctions over alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and to achieve “parity” with the level of the Russian diplomatic presence in the U.S. Trump’s closing of the Russian consulate and two annexes brought the number of Russian diplomatic facilities in the U.S. even with the number of U.S. facilities in Russia.

“But when we used parity to withdraw our consent for the Russian government to have a consulate in San Francisco, then everyone got all excited. And, you know, parity is parity,” Tefft noted.

Tefft: Reduction not voluntary

Russia’s Foreign Ministry gave conflicting statements, implying that the U.S. had voluntarily reduced its staff, a notion also rejected outright by Tefft.

However, Tefft said in the interview that it was false to suggest that Washington “negotiated or somehow signed on to the idea of reducing our staff.”

“We were told to do that. That was not something that was negotiated,” he said.

Russian officials say they are considering how to respond to the reduction of their U.S. consular facilities.

Despite the downward spiraling diplomatic relations, Tefft has urged Russia to join U.S. allies in Asia and Western governments in pressuring North Korea to end its nuclear weapons program.

“While the focus, at this point, is on the United States, I noted one of the earlier missiles a few weeks ago, you know, landed 60 kilometers off of Vladivostok in the water,” Tefft said. “This is a regional and now becoming a global threat. It’s not just against the United States, it’s against all of us.

“One of the things that Secretary Tillerson and Foreign Minister Lavrov agreed, when they saw each other here in March, was that the United States and Russia both believed the Korean Peninsula should be non-nuclear.That’s a fundamental which we can work on,” Tefft added.

Regular talks seen continuing

The U.S. ambassador said there had been regular consultations between U.S. and Russian experts on North Korea and that he expected more in the next few weeks.

“Now, getting forward, we’ve got to try to find the best tactics to do this. But we need strong efforts by Russia and China if we’re all going to be successful,” he said.

Tefft is expected to leave Russia this year and be succeeded by Trump appointee Jon Huntsman, a former U.S. ambassador to China.

VOA’s Danila Galperovich contributed to this report.
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A federal appeals court panel on Tuesday stayed a permanent injunction to throw out the Texas law requiring voters to present an accepted photo identification card.

By a 2-1 vote, the three-judge panel in New Orleans left in the injunction’s place a previous order by U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos. That order allows those without an accepted ID to vote by signing a sworn declaration stating they have a reasonable impediment to obtaining one.

Gonzales Ramos had issued the permanent injunction against a subsequent voter ID law on Aug. 23, calling it a “poll tax” on minority voters. The stay suspends that order until the appeals court can hear the merits for and against the state’s appeal.

The U.S. Justice Department participated in the fight to dispose of the law until President Donald Trump took office this year, when it reversed position and supported the Texas voter ID law.

In the six-page majority opinion, Circuit Judges Jerry Smith and Jennifer Walker Elrod suggested the state’s showing was strong enough that they appeared likely to succeed on the merits of its appeal.

“A temporary stay here, while the court can consider arguments on the merits, will minimize confusion among both voters and trained election officials,” the majority opinion stated.

In his five-page dissent, Circuit Judge James Graves Jr. argued that any stay “should be comprehensive. In other words, the correct approach would be to stay both the district court’s order and the new (voter ID) legislation.”

The new law makes permanent the “reasonable impediment” declaration procedure and imposes stiff penalties for violations.

Graves also disagreed that the state has shown that it is likely to succeed on the merits of its appeal.

 
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Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the end of DACA, the immigration program whose full title is Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, on Tuesday. President Donald Trump’s administration decided to rescind the program despite appeals from those affected. VOA’s Ramon Taylor talked to DACA recipients who said they will fight for permission to stay in the U.S.
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They grew up in America and are working or going to school here. Some are building businesses or raising families of their own. Many have no memory of the country where they were born.

Now, almost 800,000 young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children or overstayed their visas could see their lives upended after the Trump administration announced Tuesday it is ending the Obama-era program that protected them from deportation.

“We are Americans in heart, mind and soul. We just don’t have the correct documentation that states we’re American,” said Jose Rivas, 27, who is studying for a master’s in counseling at the University of Wyoming.

Came to America at age 6

Rivas’ grandmother brought him to this country from Mexico when he was 6. He wants to become a school counselor in America but lamented: “Everything is up in the air at this point.”

The news that the government is phasing out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, was met with shock, anger and a sense of betrayal by its beneficiaries, often called “Dreamers.”

Demonstrations broke out in New York City, where police handcuffed and removed over a dozen immigration activists who briefly blocked Trump Tower, and in other cities, including Salt Lake City, Denver, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon. Students walked out of class in protest in several cities including Phoenix and Albuquerque.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said DACA, started by President Barack Obama in 2012, was an unconstitutional exercise of executive power. The Trump administration and other DACA opponents argue that it is up to Congress to decide how to deal with such immigrants.

‘American lives matter’

At a Los Angeles rally, handyman John Willis carried a sign saying “American lives matter” and criticized the DACA program as an “unlawful tyrannical executive order that our previous president thrust upon us.”

“I don’t wish these kids to be sent back to Mexico or anything like that, but I don’t believe we should have two sets of laws,” he said. “We have one set of laws, we should follow them. Congress needs to get up off the pot and enact some legislation to take care of this mess.”

Attorneys general for several states threatened to sue to protect the DACA beneficiaries. “We stand ready to take all appropriate legal action to protect Oregon’s Dreamers,” Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum tweeted.

Helping as volunteer in Houston

Ricardo Ortiz, who was brought to the U.S. from Monterrey, Mexico, at age 3, has been volunteering at the downtown Houston convention center that sheltered thousands of Hurricane Harvey victims.

Ortiz, a 21-year-old student at the University of Houston, said he doesn’t know what he will do if DACA is ended or he is forced to leave the country.

“It’s crazy that people really think that we don’t belong here when we’ve been here all of our lives,” he said.

Amid fears of a greater immigration crackdown, Oscar Belanger, vice principal at Nellie Muir Elementary School in the predominantly Latino town of Woodburn, Oregon, greeted students in English and Spanish on their first day of class.

He told a reporter the school would refuse to turn over students’ information to immigration agents, noting that Oregon law prohibits that. He said administrators and teachers want Washington to stand by the DACA beneficiaries. Only those who are at least 15 can apply for the program.

Trump is right, to deport children is wrong

Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, a Republican and an early Trump supporter, said the president has every right to end DACA. But he added that it would be unconscionable to deport those who benefited from the program.

“These children grew up believing they are American and so many of them have lived lives of which America can be proud,” Reyes said.

In Miami, Paola Martinez, 23, who is from Bogota, Colombia, sobbed as she attended a rally of about 100 immigrants, and said she will feel helpless without DACA. She recently graduated with a civil engineering degree from Florida International University.

‘A step backwards’ 

“Instead of going a step forward, we are going a step backwards. We are hiding in the shadows again after my work (permit) expires. It’s just sadness,” Martinez said. “You just feel like you are empty. There is no support anymore.”

Martinez said she is not able to renew her permit because it expires in 2019, so she is hoping her employer or another company sponsors her so she can stay and help support her parents, who depend on her for rides and household expenses. In Florida, immigrants who are illegally in the country cannot get driver’s licenses.

Karen Marin, a 26-year-old from New York whose parents brought her to the U.S. from Mexico before she was a year old, was in physics class at Bronx Community College when Sessions made the announcement.

“I honestly I can’t even process it right now. I’m still trying to get myself together,” Marin said. “I just hope that they do change their mind and they realize what they’re doing is wrong.”

‘In limbo right now’

Carla Chavarria, 24, is a Phoenix entrepreneur who owns a digital marketing firm and a fitness apparel line. She came to the U.S. from Mexico when she was 7.

Her permit expires in November and she is waiting for her renewal to be processed. She is set to close on the purchase of a home later this month.

“It’s hard being a business owner as it is, especially with being young and being a woman and someone who’s an immigrant. It’s already hard as it is. Now having DACA being taken away,” she said.

“I’m sort of like in limbo right now.”
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