<1
Dow Jones industrials take second straight 2-percent plunge

NEW YORK (AP) — Another day of big losses knocked U.S. stocks to their lowest levels in more than a year Monday.

Selling was widespread. Investors dumped high-growth technology and retail companies as well as steadier, high-dividend companies. Hospitals and health insurers slumped after a federal judge in Texas ruled that the 2010 Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 507 points after a 496-point drop Friday, and all the major stock indexes fell at least 2 percent. Oil closed below $50 a barrel for the first time since October 2017. Bonds rose and their yields fell.

Mark Hackett, chief of investment research at Nationwide Investment Management, attributed Monday’s action in stocks to investor concerns about the slowing global economy. But he felt it was overdone. “That is basically retail investors panicking,” he said. “Investors basically are confusing the idea of a slowdown with a recession.”

Investors sold almost everything. Less than 40 of the 500 stocks comprising the S&P 500 finished the day higher. Amazon led a rout among retailers and tech companies including Microsoft turned sharply lower. Some of the largest losses went to utilities and real estate companies, which have done better than the rest of the market during the turbulence of the last three months.

The S&P 500 index, the benchmark for many investors and funds, finished at its lowest level since Oct. 9, 2017. It has fallen 13.1 percent since its last record close on Sept. 20. The Russell 2000, an index of smaller companies, has dropped more than 20 percent since the end of August, meaning that index is now in what Wall Street calls a “bear market.”

Germany’s main stock index also fell into a bear market Monday as companies like Siemens and SAP kept falling.

Smaller U.S. stocks have taken dramatic losses as investors have lost confidence in the U.S. economy’s growth prospects. Smaller companies are considered more vulnerable in a downturn than larger companies because they are more dependent on economic growth and tend to have higher levels of debt.

Hackett said the current drop is similar to the market’s big plunge in late 2015 and early 2016, which was also tied to fears that the global economy was weakening in a hurry. But even though the economy is slowing down after its surge in 2017 and 2018, it should continue to do fairly well.

“It’s a slowdown from extremely high levels to healthy levels,” he said. “The globe isn’t going into a recession.”

The S&P 500 skidded 54.01 points, or 2.1 percent, at 2,545.94. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 507.53 points, or 2.1 percent, to 23,592.98. The Nasdaq composite fell 156.93 points, or 2.3 percent, to 6,753.73. The Russell 2000 index dipped 32.97 points, or 2.3 percent, to 1,378.14.

Following the health care ruling, hospital operator HCA dropped 2.8 percent to $123.1 and health insurer UnitedHealth lost 2.6 percent to $258.07. Centene, a health insurer that focuses on Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act’s individual health insurance exchanges, fell 4.8 percent to $121.42 and Molina skidded 8.9 percent to $120.

Many experts expect the ruling will be overturned, but with the markets suffering steep declines in recent months, investors didn’t appear willing to wait and see.

Benchmark U.S. crude fell 2.6 percent to $49.88 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, used to price international oils, dipped 1.1 percent to $59.61 a barrel in London. Weaker economic growth would mean less demand for oil, and traders have been concerned there is too much crude supply on the market. That’s chopped oil prices by one-third since early October.

Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.86 percent from 2.89 percent.

The Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates again Wednesday, the fourth increase of this year. It’s been raising rates over the last three years, and investors will want to know if the Fed is scaling back its plans for further increases based on the turmoil in the stock market over the last few months and mounting evidence that world economic growth is slowing down.

Hackett, of Nationwide, said investors will be happy if the Fed adjusts its plans and projects fewer increases in interest rates next year. But he said investors might be startled if the Fed decides to not raise rates this week.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said Parliament will vote Jan. 14 on her deal setting terms for Britain’s departure from the European Union. She canceled a vote on the deal last week because it was clear legislators were going to reject it. May insists she can save the deal, but pressure is mounting for either a vote by lawmakers or a new referendum on the issue.

Britain is scheduled to leave the EU in late March, and if it does so without a deal in place governing its trade and economic relationships with the bloc, it could bring huge disruptions to the British and European economies and financial markets.

Germany’s DAX lost 0.9 percent. That means the DAX, which represents Europe’s largest single economy, is also in a bear market. France’s CAC 40 and Britain’s FTSE 100 both fell 1.1 percent.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index added 0.6 percent and the Kospi in South Korea gained 0.1 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was less than 0.1 percent lower. Both the Kospi and Hang Seng are in bear markets as well.

In other energy trading, wholesale gasoline shed 1.7 percent to $1.41 a gallon and heating oil slid 1 percent to $1.83 a gallon. Natural gas dropped 7.8 percent to $3.53 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Gold rose 0.8 percent to $1,251.80 an ounce. Silver added 0.8 percent to $14.76 an ounce. Copper dipped 0.3 percent to $2.75 a pound.

The dollar slipped to 112.75 yen from 113.29 yen. The euro rose to $1.1350 from $1.1303. The British pound rose to $1.2629 from $1.2579.

https://www.apnews.com/bd739b64af9e4e6fa1653842d7f38f98

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Chinese tech start-ups are tapping into Southeast Asia amid tough relations with US in trade war, NYSE executive says

‘Southeast Asia is one of those areas where it has been explored before, but now there is that new focus,’ says Betty Liu, executive vice-chairwoman at NYSE

A shift would challenge US markets to draw more companies from China, which has become a growth engine

Chinese technology start-ups are pivoting to Southeast Asia and away from the United States in their expansion plans, in a clear bid to avoid getting in the midst of a trade war that is intensifying.

In a recent trip to Asia, Betty Liu, an executive at the New York Stock Exchange, said that she saw entrepreneurship continued to be “rocking” there. But the businesses are also increasingly looking at growth in Southeast Asia.

“Southeast Asia is one of those areas where it has been explored before, but now there is that new focus,” said Liu, executive vice-chairwoman of the exchange, to the South China Morning Post.

In Chinese entrepreneurs' minds, she said, “it's tough with the United States right now, so they're looking at the Southeast Asian markets as another area that can help them diversify beyond perhaps focusing only on the US or focusing only on Europe and other more developed markets.”

That shift would potentially constitute a challenge for US markets to draw more listings from China-based companies, a growth engine for the exchange, in coming years should trade tensions continue.

Chinese tech companies have been going public at a faster pace in recent years. As of Friday, 58 Chinese tech companies raised a total of more than US$20 billion this year, accounting for about a third of the total amount of capital sold to investors by tech companies globally, according to data provider Dealogic.

More often than not, however, Chinese tech companies chose to list elsewhere. Just 21 raised a little more than US$6 billion through US public offerings in the same period, Dealogic data show.

Other markets are vying for China’s tech companies, posing more competition. The Hong Kong stock exchange, for example, has in recent years loosened its listings rules to attract some of the tech sector’s biggest initial public offerings.

In July, the Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi debuted in Hong Kong in a US$3 billion listing. Meituan Dianping, an online food delivery-to-ticketing services platform, was also listed in Hong Kong in a US$4 billion IPO in September.

To be sure, the NYSE, the world’s largest stock exchange by market capitalisation, continues to draw a number of large Chinese companies from China. That included in September the electric-vehicle maker NIO, which raised US$1 billion in its listing.

And Tencent’s music-streaming business, a highly anticipated Chinese tech venture, just debuted on the exchange on Wednesday, raising US$1.1 billion.

But some recent debuts drew underwhelming responses, leading US investors to worry whether the sector is going to hold its valuations as a trade war between the two countries continues to escalate.

Since July, the US and China have slapped tariffs on billions of dollars worth of imports from each other. The moves have dragged down next year’s growth prospects for both nations.

Investors are particularly worried about Chinese technology companies because the two countries are racing to achieve a global dominance in the sector, in areas like artificial intelligence, robotics and life sciences.

Additionally, intellectual property theft is believed to be the thorniest part of the negotiations US President Donald Trump raised with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

“That's a really good example of how you've got the macro environment which is the US trade relations. Certainly any CEO would not be doing their job if they were not looking at what was happening in the environment and reassessing their plans,” Liu said.

The bright side? “It looks like both sides are negotiating now. There is this 90-day deadline so there is a time frame. And you know there's nothing like a deadline to get people to come to both sides and really try to iron out a compromise,” she noted.

“Both sides understand that there is a very strong relationship here, no matter how tense it has been.”

https://www.scmp.com/news/article/21781 ... -asia-amid

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ATTACK MODE

Comey Blasts GOP, ‘Lying’ Trump: ‘At Some Point Someone Has to Stand Up’

‘In the face of fear of Fox News, fear of their base, fear of mean tweets, stand up for the values of this country and not slink away into retirement,’ the ex-FBI director said.

Former FBI Director James Comey went after President Donald Trump and Republican members of Congress on Monday after emerging from a closed-door interview with House members, accusing the GOP of “shameful” silence in the face of the president’s attacks on the FBI.

“People who know better, including Republican members of this body, have to have the courage to stand up and speak the truth, not be cowed by mean tweets or fear of their base,” Comey told reporters. “There is a truth, and they’re not telling it. Their silence is shameful.”

He later added: “Some day they’ve got to explain to their grandchildren what they did today.”

Comey appeared on Monday before the House Judiciary and Oversight committees for the second time this month. Republicans, who control the House of Representatives for just a few more weeks, have been investigating the FBI’s handling of the federal investigations involving the Trump campaign and Hillary Clinton’s emails, dating back to 2016.

“So another day of Hillary Clinton’s emails and the Steele dossier,” Comey said dismissively after the interview, referring to former British spy Christopher Steele’s document alleging connections between Trump and Russia.

“This, while the president of the United States is lying about the FBI, attacking the FBI, and attacking the rule of law in this country–how does this make any sense at all?” he added.

“Republicans used to understand that the actions of a president matter, that words of a president matter, the rule of law matters, and the truth matters. Where are those Republicans today?” he said. “At some point, someone has to stand up, and in the face of fear of Fox News, fear of their base, fear of mean tweets, stand up for the values of this country and not slink away into retirement.”

Comey also dismissed Republican criticisms of how the FBI handled its interview of Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the agency and has been cooperating with federal prosecutors.

“Oh come on,” Comey said with a laugh. “Think of what’s happening to the Republican party. They’re up here attacking the FBI’s investigation of a guy who pled guilty to lying to the FBI. ‘He should have been warned you shouldn’t lie. He should have been told you can have a lawyer.’ Think of the state of affairs we’ve ended up in. That’s nonsense.”

After Comey’s testimony, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), a top Republican on the oversight committee and a staunch Trump ally, said Comey “didn’t follow protocol” with the agency’s interview of Flynn, and “treated different people by different rules,” citing the fact that Flynn was not warned in advance that it was a crime to lie to federal agents.

Flynn’s attorneys have claimed that the former national security adviser was coerced into lying to the FBI about his conversations with then-Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, but special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors fired back, writing: “Nothing about the way the interview was arranged or conducted caused the defendant to make false statements to the FBI.”

Comey had asked for his testimony to be in public, but Republicans sent Comey and his attorneys a subpoena earlier this month to compel him to testify in private. The two sides later agreed that Comey would speak with lawmakers behind closed doors, but that a transcript of the testimony would be released the following day.

Democrats have accused Republicans of using their perches on powerful congressional committees to protect Trump and to attack the credibility of his adversaries.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/comey-bla ... p?ref=home

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For every sale of stock, there has to be a buyer and seller. Someone may have lost some value but who is to say that the seller actually lost money?

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Trump pulling all US troops from Syria, declaring IS defeat

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is pulling all 2,000 U.S. troops out of Syria, officials announced Wednesday as the president suddenly declared victory over the Islamic State, contradicting his own experts’ assessments and sparking surprise and outrage from his party’s lawmakers who called his action rash and dangerous.

The U.S. began airstrikes in Syria in 2014, and ground troops moved in the following year to battle the Islamic State, or ISIS, and train Syrian rebels in a country torn apart by civil war. Trump abruptly declared their mission accomplished in a tweet.

“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” he said as Vice President Mike Pence met with top leaders at the Pentagon. U.S. officials said many details of the troop withdrawal had not yet been finalized, but they expect American forces to be out by mid-January.

A senior administration official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, said Trump made the decision based on his belief that U.S. troops have no role in Syria beyond combatting Islamic State, whose fighters are now believed to hold about 1 percent of the territory they did at the peak of their power.

The president informed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of his decision in a telephone call, the official said. Turkey has recently warned that it would launch combat operations across its southern border into northeastern Syria against Kurdish forces who have been allied with the U.S. in the fight against the Islamic State.

Trump’s declaration of victory was far from unanimous, and officials said U.S. defense and military leaders were trying to dissuade him from ordering the withdrawal right up until the last minute. His decision immediately triggered demands from Congress — including leading Republicans — for more information and a formal briefing on the matter. Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, just returned from Afghanistan, said he was meeting with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis late in the day.

Graham, typically a Trump backer, said he was “blindsided” by the report and called the decision “a disaster in the making.” He said, “The biggest winners in this are ISIS and Iran.”

The decision will fulfill Trump’s long-stated goal of bringing troops home from Syria, but military leaders have pushed back for months, arguing that the IS group remains a threat and could regroup in Syria’s long-running civil war. U.S. policy has been to keep troops in place until the extremists are eradicated.

The senior administration official said American forces would still work with allies to fight the Islamic State or other extremists in the country but gave no details on what that might entail.

Another official said it still is not clear to defense leaders whether U.S. airstrikes against IS insurgents will continue in Syria after the American troops leave. U.S. military officials worry that American-backed Kurdish troops will be targeted by Turkey and the Syrian government, leaving no ally on the ground to help direct the strikes.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who remains concerned about Iranian efforts in the area, reacted in noncommittal fashion after talking with Trump by telephone.

“This is, of course, an American decision,” he said. No matter what, he said, “we will safeguard the security of Israel and protect ourselves from this arena.”

Leading Republican senators reacted with displeasure to the news.

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said the withdrawal would be a “grave error” and that Kurdish fighters will stop fighting the Islamic State when they must confront Turkish troops crossing the border into Syria.

“This is a bad idea because it goes against the fight against ISIS and potentially helps ISIS,” he said, warning it could trigger a broader conflict in the region.

Just last week, the U.S. special envoy to the anti-ISIS coalition, Brett McGurk, said U.S. troops would remain in Syria even after the Islamic State was driven from its strongholds.

“I think it’s fair to say Americans will remain on the ground after the physical defeat of the caliphate, until we have the pieces in place to ensure that that defeat is enduring,” McGurk told reporters on Dec. 11. “Nobody is declaring a mission accomplished. Defeating a physical caliphate is one phase of a much longer-term campaign.”

And two weeks ago Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. still has a long way to go in training local Syrian forces to prevent a resurgence of IS and stabilize the country. He said it will take 35,000 to 40,000 local troops in northeastern Syria to maintain security over the long term, but only about 20 percent of that number have been trained.

Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, said in September that the U.S. would keep a military presence in Syria as long as Iran was active there. “We’re not going to leave as long as Iranian troops are outside Iranian borders and that includes Iranian proxies and militias,” he said.

James Stavridis, a former Navy admiral who served as top NATO commander, tweeted Wednesday that “Pulling troops out of Syria in an ongoing fight is a big mistake. Like walking away from a forest fire that is still smoldering underfoot. Big winner is Iran, then Russia, then Assad. Wrong move.”

The withdrawal decision, however, is likely to be viewed positively by Turkey, and comes following several conversations between Trump and Erdogan over the past several weeks. The two spoke at the G-20 summit in Argentina and in a phone call last Friday.

Erdogan said Monday he had gotten “positive answers” from Trump on the situation in northeast Syria where he has been threatening a new operation against the American-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters.

Just hours before the withdrawal decision became public, the State Department announced late Tuesday that it had approved the sale of a $3.5 billion Patriot missile defense system to Turkey. The Turks had complained that the U.S. was slow walking requests for air defenses, and they had signed a deal with Russia to buy a sophisticated system in a deal that Washington and Ankara’s other NATO partners strongly opposed.

Completion of that deal with Russia for the S-400 system would have opened up Turkey to possible U.S. sanctions and driven a major wedge between the allies. It was not immediately clear if there was a connection between the Patriot sale and the decision on U.S. troops.

Although the withdrawal decision doesn’t signal an end to the American-led coalition’s fight against the Islamic State, it will likely erode U.S. leadership of that 31-nation effort. The administration had been preparing to host a meeting of coalition foreign ministers early next year.

“The bottom line is that the American withdrawal from eastern Syria will create a power vacuum that will lead to a new phase of international conflict in Syria,” said Jennifer Cafarella, a Syria expert at the Institute for the Study of War.

She predicted that the Russians, the Iranians, Syrian President Bashar Assad and the Turks will compete for the terrain and resources previously under U.S. control “at the expense of” the Syrian Kurds who have partnered with U.S. forces against IS.

https://www.apnews.com/583a18db0cd340a1a553c64ff9a47ef9

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Islamic State not defeated, just transforming: experts

By AFP 14/12/2018

By Michel Moutot

WASHINGTON - Even as the last pockets of resistance in eastern Syria hold their ground, the Islamic State group is shapeshifting into a new, but no less dangerous, underground form, experts warn.

Also known as ISIS, or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the group had long been ready to cede the territory it once held in its self-styled "caliphate," and has already begun the switch to a more clandestine role, closer to its roots.

"ISIS anticipated its battlefield defeat and the loss of the caliphate and prepared accordingly," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University in Washington.

"Hundreds of ISIS fighters were able to flee Syria, bribe their way through Syria to Turkey and thereby disappear," he said.

"Beneath the surface, ISIS has always played the long game."

In a recent study entitled "ISIS's Second Resurgence," Brandon Wallace and Jennifer Cafarella of the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said the jihadist group "has already restructured its operations to return to a regional insurgency."

"ISIS is finding new sources of revenue and rebuilding command-and-control over its scattered remnant forces in order to prepare for a future large-scale insurgency in both Iraq and Syria," the report said.

- 'We'll be back' -

The group has managed to smuggle funds to several countries around the Middle East, using front companies such as car dealerships, electronics stores, pharmacies and currency exchanges that it established in Iraq, experts said.

"We're entering a very risky period," said Seth Jones of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). "I have no faith that ISIS has been crushed, defeated."

"They already have gone underground," he said. "They are doing what everybody does who faces a better equipped opposition, with air and naval capabilities: they have to face Russian air strikes, cruise missiles."

"What do you do in a case like that?" he said. "You disperse, you don't operate in platoon-size positions the way they did in 2014, you go underground, you build your clandestine network, you conduct targeted assassinations, IEDs [roadside bombs] and you wait for opportunities."

Data collected by the CSIS show that in some provinces in Iraq, such as Kirkuk in the northeast, the number of attacks attributed to ISIS doubled last year from 2017, with an average of 75 a month.

The group has regularly picked off tribal leaders, government officials, police and members of the armed forces.

Related: Khanaqin villagers flee their homes, fearing resurgent ISIS

In a television interview last month, the Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani said that ISIS "is not defeated and will not be ended easily."

"ISIS was on the ground, now they are underground," Barzani said, noting that they had returned to many areas they had been driven out of even stronger than before.

An Islamic State fighter in Syria, who spoke to The New York Times via WhatsApp, echoed Barzani's grim message.

"Do you think the Americans can defeat the caliphate?" said the fighter, who identified himself only as Yehya. "It's a war of attrition. When the coalition stops the air strikes, we will return immediately."

"We didn't leave for good. We're still in Syria, even in the areas that you think we left. We still have our suicide bombers ready to attack. Our informers are active," he said.

Hoffman agreed that the US and Russia are locked in a war of attrition against the Islamists, "and frankly we're losing it. There are nearly a quarter of a million salafi-jihadi fighters all around the world."

That is four times the number of jihadists there were in 2001, when Al-Qaeda triggered the global "war on terror" with its jetliner suicide attacks on the United States.

Hoffman said that while military operations may have held them at bay, Islamic State operatives "carry within their own DNA the seeds to constantly regenerate, to continue to attract, recruit."

"Who would have thought in the immediate aftermath of September 11 that 17 years later, we would still be fighting?" he said.

[ A fellow worker over 30 years ago told me that the west would never win a war of attrition ]

http://www.rudaw.net/NewsDetails.aspx?pageid=417320

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Trump and the Market in a Melt Down. Trump & the Whitehouse in Chaos....What's new?

Dow drops another -464 (22,859).
5 Days 22,859.60 –1,737.78 –7.06%
Trump pulling troops out of Syria. That leaves Russia and Turkey with that warm and fuzzy feeling.

Trump’s Syria Decision ‘Rattled the World,’ Graham Says.

Trump fires Jim Mattis. Mattis said he's had enough.

Trump looks like he's shutting down government for Christmas over the wall.

Trump and family under 17 different investigations.[/b]

<
Mattis resignation letter lists ways he was "not aligned" with Trump

The Pentagon released Defense Secretary James Mattis' resignation letter Thursday evening, moments after President Trump announced on Twitter that Mattis would be "retiring" in late February.

The bottom line: "Because you have the right to a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects," Mattis wrote, "I believe it is right for me to step down from my position.”

I have been privileged to serve as our country’s 26th Secretary of Defense which has allowed me to serve alongside our men and women of the Department in defense of our citizens and our ideals .

I am proud of the process that has been made over the past two years on some of the key goals articulated in our National Defense Strategy: putting the Department on a more sound budgetary footing, improving readiness and lethality in our forces, and reforming the Department’s business practices for greater performance. Our troops continue to provide the capabilities needed to prevail in conflict and sustain strong U.S. global influence.

One core belief I have always held is that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliance and partnerships. While the US remains the indispensable nation in the free world, we cannot protect our interests or serve that role effectively without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those allies. Like you, I have said from the beginning that the armed forces of the United States should not be the policeman of the world. Instead, we must use all tools of American woes to prove for the common defense, including proving effective leadership to our alliances. NATO’s 29 democracies demonstrated that strength in their commitment to fighting alongside us following the 9-11 attack on America. The Defeat-ISIS coalition of 74 nations is further proof.

Similarly, I believe we must be resolute and unambiguous in our approach to those countries whose strategic interests are increasingly in tension with ours: It is clear that China and Russia, for example, want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model — gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions — to promote their own interests at the expense of their neighbors, America and our allies. That is why we must use all the tools of American power to provide for the common defense.

My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues. We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity, and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances.

Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my positions. The end date for my tenure is February 28, 2019, a date that should allow sufficient time for a successor to be nominated and confirmed as well as to make sure the Department’s interests are properly articulated and protected at upcoming events to include Congressional posture hearings and the NATO Defense Ministerial meeting in February. Further, that a full transition to a new Secretary of Defense occurs well in advance of the transition of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in September in order to ensure stability within the Department.

I pledge my full effort to a smooth transition that ensure the needs and interests of the 2.15 million Service Members and 732.079 DoD civilians receive undistracted attention of the Department at all times so that they can fulfill their critical, round-the-clock missions to protect the American people.

I very much appreciate this opportunity to serve the nation and our men and women in uniform.

Be smart: "This [letter] is an astonishing rebuke of Trumpism," NYT reporter Maggie Haberman tweeted.

https://www.axios.com/read-james-mattis ... f4200.html

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Dow dives 400 points to end its worst week in 10 years

Stocks plunged again Friday, bringing the Dow Jones Industrial Average's losses for the week to nearly 7 percent and ending its worst week since the financial crisis in 2008. The Nasdaq Index fell into a bear market, and the S&P 500 was on the brink of one itself, down nearly 18 percent from its record earlier this year.

The Federal Reserve's rate hike Wednesday drove the losses this week and fears of an extended government shutdown only added to the pain on Friday.

The Dow lost 414 points in turbulent trading that sent the blue-chip index up as much as 300 points earlier in the day, only to trade in negative territory less than one hour later. The initial tick upward came as Federal Reserve Bank of New York President John Williams said that the central bank could reassess its interest rate policy and balance sheet reduction in the new year if the economy slows.

But those gains slowly disappeared as investors used that short-term pop as a chance to sell more. The broader S&P 500 fell 2 percent on Friday, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq shed 2.99 percent, with big losses in technology stocks, including Facebook, Amazon and Apple.

Stocks accelerated to their lows after President Donald Trump's trade adviser, Peter Navarro, told Nikkei that it would be "difficult" for the U.S. and China to arrive at a permanent economic agreement after a 90-day ceasefire in the trade tensions.

Here's a tally of the carnage:

The Dow lost 7 percent and nearly 1,600 points on the week. It was its worst percentage drop since October 2008.

The Nasdaq lost 8.2 percent on the week and is now 22 percent below its record reached in August, a bear market.

The S&P 500 lost 7 percent for the week and is now down 17.7 percent from its record.

The Dow and S&P 500, which are both in corrections, are on track for their worst December performance since the Great Depression in 1931, down more than 12 percent each this month.

Both the Dow and the S&P 500 are now in the red for 2018 by at least 9 percent.

"The message people should take home, especially if there's a government shutdown, is that longer term, the prospects for equities are not good," said Komal Sri-Kumar, president of Sri-Kumar Global Strategies. "There are lots of signs now suggesting that we may be looking at a recession. I would say that the risk here is that a whole lot of confluence is taking place: The trade war is not going to end soon, and the Fed totally misjudged the market in suggesting two more rate hikes next year."..................

[ Mr. President..........Comments ????? ]

<2



NEWS/TURKEY

Erdogan delays Syria operation, welcomes US troop withdrawal

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also vows to clear Kurdish and ISIL armed groups from northern Syria.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that his country would postpone a military operation against Syrian Kurdish fighters in northeast Syria as he "cautiously" welcomed Washington's decision to withdraw its troops in the area.

Speaking during a speech in Istanbul, Erdogan said the US decision meant Turkey would "wait a little longer" before launching the operation.

"Of course, this is not an open-ended waiting period," he warned, adding that Turkey was working on plans to "neutralise Daesh elements" that still exist in Syria. Daesh is the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).

Erdogan had announced on December 12 that Turkey would start an offensive in northern Syria in "the next few days", but on December 14, he spoke to US President Donald Trump in a phone call.

According to Turkish daily Hurriyet on Friday, Trump decided to pull out of Syria during that call with Erdogan and ordered his national security adviser John Bolton to "start the work" to prepare withdrawing troops.

Clear ISIL, Kurdish armed groups

Erdogan also promised on Friday to clear Syria of US-backed Kurdish armed groups after the US decision to pull troops out.

"In the next months, we will see an operational style aimed at removing the YPG (Kurdish People's Protection Units militia) and Daesh (ISIL) elements on the ground in Syria," Erdogan said.

The Turkish government views the US-backed YPG as an extension of an armed group fighting inside Turkey.

Although Erdogan welcomed Trump's decision to leave Syria, he said he remained "cautious" because of "past negative experiences", referring to Ankara's continued disappointment over the US administration's failure to stop providing military support to the YPG in their fight against ISIL.

In November last year, Turkish officials said Trump had promised not to supply weapons to the YPG, although the White House was not as explicit about its intentions.

American support of the YPG, which spearheaded Washington's battles in Syria to eliminate armed groups, has long been a source of tension between the NATO allies.

Meanwhile, on Friday, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is made up of an alliance of Arab and Kurdish groups, said they may not be able to hold ISIL prisoners if the situation in the region gets out of control.

Ilham Ahmed of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) warned that the Trump administration's decision to withdraw all of its forces would have dangerous repercussions and a destabilising effect on the entire region.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/ ... 12573.html

<3



Politics

Putin Praises Trump’s Syria Troop Exit as ‘Right Thing to Do’

Russian leader sees risk of nuclear confrontation with U.S.

Russian President Vladimir Putin applauded Donald Trump’s decision to pull U.S. forces out of Syria even as he warned that American moves to pull out of arms control treaties are increasing the risk of a nuclear confrontation.

Putin said that the U.S. announcement it will withdraw its troops from Syria is “the right thing to do” though he expressed skepticism about whether it will actually take place. He added that he broadly agreed with Trump’s view that Islamic State has been defeated in Syria. “Donald’s right and I agree with him,” he said at his annual press conference in Moscow on Thursday.

The U.S. exit from Syria would be a major achievement for the Russian leader, who has backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad through almost seven years of civil war amid efforts by the U.S and its allies to oust him. As Putin was speaking, Trump tweeted that Russia was among those countries that are “not happy about the U.S. leaving” because they will have to fight Islamic State alone, but the Russian president didn’t address that.

Putin underscored a growing confrontation with the U.S. over its move to pull out of a landmark 1987 arms control treaty. He warned of a “nuclear catastrophe” if the U.S. stations new missiles in Europe. The Trump administration on Dec. 4 said it would withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 60 days if Russia doesn’t stop its violations. Russia insists it is complying with the deal.

“For mankind this is very bad, because it will take us to a dangerous point,” Putin said, expressing concern about moves to lower the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, including the U.S. decision to produce lower-yield missiles. This trend “could lead to a global nuclear catastrophe,” he said.

Russia will be forced to develop new weapons systems, the Russian leader signaled. “If missiles appear in Europe, what else can we do?” Putin said. “We are witnessing the collapse of the global system of deterrence.” The U.S. has said it has no plans to deploy new missiles after pulling out of the INF treaty.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... sia-update

<4



Shares in Russian aluminium giant Rusal surge as US lifts sanctions

Russian aluminum giant Rusal saw its stock jump 25 percent after the US said it is dropping sanctions against the firm after its owner, who is on the US sanctions list, reduced his stake in the company.

The Trump administration on Wednesday notified Congress of its plans to lift sanctions on two Russian firms, Rusal and EN+ Group. Both companies are owned by Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska, who was included in the list of sanctioned companies and individuals as part of broader US sanctions against Russia.

“Treasury sanctioned these companies because of their ownership and control by sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, not for the conduct of the companies themselves,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.

“These companies have committed to significantly diminish Deripaska’s ownership and sever his control.”

On April 6, Washington imposed sanctions on the Russian businessman, and companies in which he owns stakes, citing “malign activities” by Russia. The move prompted fears of a global aluminum shortage and put upward pressure on the price.

However, the enforcement of the restrictions has been postponed to allow more time for talks with Rusal and its parent companies.

Rusal stock and En+’s global depositary receipt demonstrated significant growth at the opening of Moscow exchange on Thursday, surging 30 and 40 percent respectively, before rolling back slightly.

Deripaska himself will still remain on the sanctions list and his property in the US will remain blocked, the Treasury noted. The tycoon’s investment in En+, Rusal, or EuroSibEnergo is also frozen and he cannot obtain cash, either in return for his shares or from future dividends issued by the companies.

Shortly after the US Treasury announcement, the London Metal Exchange said that it would lift its suspension on aluminum produced by Rusal once the measure is implemented.

“In the event of the sanctions being lifted, the LME proposes removing all previous requirements around suspension of Rusal brand metal from being delivered into LME warehouses and used in settlement,” the exchange said in a statement, as cited by Reuters.

Rusal welcomed the US Treasury decision and said that it continues to do all the necessary work to return “the company to normal operation.” However, the aluminum giant noted that there are no guarantees that the restrictions will be removed as promised.

https://www.rt.com/business/446958-trea ... ted-rusal/

<5



CHRISTMAS PRESENTS FOR THE KREMLIN

Russia Gloats: ‘Trump Is Ours Again’

If Moscow was happy about the Syria pullout, it’s ecstatic about Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ resignation.

The Kremlin is awash with Christmas gifts from Washington, D.C. and every move by the Trump administration seems to add to that perception. On Wednesday, appearing on the Russian state TV show “The Evening with Vladimir Soloviev,” Director of the Moscow-based Center for Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies Semyon Bagdasarov said that the U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis is “struggling to keep up” with the flurry of unexpected decisions by the U.S. President Donald Trump. The news that Mattis decided to step down sent shock waves across the world, being interpreted as “a dangerous signal” by America’s allies.

Meanwhile, the Mattis departure is being cheered in Russia. Konstantin Kosachev, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Upper House of the Russian Parliament, has said that “the departure of James Mattis is a positive signal for Russia, since Mattis was far more hawkish on Russia and China than Donald Trump.” Kosachev opined that Trump apparently considered his own agenda in dealing with Russia, China and America’s allies to be "more important than keeping James Mattis at his post," concluding: "That’s an interesting signal, and a more positive one” for Russia.

Jubilation was even more apparent on Russia’s state television, which adheres closely to the Kremlin’s point of view. The host of the Russian state TV show “60 Minutes,” Olga Skabeeva asserted: “Secretary of Defense Mattis didn’t want to leave Syria, so Trump fired him. They are leaving Syria.”

President Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Sanders, remarked: “The idea that Putin is happy about this [Trump's decision to withdraw US forces from Syria] is ridiculous. It puts them at a greater risk, so I think that's just silly.” To the contrary, the idea of an American withdrawal from Syria is being widely perceived in Russia as “a total dream come true” if it truly takes place.

[State TV host Olga Skabeeva surmised that Americans are “losers, since Putin has defeated them in every way.” With a theatrical sigh, her co-host, Evgeny Popov, added: “Trump is ours again—what are you going to do?” Every member of the sizeable audience enthusiastically clapped. While these statements are decidedly sarcastic, Russian opinion makers recount the Kremlin’s victories with unmistakable glee. Popov smirked: “It seems to Americans that we won on every front: the U.S. Secretary of Defense has been removed, we unquestionably secured a complete, unconditional victory in Syria.” Skabeeva chimed in: “They’re also planning to leave Afghanistan.”

Popov pointed out: “On top of that, Rusal sanctions have been lifted with Trump’s hands.” Panelists of the show, including Russian lawmakers, couldn’t hide their satisfied grins. The reference was to the announcement that Trump’s Treasury Department intends to lift sanctions against the business empire of Oleg V. Deripaska, one of Russia’s most influential oligarchs, sanctioned for Russian interference in the U.S. elections.

Texas Representative Lloyd Doggett told The New York Times that the move to lift Rusal sanctions amounted to Trump “sliding another big gift under Vladimir Putin’s Christmas tree.” The gesture is certainly being interpreted that way in Russia. Deripaska’s attorneys are reportedly mounting an aggressive campaign to pursue the removal of personal sanctions from the Putin-linked oligarch as well.

Discussing the planned departure of the U.S. from Syria, state TV host Olga Skabeeva pondered why Trump suddenly decided to leave at this point in time: “Americans say, it’s because he is beholden to Putin. Is that logical? Yes, it is.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/russia-gl ... n?ref=home


<6



GONE ROGUE

Trump ‘Shocked’ Turkey’s Erdogan, John Bolton With Snap Decision to Exit Syria: Report

Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria was made quickly, without consulting his national-security team or allies, the Associated Press reported. The president reportedly agreed to the hasty pullout during a phone call last week with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, shocking National Security Adviser John Bolton, who vehemently objected to the decision—and Erdogan himself. The Wednesday announcement stunned the world and prompted Thursday’s resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis. According to the report, Mattis, Bolton, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo later scrambled to find a middle path, but were informed by Chief of Staff John Kelly and his acting successor Mick Mulvaney that the president’s call for the pullout would not be “delayed or denied.” Russian state-controlled television reacted differently, calling the announcement “a total dream come true.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-agr ... t?ref=home




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<1



Syria: What’s at Stake for US, Russia, Iran and Turkey

The announcement Wednesday by the White House that the U.S. has defeated Islamic State (IS) in Syria and begun withdrawing troops from the country took many by surprise.

The Syrian civil war, now in its eighth year, is further complicated by the actions within its borders by four other countries: the U.S., Russia, Iran and Turkey.

(Why is the U.S. involved in Syria?)

The U.S. mission in Syria has always been to defeat Islamic State, which in 2014 took over vast swaths of Iraq and Syria.

The United States has about 2,000 troops, mostly special forces, located mainly in northeast Syria. The troops act as advisers and provide support, including air power and weapons, for local militias, such as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is also fighting IS. Washington had given support — weapons and training — to moderate rebel groups fighting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, but ended that support earlier this year.

The U.S. also leads a coalition of nearly 60 countries, the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, that has targeted IS and other extremist groups with airstrikes since late 2014.

(Why is Russia involved?)

Russia, a longtime Syrian ally, entered the conflict in Syria in 2015, offering the Assad regime weapons and air support, as well as troops on the ground.

Some also see Russia’s involvement as President Vladimir Putin asserting himself on the world stage, and a way for Russia to be an influence in the region.

When it began its air campaign in Syria, Moscow said it was targeting “terrorists,” which they said included IS and other terrorist groups. The U.S.-led coalition, however, said Russian airstrikes were targeting the non-IS rebel forces battling Assad’s government.

(Why is Iran involved?)

Iran’s engagement in Syria began gradually since the start of the country’s civil war in 2011, initially in the form of providing military advisers to the Syrian regime. The engagement later morphed into a full-scale military intervention where the regime sent its forces and employed its proxies to fight alongside Assad to crack down on the various Syrian rebel groups in the country.

By supporting Assad, Tehran has been able to maintain a regional presence against rivals Saudi Arabia and Israel. In October, U.S. lawmakers voiced concerns that Tehran might be in the process of establishing a long-term presence in Syria.

According to a report published by the U.S. Department of State in October, Iran has spent about $16 billion to destabilize the Middle East by funding proxy wars in different countries including Yemen, Iraq and Syria.

(Why is Turkey involved?)

Turkey has supported non-Kurdish Syrian opposition groups, such as the Free Syrian Army (FSA), since the civil war began. They fear gains made by Kurdish groups in Syria would embolden the Kurdish population in Turkey to seek independence.

Turkey launched two military operations to help Syrian rebels recapture territory in Syria from Islamic State and the mostly Kurdish militia in Syria, the YPG, in August 2016 and January 2018. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signaled earlier this month that Turkish forces may soon launch a new operation against U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish militias in northern Syria, which is where most U.S. troops are based.

While Turkey is part of the U.S.-led coalition battling IS, the cooperation between U.S. and SDF forces has strained relations between Ankara and Washington.

https://www.voanews.com/a/syria-whats-a ... 08689.html

<2



Taliban greets Trump withdrawal news with cries of victory

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — News that the White House had ordered the Pentagon to draw up plans for a troop withdrawalfrom Afghanistan provoked widespread criticism that the move would kneecap efforts to broker a peace deal to end America's longest war.

But there was one group on Friday celebrating the reports — the Taliban.

Senior members told NBC News the reports were a clear indication they were on the verge of victory.

"The 17-year-long struggle and sacrifices of thousands of our people finally yielded fruit," said a senior Taliban commander from Afghanistan's Helm and province. "We proved it to the entire world that we defeated the self-proclaimed world's lone super power."

"We are close to our destination," added the commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the group's leadership had prohibited members from talking to the media about current events. He added that all field commanders had also been told to intensify training efforts to capture four strategic provinces in the run up to the next round of talks, which are expected in January.

The Pentagon declined to comment on the Taliban's claims.

So far, the U.S.'s military campaign, along with billions in aid, have not succeeded in driving out the Taliban and other militants or making the country safe.

In 2017, Afghanistan overtook Iraq to become the deadliest country for terrorism, with one-quarter of all such deaths worldwide happening there. And the number of civilians killed in the country reached a record in the first half of this year, with a surge in suicide attacks claimed by the Islamic State group, according to the United Nations.

Despite years of fighting, only around 65 percent of the Afghan population lives in areas under government control.

The U.S. plans for a withdrawal were due shortly after the new year, according to two defense officials and a person briefed on the matter. They cautioned that no decision has been made, but President Donald Trump wants to see options.

The White House has asked the Pentagon to look into multiple options, including a complete withdrawal, the officials said.

The Taliban sheltered 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden and was toppled soon after the 2001 attacks. Since then, the militants have been trying to unseat the U.S.-backed government in Kabul and reimpose their strict version of Shariah. Successes on the battlefield coupled with a recent intensifying efforts to reach a peace deal led by U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad have boosted the movement's confidence and power.

Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan and the United Nations, has stressed he is "in a hurry" to secure an agreement, a sign of how eager the White House is to withdraw the 15,000 American troops remaining in the country.

But reducing the U.S. footprint in Afghanistan would mean fewer U.S. air bases, and American firepower will be "less responsive and less available" for Afghan troops fighting Taliban militants, said Jason Campbell, a former senior Defense Department official and now a policy researcher at the RAND Corp. think tank.

Plans to scale back the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan comes after Washington pressed NATO allies this year to keep troops in the country, and some governments — including Britain — agreed to expand their contributions following an appeal from Defense Secretary James Mattis, who resigned abruptly on Thursday.

The news shocked and confused NATO allies and the Afghan government, at a moment when the United States is engaged in a major diplomatic push to try to launch peace negotiations.

"The abruptness of this I think really hurts our credibility," Campbell said.

For Khalilzad, the move deprives him of his most effective point of leverage before negotiations even have begun in earnest, experts and former officials said.

"It will have a devastating effect on peace negotiations," said Seth Jones, a former adviser to the U.S. military now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

"The challenge now the U.S. faces is how is it going to get the Taliban to reach an agreement if they can wait and expect a better outcome in the future if the U.S. continues to withdraw its forces?"

Mushtaq Yusufzai reported from Peshawar, Pakistan, F. Brinley Bruton from London and Daniel DeLuce from Washington.

https://www.euronews.com/2018/12/21/tal ... ry-n950811

<3



FED UP

Brett McGurk, the Man Who Built Coalition to Fight ISIS, Quits Over Presidents ISIS Strategy

Brett McGurk, the seasoned diplomat who brokered and led the delicate coalition of partners in the global fight against ISIS, has resigned from the high-profile post, becoming the latest member of the Trump administration to leave in protest to the president's abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria.

The decision by McGurk, the special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, comes days after Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis quit after Trump declared Wednesday that the fight against the terror group is over and he would to pull 2,000 American soldiers from Syria.

McGurk, considered to be the United State’s institutional authority on Syria and Iraq, has served in senior diplomatic roles in the region under the three presidents. He was initially expected to leave his current role in February, but resigned on Friday reportedly informing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that he will leave immediately because he disagrees with the president's assessments of the war against ISIS.

“The recent decision by the president came as a shock and was a complete reversal of policy that was articulated to us. It left our coalition partners confused and our fighting partners bewildered,” McGurk said in an email to his staff.

“I worked this week to help manage some of the fallout but—as many of you heard in my meetings and phone calls—I ultimately concluded that I could not carry out these new instructions and maintain my integrity,” he also reportedly wrote.

According to McGurk’s state department bio, he “leads a global coalition of 79 members and helps coordinate all aspects of U.S. policy related to the ultimate destruction of ISIS.”

McGurk was reportedly in the region meeting with allies in the anti-ISIS fight, such as Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani, and was caught off guard by Trump’s announcement. Trump’s snap proclamation not only flew in the face of his top national security aides, but came without consulting the United States’ allies.

The removal of U.S. troops effectively leaves America’s allies to fend for themselves in the war-torn region. The President’s prior policy had been to keep U.S. forces in Syria until Iran withdrew its militias, and to bolster stabilization efforts carried out by America’s allies in the region, according to CBS News.

McGurk’s resignation came one day after Mattis quit because of deep disagreements with President Trump, such as the United State’s handling of military alliances.

McGurk’s resignation officially goes into effect on Dec. 31, CBS said.

He had apparently expressed concern to Barzani over Kurds in Syria, such as the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces. SDF troops have been on-the-ground fighters in Syria against ISIS, and have been bolstered by the United States, including with military advisers and weapons, as well as air strikes.The fate of SDF troops is uncertain if U.S. troops leave Syria, as it’s unclear whether the United States will keep providing air support to their anti-ISIS efforts, CBS notes.

The withdrawal also comes shortly after McGurk promised that the U.S. was committed to keep fighting ISIS. While ISIS only held one percent of the area it once controlled because of the U.S.-led coalition forces, McGurk said the group still posed a threat.

“I think it's fair to say Americans will remain on the ground after the physical defeat of the caliphate, until we have the pieces in place to ensure that that defeat is enduring,” McGurk reportedly said, elaborating that “it would be reckless if we were just to say, well, the physical caliphate is defeated, so we can just leave now. I think anyone who's looked at a conflict like this would agree with that.”

McGurk also tweeted on Dec. 10 “We salute the Iraqi forces and #Peshmerga that fought heroically against #ISISand continue to attack its clandestine cells. The US and our global @coaltion will continue to support Iraq and its people to ensure this historic military victory over ISIS is lasting & permanent.”

McGurk, who is presumed to take a position at Stanford in spring 2019, has been a long-time hand on issues related to the Middle East, especially Iraq under presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Trump.

His accomplishments include had brokered the Status of Forces Agreement in 2008, a deal which set parameters for the U.S. presence in Iraq as well as its ultimate withdrawal and is seen as one of the chief architects “the surge,” a Bush strategy to reduce violence in Iraq.

He was poised to become the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq in 2012.

The Obama pick withdrew from his nomination, however, after an email discussion of “blue balls” between him and a Wall Street Journal reporter surfaced, revealing that they had an affair.

He nevertheless headed U.S. efforts to fight ISIS since 2015, making him one of the few Obama appointees asked to stay on in the Trump administration, CBS notes.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/brett-mcg ... s?ref=home

<4



1. OKAY

Trump Says He Should Be 'Most Popular Hero in America'

In a series of tweets Saturday night President Trump denied knowing the top Middle East diplomat Brett McGurk, and deemed himself the 'most popular hero in america' for pulling American troops out of Syria. McGurk, who was in charge of the coalition to fight ISIS which coordinates “all aspects of U.S. policy related to the ultimate destruction of ISIS,” according to his government bio, announced his early departure from his position on Friday. In an email to his staff McGurk said he “could not carry out these new instructions and maintain my integrity.” His announcement came one day after Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis made his own exit. In a separate tweet, the president, said, “I do not know,” McGurk and noted that he was appointed to the post by President Obama in 2015, adding “was supposed to leave in February but he just resigned prior to leaving. Grandstander? The Fake News is making such a big deal about this nothing event!” McGurk, who was appointed to a number of high level diplomatic posts by President George W. Bush, came to be an indispensable Iraq expert and was kept on by the Obama administration. He was one of the few Trump holdovers from the Obama administration.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-say ... a?ref=home

<5



Comey mocks Trump: Staffers resigning on principle 'must be confusing'

Former FBI Director James Comey took aim at President Trump on Saturday, saying that resignations of staff members on matters of principle must be confusing for Trump, whom Comey says governs "without any external ethical framework."

Comey's tweet followed the resignations of both Defense Secretary James Mattis and Trump's envoy to coalition forces fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Brett McGurk, but mentioned neither.

"To a president without any external ethical framework, folks who resign on principle must be confusing," the former FBI chief, who was fired last year by Trump, wrote on Twitter.

McGurk and Mattis both announced their resignations this week following the president's announcement of a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, and reports that Trump is considering a reduction of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Comey frequently criticized the president and his GOP allies in recent months, and has called for Trump to be voted out of office in 2020.

“I understand the Democrats have important debates now over who their candidate should be, but they have to win,” Comey said at a public appearance earlier this month. “All of us should use every breath we have to make sure the lies stop on January 20, 2021.”

He has also taken aim at congressional Republicans, who he claims are not standing up for law enforcement against the president's criticism of the special counsel investigation.

“Republicans used to understand that the actions of a president matter, the words of a president matter, the rule of law matters, and the truth matters. Where are those Republicans today,” Comey added at a press conference following six hours of interviews with GOP lawmakers on Monday.

“At some point, someone has to stand up and in the fear of Fox News and fear of their base, and fear of mean tweets, stand up for the values of this country and not slink away into retirement.”

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing ... le-must-be

<6



Partial government shutdown to last at least through Thursday

Dec. 22 (UPI) -- The federal government's partial shutdown over a border wall will continue until at least after Christmas because the U.S. Senate adjourned for the day Saturday afternoon without an agreement.

Because of the shutdown, President Donald Trump will remain in Washington, D.C., and first lady Melania Trump will return from their home in Palm Beach, Fkla., "so they can spend Christmas together," press secretary Sarah Sanders later announced. The holiday plans of other Trump family members staying at Mar-a-Lago weren't known.

Monday is a pro forma session -- lasting only a few minutes -- to prevent Trump from making recess appointments in their absence. The next actual session is scheduled for Thursday afternoon, two days after Christmas. Federal employees aren't being paid during the shutdown, the third this year, but likely will receive reciprical pay.

Essential employeers will continue to work during the closure.

Before the adjournment, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced there would be no action on the floor until Trump and Senate Democrats come to an agreement. Legislation needs at least 60 votes to pass and the Republicans have only a 51-49 majority.

Later in the day, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded that "Leader McConnell can't duck out of it."

Schumer, in declaring it is a Trump shutdown, said "President Trump, if you want to open the government, you must abandon the wall -- plain and simple."

Trump is demanding $5.7 billion to pay for a border wall in a spending bill.

Earlier this week, the Senate unanimously by voice approved a continuing resolution to fund 25 percent of the agencies through Feb. 8. The rest of the government, including the military, is funded through September.

Then Trump, who earlier had agreed to the resolution, changed his mind. The House voted 217-185 late Thursday to approve a spending bill with money for the wall.

On Friday, Vice President Mike Pence, budget director Mick Mulvaney and the President's son-in-law, Senior Adviser Jared Kushner went to Capitol Hill and stayed even after the House and Senate adjourned for the night.

On Saturday, Pence returned to Capitol Hill, to meet with Schumer

On Saturday afternoon, Trump had lunch with Republican leaders "concerning Border Security," according to a post on Twitter.

Afterward, he posted: "The crisis of illegal activity at our Southern Border is real and will not stop until we build a great Steel Barrier or Wall. Let work begin!"

The shutdown affects thousands of federal employees as funding for nine departments and other federal agencies lapsed at midnight, including Homeland Security and the Justice Department.

Many federal agencies and services, such as the U.S. Postal Service, the military, the Department of Veteran Affairs, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and food stamps will not be affected, but 380,000 employees will likely be home without pay and some 420,000 others may have to work without pay, The New York Times reported.

Workers were granted a paid holiday on Christmas Eve by Trump this week to make it a four-day weekend with Christmas on Tuesday.

Trump has refused to accept lawmakers' spending bill compromises without funding for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and continued to demand funding Friday evening in a video on his Twitter page.

"Our great country must have border security," Trump said. "We don't want people coming in that aren't supposed to be here. We want people to come in through a legal process. It's very dangerous out there."

Trump added that he needed Democrats' votes to secure funding for the border wall.

"Call it a Democrats shutdown, call it whatever you want, but we need their help to get this approved," Trump said. "The shutdown hopefully will not last long."

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2018/12 ... 545483822/

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<1



Trump: Mattis out as of Jan. 1; deputy to be acting chief

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will leave his post on Jan. 1. Trump announced Mattis’ new departure date in a tweet, and said he’s naming deputy defense chief Patrick Shanahan as acting secretary.

The move comes just three days after Mattis resigned in protest over Trump’s decision to pull all U.S. troops out of Syria. Mattis originally said he would stay through February to ensure an orderly transition.

https://www.apnews.com/17edb5a21ce44dec8cedac834724b8d0

<2



Turkey

Turkey sends more troops to Syrian Kurdish area as US pulls out — monitor

Turkish tanks and other heavy equipment in the border town of Kilis en route to northern Syria/ DHA

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Turkey on Saturday sent military reinforcements to northern Syria near an area controlled by Kurdish forces as Ankara threatens to carry out a fresh offensive to wipe them out, a war monitor said.

The move comes after US President Donald Trump’s surprise announcement on Wednesday of the withdrawal of American troops stationed in northeastern Syria alongside Kurdish fighters, a long-time enemy of Turkey.

Washington has for years supported the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria, as part of an international anti-jihadist coalition dominated by the People’s Protection Units (YPG).

But on Wednesday Trump said he was ordering a withdrawal of the estimated 2,000 US troops in Syria because IS had been defeated, an assessment criticized by many.

“Around 35 tanks and other heavy weapons, carried aboard tank carriers, crossed the Jarablos border crossing in the early evening,” Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP.

“They headed for an area near the Sajour River, between Jarablos and Manbij, not far from the front lines where Kurdish fighters of the Manbij Military Council are stationed,” he added.

Turkey accuses the YPG of being a “terrorist offshoot” of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which has been waging an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday vowed to drive both the YPG and IS from Syria.

Ankara fears a Kurdish state could be established on its borders, which it believes could reinforce separatist ambitions of the Kurdish minority in Turkey.

The Kurdish community accounts for 15 percent of Syria’s population and controls around 30 percent of the country, as a federal region declared in 2016.

In the past two years Turkey has conducted two offensives into northern Syria. In 2016 it launched an operation against IS, which also aimed to block the YPG from joining up the territory it held in northern Syria.

And in January 2018 Turkey staged an offensive against the militia in its northwestern enclave of Afrin.

http://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast ... /231220181

<3



World

‘An ally must be reliable’: Macron responds to Trump’s Syria pullout

France's President Emmanuel Macron holds a press conference at the presidential palace in N'Djamena, on December 23, 2018. Photo: Ludovic Marin/AFP

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – French President Emmanuel Macron criticized Donald Trump, implying the American president is an unreliable ally after deciding to withdraw from Syria.

Macron says he ‘deeply regrets’ Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria

"To be an ally is to fight shoulder to shoulder," Macron said in a press conference in N’Djamena, Chad on Sunday.

"An ally must be reliable, to coordinate with its other allies.”

France has troops on the ground in northern Syria as part of the international coalition against ISIS. They are there alongside American and British forces, backing up their allies in the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Trump surprised his partners and his own advisors when he announced last week that ISIS was “defeated in Syria” and he was calling US troops home.

"I deeply regret the decision" made by Trump, said Macron.

France will not follow Trump’s lead. French Defence Minister Florence Parly said the fight against terrorism is a priority for her government – “Our analysis: we have a job to finish.”

Representatives of the Kurdish-led administration governing more than a quarter of Syrian territory visited Paris to ask France to fill the gap that will be left by the withdrawing Americans.

Macron also said a few words in tribute to US Secretary of Defense James Mattis who resigned in protest of Trump’s decision.

"I want here to pay tribute to General Mattis... for a year we have seen how he was a reliable partner," he said.

In his resignation letter, Mattis told Trump that he prioritizes relationships with allies and he was leaving his position so that Trump could have a defense chief whose values match those of the president.

http://www.rudaw.net/english/world/23122018

<4



1. DISASTER

Death Toll From Indonesia Tsunami Surpasses 200, Dozens Still Missing

The death toll now stands at more than 200, after a tsunami struck the coast of Indonesia without warning on Saturday, according to reports. The number injured stands at 800 and there are hundreds more missing. Among the victims are members of the Indonesian pop band Seventeen, who were playing at the Tanjung Lesung beach resort when waves made their stage collapse. One musician and the manager of Seventeen were killed, while the other members remain unaccounted for. The tsunami, which is thought to have been prompted by an eruption of the Krakatoa Volcano, located in the Sunda Strait, and subsequent underwater landslides, CNN said. Java and Sumatra, between which the Sunda Strait is located, were also hit by the tsunami. Officials with Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency said the death toll is at least 222. There are at least 843 injured people and at least of 28 remain unaccounted for, per CNN. This tsunami comes several months after an Indonesian tsunami and earthquake left thousands dead. While the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, which left hundreds of thousands dead, most impacted Indonesia, the nation still doesn’t have a system in place to warn of an incoming tsunami. Officials said they were caught off guard by this tsunami because there was no earthquake, which typically proceed tsunamis, CNN notes.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/more-than ... s?ref=home

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OPINION/DONALD TRUMP

What would the US withdrawal from Syria mean for the region?

Trump's decision to withdraw troops from Syria could mark the start of a new 'all-against-all' war in the Middle East.

by Marwan Kabalan

an hour ago

On December 19, Donald Trump made a move that took almost everybody, including members of his own administration, off guard - he ordered a full, rapid withdrawal of over 2,000 US troops from Syria.

The president justified his decision by saying that the only reason US troops were in Syria was to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group, and now that this mission is accomplished, there is no reason for them to stay in the country.

Trump's unexpected announcement, which underlined the continued absence of a clear and coherent US strategy in Syria and the wider Middle East, is likely to mark the start of a new period of conflict in the region.

Following Obama's footsteps

Over the past few years, apart from defeating ISIL, the US has not been able to define clear political objectives in Syria.

Barack Obama was elected on a promise to reverse his predecessor George W Bush's heavy military involvement in the Islamic world. He hence ordered the full withdrawal of US troops from Iraq at the end of 2011.

In June 2014, Mosul's fall to ISIL forced Obama to get involved in Iraq once again. A US-led international coalition to defeat ISIL and prevent it from establishing a state across Syria and Iraq was formed. However, Obama was still reluctant to commit a large number of ground forces to this fight, so he relied on local proxies to fight ISIL.

In Iraq, Obama worked with the Iraqi government, Kurdish Peshmerga and Shia militias against ISIL. In Syria, the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), the backbone of which is the Kurdish YPG, became America's most reliable local ally against the armed group. The Obama administration trained, funded and equipped the Kurdish group despite strong objections from Turkey, which considers the YPG a terror organisation.

A full-blown proxy war

Mainly as a result of the Obama administration's reluctance to act as a hegemon, Syria's conflict rapidly transformed into a full-blown proxy war. The unwillingness of the US to play a more active role in the conflict enabled regional powers - such as Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia - to step in and try to influence the course of events in Syria and the Levant at large. Russia also joined the fray in September 2015, when it became absolutely clear that the US had become utterly uninterested in the outcome of the Syrian conflict.

When Trump moved into the White House in early 2017, despite his known disapproval of most of his predecessor's policies, and the well-known reluctance of some members of his administration to end the US military presence in the Middle East, he chose to continue with Obama's hands-off approach in the region.

And only a year later, he expressed his intention to go even further than Obama and order a full withdrawal of US troops from Syria.

Trump first announced that the US will be "coming out of Syria, like very soon" in March 2018. Regional allies and advisers convinced the US president that ISIL was not completely defeated, so he agreed to give the Pentagon and State Department another six months to finish the job, still refusing to commit to an open-ended military presence in Syria.

Implications for Syria and the region

Now that the Trump administration officially announced its intention to leave Syria for good, regional powers who have been active participants in Syria's war will likely increase their efforts to gain control of the areas that are currently under US control.

As things stand now, the US, through its Kurdish allies, controls approximately one-third of Syrian territory. These areas are justifiably dubbed by the media and analysts as "useful Syria": They contain Syria's major oil and gas fields, main water resources, dams, power plants and most of its fertile land.

Regaining control over these territories is of vital importance for Russia. Moscow lacks the funds to sustain major reconstruction efforts in post-conflict Syria, without which its costly military achievements - defeating the opposition and securing the regime of President Bashar al-Assad - would be hollow. It also wants to be financially rewarded for its military support of the Syrian regime. Hence it had long been eyeing the oil and gas fields that are currently under US control. Now that the US is leaving, Russia will do everything necessary to be the power that fills this vacuum.

Iran is also interested in the US-controlled Syrian territories, albeit for completely different reasons. Since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran has been working hard to establish a “Shia Crescent” from western Afghanistan to the Mediterranean Sea. The US withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 brought Iran one step closer towards achieving that goal. Yet, the rise of ISIL and the loss of a huge swath of territories in eastern Syria and western Iraq to the group denied Iran the possibility of keeping a land corridor open from Tehran to Damascus and to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran supported the US war on ISIL and even sought membership in the international coalition against the armed group, with the expectation that the US will leave the region once this fight is over. Now that the US is doing just that, Iran will resume its efforts to have the trans-Syria land corridor reopened by trying to increase its influence over northeast Syria.

The US decision to leave northeastern Syria will also cause problems for Israel. In September, a Russian spy plane was downed by Syrian regime forces after Israeli jets used it for cover during attacks in Syria. The incident caused Moscow to downgrade its cooperation with Israel in Syria. As a result, Tel Aviv became fully dependent on the US to keep Iran's influence in Syria in check. Following the US decision to leave Syria, Israel is now left with little leverage to shape events on the ground in Syria.

Saudi Arabia also has strategic interests in the area. Over the past year, Riyadh exerted tremendous efforts to convince President Trump to maintain a substantial military presence in northeast Syria to counterbalance both Turkey and Iran. Last November, the Saudis committed $100m to convince the US to keep its troops in Syria. At one point, Riyadh even offered to send troops to patrol the area alongside the US and the YPG. Hence the US decision to leave the area likely caused major disappointment for the Saudis and encouraged them to play an even more hands-on role in the country's future.

Turkey too is interested in this part of Syria. It has long accused the US-backed SDF of trying to establish an independent state in northeast Syria and has called repeatedly for the US to end its support for the Kurdish group, which it considers to be the Syrian arm of the PKK. In recent weeks, Turkey threatened to launch a major crossborder military operation to destroy its bases in Syria. Now that the US is withdrawing its troops from the region, it might be tempted to move in and eliminate the YPG as it did with Operation Olive Branch in Afrin early in the year.

This means the SDF is possibly the actor that will be most affected by the US decision to withdraw from Syria. Now that it is officially abandoned by its superpower patron, the Kurdish group will be forced to start looking for new allies to help it survive in the new political environment. Most likely, it will move closer to the Russia-Iran-Syrian regime axis to deter a Turkish military intervention.

ISIL might also find a window for a resurgence in the vacuum that will be created as result of Washington's exit.

In light of all this, the US withdrawal from Syria is likely to be the single most important development in the Syrian conflict since Russia's intervention in September 2015. It could bring the Syrian conflict back to where it was before the rise of ISIL: a major power play fueled by the competing interests of regional actors. We might hence witness another round of conflict in Syria between middle size powers after the departure of the hegemon. In other words, the ultimate outcome of Trump's decision to leave Syria could perhaps be the start of a new "all-against-all" war in the Middle East.

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opini ... 05616.html

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Susan Rice rips Trump over McGurk tweet: ‘I can assure you’ Obama knows him well

Former national security adviser Susan Rice ripped President Trump late Saturday for declaring he doesn't know his top envoy in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), saying that she "can assure you" former President Obama "knows him well."

"The fact that you say you don’t know @brett_mcgurk speaks volumes about your commitment to fighting ISIS @realDonaldTrump. Why don’t you know the man who has done more than any civilian to degrade ISIS? I can assure you @BarackObama knows him well," tweeted Rice, who was Obama's national security adviser for most of his second term.

Susan Rice

@AmbassadorRice
The fact that you say you don’t know @brett_mcgurk speaks volumes about your commitment to fighting ISIS @realDonaldTrump. Why don’t you know the man who has done more than any civilian to degrade ISIS? I can assure you @BarackObama knows him well.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump
Brett McGurk, who I do not know, was appointed by President Obama in 2015. Was supposed to leave in February but he just resigned prior to leaving. Grandstander? The Fake News is making such a big deal about this nothing event!

The envoy, Brett McGurk, resigned on Friday because he reportedly disagreed with Trump's decision to withdraw troops from Syria, which Trump claimed he was doing because the U.S. had defeated ISIS in that region.

McGurk had reportedly planned to leave the position in February but decided to resign early. His resignation came a day after Defense Secretary James Mattis also resigned.

Trump in a tweet on Saturday suggested McGurk was being a "grandstander" and wrote that he doesn't know him.

"Brett McGurk, who I do not know, was appointed by President Obama in 2015. Was supposed to leave in February but he just resigned prior to leaving. Grandstander? The Fake News is making such a big deal about this nothing event!" the president tweeted.

https://thehill.com/policy/national-sec ... bama-knows

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Dow dives 653 points, S&P 500 enters bear market

U.S. stocks plunged on Monday in their worst Christmas Eve trading ever, as the S&P 500 entered a bear market.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by 653 points Monday in volatile trading, falling below 22,000. The Dow sank more than 2 percent, then recovered nearly all of the day’s losses, before again falling more than 2 percent. The S&P 500 fell 2.7 percent, slipping into a bear market as it fell 20.06 percent from recent highs. Wall Street traditionally considers a drop of 20 percent or more from recent highs to be a bear market. The Nasdaq Composite Index slid 2.2 percent.

Markets responded to turmoil in Washington. Multiple reports said President Donald Trump is discussing how to remove Jerome Powell from his position as chairman of the Federal Reserve. That discussion, as well as the recent market volatility, spurred Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to call the leaders of the six largest U.S. banks over the weekend. Additionally, Defense Secretary James Mattis announced he would step down at the end of February, saying his views do not align with the president’s.

Trump resumed his attack on the Fed on Monday, tweeting that the central bank is “the only problem” with the U.S. economy.
“They don’t have a feel for the Market,” Trump said in the tweet.

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

The only problem our economy has is the Fed. They don’t have a feel for the Market, they don’t understand necessary Trade Wars or Strong Dollars or even Democrat Shutdowns over Borders. The Fed is like a powerful golfer who can’t score because he has no touch - he can’t putt!

53.1K
9:55 AM - Dec 24, 2018

All 11 sectors of the S&P 500 are now negative for December, the fourth quarter and the full year.

Last week the Dow lost 1,655 points, or 6.8 percent. That was the Dow’s worst week of trading since October 2008 during the financial crisis. The S&P 500 also lost 7 percent for the week. The Nasdaq Composite is now 22 percent below its record reached in August and is in a bear market.

Stocks temporarily climbed off their lows after billionaire hedge fund manager David Tepper told CNBC that he’s buying some stocks following the market’s move lower. CNBC’s Scott Wapner says that Tepper told him that “it’s still a tough market,” so you’ve “got to be careful about your exposure.”

“The key question is whether the market of stellar returns is going to a market of slow or stalling returns,” Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial, told CNBC.

“This is a market selling off as if it believes that we are headed in to a stall. Exacerbating that is the thesis that the Federal Reserve’s policies are leading us to a hard landing, rather than a soft landing,” Krosby said.

Last Wednesday, the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate for a fourth time this year and Chairman Jerome Powell signaled the central bank would continue to unwind its balance sheet at the current pace. The two monetary tightening actions are driving the stock market declines, traders say.

There was a report late Friday that President Donald Trump was discussing the possibility of firing Powell, a move that could undermine confidence in the U.S. financial system. Other media outlets later confirmed those reports, but Mnuchin sought to from those reports this weekend. A senior Treasury official acknowledged that the reports about Trump’s discussion of firing Powell was part of the catalyst for Mnuchin’s call but not the sole reason.

Mnuchin tweeted that he spoke with the president. Mnuchin declared that Trump said he never suggested firing Powell and doesn’t believe he has the right to do so.

Mnuchin held calls on Sunday with the heads of the six largest U.S. banks in order to reassure nervous investors that the financial markets and economy were functioning properly.
“The banks all confirmed ample liquidity is available for lending to consumer and business markets,” the statement from the Treasury said.

“We continue to see strong economic growth in the U.S. economy with robust activity from consumers and business,” said Mnuchin added in the statement on Sunday. A senior Treasury official told CNBC on Monday that the purpose of Mnuchin’s call and statement was to take a “prudent, preemptive measure” after last week’s market volatility.

Wall Street is processing Mnuchin’s call, which seems “to raise more questions than answers,” Raymond James analyst Ed Mills said in a note. Mills thinks it is unclear why the Treasury secretary hosted the call, “as no one had seemed to raise any concerns related to these issues of which Mnuchin is seeking to reassure the market,” Mills said.

December is typically a buoyant month for stocks. Yet both the Dow and S&P 500 are down more than 14 percent this month -- on track for their worst December performances since the Great Depression in 1931.

Oppenheimer equity analyst John Stoltzfus said in a note Monday that “putting the recent equity market declines into historical context lessens their sting.” The three catalysts which pushed the market lower in 2015 and 2016 -- China, the Federal Reserve, and oil -- are roiling “the market yet again in 2018,” Stoltzfus said.

“I think there’s a massive gap between sentiment and fundamentals” for the market, Blackstone investment strategist Joe Zidle said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

“If the market closes down for the year, which looks likely … it will only be the 13th time that we’ve seen a full year decline since 1960,” Zidle said. Of those 13 full year declines in the past 58 years, seven occurred before or during a recession.

“The markets are saying there’s a greater than 50 percent chance we enter a recession and fundamentals don’t support it and fundamentals win,” Zidle said.

Also weighing on investor confidence is a government shutdown that on through at least Thursday.

Both the Dow and the S&P 500 are now in the red for 2018 by more than 10 percent. Some traders have suggested that the market has gotten to the point where a short-term bounce could occur, if only for technical reasons. Seasonally, this is usually a positive, or at least benign, time for the markets.

The next worst Christmas Eve for the Dow and S&P 500 was in 1985, when both indexes fell a little over 0.6 percent.

The NYSE closes early on Monday at 1 p.m. ET. The exchange is closed on Tuesday for Christmas day. Wednesday through Friday are normal trading days.

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Schumer and Pelosi accuse Trump of 'plunging country into chaos' as markets tank

Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) are blasting President Trump for “plunging the country into chaos” before Christmas, pointing to a sharp plunge in the stock market amid a government shutdown.

“It's Christmas Eve and President Trump is plunging the country into chaos. The stock market is tanking and the president is waging a personal war on the Federal Reserve – after he just fired the Secretary of Defense,” the Democratic leaders said in a statement shortly after markets closed.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted by 653 points Monday in the worst day of trading on Christmas Eve in history. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq dropped by similarly large percentages.

U.S. crude oil prices also dropped by nearly 7 percent to an 18-month low, signaling weak demand in the months ahead as economic experts forecast a slowdown in 2019.

Trump appears to have exacerbated the market volatility by attacking the Fed for raising interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point last week, tweeting “the only problem our economy has is the Fed.” He also indicated he's looking to fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

Washington, meanwhile, is mired in a standoff over Trump’s demand for $5 billion to build a border wall, which triggered a government shutdown on Saturday that is expect to last until later this week or even the early part of 2019.

“Instead of bringing certainty into people’s lives, he’s continuing the Trump Shutdown just to please right-wing radio and TV hosts,” Schumer and Pelosi said in their joint statement.

The Democratic leaders say talks on reopening the government have stalled in part because of conflicting signals on what Trump would accept as a compromise to fund federal agencies.

“Different people from the same White House are saying different things about what the president would accept or not accept to end his Trump Shutdown, making it impossible to know where they stand at any given moment,” Schumer and Pelosi said.

“The president wanted the shutdown, but he seems not to know how to get himself out of it,” they added, accusing the president of being beholden to the most inflexible Republicans in Congress.

Trump earlier this month in an Oval Office meeting said he would be "proud" to take the blame for a shutdown over the border wall. He later blamed the Democrats for the shutdown.

“As long as the president is guided by the House Freedom Caucus, it’s hard to see how he can come up with a solution that can pass both the House and Senate and end his Trump Shutdown,” the leaders said.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis also resigned this week, adding to the chaos the Democratic leaders see in the administration.

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/4227 ... rkets-tank

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Sen. Bob Corker calls reasoning for government shutdown a 'made up fight'

On pulling troops from Syria, Corker said Trump "knows he's made a mistake" but tends to "dig in and double down."

With less than two weeks left before he leaves office, U.S. Sen. Bob Corker stood his ground once again to denounce President Donald Trump's decisions — from the government shutdown to pulling U.S. troops from Syria.

Corker called Sunday the federal government shutdown an unnecessary action and a "made up fight" perpetrated by the president.

"This is a purposefully contrived fight," Corker said on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday morning.

On Thursday, Trump announced he wouldn't sign an agreement to keep a number of federal departments funded at their current levels through early February unless the spending bill included funding for the construction of a wall along the southern U.S. border.

Corker said that Democrats and Republicans supported legislation to provide $25 billion for border security while also dealing with young immigrants who arrived with parents who entered the country illegally. The legislation wasn't ultimately approved.

"At the end of the day, our borders will still be insecure," Corker said. "The president could have received $25 billion in (funding) in dealing with the DREAMers."

"Most Republicans want to deal with the DREAMers," Corker told CNN. "This is a made up fight so the president can look like he’s fighting. Even if he wins our borders won't be secure."

A short-term spending plan expired and portions of the federal government shut down on Saturday. Congress announced on Saturday that the government will remain closed until at least Dec. 27.

The closure could extend more, too. Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told Fox News Sunday that the negotiations over the border and spending bill aren't going to move quickly.

Mulvaney said "there's a chance this could go into the next Congress," which begins Jan. 3.

The House last week passed a spending bill that included $5 billion for the wall, but the Senate was unable to reach an agreement.

Mulvaney said that the White House is making a counter offer and would reduce its demand from $5 billion. But he wouldn't specify an amount. Democrats have discussed only providing $1.3 billion.

Corker, a Chattanooga Republican who did not seek re-election in November, has had a tumultuous relationship with Trump over the past two years.

Corker has criticized the president's handling of a number of issues, and the two have traded barbs — including on Twitter — even as they have worked together on a number of domestic and foreign policy matters.

That continued on Sunday.

Neither Corker nor fellow Tennessean U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander wanted to see the government shutdown and both opposed Trump's call for Republicans to change Senate rules to allow a simple majority to end debate and approve a spending resolution.

On Sunday, Corker went on to say that the reasoning for the shutdown was "juvenile."

"I want to see real border security and that’s why I am disappointed with this Congress," he said.

On Sunday afternoon, Trump took to Twitter to fire back at Corker. Trump slammed Corker over his decision not to seek a third term, saying Corker "wanted to run but poll numbers TANKED when I wouldn't endorse him ..."

https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/p ... 401284002/

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U.S. WITHDRAWAL FROM SYRIA HURTS ISRAEL AND HELPS ERDOGAN, SHAKED SAYS

While "the US President is a great friend of Israel," Shaked said, "this step does not help Israel and strengthens Erdogan, who is an antisemite."

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked called US President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw American troops from Syria "bad for Israel" and strengthens Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in an interview with Army Radio on Sunday morning.

While "the US President is a great friend of Israel," Shaked said, "this step does not help Israel and strengthens Erdogan, who is an antisemite."

"We know how to protect ourselves," Shaked continued. The US withdrawal could lead to the transfer of more weapons to Lebanese Shi'ite terrorist group Hezbollah from Iran, Shaked said, but "we will do everything we need to prevent Iran from gaining foothold in Syria."

Shaked also condemned the effect that the American troop withdrawal would have on Kurdish militias in Syria, which have been leading the fight against the Islamic State. On Friday, Erdogan pledged to "eliminate" these Kurdish militias along with remaining ISIS fighters.

"The Kurds are great heroes," she said, "and because of them the West succeeded in its fight against ISIS. They are allies, and I hope that they will win in their battle against the Turks. I hope that the international community will prevent Erdogan from massacring the Kurds."

Shaked's statements echoed sentiments expressed more bluntly by an unnamed Israeli official to the New York Times Friday. The official said that Trump has "effectively thrown Israel under the bus – and the bus in this case was a Russian Army transport truck," according to the Times paraphrase of his statement.

On Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu similarly slammed Erdogan for a statement attacking Jews, stating that he was hardly in any position to be preaching morality.

“Erdogan – the occupier of northern Cyprus, whose army massacres women and children in Kurdish villages, inside and outside Turkey – should not preach to Israel,” Netanyahu said.

https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conf ... ays-575154

[ Haaretz.com - Official Site:

Opinion

Trump Just Gave the Finger to His Jewish Voters

Trump is retreating from Syria – and from his pro-Israel Jewish conservative voters. If that decision is a harbinger of other strategic moves distancing him from Israel's security, much of his remaining Jewish support will fall off a cliff ]

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Markets

U.S. Stocks Surge in Best Rally Since March 2009: Markets Wrap

U.S. stocks staged one of the biggest rallies of the 9 1/2 year bull market after coming within points of seeing it end, with major indexes surging at least 4.9 percent. Crude jumped almost 10 percent.

All but one member of the S&P 500 finished in the green, the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped more than 1,050 points for its biggest-ever point gain and the Nasdaq 100 rallied 6 percent in a surge last seen in March 2009. Small caps joined the rally with a 5 percent advance.

Consumer shares paced the rally, with Amazon jumping 9.5 percent after reporting record holiday sales. Each member of the FAANG cohort rallied at least 6.4 percent, while energy producers surged as crude powered past $46 a barrel. All 30 Dow members gained, with Nike and Apple rising more than 7 percent. Newmont Mining was the only S&P 500 member to fall.

“It was probably a pretty good retail-oriented holiday and that probably has a lot to do with what’s happening today,” said Kim Forrest, a senior portfolio manager at Fort Pitt Capital Group.

President Donald Trump said a day earlier that the rout that took stocks down 19.8 percent from a record provided a “tremendous opportunity to buy.” Investors also welcomed Kevin Hassett’s assurance that Jerome Powell’s job is “100 percent” safe. Oil’s best rally since 2016 added to the equity surge. Stocks are looking to stop one of the most miserable Decembers on record, as a host of headwinds combined to drag down America’s benchmark index.

A reminder that consumers -- a key part of the American economy -- remain on solid footing helped soothe anxiety created by fears of a global slowdown and personnel churn in the U.S. administration. A late report that a U.S. government delegation will travel to Beijing in two weeks to hold trade talks gave stocks a final push higher.

“The thing that the Fed chairman won’t be axed, that has a lot to do with everyone being happy Powell gets to keep his job and that the turmoil about this has abated for today,” Forrest said. “You have the market leaning one way or the other, and it can often do what it’s doing today, which is go higher. On Monday the market leaned lower. It’s an outsize move.”

Hassett was the latest government official to try to calm the markets after Bloomberg’s report Friday that President Donald Trump asked about firing Powell. Steven Mnuchin was criticized for saying he called bank chiefs to gauge liquidity. Trump expressed confidence in Mnuchin yesterday.

Crude surged, the greenback was stronger versus its major peers and Treasuries fell. Exchanges throughout Europe remained closed for the holiday.

Elsewhere on Wednesday, Japanese equities closed higher on a wave of late buying after fluctuating throughout the day. Korean shares tumbled after a holiday, and Shanghai stocks fell for a second day. Markets in Australia and Hong Kong were closed.

West Texas Intermediate crude rebounded to trade above $44 a barrel. The offshore yuan was little changed after China released new rules promising to treat all companies equally, the latest positive step on the trade and investment front since further U.S. and Chinese tariff hikes were paused.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty in the short-term and that makes sense,” Gershon Distenfeld, AllianceBernstein co-head of fixed income, said on Bloomberg TV. “We’re going to have a lot of volatility. But this base case of ’the world is coming to an end’ just given the fundamental data out there doesn’t make any sense.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... nd=premium

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Trump Visits US Troops in Iraq on Unannounced Trip

President Donald Trump made an unannounced visit to Iraq on Wednesday to talk with U.S. troops stationed there.

Trump and first lady Melania Trump landed at Al Asad Airbase in western Iraq at 7:16 p.m. local time.

They left Washington late Christmas night, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a tweet Wednesday afternoon.

The trip to Iraq, where a total of about 5,200 members of the U.S. military are stationed, was Trump's first visit to a conflict zone as president. It came a day after he held a video conference from the Oval Office with military members around the globe. After the call, he was criticized by some media outlets that said he was the first president since 2002 to not visit U.S. troops at Christmastime.

Previous U.S. presidents have embraced the tradition of visiting U.S. troops in conflict zones, because it is seen as a morale-booster for them. President George W. Bush visited U.S. troops stationed overseas eight times during his presidency, including serving a Thanksgiving meal to soldiers in Baghdad in 2003. President Barack Obama visited troops in Baghdad in April 2009, four months after he took office. He also visited troops in Afghanistan and South Korea.

In Iraq, Trump and his wife greeted troops in a dining hall, posing for photos and signing autographs as part of the visit. They left three hours later.

The president did not meet with any Iraqi officials during his short visit to the country, but he did speak on the phone with Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi.

Syrian withdrawal

The president last week made the controversial move of announcing plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. In his remarks to the troops in Iraq, he defended that decision, saying that the Islamic State group had been "very nearly defeated" and that the caliphate was gone.

"I made it clear from the beginning that our mission in Syria was to strip ISIS of its military strongholds,'' Trump said, using an acronym for the militant group.

"Eight years ago, we went there for three months, and we never left," he said, adding the U.S presence in Syria was never meant to be "open-ended."

Trump said Turkey had agreed to eliminate any IS "remnants" in the region.

"The nations of the region must step up and take more responsibility for their future," Trump said, adding there would be an "orderly withdrawal" of the roughly 2,000 U.S. forces in Syria.

In addition to the Syrian pullout, Trump is also considering withdrawing roughly half of the more than 14,000 American troops stationed in Afghanistan, beginning next month.

Trump's senior advisers and military officials have warned that the moves will cause further chaos in the region.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy for the global coalition to counter ISIS, both resigned, at least in part, because of disagreement over the Syria and Afghanistan policies. ​

https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-visits- ... 17134.html

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BATTLE SCARS

Trump Takes a Warzone Victory Lap—And Trips

This should have been a victory lap for a president hailed by the military for letting them loose to attack ISIS, unconstrained by the reluctance and micromanagement of the Obama administration. But President Donald Trump has just announced the U.S. would be leaving the job to Turkey, leaving Kurdish and western coalition allies in harm’s way, and abandoning the field of battle to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, Russia, and Iran.

“We’re no longer the suckers, folks,” President Donald Trump told a group of about a 100 troops, most of them special operators in an unannounced holiday visit to Al-Asad Airbase, in northern Iraq, adding that other countries can no longer expect the U.S. to do their fighting, unless they are willing to pay for it. “The United States cannot continue to be the policeman of the world,” he said.

"America shouldn't be doing the fighting for every nation on Earth, not being reimbursed in many cases at all. If they want us to do the fighting, they also have to pay a price and sometimes that's also a monetary price. So we're not the suckers of the world. We're no longer the suckers, folks. And people aren't looking at us as suckers."

He defended his decision to turn over the ISIS fight to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“In Syria, Erdogan said he wants to knock out ISIS, whatever’s left, the remnants of ISIS,” Trump told reporters on the trip. “And Saudi Arabia just came out and said they are going to pay for some economic development, which is great; that means we don’t have to pay.”

But what of the French and British allies the U.S. has left behind in Syria to keep up the fight? Does that mean they are the suckers left holding the bag? Or the Kurdish militia groups that did most of the fighting, and dying, to drive out the so-called Islamic State, now left to the tender mercies of sworn enemy Turkey?

The president was unrepentant, explaining that he gave “the generals” multiple six month “extensions” to get out of Syria. “They said again, recently, can we have more time? I said, ‘Nope.’ You can’t have any more time. You’ve had enough time.

We’ve knocked them out. We’ve knocked them silly,” he said. “Others will do it to. Because we are in their region. They should be sharing the burden of costs and they’re not.”

But the decision hasn’t sat well with many in the special operations community Trump was addressing, as they’ve known many of these Kurdish fighters for years, and risked life and limb on joint missions together well before the ISIS fight.

No meeting with Iraqi leader

Trump didn't meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi because the president had asked the Iraqi leader to travel from the capital, Baghdad, to meet Trump in Al Asad, Iraqi political sources told NPR.

The president's request was viewed by Iraqis as disrespectful of their sovereignty.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-tak ... s?ref=home

<4



WORLD NEWS

Putin says Russia ready to deploy new hypersonic nuclear missile

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday his country would deploy its first regiment of hypersonic nuclear-capable missiles next year, saying the move meant his country now had a new type of strategic weapon.

Putin was speaking after overseeing what the Kremlin said was a pre-deployment test of the new missile system, called Avangard.

"This test, which has just finished, ended with complete success," Putin told a government meeting.

"From next year, 2019, Russia's armed forces will get the new intercontinental strategic system Avangard ... It's a big moment in the life of the armed forces and in the life of the country. Russia has obtained a new type of strategic weapon."

Russia has said the new missile system, one of several new weapons Putin announced in March, is highly manoeuvrable, allowing it to easily evade missile defence systems.

Putin remotely observed Wednesday's test from a Russian defence ministry building in Moscow. The Kremlin described the test in a statement, saying that an Avangard missile, launched from a location in southwest Russia, had successfully hit and destroyed a target in the Russian Far East.

Putin announced an array of new weapons in March, including the Avangard, in one of his most bellicose speeches in years, saying they could hit almost any point in the world and evade a US-built missile shield.

https://www.euronews.com/2018/12/26/put ... le-n951986

<5

Old bone spurs looked about 20 pounds heavier with that extra thick bulletproof vest he was wearing.

<1



Trump misleads about military pay raises again

(CNN) President Donald Trump incorrectly told troops in Iraq on Wednesday that he gave them their first pay raise in more than 10 years -- a falsehood he has repeatedly told.

Speaking to troops at Al Asad Air Base during his surprise visit to Iraq, Trump told troops: "You protect us. We are always going to protect you. And you just saw that, 'cause you just got one of the biggest pay raises you've ever received. ... You haven't gotten one in more than 10 years. More than 10 years. And we got you a big one. I got you a big one. I got you a big one."

In fact, military pay has increased every year for more than three decades. It was raised 2.4% in 2018 and then 2.6% in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. The 2.6% pay raise is the largest in the past 9 years.

The President and first lady quietly swept into Iraq on Wednesday to pay a holiday visit to US troops -- the first trip Trump has made to a war zone.

"They had plenty of people that came up, they said, 'You know, we could make it smaller. We could make it 3%, we could make it 2%, we could make it 4%,'" Trump told the troops about the latest pay raise. "I said, 'No. Make it 10%. Make it more than 10%.'"

'Cause it's been a long time, it's been more than 10 years. Been more than 10 years, that's a long time," Trump said, repeating the false claim.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/26/politics ... index.html

<2

[ The Great Wall Of China - The hard labor and monumental effort didn't pay off in terms of national defense. The Great Wall never managed to keep out invaders from the north. It only slowed them down a little. The nomads regularly made raids over the wall for years. They eventually controlled parts of China for 250 years.

Israel destroyed 'Hezbollah cross-border tunnels. Israel says it has destroyed tunnels crossing into its territory after claims of discovering five of them this month.

So! It looks like you can pass over, through, and under the walls. What would make the Mexico/USA border wall any different. If you have the will, you will find a way. Is it worth 25 billion dollars? 5 billion? 1.6 billion? ]



A man stands next to a drill as Israeli military personnel continue work on 'exposing and thwarting' cross-border tunnels [Ronen Zvulun/Reuters]

NEWS/ISRAEL

Israel destroys 'Hezbollah cross-border tunnel'

Israel says it has destroyed tunnels crossing into its territory after claims of discovering five of them this month.

26 Dec 2018

The Israeli army has destroyed another cross-border tunnel, which it claims was built by the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.

A video released by the Israelis on Wednesday showed an officer shouting across the border and warning residents of the Lebanese village of Ayta ash-Shab that they were in danger and to stand far away.

The video then shows a countdown before a soldier pushes a button and aerial footage of a powerful explosion.

Israel announced the discovery of the tunnels - five in total - earlier in December. It said Hezbollah planned to use these tunnels in the event of a war to conduct attacks in Israel.

The Israelis have not specified the number of tunnels destroyed so far.

The Lebanese armed group has not commented on the discovery.

On December 17, the United Nations's Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said the tunnels violated a ceasefire agreement that ended the 2006 war.

"These [tunnels] constitute violations of the UN Security Council Resolution 1701," the peacekeeping force said in a statement at the time, referring to the agreement that ended the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Lebanese authorities have vowed to abide by the ceasefire terms with Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri saying the Lebanese army would conduct patrols to deal "with any flaw in the implementation" of the truce.

Israel and Hezbollah, who are technically still at war, have avoided any major conflict at the border since 2006, though Israel has mounted attacks in Syria targeting what it said were advanced weapon deliveries to the group.

President Michel Aoun, a political ally of Hezbollah, said in early December that he did not see in Israel's military operation a threat to peace, adding Beirut was ready to "remove the causes of the dispute", without adding any further information.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/ ... 06450.html

<3



WORLD

TRUMP PUT U.S. TROOPS IN A ‘VERY BAD POSITION’ BY POLITICIZING HIS IRAQ VISIT, RETIRED GENERAL SAYS

BY JASON LEMON ON 12/27/18 AT 9:39 AM

President Donald Trump politicized his visit to troops in Iraq, putting the soldiers in a “very bad position,” according to a retired general.

Mark Hertling, who formerly served as a lieutenant general and the commanding general of U.S. Army Europe and the Seventh Army, appeared on CNN on Wednesday to share his perspective on the president’s surprise trip to Iraq. Speaking to host Don Lemon, Hertling was highly critical of how Trump handled the troop visit.

“What [presidents] don’t do is politicize the event, and unfortunately as we saw some of the commentary by the president today, that’s exactly what he did,” Hertling pointed out. “It puts the soldiers—truthfully, all of the military personnel—in a very bad position,” he added, “because the military has regulations against doing exactly that.”

Although Hertling also admitted that presidential visits generally create excitement among U.S. forces, he raised specific concerns about “lies” the president told about military paychecks and the Islamic State (or ISIS).

Trump falsely told service members at Al Asad Air Base that he’d gotten them their first pay raise in 10 years, saying it was more than 10 percent. In reality, service members have received a pay raise every year over the past decade, ranging from 1 to 3.9 percent. The raise for 2019 is just 2.6 percent, or about 0.2 percent more than 2018.

The president also again suggested that ISIS had been defeated in Syria, defending his decision to withdraw 2,000 troops and U.S. military efforts in the country, The Guardian reported. But experts, politicians, allies and some within Trump’s own administration have pushed back, pointing out that sizable pockets of the extremist organization still operate there. Many have also raised concerns that the U.S. withdrawal will embolden the group.

Also sharing his perspective with CNN, Retired Major General James “Spider” Marks, said that Trump should have focused solely on the troops. “Make it about them,” he said, “don’t put the spotlight on you.”

Iraqi lawmakers also took aim at Trump’s visit, arguing it was a violation of their country’s sovereignty.

Sabah al Saadi, the leader of Iraq’s Islah parliamentary bloc, called for an emergency session of parliament to “discuss this blatant violation of Iraq’s sovereignty and to stop these aggressive actions by Trump, who should know his limits,” Reuters reported. “The U.S. occupation of Iraq is over,” he said.

Leaders of the Bina bloc, which stands in opposition to Islah, blasted the president’s Iraq trip as well. “Trump’s visit is a flagrant and clear violation of diplomatic norms and shows his disdain and hostility in his dealings with the Iraqi government,” the political group said.

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-troops-v ... al-1272395

<4



IDEAS

Politicizing the Military Is Uniformly Wrong

Trump’s visit to U.S. troops was marred by overtly political rhetoric. That’s not normal—but his defenders don’t care.

The surprise visit by President Donald Trump to military personnel in Iraq and Germany the day after Christmas was a particularly welcome development, given his previous departure from this time-honored tradition of his predecessors around the holiday season. The visits were marred, however, by the president’s overtly political rhetoric and by his encouragement of the small number of uniformed personnel who offered him their “Make America Great Again” hats to sign, or who displayed campaign banners. It’s the latest instance of the erosion of long-standing commitments to apolitical institutions—and the comparative indifference with which these acts were greeted ought to worry all of us.

Employees of the U.S. government, in general, face restrictions on the “political activity” in which they can engage in the workplace. Uniformed members of the U.S. military are arguably held to a high standard of nonpolitical behavior, even outside the workplace and particularly while in uniform. The presence of campaign paraphernalia at a presidential visit—and the president’s blithe disregard for protocol in choosing to sign some of that paraphernalia, to say nothing of his politically tinged speech to military personnel in a war zone—runs afoul of at least the spirit, if not the letter, of written rules such as Department of Defense Directive 1344.10 (Political Activities) and Uniform Code of Military Justice Article 88 (Contempt Toward Officials) and Article 134 (General Article).

These displays should never have been allowed, and the president certainly should not have encouraged them. But the real problem was not the boneheaded actions of a few men and women in uniform. They made a mistake in a moment of exuberance, excited to see their commander in chief. They may face a tongue lashing, or perhaps some minor discipline, but that is the most that should, and likely will, happen to them.

Nor is the real problem Trump himself. The president has made it clear that he has little interest in abiding by institutional customs and norms. Where the law does not explicitly and unequivocally prohibit behavior on his part, he construes that as an opportunity to engage in the behavior. He pays little regard to whether he should do so, or whether it would reflect poorly on the institution of the presidency itself. That is who the president has always been, and it is who he will remain.

No, the real problem is the political tribalism that continues to erode our apolitical institutions. Rules are rules, even when politically inconvenient. The military in particular is one of our most cherished apolitical institutions. We rely on the military to protect the country as a whole, regardless of which party controls the executive branch. The public needs to retain the assurance that military personnel are fighting for the United States of America, not merely for the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Maintaining that public confidence requires equal and just application of the rules, even on minor issues, such as what transpired in Iraq and Germany.

Democracy does not die in darkness—it dies with indifference. It was indifference that led some to excuse the president’s breaking decades of institutional custom in order to conceal his tax returns, or his refusal to divest from his businesses. It was indifference that led to the acceptance of the politically expedient erosion of anti-nepotism laws so that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner could serve in the White House. And it was indifference that allowed the politicized micromanagement of the civil servants at the Justice Department conducting the Russia investigation.

Now some of the president’s defenders are trying to persuade us to ignore erosion of the apolitical bubble we have so carefully constructed over the years around the civil service and the U.S. military. They suggest that only some rules really need to be worried about, and the rest are just for show—especially if we happen to like the political views being advanced by those who ignore them.

There is danger in indifference. Those who opposed the president’s agenda—and, even more so, those who support it—should see that danger clearly, and decline to take the bait.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... al/579070/

<5



NO THANK YOU

Federal Workers Reject Trump’s ‘False’ Claim That ‘Many’ Want Government Shutdown

Government employees on Wednesday rebuked President Trump’s claim that “many” of them told him to “stay out until you get the funding for the wall,” according to a report from the New York Daily News. As a result of Trump’s inability to come to an agreement with Congress over border wall funding, 420,000 government employees are reportedly currently working without pay and 380,000 more aren’t working at all. The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 700,000 federal workers, spoke out against the shutdown Wednesday, noting that there “should be no confusion” about how federal employees feel about being out of a paying job. “They are eager to get back to work,” the federation’s president, Jeffrey David Cox Sr., said in a statement. “They unequivocally oppose using shutdowns as a means of resolving policy disputes. This is not about a wall, this is about 800,000 real people with real families and real bills to pay,” he said. Paul Shearon, the president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, took an even stronger stance, calling the president’s claims entirely “false.” “We have not heard from a single member who supports the President’s inaction,” he said. “Most view this as an act of ineptitude.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/federal-w ... n?ref=home

<7



BRAIN DRAIN

The Putin Regime Is Forcing Russia’s Best and Brightest Into Exile

The hammer of oppression falls hard on women and men who dare to speak out against the Kremlin and its policies.

MOSCOW – Best-selling Russian novelist Yulia Latynina begins her mornings with long runs on the beach, a tropical wind blowing through her flame-red hair—far away from the dark, freezing winters of her homeland.

These days Latynina, along with her mother Alla Latynina, a literary critic, and her father, the prolific poet Leonid Latynin, enjoy stunning views of a mountain valley, of blooming gardens, of light rays changing colors above the sea as they write, but for safety reasons they asked me not to mention precisely where they are. Suffice to say that they spend most of their time far away from their Moscow home.

The family’s nightmare began in 2016 when mobs of trolls attacked Latynina on social media after she published an article in Novaya Gazeta about “Putin’s chef,” billionaire caterer Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is also the Russian president’s go-to guy for such nefarious activities as internet-based attacks on American presidential elections and mercenary armies for deployment in Africa and the Middle East.

“Get out of Russia, we’ll breathe easier without your liberal stink,” one of the posts said. Soon, ugly words turned into ugly actions: Latynina’s attackers followed her for weeks until, in August 2016, somebody poured excrement all over her as she was on her way to the radio station Echo of Moscow.

Latynina has published more than a dozen bestselling crime and fantasy novels in Russia. She has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish and Polish. But Russians may know Latynina best for her weekly Echo of Moscow show “Access Code,” interpreting the Kremlin’s commands and ideology and often flaying Russia’s leadership.

Latynina is also a staff writer at Novaya Gazeta, five of whose journalists have been murdered.

As Pavel Kanygin, a leading journalist at Novaya Gazeta, told The Daily Beast that after the disgusting attack on Latynina, the paper demanded an investigation, but nothing happened. “When we speak with authorities about violence against our colleagues, we hear, ‘When you criticize the state, you should be ready for a reaction.’ Those in power are pointing at the door, as if to say, ‘Whoever does not like us, can leave.’”

Writing in Novaya Gazeta right after the first attack, Latynina claimed in her usual combative way that the mastermind behind it “could be stopped with one phone call,” and warned that “otherwise, there will be real corpses and it won’t be just Putin’s chef covered in shit but Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, himself.”

In the end, nobody placed a call to order such an investigation. Russian police did not find the thugs, and the violence continued.

One day the brakes on Latynina’s car stopped working. Then, one night in the summer of 2017 Latynina and her parents, aged 77 and 79, were awakened by a suffocating gas filling their residence. Later a forensic study showed that the attacker used a non-lethal military grade chemical weapon. Yulia’s mother Alla Latynina told The Daily Beast that in the following few months she fell ill twice with pneumonia, which she believed was a result of the gas attack.

The Latynina haters clearly wanted the family to leave the country: they set the family’s vehicle on fire, once again in the middle of the night. Yulia’s mother woke up and saw her husband running around their burning SUV trying to find some way to put out the fire.

“That was a horrifying scene. I was scared that the vehicle might blow up when he was near it,” she said.

Shortly after the incident, the family left for Europe. “The FSB was no longer protecting its ‘monopoly over violence,’” Yulia Latynina told The Daily Beast in a recent interview, referring to the classic position of security services in authoritarian states. “In fact, the regime found a new modus operandi—it consistently farms out violence to various thugs to maintain plausible deniability.”

Latynina would have liked to see her attackers punished. ”We, journalists of Novaya Gazeta, know that Prigozhin’s structures have been focusing on us for a long time; for now this is all we know.”

“Before, we thought that Chechen leader [Ramzan] Kadyrov was the top of most dangerous topics to cover for a reporter,” she said. “The list seems to be growing.”

Last month, Petr Verzilov, one of the Pussy Riot activists, said he was poisoned after receiving an important email relating to an investigation into the mysterious deaths of three Russian journalists in the Central African Republic. Verzilov moved abroad for treatment.

Outspoken critics of the Kremlin’s policy are aware of the risks they run. Every week Russian authorities order the arrests of activists. On Sunday, police detained 12 people protesting outside the Federal Security Service (FSB) headquarters against abuses of power. One of the activists was holding a banner, which said: “Putin, leave Ukraine alone, nobody wants the war.”

In 2015 a group of assassins gunned down the man at the heart of the Russian opposition, ex-vice prime minister Boris Nemtsov, right by the Kremlin wall. It was a demonstrative gesture: the criminals showed that no federal security service was there to protect the leading critic of President Putin.

Every year thousands march in Nemtsov’s memory all over the country. Earlier this year, the city of Washington D.C. renamed the street outside the Russian embassy Boris Nemtsov Plaza.

Since 2014, the year Russia took Crimea from Ukraine and annexed it, Russia’s prominent cultural figures, writers, artists, gallery owners, musicians, film-makers, and journalists have been moving out. According to the latest study by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, nearly every third young Russian wants to emigrate.

Earlier this month Russian liberal intellectuals gathered for the Open Russia Forum in Vilnius, Lithuania, to discuss Russia’s political future. Here, the prominent environmentalist Yevgeniya Chirikova presented her online project “Activatica,” which maps all Russian social movements and protests.

A few years ago Chirikova became a refugee from political persecution: she emigrated to Estonia after state officials threatened to take away her children.

“My friend Mikhail Beketov, editor of a local paper, was beaten severely and died; my husband was beaten and lost vision in one eye, the FSB and some social workers came to my door, asking about my children,” Chirikova told The Daily Beast.

Living abroad, Chirikova continues to think about Russia and work for Russians. “Since all our projects are virtual, we can help Russian activists defend their environment living abroad and our readership is quickly growing,” Chirikova told The Daily Beast.

Violence did not silence Latynina’s voice, either: her radio shows on Echo of Moscow come out every week, as well as her articles in Novaya Gazeta.

Opposition activists are not the only ones to leave Russia. The exile population of former Russian bureaucrats and politicians is growing, too.

Opera singer Maria Maksakova and her husband Denis Voronenkov escaped from Russia to Kiev. Both had been members of the Russian parliament and of Putin’s political party. But migration did not save them from violence.

Voronenkov testified against the Kremlin’s ally, ex-Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, and his wife knew retaliation was inevitable. “On the day my husband testified, I rushed to the airport in fear of persecution,” Maksakova told The Daily Beast.

In March last year, Voronenkov was gunned down in the streets of Kiev. Even then, Moscow did not leave Maksakova in peace. State TV channels, aiming to humiliate her, tell viewers again and again how wrong she was to abandon her home country.

“Russian authorities would not leave me alone, they stage public shows about me, send TV crews to hunt for me on my trips to Europe,” the exiled Russian MP told The Daily Beast. “I am not surprised. Historically, Russian totalitarian regimes treated their celebrities as property, demanding that exiled talents return or destroying them with propaganda,”

Like Latynina, like Chirikova, Maksakova thinks it will be a while before she returns to her homeland.

“I am not going to return to Russia for as long as there is this atmosphere of hate, crime and impunity,” she said.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-putin ... ref=scroll

<8



OUCH

Fox News Hits Trump for Turning Troop Visit Into ‘Campaign Rally’

‘Military men and women, I believe, deserve way more respect than that,’ Fox News’ Julie Banderas said Thursday.

The hits keep coming from Fox News to President Trump. The day after his surprise visit to U.S. troops in Iraq—his first to soldiers in a war zone since taking office nearly two years ago—the hosts of Outnumbered shared some sharp criticism of his impromptu “campaign rally” overseas.

“I just don’t think it’s ever worked out for a president to prematurely declare victory over a terrorist organization,” co-host Lisa Boothe declared early in the segment, noting that it “didn’t work out for George W. Bush with the ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech,” nor did it “work out for President Obama saying that Al Qaeda was ‘on the run.’”

“The fact that Russia and Turkey, first of all, are supporting the United States and praising us for making a decision, there lies a huge problem,” contributor Julie Banderas added. She went on to say she “really had an issue” with Trump telling service members, “We’re no longer the suckers, folks.”

“I would never consider us, as a country, as the United States, ‘suckers,’” she continued. “We have always led the fight in every major war. Military men and women, I believe, deserve way more respect than that.” Banderas wondered what military families who have lost loved ones in previous wars must be thinking right now: “Oh, so my son or daughter was a ‘sucker’ when they were fighting for our freedom?”

Only co-host Lisa Kennedy was willing to defend Trump’s comments, claiming it “speaks to their bravery” because they “put themselves in harm’s way for incursions and wars that don’t make sense.”

“There is a way, though, for both of you to be right,” Fox contributor Jessica Tarlov added, “and that’s if the president had gone and made this trip, which he absolutely should have done, and not used it as a campaign rally.”

In addition to implying that U.S. troops were “suckers” before he came along, Trump also used his remarks in Iraq to push his political agenda back home. “I don’t know if you folks are aware of what’s happening,” he told them. “We want to have strong borders in the United States, the Democrats don’t want to let us have strong borders. Only for one reason. You know why? Because I want it.”

“He could have gone there and said ‘thank you for your service’ and all the things he’s supposed to say,” Tarlov added before Kennedy interrupted her, arguing that it “doesn’t matter what he said or what he did” because the left would have attacked him anyway.

With those comments, Kennedy was echoing the message from earlier in the day on Fox & Friends, where fill-in host Pete Hegseth attacked the media for “nitpicking” the president’s political behavior during his visit with the troops.

“Man, if I was deployed, I would probably have a MAGA hat,” Hegseth said, “and if the president showed up, he better sign it.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-news- ... y?ref=home

<

<1



Hamza Division, member of Turkey-backed Free Syria Army, dispatches fighters and armored vehicles to Manbij border line [Anadolu Agency]

NEWS/SYRIA'S WAR

US refutes Syrian government's claim of entering Manbij

The US military calls parties to respect the 'integrity of Manbij and the safety of its citizens'.

The Syrian army has not entered Manbij, the United States military has said, after Syrian forces claimed they had gone into the key northern city and raised the national flag.

"Despite incorrect information about changes to the military forces in Manbij city, (the US-led coalition) has seen no indication of these claims being true," US Central Command spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Earl Brown said on Friday.

Manbij is a strategic city close to the Turkish border where Kurdish forces have been deployed since 2016.

US and French special operations troops are also stationed there, assisting the Kurds, but the Americans will be withdrawing under a surprise pull-out announced by President Donald Trump last week.

Brown called on all parties to respect the "integrity of Manbij and the safety of its citizens".

"Our mission has not changed. We will continue to support our coalition partners, while also conducting a deliberate and controlled withdrawal of forces, while taking all measures possible to ensure our troops' safety and that of our partners on the ground," he told AFP news agency.

'No sign of Syrian forces'

The Syrian government announced earlier on Friday that it has entered the town of Manbij and raised the national flag there.

It also pledged to guarantee "full security for all Syrian citizens and others present in the area", according to Syrian state-run news agency SANA.

However, Al Jazeera's Mohammed Adow, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkish border, said residents of Manbij, which lies 30km south of the Turkish border, dispute the Syrian army's claim.

"Manbij residents who we spoke to have said that they have not seen any sign of Syrian forces in their city but what we know is that Syrian government troops have already been on the outskirts of the city, where they were part of an international coalition that is fighting remnants of ISIL," he said.

Nura al-Hamed, deputy head of the Manbij local authority, told AFP that the regime deployment was the result of Russian-sponsored negotiations.

"The regime forces will not enter the city of Manbij itself but will deploy on the demarcation line" with Turkish-backed Syrian groups, she said.

Shift in alliance

The Syrian army's deployment creates a government buffer arching across northern Syria that fully separates the Turkish army and its proxies from the Kurds.

Turkey reacted to the deployment by warning "all sides to stay away from provocative actions" while a large convoy of its Syrian auxiliaries were seen moving closer to the western edge of Manbij.

The US withdrawal from Syria has sent Kurdish forces scrambling to find allies to fend off a possible attack from Turkey, which views the fighters as "terrorists".

The Kurds have welcomed a Syrian government advance in Manbij province, a pragmatic shift in alliances that will dash their aspirations for autonomy but could help them cut their losses.

The People's Protection Units (YPG) have been the backbone of an alliance that has spearheaded the US-backed fight against the Islamic State group in Syria.

"We invite the Syrian government forces... to assert control over the areas our forces have withdrawn from, particularly in Manbij, and to protect these areas against a Turkish invasion," the YPG said in a statement.

Al Jazeera's correspondent said the YPG's appeal was a "tactic by its fighters to avoid confrontation with the Turkish forces who they, of course, know they are no match for".

Following the conflicting reports regarding Manbij on Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayipp Erdogan said Turkey will have no reason to be in Manbij once "terrorist organisations" leave.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/ ... 58289.html

<2



FILE PHOTO: Kurdish fighters from the People's Protection Units (YPG) fire rifles at a drone operated by Islamic State militants in Raqqa, Syria,

Exclusive: U.S. commanders recommend letting Kurdish fighters in Syria keep weapons

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. commanders planning for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria are recommending that Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State be allowed to keep U.S.-supplied weapons, four U.S. officials said, a move that would likely anger NATO ally Turkey.

Three of the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the recommendations were part of discussions on a draft plan by the U.S. military. It is unclear what the Pentagon will ultimately recommend to the White House.

Discussions are still at an early stage inside the Pentagon and no decision has yet been made, the officials said. The plan will then be presented to the White House in the coming days with U.S. President Donald Trump making the final decision.

The Pentagon said it would be “inappropriate” and premature to comment on what will happen with the weapons.

“Planning is ongoing, and focused on executing a deliberate and controlled withdrawal of forces while taking all measures possible to ensure our troops’ safety,” said Commander Sean Robertson, a Pentagon spokesman.The White House did not comment.

Trump last week abruptly ordered a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, drawing widespread criticism and prompting Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ resignation.

The U.S. officials said Trump’s announcement has upset U.S. commanders, who view his decision as a betrayal of the Kurdish YPG militia, which has led the fight to eradicate Islamic State from northeastern Syria.

Ankara views the YPG as an extension of a Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey. Turkey has threatened to launch an offensive against the YPG, raising fears of a surge in violence that could harm hundreds of thousands of civilians.

The United States told the YPG that they would be armed by Washington until the fight against Islamic State was completed, one of the U.S. officials said.

“The fight isn’t over. We can’t simply start asking for the weapons back,” said the official.

The proposal to leave U.S.-supplied weapons with the YPG, which could include anti-tank missiles, armored vehicles and mortars, would reassure Kurdish allies that they were not being abandoned.

But Turkey wants the United States to take the weapons back, so the commanders’ recommendation, if confirmed, could complicate Trump’s plan to allow Turkey to finish off the fight against Islamic State inside Syria.

The Pentagon keeps records of the weapons it has supplied to the YPG and their chain of custody. But, the U.S. officials said, it would be nearly impossible to locate all of the equipment.

“How are we going to get them back and who is going to take them back?” one of the officials asked.

The debate over whether to leave weapons with the YPG coincides with Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton’s visit to Turkey and Israel next week for talks on Syria.

In May 2017, the United States started distributing arms and equipment to the YPG for an offensive against Raqqa, the de facto capital of the self-declared caliphate that Islamic State overran in Iraq and Syria in 2014.

The United States told Turkey that it would take back the weapons after the defeat of Islamic State, which has lost all but a few slivers of territory in northeastern Syria.

“The idea that we’d be able to recover them is asinine. So we leave them where they are,” said a U.S. official.

A person familiar with the discussions of the U.S. withdrawal plan said the White House and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan would oppose the proposal to allow the YPG to keep its U.S.-supplied weapons.

The recommendation “is a rejection of Trump’s policy to withdraw from Syria,” said the person, who asked not to be further identified.

Turkey has said weapons supplied to the YPG have in the past ended up in the hands of its Kurdish separatists, and described any weapon given to the insurgents as a threat to Turkey’s security.

A phone call between Trump and Erdogan led to the decision to withdraw all U.S. forces from Syria.

In the call two weeks ago, Trump had been expected to deliver a standard warning to the Turkish president over his plan to launch a crossborder attack targeting U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in northeast Syria, U.S. officials said.

Instead, in the course of the conversation, Trump reshaped U.S. policy in the Middle East, abandoning a quarter of Syrian territory and handing Turkey the job of finishing off Islamic State in Syria.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mide ... SKCN1OR1OD

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1. RANSOM NOTE

Trump Threatens to Close Southern Border if He Doesn’t Get His Wall

Donald Trump has threatened to close the southern border with Mexico “entirely” if Democrats don’t give in and give him funding for his wall. The president appeared to be infuriated by Senate Democrats’ refusal to back a spending bill that includes money for his border-wall project, leading to the government shutdown. Tweeting Friday morning, Trump wrote: “We will be forced to close the Southern Border entirely if the Obstructionist Democrats do not give us the money to finish the Wall & also change the ridiculous immigration laws that our Country is saddled with. Hard to believe there was a Congress & President who would approve!” The president went on to say that he would consider closing the border to be a “profit making operation” because the “United States looses soooo much money on Trade with Mexico under NAFTA.” Trump recently signed a replacement for the NAFTA trade agreement between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, and said the new deal would be “fantastic for all!”

Further in his early-morning tweetstorm, Trump went on to point to reports that a new “migrant caravan” was forming in Honduras, and repeated his threat that he would shut down all aid to the region: “They are doing nothing about it. We will be cutting off all aid to these 3 countries [Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador]—taking advantage of U.S. for years!”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-thr ... t-his-wall

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Border closure could cost billions

Closing the U.S. border with Mexico, which President Trump threatened to do in a Friday tweet if Democrats do not approve funding for his wall, could cost the economy billions of dollars, say analysts who have studied the issue.

“It would affect the U.S. economy massively and very negatively,” said Chris Wilson, deputy director at The Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, and the co-author of a study on the border economy.

“There’s about a billion dollars of commerce that crosses the border every single day, so every day it’s closed we’re losing out on hundreds of millions of dollars,” he added.

Trump threatened to close down the border as part of a broader fight with Democrats over building a border wall and funding the government.

“We will be forced to close the Southern Border entirely if the Obstructionist Democrats do not give us the money to finish the Wall & also change the ridiculous immigration laws that our Country is saddled with,” Trump wrote in the Friday tweet.

Trump is demanding $5 billion to fund his wall in order to reopen the government, while Democrats say they will only support legislation that includes $1.6 for border security, including $1.3 billion for fencing.

Mexico is America's third largest trade partner, and the two economies are deeply intertwined, with $558 billion in goods crossing the border in two-way trade last year alone. The Commerce Department estimated that in 2015, nearly 100,000 American jobs were supported by goods trade with Mexico.

If the border were to be shut down, experts say, the consequences would be immediate.

“The first thing you’d start to see is a spike in car prices and factories in trouble,” said Richard Miles, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Americas program.

A huge proportion of American trade with Mexico deals in parts, so shutting the border would immediately throw a wrench into the auto supply chain, as well as other manufacturing.

Another major casualty would be agriculture, which would hit farm states already facing a squeeze from a trade war with China.

Miles noted that corn and soybean exports to Mexico are big business for farmers in Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Illinois and Indiana.

American consumers would see the difference at the supermarket, said Wilson.

Many foods such as avocados, tomatoes, lettuce, celery and a variety of berries come to the United State by way of Mexico.

“It’s winter, so we don’t produce a whole lot of fruits and vegetables in the United States. By and large we depend on Mexico to supply our grocery stores in the winter,” said Wilson, who estimated that some 70 percent of that produce comes into the U.S. by truck.

Some of the states that would be the hardest hit by a border closure backed Trump in 2016.

Mexico comprised over 23 percent of imports for states such as Arizona, Michigan, Texas and Utah, which all went for Trump. Texas, Arizona, and South Dakota, all red states, each sent over a quarter of their exports to Mexico last year.

Border states would feel the brunt of the pain.

In September, nearly 8 million vehicles and 15 million passengers crossed the U.S.-Mexico border legally, according to data from the Department of Transportation.

“There are almost a million legal crossings every single day. In Tijuana alone, it’s like 50,000 vehicles and 25,000 pedestrians. That’s day laborers, nannies, landscapers coming in, and the other way around. It’s services like architects to engineers to high-skilled labor,” said Miles.

Around Thanksgiving this year, the government closed down the San Ysidro border crossing between San Diego and Tijuana for six hours, citing concern about migrants trying to rush the border.

The San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce estimated that those six hours led to an estimated $5.3 million in losses for the local economy alone.

“People depend on a functioning U.S.-Mexico border as part of their day-to-day life, in a way that few in Washington understand,” said Wilson.

Even something short of a full shutdown, such as increasing vehicle checks or otherwise slowing crossings, could be a major economic drag.

In the aftermath of 9/11, the government decided to inspect every vehicle for several, causing lines for kilometers and dramatically reducing crossings, and leaving car manufacturers and other industrialists short on supplies.

But the current situation along the border, says Wilson, provides no security justification for closing the border completely.

“I think that it would be economically dangerous. The only reason to do it is if you have a massive national security imperative to do it. In the aftermath of 9/11 that may have made sense, but people fleeing violence in Central America is just not the national security crisis at the border that would justify,” he said.

Trump previously threatened to shutter the border in October, ahead of the November midterm elections, as he devoted significant attention to a caravan of Central American refugees and migrants headed toward the United States.

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/4231 ... t-billions

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Nauert faces questions about qualifications at UN

In two years, Heather Nauert has moved from Fox News to the State Department, earning good reviews along the way as the spokeswoman for President Trump’s State Department.

Now she’s poised for an even bigger role as Trump’s nominee to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a job that combines the need to be an advocate for the United States and administration with the policy chops necessary to serve as the top U.S. envoy.

Critics have raised skepticism about the former cable news anchor’s fitness for the job, citing her lack of deep experience in government and traditional foreign policy credentials.

“I’ll be happy to hear why she thinks she’s qualified,” said Sen. Bob Menendez (N.J.), the Foreign Relations Committee’s top Democrat. “She has no foreign policy experience that I can deduce, and being a spokesperson is different than being the chief diplomat of the United States at a world body like the United Nations.”

Supporters say she’s more than qualified for the role, noting her practice in messaging the administration’s foreign policy for nearly two years under Trump’s first Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and now his successor, Mike Pompeo.

Trump is also expected to downgrade the U.N. ambassador post, meaning that Nauert will not be a part of the president’s Cabinet, as her predecessor Nikki Haley was. She is likely to play less of a role in developing policy than national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Pompeo.

“I think the criticism of Heather Nauert is in some ways outdated,” said Brett Schaefer, a U.N. analyst at the Heritage Foundation. “She has a great deal of experience in thinking about, in defending and explaining this administration’s foreign policy.”

“I don’t think she’s going to have as high profile of a policy formation role as Ambassador Haley did,” Schaefer said.

Nauert is widely believed to have a tough act to follow in Haley, the former South Carolina governor who commanded respect for her negotiation skills and independent voice even from those who criticize the administration’s actions.

Haley had little foreign policy experience but a robust government background, and quickly emerged as a fierce and respected voice for the administration.

There are no signs yet that Nauert’s confirmation will be a bruising battle in a Senate where Republicans will hold a 53-47 majority.

Still, she is expected to be peppered with questions on her foreign policy know-how from Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in private one-on-one meetings and, eventually, a public confirmation hearing.

Most Republicans have had a muted reaction to Nauert’s nomination, many holding judgment until they can meet with her in person and question her publicly in the new year.

“I look forward to meeting with her and learning more about her views,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee.

“I think if you’re the right person with the right level of intellect and understanding, then she can do the job. I just haven’t met her, so I can’t render a judgment. I have nothing against her, I just haven’t met her,” he said.

Fellow committee member Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) similarly withheld judgment until he meets with her.

“I’ve only met Heather one time, and that was actually when she was still at Fox,” Johnson said. “I want to review her background and talk to her and have an interview with her, and we’ll just go through the confirmation process.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has offered a robust endorsement of her nomination, calling her a “solid choice” and citing her rapport with Pompeo and Trump.

Nauert beat out a slew of candidates with more traditional foreign policy backgrounds for the position, including Richard Grenell, the current ambassador to Germany. Historically, occupants of the role have served in high-profile diplomatic or political positions prior to their appointment.

If confirmed, Nauert will be thrust into a vast bureaucratic organization where she will need to learn quickly how to deal with and negotiate with foreign counterparts on hot-button issues such as Iran, Yemen, North Korea’s nuclear program and Russia’s continued intervention in Ukraine.

And while Nauert has earned respect within the Trump administration, she will now need to match that on the international stage.

“She’s going to have a lot to prove very quickly, and I think she knows that, which could end up working to her advantage,” said Rachel Rizzo, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington.

Haley’s exit is one of multiple shakeups that has remade Trump’s foreign policy apparatus over the past year. Trump replaced Tillerson, who had in many ways been eclipsed by Haley as the chief U.S. diplomat, with Pompeo in the spring and brought on Bolton as his third national security adviser soon after.

While Nauert has demonstrated an ability to articulate Trump’s “America First” foreign policy, the challenge she will confront, experts say, will be negotiating tough issues and navigating a complex bureaucracy on the global stage — something Haley is believed to have mastered early on.

The administration has also been rocked by the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis, which has also shaken some of Trump’s GOP allies on Capitol Hill.

Mattis tendered his resignation following a disagreement with the president over his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, a move that also has its critics in Congress. Nauert is sure to be asked about the policy, as well as the drawdown of troops Trump plans for Afghanistan, and the treatment of U.S. allies and traditional rivals such as Russia and China.

Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho), the incoming Foreign Relations chairman, said the panel would move Nauert’s nomination “as quickly as we can after the first of the year.” Haley will vacate her post at the end of December.

https://thehill.com/policy/national-sec ... ions-at-un

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CNN's Don Lemon airs 2013 clip of Trump saying Obama should be 'fired' over shutdown

CNN host Don Lemon on Thursday shared a 2013 video of President Trump saying then-President Obama should be fired over a government shutdown.

"If you say, 'Who gets fired?' it always has to be the top," Trump said on Fox News in 2013.

"The problems start from the top and they have to get solved from the top. The president is the leader, he has to get everyone in a room and lead," Trump added at the time.

Following the clip, Lemon, a frequent critic of the president, said that the comments were "priceless."

“Donald Trump suggesting that President Barack Obama should have been fired for a government shutdown. Priceless,” Lemon said.

There has been a partial government shutdown since last week because of Trump and Democratic leaders disagreeing over $5 billion in funding for the president's desired border wall.

Earlier this month, Trump said he would embrace a shutdown over funding for the wall.

On Thursday, the Senate adjourned until Monday and the House said they did not expect any votes this week, meaning the shutdown will likely drag on into at least next week.

The two sides have battled over who deserves blame for the shutdown over the last few days.

“The President and his team stayed in Washington over Christmas hoping to negotiate a deal that would stop the dangerous crisis on the border, protect American communities, and re-open the government. The Democrats decided to go home,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement released Thursday.

A spokesman for House Minority Leader and likely next Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) responded, saying Democrats would pass a bill to reopen the government when they took power if the GOP did not act.

“Democrats have offered Republicans three options to re-open government that all include funding for strong, sensible, and effective border security — but not the President's immoral, ineffective and expensive wall,” spokesman Drew Hammill wrote in a tweet.

“With the House Majority, Democrats will act swiftly to end the Trump Shutdown, and will fight for a strategic, robust national security policy, including strong and smart border security, and strong support for our service members and veterans,” he wrote.

Lemon has used old clips of Trump which contradict actions he's taken as president before, most recently sharing a 1999 video of Trump saying that "nobody knows more about campaign finance than I do" after the president's former attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in August to paying two women during the campaign in order for them to remain silent about alleged affairs they had with Trump more than a decade ago.

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/4230 ... fired-over

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Shutdown

GOVERNMENT TELLS FURLOUGHED WORKERS TO UNCLOG TOILETS FOR RENT AS TRUMP RANTS AND RAVES OVER BORDER

The fate of hundreds of thousands of federal employees rests with a president who still doesn’t understand basic facts.

One of the most distressing aspects of the ongoing government shutdown, besides the national embarrassment of having a dysfunctional political system, is that for as long as Donald Trump keeps up his tantrum over the wall, some 800,000 federal workers will go unpaid. For many who live paycheck to paycheck, the prospect of not being able to put food on the table or pay their mortgage or rent is a very real concern, with furloughed employees sharing their fears on Twitter using the hashtag #ShutdownStories. While the president is apparently unconcerned about hundreds of thousands of Americans going without a paycheck—many of them are Democrats!—the Office of Personnel Management has tried to help, sharing a series of sample letters it suggests using as “a guide when working with your creditors during this furlough.” Here’s an excerpt from one of them:

I am a Federal employee who has recently been furloughed due to a lack of funding of my agency. Because of this, my income has been severely cut and I am unable to pay the entire cost of my rent, along with my other expenses...I will keep in touch with you to keep you informed about my income status and I would like to discuss with you the possibility of trading my services to perform maintenance (e.g. painting, carpentry work) in exchange for partial rent payments.

Emphasis ours because that’s the federal government actually telling workers to beg their landlord to let them unclog some toilets or perform other janitorial work to avoid being evicted. (When tweeting the sample letters, the O.P.M. also told people to consult their “personal attorney” over legal matters—advice we’re sure the average government employee currently working without pay much appreciated.)

Presumably even less comforting, though, was the wall rant Trump went on this morning, sandwiched between defending signing MAGA merch while visiting the troops in Iraq and thanking Pravda competitor Fox & Friends for some great press:

If your reaction to reading that is “WTF” or simply slack-jawed astonishment, you’re not alone. Here, the president is somehow conflating the alleged need for an (ineffective!) wall to keep out illegal immigrants with NAFTA—a trade agreement he crowed about renegotiating not long ago. Unsurprisingly, the former beauty pageant owner, for whom everything is transactional, can’t set aside his obsession with supposedly being screwed (“The United States looses [sic] soooo much money on Trade”) and focus on one thing for one minute. Now, somehow, the battle over wall funding also has to do with jobs being sent to Mexico, plus “Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador . . . doing nothing for the United States but taking our money,” and the solution for it all is some tasteful steel slats. Or, barring that, completely shutting down the southern border. For the furloughed workers currently being advised to barter with their landlords to make rent, it can’t be much comfort to know their fate is tied to the whims and logic of a confused child.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/12 ... s-for-rent

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<1



Russia has 'unstoppable' supersonic nuclear missile that cannot be traced by Western defence systems, says Putin

Country also trialling new underwater drones that can carry nuclear bombs, as well as developing atomic warheads small enough to be delivered on a cruise missile

Russia is developing a series of nuclear weapon systems, including a new supersonic cruise missile capable of overcoming Nato defence systems, Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed.

In a belligerent state of the nation speech delivered to federal legislators, Mr Putin said the weapons are both new and unique to Russia.

He confirmed tests of a new intercontinental ballistic missile complex (ICBM) codenamed Sarmat. Weighing more than 200 tonnes, the system has an increased range over its predecessor, and is able to fly at minimal altitude, he claimed.

“No anti-missile system – even in the future – has a hope of getting in its way,” said the president.

The rhetoric from Mr Putin was not unlike some of the recent boasts by President Donald Trump about the size and capability of the US nuclear arsenal. While Russia has no doubt had the announcement planned for a while, the timing of the remarks appears to be a message to Washington in the wake of the Trump administration’s recently announced plans to develop new nuclear arms and questions about the future of arms-control agreements between Washington and Moscow.

However, the US sought to play down the potential for a new arms race. "We've been watching Russia for a long time. We're not surprised," Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said.

The White House dismissed Putin's comments. “President Putin has confirmed what the United States government has known all along, which Russia has denied: Russia has been developing destabilizing weapons systems for over a decade in direct violations of its treaty obligations,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.

Several major announcements were part of the speech. Russia was developing new underwater drones capable of carrying nuclear bombs, he said. Codenamed Status-6, the drones can travel in deep water “at speeds many times that of current submarines, the most modern torpedos and even the speediest of surface boats.”

On cue, an animation showed the new submarine destroying a Nato-resembling aircraft-carrier strike force and a seaside town. On cue, the audience applauded.

There was more. “Heroic” military developers had delivered a new class of supersonic nuclear cruise missiles. The new missiles had a range “dozens” of times above current models and were capable of flying at unpredictable trajectories and low-altitudes.

“Their ability to move around missile shield intercepts make them invincible for all current and projected anti-missile and anti-aircraft systems,” said Mr Putin.

Cue more animations of destruction, and more applause from the audience.

The US State Department also accused Russia of developing destabilizing nuclear weapons in violation of its treaty obligations, with spokeswoman Heather Nauert saying that Mr Putin's speech showed Russia had violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty.

She also criticised an animated video played during his remarks, saying it appeared to depict an attack on the United States.

“It was certainly unfortunate to have watched the video animation that depicted a nuclear attack on the United States,” Ms Nauert said. “We don't regard that as the behaviour of a responsible international player.”

Igor Sutyagin, a military expert at the Royal United Services Institute, an international defence and security think tank based in London, suggested the announcements by Mr Putin amounted to little more than “horror stories”.

Issues of production lines, finance and science made many of the technical claims suspect, he said. Most of the technology was not new: “It’s a cheap marketing trip. An old product, new package, with a new price label.”

Mr Sutyagin said: “I’m not sure if he understands what he said about low altitude, but intercontinental ballistic missiles have been flying at low altitude since at least the 1980s.”

The Status-6 underwater drone, meanwhile, went against the “philosophy” of Russian military planning. “You’d lose control over the weapon for approximately one week,” he said. “The Russian thinking about nuclear weapon use is all about keeping tight control of the weapon for as long as possible.”

In the lead up to Mr Putin’s 14th state of the nation address, few commentators anticipated such a dramatic speech. Traditionally, the event has been used to outline domestic policy priorities to his regional henchmen. This year, of course, there was another dimension. With the speech delayed for three months, it had become a central event of the presidential election campaign.

With no major opponent standing against him, Mr Putin is said to be looking at turnout instead. To project the strength of his position to the outside world, he is looking for a significant number of people to head to the polls on 18 March. In the run-up to the address, presidential aides promised it would offer a vision of the future to ordinary Russians. While Mr Putin remains popular among core constituencies, most Russians are now experiencing their fourth year of shrinking real-terms incomes.

True to the promise, Mr Putin spent much of the first hour of his speech focusing on matters of domestic peace. He touched on many of Russia’s acupuncture spots. He made striking promises. He’d halve poverty. He’d double health spending. He’d increase support to parents by 40 per cent. He’d improve ecological conditions. And he’d extend life expectancy by 10 years. Even more remarkable for a president in his 18th year of power were his promises to “increase freedom and democracy” and curtail regulatory pressure on business.

But it was in the second hour, with an abrupt turn to war, that the sparks flew. The simple animations that accompanied Mr Putin’s military presentation, showing east-west trajectories for his new weapons, left little to the imagination. This speech was a bellicose challenge to Russia’s rediscovered geopolitical foe, the United States. It was the sort of gesture that wearied Russian voters tend to enjoy.

Mr Putin said Russia had stepped up military development in response to the 2002 US withdrawal from the treaty on anti-ballistic weapons systems.

“They thought we would never be able to recover economically, militarily, so ignored our complaints,” he said. “They didn’t listen, but perhaps they will listen now.”

The reality of the confrontation was somewhat more nuanced, suggested Mr Sutyagin. American anti-missile shields were “never” intended for use against Russia, since everyone understood the sophistication of Soviet weapons. He said: “The Kremlin knows this too, so why the hysteria? Perhaps it has something to do with the huge losses sustained by Russian mercenaries in Syria last month.”

For political commentator and former Kremlin advisor Gleb Pavlovsky, writing on social media, it was today, after an absent election campaign, that Mr Putin finally found his purpose.

“Only by telling everyone how he would destroy the world did the old man come alive,” he said.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 34296.html

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Underwater Drone

Russia's New Submarine: Stealthy, Loaded with Cruise Missiles and Hypersonic Weapons?
Should the Navy be worried?

he Husky-class submarine might seem redundant since the Yasen class is also in production. However, the addition of hypersonic weapons, increased automation and robotic integration, and reduced acoustic signature (especially if it really is two times) make the Husky class an incremental upgrade. Perhaps the true advantage of the ­Husky class is not in its technical specifications but rather its price—it’s slated to be a fair bit cheaper than the Yasen class . Moscow will appreciate the lower price, since the Husky class is expected to replace all third-generation SSNs in Russian service, including the Akula- and Sierra-class SSNs. Whether any of this gets past the planning stage remains to be seen.

Russia’s attack submarine fleet is one of the best in the world. When the Akula and Alfa classes of Soviet nuclear attack submarines (SSNs) were launched, they were among the most advanced in the world. While the Russian Navy has continued this tradition with the Yasen-class submarines—which are still under construction—it is also looking to the future with the new Husky-class. Information on the Husky-class is limited because the project is still on the drawing board, but it will have a number of interesting features that could make it harder to detect and more lethal. According to Vice Admiral Viktor Bursuk, the Husky-class will begin construction sometime around 2023. Finalization of the design and research work for this class is expected to finish by the end of 2018.

The Husky­ -class is meant to serve in both the SSN (attack) and SSGN (cruise missile carrier) capacities. This was first reported in 2015, when the head of the United Shipbuilding Corporation, Anatoly Shlemov, revealed that the fifth-generation (referring to Husky) project would fulfill both of these roles. The importance of Russian SSGN platforms has been emphasized by certain groups in the Russian government, due to the use of Kalibr cruise missiles in Syria by the Russian Navy.

The primary improvement Husky class’ lethality is the new missile it is slated to carry—the 3M22 Zircon hypersonic cruise missile. The Zircon was successfully tested in 2017, reaching speeds of up to Mach 8. These speeds will make it very hard to track and intercept, as a cruise missile would be able to travel from a ship’s radar horizon to the ship very quickly. Zircon’s ability to reach Mach 8 puts it at almost three times faster than prior generation missiles. The P-800 Onyks or P-700 Granit missiles, for instance, could only reach speeds of Mach 2.5. The Husky class would also be capable of carrying Kalibr cruise missiles.

A recent photo released by the design bureau behind the Husky class, SB Malachit, may shed light on how these armament systems will be implemented into the submarine’s design. In the photo, launchers are seen in the bow and middle of the submarine. Eight covers are seen opening in the middle of the submarine. As Mr. Valagin writes at rg.ru, there will be between 40–48 missiles underneath these covers, as a similar launcher construction on the Yasen ­-class submarines holds between 4–5 missiles, depending on the type.

Other offensive capabilities of the Husky class include integration to operate various varieties of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). Some sites have even reported that the Husky class could employ the Status 6 nuclear torpedo. The head of Malachit design bureau’s robotics sector, Oleg Vlasov, has also stated that the Husky class will be integrated with systems that work in the air, meaning the Husky class could possibly launch unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to conduct reconnaissance and find targets. While the photo shows what might appear to be torpedo tubes in the bow of the submarine, it is speculated that the Husky class will have its torpedo launcher around the center of the sub, similar to the Yasen class, with the bow being reserved for the forward launcher and sonar systems.

The other “hyped” feature of the Husky class will be its incredibly low acoustic signature. Composite materials are being used in the Husky class so that sound waves from the submarine will be harder to detect. In addition to this, advanced technologies designed to mitigate the acoustic signature of prior generation subs are expected to be incorporated into the Husky class. According to Bursuk, the Husky class is expected to be two times quieter than earlier generations of submarines.

The Husky -class submarine might seem redundant since the Yasen class is also in production. However, the addition of hypersonic weapons, increased automation and robotic integration, and reduced acoustic signature (especially if it really is two times) make the Husky class an incremental upgrade. Perhaps the true advantage of the ­Husky class is not in its technical specifications but rather its price—it’s slated to be a fair bit cheaper than the Yasen class . Moscow will appreciate the lower price, since the Husky class is expected to replace all third-generation SSNs in Russian service, including the Akula- and Sierra-class SSNs. Whether any of this gets past the planning stage remains to be seen.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-b ... iles-26353

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The halfway point: what have two years of Trump's wrecking ball done to America?

The republic has undergone a wild stress test but despite new lows, Donald Trump’s presidency has also seen a democratic renaissance

It’s nearly half-time and we’re still here. On 20 January it will be two years since the businessman and reality TV celebrity Donald Trump took the oath as president, spoke of “American carnage” and boasted about his crowd size, leaving millions to wonder if the US, and the world, could survive him.

It will also be two years until the next inauguration in Washington. Has the 45th president kept his campaign promises and made America great again? Or has he proven an existential threat to the republic, stoking internal divisions, destroying its reputation abroad and assailing norms and values, the rule of law and reality itself?

For sure, Trump is testing his infamous January 2016 claim – “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters” – to destruction.

True, there has been no new war, no major terrorist attack, no economic crash – at least not yet – such is the soft bigotry of low expectations. There is also a school of thought that this presidency was necessary, that the rise of a narcissistic authoritarian has brought about a moment of reckoning, forcing white Americans to confront a racism many had dismissed as ambient noise and forcing everyone to confront a broken politics.

“There’s no question that the institutions of our democracy are being tested every day in terms of the fundamental checks and balances built into our constitution,” said Leon Panetta, a former defence secretary and CIA director. “There are some days when you wonder whether the system is going to work well, but I think generally we’ve been able to survive. But presidencies ought to be about a hell of a lot more than just survival.”

Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington and former policy adviser to President Bill Clinton, agrees: “America is surviving; it isn’t thriving. Our institutions have undergone a stress test. They have bent; they haven’t broken.”

Most observers agree that Trump has remained true to himself and his candidacy, the anti-Barack Obama. Last month he awarded himself an A+, asking on Fox News: “Is that enough? Can I go higher than that?”

Trump presides over a strong economy with unemployment at its lowest rate for half a century, though Democrats argue that he is building on Obama’s foundations and warn of a spiralling national debt. He passed sweeping tax reform in what critics say was a giveaway to the super-rich at the expense of working families. He slashed regulations with little heed for the environment (he denies the science of climate change).


He appointed Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the supreme court, and many more conservative judges to the lower courts, delighting his base but infuriating millions of women and men after allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh were brushed aside. He has failed to build the wall he promised on the Mexican border but enforced an anti-immigration policy that separated children from their parents.

Overseas, Trump has praised authoritarians while alienating old allies and rattling the post-second world war liberal order. His relationship with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, remains a mystery, exemplified by a summit in Helsinki that led to cries of treason, but special counsel Robert Mueller has caught several criminals in Trump’s orbit and has cast a long shadow over the White House. Trump’s trade war with China could hurt the people who elected him the most.

Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, says: “Trump is squandering one of America’s greatest strengths, which is its allies. Stand back and say, is America more powerful than when he got elected in 2016? The answer has to be no. There has been only slippage.”

Along the way, the Republican party has done little to stop him, with most critical voices in the Senate – John McCain, Bob Corker, Jeff Flake – stilled by death or retirement. Even so, Jacobs retains faith in the country’s resilience. He said: “I’m not one of those people who think American democracy is ending. This is not a late-night horror movie. This is a country that had hundreds of years of democracy with a civil war, the McCarthy hearings and a lot more. The country has been through the wringer and democracy has held.

“When I look at the performance of institutions, I’d say it’s largely operational. The media has been described as the enemy of the people but the press looks more vibrant and aggressive in its reporting than at any time since Watergate. Trump is an aberration in his conduct but the operation of the American electoral system, judiciary and media continue.”


Trump confronts the CNN correspondent Jim Acosta. The president has regularly accused the media of being the ‘enemy of the people’. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Trump also provokes questions of character, ethics and temperament. His White House has been a vortex of chaos with a record turnover of staff. He surrounded himself with ageing white men and members of his own family, inviting accusations of corruption. He drew moral equivalence between white nationalists and anti-fascist protesters after deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, and appears to reserve particular venom for women and people of colour. He has attacked the media as “the enemy of the people” while chalking up thousands of false statements. His Twitter account brims with insults, lies, vulgarity and bad spelling.

Sidney Blumenthal, a biographer of Abraham Lincoln, says: “Trump is certainly the person with the worst character ever to be president. At two years and counting, the damage may equal the damage done by the worst presidents which brought on the civil war, and the damage done by Andrew Johnson who encouraged the Ku Klux Klan and white nationalist attacks on Reconstruction that brought about legalised segregation.”

Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to Clinton, warns that even if Trump – who lost the popular vote in 2016 and saw House Republicans routed in 2018 – is defeated in 2020, his legacy will endure. “The idea that there can be a simple restoration and the country can pick up where we left off the minute before Trump took the oath is a dangerous illusion. We’re going to have to deal with the damage. It is too profound that it is an unprecedented assault on our constitution.”

And yet there is a striking paradox. Over the past two years, Trump has also caused a democratic renaissance. The first Women’s March on Washington the day after his inauguration was probably the biggest single-day demonstration in recorded US history, with an estimated 725,000 people. In November 2018, 49% of the voter-eligible population showed up at the polls, the highest midterm turnout seen since 1914. Activists, authors, journalists and satirists have thrived in an age when politics suddenly matters again. The complacent myth of a post-racial country, which some espoused after Obama’s election, has been exploded, forcing some long-overdue conversations.


Asked if he considers Trump a white supremacist, Rashad Robinson, president of the advocacy group Color of Change, replies instantly: “Absolutely.” But he adds: “If Trump was the only one, he couldn’t survive. There is potential for us to be more honest and more clear and see what people do when things are hard. When you’re getting your tax breaks and your judges, are you willing to go along with racism?”

The president has shaken up norms once taken for granted, he adds. “Trump and the right have sort of called the bluff on those things where we thought the system was supposed to work: you can’t steal a supreme court seat, you can’t say racist things to a black female reporter, you can’t lie every day and get away with it. The bluff has been called and we can’t rely on the old structures and rules of cordiality.”

But the “resistance” to Trump has produced a surge of civic activism. Robinson says: “As much as the levers of power are being used, racial justice is winning as never before. People are working across silos as they haven’t in the past. There’s a new level of engagement.”

One example is Jjana Valentiner, an actor and makeup artist from Salt Lake City, Utah, now living in Washington, who stood outside the White House with candles on the night of Trump’s election. “I was in shock,” she recalls. “I was just numb. I heard a lot of people say it felt like a death.”

Valentiner’s response is to regularly hand-deliver boxes of cupcakes to members of Congress, the media and others she wants to thank for “saving democracy”, helped by a GoFundMe page that has raised more than $2,000 to date. She reflects: “We had stages of grief and, now that we’re two years in, I can look at it and go, right, it was necessary because I think it’s exposing a lot of what was under the surface already that needed to be exposed, especially for white folks.

“I actually think we’re going to get through this and I think we’re going to be stronger and better because of it.”


Neil Sroka, communications director of the progressive group Democracy for America, also finds consolation in the country’s response. “A giant Trump-shaped cloud sits over everything, but the silver lining is that the rise of this administration has led to a progressive awakening that had been thought of as possible but not guaranteed,” he says. “What many folks have realised is how fragile institutions are and in a lot of ways Trump himself hasn’t rotted the trust, but the wrecking ball Trump has been to our democratic norms has exposed the rot that lay beneath the surface.”

Race has been at the core of the Trump presidency, just as it is at the core of America. Sroka adds: “In January 2017, we had millions of white liberals running around saying this isn’t our country and what the last two years have shown is that, yes, this is our country and the only way we’re going to fix it is to fundamentally change our politics.”

Trump is as American as Obama. His presidency has laid bare America’s soul and shaken its oldest institutions, including the church. Michael Curry, presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal church, says: “I think in most folks there’s a sense that something’s out of kilter. We don’t know exactly what, and that’s not a liberal or conservative thing, but there’s something in the way we’re even engaging each other.”

Curry, 65, who shot to fame at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan, says he is now having more conversations with members of Congress and people in government about spiritual values. Despite it all, does he remain optimistic? He pauses and leans back, then replies: “I believe in hope. I believe in God. This isn’t the first time the human race has been in trouble and I expect it won’t be the last.

“We’re in the midst of some tough times right now but like the old slaves used to say, tough times don’t last always. As long as there’s a God.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... ay-america

<4



78 Environmental Rules on
the Way Out Under Trump

Since his first days in office, President Trump has made eliminating federal regulations a priority. His administration, with help from Republicans in Congress, has targeted environmental rules it sees as overly burdensome to the fossil fuel industry, including major Obama-era policies aimed at fighting climate change.

A New York Times analysis, based on research from Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School and other sources, counts nearly 80 environmental rules on the way out under Mr. Trump. Our list represents two types of policy changes: rules that were officially reversed and rollbacks still in progress. Nearly a dozen more rules – summarized at the bottom of this page – were rolled back and then later reinstated, often following legal challenges.

The process of rolling back regulations has not always been smooth. In some cases, the administration has failed to provide a strong legal argument in favor of proposed changes or agencies have skipped key steps in the rulemaking process, like notifying the public and asking for comment. In several cases, courts have ordered agencies to enforce their own rules.

All told, the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks could lead to at least 80,000 extra deaths per decade and cause respiratory problems for more than one million people, according to a separate analysis conducted by researchers from Harvard. That number, however, is likely to be “a major underestimate of the global public health impact,” said Francesca Dominici, a professor of biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Here are the details for the policies targeted by the administration so far. Are there rollbacks we missed? Email climateteam@nytimes.com or tweet @nytclimate.

Air pollution and emissions
COMPLETED

1. Canceled a requirement for oil and gas companies to report methane emissions.
E.P.A. | Read more

2. Revised and partially repealed an Obama-era rule limiting methane emissions on public lands, including intentional venting and flaring from drilling operations.
Interior Department | Read more

3. Loosened a Clinton-era rule designed to limit toxic emissions from major industrial polluters.
E.P.A. | Read more

4. Stopped enforcing a 2015 rule that prohibited the use of hydrofluorocarbons, powerful greenhouse gases, in air-conditioners and refrigerators.
E.P.A. | Read more

5. Repealed a requirement that state and regional authorities track tailpipe emissions from vehicles traveling on federal highways.
Transportation Department | Read more

6. Amended rules that govern how refineries monitor pollution in surrounding communities.
E.P.A. | Read more

7. Directed agencies to stop using an Obama-era calculation of the “social cost of carbon” that rulemakers used to estimate the long-term economic benefits of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
Executive Order | Read more

8. Withdrew guidance that federal agencies include greenhouse gas emissions in environmental reviews. (But several district courts have ruled that emissions must be included in such reviews.)
Executive Order; Council on Environmental Quality | Read more

9. Reverted to a weaker 2009 pollution permitting program for new power plants and expansions.
E.P.A. | Read more

IN PROCESS

10. Proposed weakening Obama-era fuel-economy standards for cars and light trucks. The proposal also challenges California’s right to set its own more stringent standards, which can be followed by other states.
E.P.A. and Transportation Department | Read more

11. Announced intent to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement (but the process of withdrawing cannot be completed until 2020).
Executive Order | Read more

12. Proposed repeal of the Clean Power Plan, which would have set strict limits on carbon emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants. In August 2018, the E.P.A. drafted a replacement plan, called the Affordable Clean Energy rule, that would let states set their own rules.
Executive Order; E.P.A. | Read more

13. Proposed eliminating Obama-era restrictions that in effect required newly built coal power plants to capture carbon dioxide emissions.
E.P.A. | Read more

14. Prepared a legal justification for weakening an Obama-era rule that limited mercury emissions from coal power plants.
E.P.A. | Read more

15. Proposed revisions to standards for carbon dioxide emissions from new, modified and reconstructed power plants.
Executive Order; E.P.A. | Read more

16. Began review of emissions rules for power plant start-ups, shutdowns and malfunctions. In September 2018, E.P.A. officials said they were considering repealing the rule.
E.P.A. | Read more

17. Proposed relaxing Obama-era requirements that companies monitor and repair methane leaks at oil and gas facilities.
E.P.A. | Read more

18. Proposed changing rules aimed at cutting methane emissions from landfills.
E.P.A. | Read more

19. Announced rewrite of an Obama-era rule meant to reduce air pollution in national parks and wilderness areas.
E.P.A. | Read more

20. Weakened oversight of some state plans for reducing air pollution in national parks. (In Texas, the E.P.A. rejected an Obama-era plan that would have required the installation of equipment at some coal-burning power plants to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions.)
E.P.A. | Read more

21. Proposed repealing leak-repair, maintenance and reporting requirements for large refrigeration and air-conditioning systems containing hydrofluorocarbons.
E.P.A. | Read more

Drilling and extraction
COMPLETED

22. Lifted a freeze on new coal leases on public lands.
Executive Order; Interior Department | Read more

23. Repealed an Obama-era rule governing royalties for oil, gas and coal leases on federal lands, which replaced a 1980s rule that critics said allowed companies to underpay the federal government.
Interior Department | Read more

24. Made significant cuts to the borders of two national monuments in Utah and recommended border and resource management changes to several more.
Presidential Proclamation; Interior Department | Read more

25. Revoked an Obama-era executive order designed to preserve ocean, coastal and Great Lakes waters in favor of a policy focused on energy production and economic growth.
Executive Order | Read more

26. Rescinded water pollution regulations for fracking on federal and Indian lands.
Interior Department | Read more

27. Scrapped a proposed rule that required mines to prove they could pay to clean up future pollution.
E.P.A. | Read more

28. Withdrew a requirement that Gulf oil rig owners prove they could cover the costs of removing rigs once they have stopped producing.
Interior Department | Read more

29. Approved construction of the Dakota Access pipeline less than a mile from the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. Under the Obama administration, the Army Corps of Engineers had said it would explore alternative routes.
Executive Order; Army | Read more

30. Changed how the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission considers the indirect effects of greenhouse gas emissions in environmental reviews of pipelines.
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission | Read more

31. Permitted the use of seismic air guns for gas and oil exploration in the Atlantic Ocean. The practice, which can kill marine life and disrupt fisheries, was blocked under the Obama administration.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | Read more

IN PROCESS

32. Proposed opening most of America’s coastal waters to offshore oil and gas drilling.
Interior Department | Read more

33. Expedited an environmental review process to clear the way for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Congress; Interior Department | Read more

34. Ordered review of regulations on oil and gas drilling in national parks where mineral rights are privately owned.
Executive Order | Read more

35. Proposed changes to regulations for oil well control and blowout prevention systems implemented after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill.
Interior Department | Read more

36. Recommended shrinking three marine protected areas, or opening them to commercial fishing.
Executive Order; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | Read more

37. Proposed revisions to regulations on offshore oil and gas exploration by floating vessels in the Arctic that were developed after a 2013 accident.
Executive Order; Interior Department | Read more

Infrastructure and planning
COMPLETED

38. Revoked Obama-era flood standards for federal infrastructure projects, like roads and bridges. The standards required the government to account for sea-level rise and other climate change effects.
Executive Order | Read more

39. Relaxed the environmental review process for federal infrastructure projects.
Executive Order | Read more

40. Revoked a directive for federal agencies to minimize impacts on water, wildlife, land and other natural resources when approving development projects.
Executive Order | Read more

41. Revoked a 2016 order promoting “climate resilience” in the northern Bering Sea region in Alaska.
Executive Order | Read more

42. Revoked an Obama-era order that had set a goal of cutting the federal government’s greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent over 10 years.
Executive Order | Read more

43. Reversed an update to the Bureau of Land Management’s public land use planning process.
Congress | Read more

44. Withdrew an Obama-era order to consider climate change in managing natural resources in national parks.
National Park Service | Read more

45. Restricted most Interior Department environmental studies to one year in length and a maximum of 150 pages, citing the need to reduce paperwork.
Interior Department | Read more

46. Withdrew a number of Obama-era Interior Department climate change and conservation policies that the agency said could “burden the development or utilization of domestically produced energy resources.”
Interior Department | Read more

47. Eliminated the use of an Obama-era planning system designed to minimize harm from oil and gas activity on sensitive landscapes, such as national parks.
Interior Department | Read more

48. Eased the environmental review processes for small wireless infrastructure projects with the goal of expanding 5G wireless networks.
Federal Communications Commission | Read more

IN PROCESS

49. Announced plans to speed up and streamline the environmental review process for forest restoration projects.
Agriculture Department | Read more

Animals
COMPLETED

50. Overturned a ban on the use of lead ammunition and fishing tackle on federal lands.
Interior Department | Read more

51. Overturned a ban on the hunting of predators in Alaskan wildlife refuges.
Congress | Read more

52. Ended an Obama-era rule barring hunters on some Alaska public lands from using bait to lure and kill grizzly bears.
National Park Service; Interior Department | Read more

53. Withdrew proposed limits on endangered marine mammals and sea turtles unintentionally caught by fishing nets on the West Coast.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | Read more

54. Amended fishing regulations for a number of species to allow for longer seasons and higher catch rates.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | Read more

55. Rolled back an Obama-era policy aimed at protecting migratory birds.
Interior Department | Read more

56. Overturned a ban on using parts of migratory birds in handicrafts made by Alaskan Natives.
Interior Department | Read more

IN PROCESS

57. Proposed stripping the Endangered Species Act of key provisions.
Interior Department | Read more

58. Released a plan to open nine million acres of Western land to oil and gas drilling by weakening habitat protections for the sage grouse, an imperiled bird with an elaborate mating dance.
Interior Department | Read more

Toxic substances and safety
COMPLETED

59. Narrowed the scope of a 2016 law mandating safety assessments for potentially toxic chemicals, like dry-cleaning solvents and paint strippers. The E.P.A. will focus on direct exposure and exclude air, water and ground contamination.
E.P.A. | Read more

60. Reversed an Obama-era rule that required braking system upgrades for “high hazard” trains hauling flammable liquids, like oil and ethanol.
Transportation Department | Read more

61. Removed copper filter cake, an electronics manufacturing byproduct comprised of heavy metals, from the “hazardous waste” list.
E.P.A. | Read more

IN PROCESS

62. Rejected a proposed ban on chlorpyrifos, a potentially neurotoxic pesticide. In August 2018, a federal court ordered the E.P.A. to ban the pesticide, but the agency appealed the ruling.
E.P.A. | Read more

63. Proposed eliminating a program designed to limit exposure to lead , which is known to damage brain and nervous system development.
E.P.A. | Read more

64. Announced a review of an Obama-era rule lowering coal dust limits in mines. The head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration said there were no immediate plans to change the dust limit, but the review is ongoing.
Labor Department | Read more

Water pollution
COMPLETED

65. Revoked a rule that prevented coal companies from dumping mining debris into local streams.
Congress | Read more

66. Withdrew a proposed rule reducing pollutants, including air pollution, at sewage treatment plants.
E.P.A. | Read more

67. Revoked federal rules regulating coal ash waste from power plants and granted oversight to the states.
E.P.A. | Read more

68. Withdrew a proposed rule requiring groundwater protections for certain uranium mines.
E.P.A. | Read more

IN PROCESS

69. Proposed rolling back protections for certain tributaries and wetlands that the Obama administration wanted covered by the Clean Water Act.
E.P.A.; Army | Read more

70. Delayed by two years an E.P.A. rule regulating limits on toxic discharge, which can include mercury, from power plants into public waterways.
E.P.A. | Read more

Other
COMPLETED

71. Prohibited funding environmental and community development projects through corporate settlements of federal lawsuits.
Justice Department | Read more

72. Announced intent to stop payments to the Green Climate Fund, a United Nations program to help poorer countries reduce carbon emissions.
Executive Order | Read more

73. Reversed restrictions on the sale of plastic water bottles in national parks desgined to cut down on litter, despite a Park Service report that the effort worked.
Interior Department | Read more

IN PROCESS

74. Proposed limiting the studies used by the E.P.A. for rulemaking to only those that make data publicly available. (The move was widely criticized by scientists, who said it would effectively block the agency from considering landmark research that relies on confidential health data.)
E.P.A. | Read more

75. Proposed changes to the way cost-benefit analyses are conducted under the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and other environmental statutes.
E.P.A. | Read more

76. Delayed compliance dates for federal building efficiency standards until Sept. 30, 2017. No updates have been published, and the status of the rule remains unclear.
Energy Department | Read more

77. Proposed withdrawing efficiency standards for residential furnaces and commercial water heaters designed to reduce energy usage.
Energy Department | Read more

78. Withdrew a proposed rule that would inform car owners about fuel-efficient replacement tires. The Transportation Department is scheduled to republish a proposal in June 2019.
Transportation Department | Read more

11 rules were reinstated following
lawsuits and other challenges

1. Reinstated a rule aimed at improving safety at facilities that use hazardous chemicals following a federal court order.
E.P.A. | Read more

2. Approved the Keystone XL pipeline rejected by President Barack Obama, but a federal judge blocked the project from going forward, saying the Trump administration did not present a “reasoned explanation” for the approval.
Executive Order; State Department | Read more

3. Reversed course on repealing emissions standards for “glider” trucks — vehicles retrofitted with older, often dirtier engines — after Andrew Wheeler took over as head of the E.P.A.
E.P.A. | Read more

4. Delayed a compliance deadline for new national ozone pollution standards by one year, but later reversed course.
E.P.A. | Read more

5. Suspended an effort to lift restrictions on mining in Bristol Bay, Alaska.
E.P.A. | Read more

6. Announced intent to regulate paint removers containing methylene chloride after pressure from families who had lost relatives to poisoning. The E.P.A. had indicated it would not finalize regulatory action on the substance. (But so far it has not moved to ban its commercial use.)
E.P.A. | Read more

7. Delayed implementation of a rule regulating the certification and training of pesticide applicators, but a judge ruled that the E.P.A. had done so illegally and declared the rule in effect.
E.P.A. | Read more

8. Initially delayed publishing efficiency standards for household appliances, but later published them after multiple states and environmental groups sued.
Energy Department | Read more

9. Reissued a rule limiting the discharge of mercury by dental offices into municipal sewers after a lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group.
E.P.A. | Read more

10. Re-posted a proposed rule limiting greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft, after initially changing its status to “inactive” on the E.P.A. website.
E.P.A. | Read more

11. Removed the Yellowstone grizzly bear from the Endangered Species List, but the protections were later reinstated by a federal judge.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... ersed.html

<5



Politics

EPA Aims to Triple Pace of Deregulation in Coming Year

Agency hopes to revoke waiver allowing tougher standards in California and other states

The Environmental Protection Agency released a plan for eliminating regulations next year that would likely dwarf its current rule-cutting pace.

The agency expects to finalize approximately 30 deregulatory actions and fewer than 10 regulatory actions in fiscal 2019, according to the Trump administration’s Unified Agenda, released Tuesday.

Such administrative speed would roughly triple the EPA’s pace from the prior year. In fiscal 2018, the agency finalized 10 deregulatory actions and three regulatory actions, resulting in an estimated $1.2 billion in cost savings, according to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

While the administration has argued that paring back regulations will reduce costs, many of the rollbacks have been soundly criticized by environmental groups for weakening public health protections and exacerbating climate change.

Under an April 2017 Office of Management and Budget directive, an action is considered “deregulatory” if its generates compliance savings for regulated industries, while “regulatory” actions generate compliance costs for the industries.

A potential “deregulatory” action heralded by OIRA is a proposed rule that the EPA and the Transportation Department issued in August that would freeze fuel economy and tailpipe emissions standards finalized under the Obama administration at 2020 levels through 2026, instead of enacting more stringent requirements. It would also revoke a waiver that allows California, along with 12 other states and the District of Columbia, to set tougher standards than federal levels.

In its review, the OIRA called the proposed rollback a “substantial” cost-cutter, citing administration estimates that it may save automakers $120 billion to $340 billion.

Also in the agenda, the administration projected that the EPA will finalize in March 2019 a proposal that would withdraw the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which required states to draft plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions from existing coal-powered electricity sources and other generation sources.

Another possible rule to be finalized in 2019 is a revision of an Obama administration rule defining “Waters of the United States,” which, in an effort to clarify water protections, modified how the federal government determines which waterways are in its jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act.

The rule has been a point of consternation from congressional Republicans who consider it a government overreach. It has also become an issue in ongoing funding arguments. A GOP policy rider that would allow the EPA to withdraw the rule without statutory reviews has been a sticking point in recent Interior-Environment funding discussions due to opposition by Democrats.

Yet action on rescinding and replacing the WOTUS rule has been slower than anticipated. Then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt told a Senate panel in May that he expected a proposed withdrawal in the “third quarter” of 2018 and a replacement by year’s end.

Currently, the administration plans to replace the rule in two steps: a final replacement rule would be issued by March 2019, and a rule with its own definition of “Waters of the United States” would come by the following September.

In a move likely to assuage concerns among corn-state lawmakers about whether the U.S. will meet its statutory renewable fuel obligations, the agency said in the agenda that it will finalize by May 2019 a proposal to allow gasoline blended with up to 15 percent ethanol, known as E15, to be sold year-round. Sales of the 15 percent blend are currently banned in the summer months because of an EPA finding that it increases smog.

https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/ ... oming-year

<

<1>



Trade wars cost U.S., China billions of dollars each in 2018

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The U.S.-China trade war resulted in billions of dollars of losses for both sides in 2018, hitting industries including autos, technology - and above all, agriculture.

Broad pain from trade tariffs outlined by several economists shows that, while specialized industries including U.S. soybean crushing benefited from the dispute, it had an overall detrimental impact on both of the world's two largest economies.

The losses may give U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, motivation to resolve their trade differences before a March 2 deadline, although talks between the economic superpowers could still devolve.

The U.S. and Chinese economies each lose about $2.9 billion (£2.3 billion) annually due to Beijing's tariffs on soybeans, corn, wheat and sorghum alone, said Purdue University agricultural economist Wally Tyner.

Disrupted agricultural trade hurt both sides particularly hard because China is the world's biggest soybean importer and last year relied on the United States for $12 billion worth of the oilseed.

China has mostly been buying soy from Brazil since imposing a 25 percent tariff on American soybeans in July in retaliation for U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods. The surge in demand pushed Brazilian soy premiums to a record over U.S. soy futures in Chicago, in an example of the trade war reducing sales for U.S. exporters and raising costs for Chinese importers.

"It’s something that's crying for a resolution," Tyner said. "It's a lose-lose for both the United States and China."

Total U.S. agricultural export shipments to China for the first 10 months of 2018 fell by 42 percent from a year earlier to about $8.3 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The most actively traded soybean futures <Sv1> contract averaged $8.75 per bushel from July to December 2018, down from an average of $9.76 during the same period a year earlier.

As of Dec. 28, futures in the last month of the year were averaging $8.95-1/2 a bushel. That was down from $9.61-3/4 for all of December last year.

To compensate suffering farmers, the U.S. government has allocated about $11 billion to direct payments and buying agricultural goods for government food programs, after consulting economists, including Tyner.

In North Dakota, which exports crops to China through ports in the Pacific Northwest, soy farmers face at least $280 million in losses because of Beijing's tariffs, said Mark Watne, president of the North Dakota Farmers Union.

"You could almost put another $100 million on top of this because all commodity prices are down and that affects North Dakota farmers indirectly," Watne said.

China's tariffs improved margins for U.S. soy crushers such as Archer Daniels Midland Co <ADM.N> by leaving plentiful supplies of cheap soybeans on the domestic market.

Chinese soybean mills, on the other hand, front-loaded soy purchases ahead of the tariffs. This led to an oversupply that reduced Chinese processing margins and led factories this summer to make the biggest cuts in years to the production of soymeal used to feed livestock.

China resumed purchases of U.S. soybeans in early December following a trade truce agreed to by leaders from the two countries during G20 summit in Argentina. But Beijing kept its 25 percent tariffs on the oil seed from America, which effectively curbed commercial Chinese buying.

"With the tariffs, the beans can't go into the commercial system," said a manager at a major Chinese feed producer, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The buying will have a very limited impact on the market."

China also suffered as products such as phone batteries were hit by U.S. tariffs, and customers began looking to buy from other countries.

A study commissioned by the Consumer Technology Association showed U.S. tariffs on imported Chinese products cost the technology industry an additional $1 billion per month.

The conflict also squeezed U.S. retail, manufacturing and construction companies that had to pay more for metal and other goods.

"Input price pressures remained elevated in part due to tariffs, particularly in manufacturing and construction, and firms were struggling to pass these higher costs onto customers," the Dallas Federal Reserve said.

The Big Three Detroit automakers - General Motors Co <GM.N>, Ford Motor Co <F.N> and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles <FCHA.MI> – have each said higher tariff costs will result in a hit to profits of about $1 billion this year.

The pain is ongoing, economists say: Ford and Fiat expect a similar hit in 2019.

(Reporting by Michael Hirtzer, Rajesh Kumar Singh and Tom Polansek in Chicago, Ann Saphir in San Francisco, Humeyra Pamuk and David Lawder in Washington, Ben Klayman in Detroit and Hallie Gu in Beijing. Editing by P.J. Huffstutter and Jonathan Oatis)

https://www.euronews.com/2018/12/28/tra ... ch-in-2018

<2



Trump pulled out of a massive trade deal. Now 11 countries are going ahead without the US

By Katie Lobosco, CNN

Updated 9:07 PM ET, Sat December 29, 2018

New York (CNN)A major 11-country agreement goes into effect Sunday, reshaping trade rules among economic powerhouses like Japan, Canada, Mexico and Australia — but the United States won't be a part of it.

That means that Welch's grape juice, Tyson's pork and California almonds will remain subject to tariffs in Japan, for example, while competitors' products from countries participating in the new Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership will eventually be duty-free.

Japan will offer similar tariff relief to the European Union, in a separate trade deal set to go into effect on February 1.

"Our competitors in Australia and Canada will now benefit from those provisions, as US farmers watch helplessly," said US Wheat Associates President Vince Peterson at a hearing on the potential negotiations with Japan.

It's the opposite of what the Obama administration planned when it began negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership, known as TPP. The proposed deal, which never passed Congress, formed the backbone of the US strategy to counter Chinese economic influence, but it was one of the first things President Donald Trump moved to undo when he took office, pulling the United States out of the deal in January of 2017.

Instead, he's pursued a series of direct bilateral agreements, launching a trade war with escalating tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese goods to force Beijing to the negotiating table. The strategy has led to a new round of talks between Trump and his counterpart Xi Jinping — but leaves US producers out of broader regional arrangements with other Pacific Rim nations, for now.

The current signatories have left open the possibility that the United States and other countries — including China — could join in the future if they agreed to the terms.

"They're trying to say, 'We're moving forward and we hope you come to your senses at some point and join us, too'," said Phil Levy, a senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs who served as a senior economist for trade under President George W. Bush.

Withdrawing from the TPP fulfilled a campaign pledge for Trump, who had called the agreement a "disaster" and argued that it would harm American workers and manufacturing.

He's also renegotiated the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, replacing it with a successor deal, the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which still needs congressional approval before it can take effect. And the Trump administration is currently pursuing bilateral accords with the European Union as well as with Japan.

The stakes will be even higher now that the Trans-Pacific deal is going into effect — especially for American farmers who were eager to take advantage of more open markets abroad.

Tariffs will be phased out over a 15-year period under the CPTPP.

Tyson Foods and Welch's have both complained to the US Trade Representative's Office about how their products will be at a significant disadvantage around the world if no action is taken.

But amid rising concerns over intellectual property protection and cybercrime, the most important element of the CPTPP may be its new rules for digital trade. Some of which were included in Trump's renegotiated North America Free Trade Agreement, but won't apply to US trade beyond Mexico and Canada for now.

Creating a variety of standards through a number of bilateral and trilateral trade deals could wind up hurting small and mid-sized American companies that may find it costly to keep up with the differences.

"The TPP was meant to create harmonization," Levy said. "If you're a small guy, that helps you immensely."

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/29/politics ... index.html

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Trump issues executive order freezing federal workers' pay in 2019

Updated 10:18 AM ET, Sat December 29, 2018

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump issued an executive order Friday freezing federal workers' pay for 2019, following through on a proposal he announced earlier in the year.

The move, which nixes a 2.1% across-the-board pay raise that was set to take effect in January, comes as hundreds of thousands of federal employees are expecting to begin the new year furloughed or working without pay because of a partial government shutdown.

Trump told lawmakers he planned to scrap the 2019 pay bump for federal workers in August, saying the federal budget couldn't support it. In addition to the 2.1% pay increase, the executive order also cancels a yearly adjustment of paychecks based on the region of the country where workers are posted, called the "locality pay increase," that was due to take effect in January.

The move does not affect a 2.6% pay increase for US troops next year that was passed as part of the massive defense spending bill Trump signed in August.

Lawmakers could include a pay raise for 2019 in a spending bill to reopen the government, but negotiations have been at an impasse over money for Trump's border wall.

About 380,000 federal employees are on furlough and 420,000 are working without pay as the new year approaches.

In a letter to House and Senate leaders in August, Trump described the pay increase as "inappropriate."

"We must maintain efforts to put our Nation on a fiscally sustainable course, and Federal agency budgets cannot sustain such increases," the President wrote.

Trump also stressed that a pay freeze would not affect the federal government's ability to attract qualified workers. He cited his statutory authority to adjust pay out of "national emergency or serious economic conditions affecting the general welfare."

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/29/politics ... index.html

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Departing senators warn: There's a problem with the current state of politics

Updated 1:13 AM ET, Sat December 29, 2018

(CNN)As departing senators said their goodbyes to Washington, a number of Democrats and Republicans took the opportunity to express concern about the state of the Senate and the political climate.

"All the evidence points to an unsettling truth: The Senate as an institution is in crisis," retiring Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah lamented in his farewell speech delivered on the Senate floor.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, who was defeated in the November midterm elections, echoed that idea when she delivered her own farewell speech. "I'd be lying if I didn't say I was worried about this place," she said. "It just doesn't work as well as it used to."

"Something is broken," the Missouri Democrat went on to say. "If we don't have the strength to look in the mirror and fix it, the American people are going to grow more and more cynical."

As senators who were either ousted in the elections or decided to retire and not seek another term reflected on their time in Congress, many expressed dismay at how divided Washington has become as lawmakers retreat to entrenched partisan positions that leave little room for compromise or common ground.

Most of them spoke in the final weeks of the year, a time largely overshadowed by a flurry of last-minute legislative activity and an unsuccessful effort to stave off a partial government shutdown. But the shuttering of roughly 25% of the federal government appeared to help illustrate a common sentiment conveyed during many of these farewell speeches: that something would need to change for Washington to function properly.

'This is not a normal time'

McCaskill and Hatch weren't the only ones sounding alarm bells.

"To say that our politics is not healthy is somewhat of an understatement," retiring Sen. Jeff Flake said in his farewell speech. "I believe that we all know well that this is not a normal time and that the threats to our democracy from within and without are real."

The Arizona Republican, a frequent critic of President Donald Trump, went beyond a critique of American politics to say he believes an "authoritarian impulse" is experiencing a resurgence worldwide and that the "global commitment to democracy seems now to be on somewhat shaky ground."

But while departing senators had unique messages to impart, the overarching idea that there's a problem with the current state of politics was a consistent theme.

"What in the world has happened to civility and to humility in our nation's public discourse?" Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who lost his seat in the midterms, asked in his farewell speech.

"Tribalism is our problem, and if not corrected, it's going to take our country down," he warned.

Year marked by 'loss of comity'

The farewell speeches came as the most recent session of Congress drew to a close in late December -- a session that has been punctuated by a series of bitterly contentious fights on Capitol Hill.

Senators split almost entirely along party lines in the fight to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, a battle that saw Christine Blasey Ford, a college professor from California, testify before lawmakers that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her in the 1980s when they were in high school and Kavanaugh vehemently deny the accusation.

Tensions ran high between Democratic and Republican senators during the confirmation hearings. In one dramatic moment, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina accused his Democratic colleagues of trying to "destroy" Kavanaugh's life for political gain.

In the end, only one Republican -- Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska -- opposed the nomination, while just one Democrat -- Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia -- sided with Senate Republicans to elevate Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

Hatch said during his farewell speech that "many factors contribute to the current dysfunction," but added, "If I were to identify the root of the crisis it would be this: the loss of comity and genuine good feeling among Senate colleagues."

In yet another sign of division between the two parties, 2018 started off with a government shutdown at the end of January and ended with another fight in December, when a standoff between Trump and Democrats over funding for a border wall triggered a partial shutdown that began just days before Christmas.

Don't be afraid of 'tough votes' and other advice

As departing senators outlined concerns in their farewell speeches, many described what they believe has contributed to the highly divisive political climate and what they think needs to change.

McCaskill urged lawmakers to have the courage to take "tough votes."

"Solving the toughest problems will not happen without tough votes," she said. "We can talk about the toughest problems ... we can argue about them, we can campaign on them, but we're not going to solve them without tough votes."

Nelson and outgoing Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly of Indiana, who also lost his seat in the midterms, suggested that an influx of big money in politics has had a corrosive effect, making an argument common to the Democratic Party.

"The court's 2010 decision opened the floodgates and allowed the wealthiest Americans to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence our elections and corrupt our democracy," Nelson said, referring to the landmark 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court ruling.

In his farewell speech, Donnelly said that "the divisive rhetoric, the political campaigns, increasingly funded by tens of millions of dollars, anonymous, dark money interests is really doing damage to this country."

Nelson argued that another issue is the "constant attempts to disenfranchise voters and make it more difficult for every American to have their voice heard at the ballot box."

Hatch, meanwhile, decried "identity politics," a concept often invoked critically by Republicans, who frequently accuse Democrats of subscribing to it.

"We must reject the politics of division, starting with identity politics," the Utah Republican said, adding that "identity politics is nothing more than dressed-up tribalism. It is the deliberate and often unnatural segregation of people into categories for political gain."

'I love this place'

In their farewell speeches, departing senators also reflected on fond memories of their time in Congress, and some expressed optimism for the future despite their concerns.

"For all the problems I've outlined, know that I love this place," McCaskill said. "We have fought, we have cried and we have laughed together. Just like family."

"For more than four decades, I have had the distinct privilege of serving in the United States Senate," Hatch said, adding, "speaking on the Senate floor, debating legislation in committee, corralling the support of our colleagues on compromise legislation -- these are the moments I will miss. These are the memories I will cherish forever."

Hatch went on to say that "to address this body is to experience a singular feeling: a sense that you are a part of something bigger than yourself, a minor character in the grand narrative that is America."

Flake called it "the honor of my life to represent my home, Arizona, in the United States Senate."

Despite his warnings, he said he was leaving the Senate "grateful and optimistic."

"Serious challenges lie ahead, but any honest reckoning of our history ... will note that we have confronted and survived more daunting challenges than we now face," Flake said. "Ours is a durable, resilient system of government, designed to withstand the foibles of those who sometimes occupy these halls."

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/29/politics ... index.html

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