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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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Donald Trump declared himself “the most popular president in the history of the Republican Party” on Wednesday. Yet his allies fear a primary challenge from a high-profile Republican could doom his re-election.

The concern was outlined in a private email shared among Republican National Committee members hours after the GOP’s last failed presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, lashed out at Trump’s character and global leadership in an opinion article published in The Washington Post. Romney is set to be sworn in as Utah’s junior senator on Thursday.

His scathing message was widely interpreted as a sign of encouragement for Republicans including outgoing Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retiring Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake to take on Trump. While a successful primary challenge is highly unlikely given Trump’s grip on the GOP base, some fear it would consume energy and resources badly needed by Trump, who is facing record-low approval ratings and signs of revolt among suburban voters.

Win or lose, any primary challenge would almost certainly hurt Trump’s re-election, warned RNC member Jevon Williams of the Virgin Islands.

“Messrs. Romney, Flake, and Kasich will continue chasing their fantasy of being president, even if that means destroying our party and denying President Trump re-election,” Williams wrote to fellow RNC members in a message obtained by The Associated Press. “Look, the political history is clear. No Republican president opposed for re-nomination has ever won re-election.”

Kasich was clearly encouraged by Romney’s criticism of the president.

“Welcome to the fray, (at)MittRomney,” Kasich wrote in a Twitter post Wednesday sharing Romney’s article.

Kasich adviser John Weaver said it’s been “awful lonely” for Kasich in recent years as one of the GOP’s most vocal Trump critics.

“It’s not so lonely now,” Weaver said.

Kasich, who leaves office later this month, is taking steps to strengthen his organization ahead of a possible run by adding paid staff and volunteers to his political and finance teams.

His advisers say he has yet to decide whether to challenge Trump — either as a Republican or as an independent — although Kasich was quick to visit New Hampshire, the base of his last presidential run, after the November midterms.

The debate among Republicans is how — and whether — to protect Trump. Williams called on his RNC colleagues to change party rules to make it harder for a viable primary challenge to take shape.

​Currently, any candidate who wins a plurality of delegates from five states can be nominated from the national convention floor. That number, which was higher in past years, was lowered at the 2016 convention in response to concerns from grassroots activists. Now some of those activists, loyal to Trump, fear the potential consequences. 

Incumbents in either party bring universal name recognition and massive institutional support to their re-election campaigns, and an insurgent effort to deny Trump the nomination would almost certainly fail. But there is still ample room for a potential spoiler to enter the race to try to deny Trump the support needed to win the general election.

Primary challengers in 1980 and 1992 helped weaken then-Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, who were ultimately defeated in November.

Still, little has come of recent discussions in South Carolina and New Hampshire, where local officials hoped to take steps to block potential Trump challengers. RNC officials now say the national GOP’s rules cannot be changed before the 2020 national convention.

Former RNC member Saul Anuzis of Michigan said Trump’s team missed an opportunity.

“Nobody wants a primary. It’s not healthy for us,” Anuzis said. “You’ll have the Democrats attacking Trump and some Republicans attacking Trump. How does that help us?”

Trump, whose party suffered deep losses in the November midterm elections, shrugged off the prospect of a serious primary challenge.

“They say I am the most popular president in the history of the Republican Party,” he told reporters.

Gallup found late last month that just 39 percent of Americans approved of Trump’s job performance, a mark lower than any president in either party at this point in his presidency since at least 1954. That said, 89 percent of Republicans approved of Trump’s job performance.

Trump’s behavior could shift sharply in the second half of his first term as he prepares for the 2020 contest.

The president is facing pressure from the special counsel in the Russia probe and an impending onslaught of Democratic investigations. That could push Trump to cater exclusively to the base of voters he is concerned about losing, according to a Republican close to the White House who has consulted on the early re-election efforts.

That instinct would echo the president’s double-down, scorched-earth response to the crises that hit his 2016 campaign, including the “Access Hollywood” tape about forcing himself on women, and could make it harder to woo the independent voters or disaffected Democrats he may well need.

The president is eager to unleash his re-election machinery and has pushed to collect pledges of loyalty from across the GOP to quell any hint of an insurrection, according to a campaign official and a Republican familiar with the inner workings of the campaign. Neither was authorized to speak publicly and both requested anonymity.

The Trump team has discussed the possibility of a challenge from someone such as Kasich or Flake and now, one adviser said, Romney would enter the conversation.

Most in Trump’s orbit were not worried about Romney, but others worried that the new article, which was published to great buzz, was merely the opening salvo in coordinated effort by some Republicans to deny the president the party’s nomination.

Publicly, RNC officials were united behind the president.

“There is no concern or expectation at the RNC of a primary challenge for President Trump at all,” said RNC member Bill Palatucci of New Jersey, a state where Republicans suffered painful losses in November. “There may be disagreements, but you express those disagreements in private. As difficult as a midterm cycle that we had, everybody still wants a Republican president and not Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders.”

Romney himself insisted that his article was not intended to signal any interest in a third Republican presidential bid, but he declined to endorse Trump’s re-election.

“I haven’t decided who I’m going to endorse in 2020,” Romney said on CNN. He continued: “I’m not running again. We’ll see if someone else does in a Republican primary or not. Time will tell.”
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Nancy Pelosi is once again Washington’s most powerful woman, poised to reclaim the U.S. House of Representatives speaker’s gavel Thursday as opponent-in-chief to an impulsive and unpredictable president.

Keeping Donald Trump in check will be among the California Democrat’s top challenges as she presides over the House of Representatives through the 2020 elections, when her party aims to dethrone the Republican commander in chief.

Pelosi is almost certain to win Thursday’s House vote for speaker, a position she held for four years from 2007, when she made history as the first woman ever to rise to that post.

When outgoing Speaker Paul Ryan yields to the 78-year-old, she will again become the nation’s third most senior official and seal her reputation as one of the great survivors in American politics.

In her first stint, Pelosi was a strong opposing force to Republican George W. Bush in the final two years of his presidency. Her role as a restraint on Trump would be similar.

But she will also need to keep the reins tight on her own caucus, some of whose newly empowered progressives are seeking swift punitive measures against Trump in the coming months.

She and the Democratic leadership would have the power to block Republican legislation, hamstringing large parts of Trump’s agenda ranging from proposed new tax cuts to building a wall on the border with Mexico.

And Pelosi could make life for Trump much harder if she uses subpoena power to compel administration officials to testify before Congress or turn over key documents, or if she launches impeachment proceedings.

So far, she has spoken out against using such a powerful political cudgel against him, arguing that the explosive step would likely mobilize Republican voters eager to protect the president.

In her reprised role, she will have to thread a political needle, standing up to Trump when needed but also showing that her party is capable of working with the president to pass legislation.

Her immediate task: finding a way to help end a standoff over Trump’s border wall demand that has led to a partial government shutdown now stretching to 13 days.

Pelosi and other congressional leaders met with Trump Wednesday but failed to secure a deal to end the impasse.

Three weeks earlier, at a remarkable Oval Office confrontation with cameras rolling, Pelosi showed she was not afraid to go toe to toe with Trump in a public forum when he appeared to belittle her effort to secure support for her speakership.

“Please don’t characterize the strength that I bring to this meeting as the leader of the House Democrats, who just won a big victory,” a defiant Pelosi said.

‘Respected,’ not hated

Pelosi is unquestionably among the savviest political leaders of her generation. She shepherded then president Barack Obama’s health law through the House to its contentious, historic passage in 2010.

Perhaps for that reason she is still seen by some as a liability eight years later, with Republicans presenting her as the ultimate liberal bogeywoman.

“Can you imagine Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House?” Trump asked a crowd at a Minnesota rally in October. “Don’t do that to me!”

Pelosi’s big comeback was no foregone conclusion. But she shrewdly navigated a simmering party power struggle that saw dozens of House Democrats and candidates signaling their desire for change at the top.

The internal resistance largely stems from Pelosi’s broad unpopularity among voters. But in an interview published Wednesday, she pushed back at the notion that she is reviled.

“I don’t necessarily feel hated. I feel respected,” she told Elle magazine. “They wouldn’t come after me if I were not effective.”

First elected in 1987

At least in part, Pelosi’s reputation is shaped by years of rightwing attacks. Conservatives depict her, the wife of an investment millionaire from California, as the embodiment of a leftist elite.

She is accused of everything from wanting to raise taxes for middle-class families to supporting a massive influx of illegal immigrants.

For three decades, Pelosi has represented California’s 12th congressional district, which includes San Francisco, a stronghold of left-wing politics, counter-culture and gay rights regarded by many heartland conservatives as a true Gomorrah.

Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro was born in Baltimore to a political family with Italian roots. Both her father and brother were mayors of the East Coast port city.

After studying political science in Washington, she moved with her husband to San Francisco, where they raised five children.

First elected to the House in 1987, Pelosi rose through the ranks to lead the chamber’s Democrats beginning in 2002.

Steeled by countless political struggles, Pelosi has largely managed to hold her diverse caucus together.

U.S. politics requires donning “a suit of armor” and the ability “to take a punch,” she has said.
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As a staff sergeant with the Marines in Iraq, Paul Whelan enjoyed fine cigars and showed an affinity for Russia, even spending two weeks of military leave in Moscow and St. Petersburg instead of at home in the U.S. with family and friends.

The 48-year-old Detroit-area man had an account on a Russian social media site, where he posted festive notes on the country’s national holidays.

Now, he’s under arrest there on espionage allegations.

Whelan has visited Russia since at least 2007 and was there again for a friend’s wedding, showing other guests around, said his twin brother, David Whelan. He was scheduled to return home Jan. 6, the brother said.

U.S. officials are seeking answers about Paul Whelan’s arrest on spying charges. The Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, said Whelan was caught “during an espionage operation,” but gave no details.

U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman Jr. visited Whelan on Wednesday in Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison, the State Department said.

“Ambassador Huntsman expressed his support for Mr. Whelan and offered the embassy’s assistance,” it said. He also spoke by phone with Whelan’s family, the statement added, but did not disclose any details because of “privacy considerations for Mr. Whelan and his family.”

Posts on Russian social media

According to what to appears to be Paul Whelan’s profile on the popular Russian social media platform VKontakte, he posted “God save President Trump” — flanked by flag emojis — on Inauguration Day in 2016. A 2010 post referred to then-President Barack Obama as a “moron.”

Another photo showed Whelan wearing a T-shirt of the Moscow soccer club Spartak. In March 2014, around the time of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Whelan suggested that “Putin can have Alaska, as long as he takes Sarah Palin, too!” And a photo posted in August shows Whelan attending a security conference organized by the U.S. State Department.

Brother not a spy

David Whelan disputes Russia’s allegation that his brother is a spy.

Former CIA agent John Sipher agrees, saying Paul Whelan’s spotty military career would keep U.S. intelligence from hiring him for sensitive operations.

“He absolutely does not fit the profile of someone we would use in a place like Moscow,” said Sipher, who once ran the agency’s Russia operations in Moscow. “Due to the oppressive level of counterintelligence scrutiny in Moscow, we do not put people without diplomatic immunity in harm’s way. Nor do we handle low-level intelligence collection operations in a place like Moscow.”

Military service

Paul Whelan attended high school in Ann Arbor, west of Detroit, and joined the Marine Corps Reserves in 1994. A decade later, he was made a staff sergeant and was deployed twice to Iraq, in 2004 and 2006.

His last duty assignment was with the Marine Air Control Group 38 Headquarters, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing; Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar, California. He specialized in administrative posts.

While stationed in Iraq, Whelan was part of something called the Lamplighter’s Club, a group of service members who got together to enjoy good cigars.

“It’s one of the unique pleasures that anyone can take advantage of, as everyone should take advantage of a fine cigar once in a while,” Whelan said in a 2007 interview posted on the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing page of the Marine Corps website.

Whelan also was part of “The Rest and Recuperation Leave Program,” which authorized 15 days of leave to service members on yearlong deployments to Iraq, according to another 2007 story on the website. The military paid for the travel and most service members chose to return home, but others could travel abroad.

​Time in Russia, court-martial

Whelan spent his two weeks in Russia, saying in the interview that the leave program “gives those of us who are single an opportunity to travel throughout the world wherever we want to go and experience the diversity of culture.”

During his military career, Whelan received awards that included the Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation and Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, but he ran afoul of the military and was convicted in 2008 on larceny-related charges at a special court-martial. Whelan’s rank was stripped, he was demoted to private and discharged for bad conduct.

After the military

He went on to start Kingsmead Arsenal, an online firearms business, from his Novi, Michigan, home, and worked for Troy, Michigan-based temporary staffing firm Kelly Services until 2017.

Whelan testified in a 2013 deposition in a federal court case involving Kelly Services that he worked as senior manager of global security and investigations for the company.

He was hired in 2017 by Auburn Hills, Michigan-based BorgWarner and is the auto parts supplier’s global security director.

“He is responsible for overseeing security at our facilities in Auburn Hills, Michigan, and at other company locations around the world,” company spokeswoman Kathy Graham said Tuesday in a statement.

She said BorgWarner does not have any facilities in Russia.
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U.S. President Donald Trump has invited Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress to what the White House is calling a “border security briefing” Wednesday, while a partial government shutdown hits its 12th day.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is expected to attend the session. It is not clear if Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer or fellow Democrat and House speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi will be there, or whether the two sides will use the meeting to negotiate plans to reopen the government.

Democrats will have a majority in the House of Representatives when the new Congress opens Thursday, and Pelosi plans to hold votes on a pair of bills that would fund most of the shuttered agencies through the end of September and the Department of Homeland Security through February 8.

The proposed legislation does not include the $5 billion in funding for a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border that Trump is demanding in any spending measure he signs. Democrats have previously offered $1.3 billion in funding for other border security measures instead.

​

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement late Tuesday that the Democratic plan is a “non-starter” and “fails to secure the border and puts the needs of other countries above the needs of our own citizens.”

Pelosi and Schumer have rejected Trump’s wall plan as “expensive and ineffective” and say Trump has yet to put forth a plan that has a chance to pass in both the House and Senate. 

Ahead of their potential meeting, Trump and Pelosi traded comments Tuesday on Twitter.

“Border Security and the Wall ‘thing’ and Shutdown is not where Nancy Pelosi wanted to start her tenure as Speaker! Let’s make a deal?” Trump said.

Pelosi responded that Trump “has given Democrats a great opportunity to show how we will govern responsibly & quickly to pass our plan to end the irresponsible #TrumpShutdown.”

Before the shutdown went into effect, the Senate passed a stopgap funding bill that would have funded the now-closed government operations through February 8 without the wall funding. The House passed its own bill that did have funding for the wall.

Pelosi said in a letter to colleagues Tuesday that lawmakers in the Senate should now support the new Democratic plan after their earlier action, and that if they reject it, then they would be “fully complicit in chaos and destruction” caused by the ongoing shutdown.

About 800,000 government workers have either been told to stay home or continue working without pay until the shutdown is resolved.

Tourists in Washington are seeing new effects of the impasse Wednesday as the Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo close until a deal is reached. The National Gallery of Art will be closed starting Thursday.
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Mitt Romney, the former Republican presidential candidate and incoming U.S. senator from Utah, sharply criticized President Donald Trump and suggested the U.S. leader had caused dismay around the world.

In a Washington Post essay published on Tuesday evening, Romney criticized a number of Trump’s actions in December.

“The appointment of senior persons of lesser experience, the abandonment of allies who fight beside us, and the president’s thoughtless claim that America has long been a ‘sucker’ in world affairs all defined his presidency down,” he wrote.

He added that “Trump’s words and actions have caused dismay around the world.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Romney suggested that “on balance, (Trump’s) conduct over the past two years … is evidence that the president has not risen to the mantle of the office.”

Romney is staking out an independent position two days before he takes office on Thursday. It is unclear whether Trump will face a serious challenge in 2020 to securing the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.

Trump last February endorsed Romney’s run for a Senate seat in Utah.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Romney excoriated Trump as a “fraud” who was “playing the American public for suckers.” Trump responded that Romney had “choked like a dog” in his unsuccessful 2012 campaign against Democratic President Barack Obama.

Despite Romney’s prior criticism, after Trump won the presidency in November 2016, he briefly considered tapping Romney as secretary of state.

In his essay on Tuesday, Romney said he “will speak out against significant statements or actions that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions.”

Romney has strongly defended press freedom and challenged Trump’s repeated attacks on some news outlets as an “enemy of the people.”

“The media is essential to our Republic, to our freedom, to the cause of freedom abroad, and to our national security. It is very much our friend,” Romney wrote in an essay in November.
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Imagine a magical place where lights are designed in the shape of the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower and dragons. It’s a place where children can enjoy a maze made of Chinese lanterns or see death-defying acts by gymnasts. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti takes us to Light-Up…a Christmas festival near Washington designed, built, and managed by Chinese workers visiting the U.S.
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