Louisiana officials have chosen a sugar cane farm as the next home for residents of a tiny, shrinking island, a move funded with a 2016 federal grant awarded to help relocate communities fleeing the effects of climate change.

Dozens of Isle de Jean Charles residents are to be relocated about 40 miles (64 kilometers) to the northwest, in Terrebonne Parish, Nola.com|The Times-Picayune and The New Orleans Advocate report.

The state is negotiating to purchase the 515-acre (208-hectare) tract, which is closer to stores, schools and health care — and which is less flood-prone than the island, which has been battered by hurricanes and tropical storms.

Louisiana’s Office of Community Development expects to finalize the purchase in the coming weeks.

“Everybody seems to think it’ll be a pretty quick property negotiation,” said Mathew Sanders, the community development office’s resilience program manager.

Construction on the new settlement could begin in late 2018 or early 2019, meaning island residents most likely will have to endure at least one more hurricane season before moving.

Last year, Isle de Jean Charles became the first community in the U.S. to receive federal assistance for a large-scale retreat from the effects of climate change. About $48 million was allotted to purchase land, build homes and move the island’s approximately 80 full-time residents.

Tribe’s area mostly gone

Isle de Jean Charles is home to members of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe. It has lost 98 percent of its area since 1955. Causes include erosion, sinking of coastal land, and Mississippi River levees that block replenishing river sediment.

Climate change-triggered sea-level rise is expected eventually to drown the island.

Owned by Acadia Agricultural Holdings, the sugar farm is valued at $19.1 million, but the actual purchase price may be about half that, Sanders said.

Albert Naquin, the tribe’s chief, said he looked at the site two years ago and it was immediately his favorite.

“It’s in the best part of the parish; it’s the highest area,” he said. “I pushed for that one.”

A master plan for the new development being created by the consulting firm CSRS will include not just houses but also community spaces and maybe even features such as crawfish ponds.

“We want to move the people on the island in such a way that the community can sustain itself,” Sanders said. To that end, officials may try to attract some businesses, including retail.
…

your ad here

U.S. President Donald Trump capped the biggest legislative accomplishment of his first year in office Friday, signing a $1.5 trillion tax overhaul into law minutes before departing Washington for holidays in Florida.

 

Clearly in a celebratory mood after the best week of his presidency, Trump said he wanted to fulfill a pledge to sign the “biggest tax cuts and reform in our country” by Christmas.

 

“I didn’t want you folks to say I wasn’t keeping my promise. I’m keeping my promise,” he told reporters who witnessed the Oval Office signing ceremony.

 

In a tweet a short time later, Trump responded to criticisms from Congressional Democrats that the bill would be a big boon for the wealthiest Americans but would do little for average families.

“95% of Americans will pay less or, at worst, the same amount of taxes (mostly far less). The Dems only want to raise your taxes!” he tweeted.

 Funding bill

The president also signed a short-term funding bill that will keep the government functioning through the holidays and into the New Year. The 30-day spending measure puts off the possibility of a government shutdown until late January.

 

The tax package, the most significant revenue bill since the 1980s, makes a permanent cut to the corporate rate from 35 percent to 21 percent and reduces the tax burden for most individuals for several years.

 

The president told reporters that corporations are “literally going wild” over the new tax rates, which he said he hopes will spur sufficient economic growth to cover the loss in tax revenues.

“Everything in here is really tremendous things for businesses, for people, for the middle class, for workers,” he said. “And I consider this very much a bill for the middle class and a bill for jobs. And jobs are produced through companies and corporations and you see that happening.”

Givaway to wealthy, critics say

Democrats have scoffed at the contention the bill will pay for itself, calling it a giveaway to the wealthy that would add $1.5 trillion to the $20 trillion national debt during the next decade at the expense of the working class.

 

After the bill passed, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, said, “Republican-controlled Washington has been an all you can eat buffet for the privileged, and the powerful, and the special interests.”  

 

Republicans “know they are going to lose the Congress [in next November’s elections] so they’re just taking all the furniture, all the paintings off the wall, everything they can get to give away to corporate America,” Pelosi said. “It’s just so obvious.”

 

Trump again Friday praised several big U.S. companies that have announced employee bonuses in the wake of the bill’s passage. He cited AT&T, Boeing, Wells Fargo, Comcast and Sinclair Broadcast Group as among corporations that were passing on to workers the expected benefits from the tax cuts.

 

The president’s final day before heading off to his Mar-a-Lago winter resort in Florida was marked by news that one of this top aides, Deputy Chief of Staff Rick Dearborn is leaving.

 

White House chief of staff John Kelly was quoted by The Wall Street Journal as saying he was heartbroken to see Dearborn leave. “Rick loyally served the president for two and a half years and brought tremendous energy to the White House staff,” Kelly said.

 

Dearborn is the latest in a procession of White House staff exiting at the end of a bruising first year. Deputy National Security Adviser Dina Powell resigned earlier this month, and Omarosa Manigault Newman was forced out of her loosely defined position. More departures are expected as Trump restructures his team for his second year in office.

 
…

your ad here

Most Americans say sexual misconduct is a major problem and that too little is being done to protect victims, according to a new poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. But some — particularly Republican men — are concerned about the rights of the accused.

The sheer speed with which an accusation of sexual misconduct can sink a career rattles some men, and not just Republicans. Bart Cassida, a 40-year-old Democrat from Indiana, said he tends to believe the accusers. But he’s concerned about employers “immediately dismissing people without proper investigation.”

“People think that men don’t mind being that kind of guy,” someone physically assertive with women, said Dan Lee, 65, a Palm Springs, California, Democrat who retired after a four-decade career in computer science. “I think that’s wrong … men are concerned with their reputations.”

The poll shows that nearly 6 in 10 Americans think there is too little protection for the rights of people who have been victims of workplace sexual misconduct. By contrast, just 37 percent think there’s too little protection for people accused of sexual misconduct, 35 percent think there’s the right amount and 26 percent think there’s too much.

Majorities of women of all political persuasions, as well as male Democrats and independents, think too little is done to protect victims, but only about a third of male Republicans think the same. Among Republican men, by contrast, 52 percent think there are too few protections for the accused. Just 33 percent of Democratic men and 39 percent of Republican women think that’s the case.

Whether there’s a balance to be struck between protections for accusers and the rights of those accused of sexual misconduct is part of America’s reckoning with the problem. Women and some men have come forward in recent months with allegations credible enough to topple titans of entertainment, news, and members of Congress — often with blinding speed. Just what is an unwelcome sexual advance, and whether there should be life-altering consequences for what some might see as just a dumb remark, have ignited ferocious exchanges across U.S. society.

“On that side of it someone should have a chance to defend themselves,” said Cedar Rapids, Iowa, resident Emily Hass, 40, who says she’s confronted two people who harassed her. She’s among the 56 percent of Americans who think harassment is a major problem in U.S. workplaces. “Absolutely. I think we don’t even know the half of it.”

A third of working Americans say sexual misconduct is a very serious problem in their own workplace, a feeling most common among women, minorities and lower-income Americans. Three in 10 women and 1 in 10 men say that they’ve personally experienced sexual misconduct at work.

The tense discussion goes to the pinnacle of American government. Americans elected President Donald Trump even after they heard a recording of him boasting of groping women and knew he stood accused of assaulting or harassing more than a dozen women. He has denied any wrongdoing and has vowed to sue his accusers. Nearly a year into his presidency, that hasn’t happened.

Misconduct allegations have been made against several members of Congress, including Sen. Al Franken, who plans to step down due to sexual assault accusations.

Allegations of sexual misconduct, many of them denied, have forced a reconsideration of lifetimes of work by accused men, such as former President Bill Clinton, actor Kevin Spacey and Miramax co-founder Harvey Weinstein. And voters in overwhelmingly Republican Alabama on Dec. 12 elected a Democrat, Doug Jones, to the Senate for the first time in a quarter century. The Republican candidate, Roy Moore, stood accused of sexual misconduct with teenage girls while he was in his 30s. Moore denied the charges. Trump endorsed Moore.

The poll shows that majorities of Americans think broad sectors of society are not doing enough to prevent sexual misconduct, including institutions including the entertainment industry, colleges and universities, state and federal governments, the military and the news media.

The sweeping nature of the national reckoning shows no sign of being resolved soon, the poll found.

Overall, two-thirds think sexual misconduct happens in most or even all workplaces and more than 8 in 10 say false accusations happen at least some of the time.

And while a third of women worry at least somewhat about being victims, an equal percentage of men worry at least somewhat about being falsely accused.

The abrupt firing of NBC’s Matt Lauer from the helm of the “Today” show this month rattled Cassida.

“By the time I had heard about it, he had already been let go. And I kind of went, whoa,” said the Greencastle, Indiana, high school math teacher, a Democrat. NBC officials said they had identified a pattern of troubling behavior before giving Lauer the ax.

Lee worries that the privacy of accusers is protected more than the names of the accused.  “You always heard rumors about who was being accused. But you never heard who was doing the accusing.”

Still the poll finds many hope the attention given to sexual misconduct will make a positive difference. Most Americans — 55 percent — think the spate of recent high-profile cases will result in change for the better for women.

The AP-NORC poll surveyed 1,020 adults from Dec. 7-11 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.
…

your ad here

In a remarkably strong show of consumer demand, nearly 9 million people signed up for “Obamacare” next year, as government numbers out Thursday proved predictions of its collapse wrong yet again.

 

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said more than 8.8 million people have signed up in the 39 states served by the federal HealthCare.gov website.

 

That compares to 9.2 million last year in the same states – or 96 percent of the previous total.

 

The level exceeds what experts thought was possible after another year of political battles over the Affordable Care Act, not to mention market problems like rising premiums and insurer exits. On top of that, the Trump administration cut enrollment season in half, slashed the ad budget, terminated major payments to insurers, and scaled back grants for consumer counselors.

 

“This level of enrollment is truly remarkable, especially given the headwinds faced by the program,” said Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

 

President Donald Trump insistently predicted “Obamacare” would implode as he pursued unsuccessful efforts to repeal it in Congress. This week he incorrectly declared the GOP tax bill had essentially repealed it.

 

Despite all that, more than 1 million new customers signed up last week, ahead of a December 15 deadline for HealthCare.gov. That’s a sign of solid interest in the program, which offers subsidized private health insurance to people who don’t have access to job-based coverage.

 

It’s possible that final HealthCare.gov numbers could end up somewhat higher than reported Thursday, partly because late sign-ups in the Midwest and the West have yet to be added in.

 

The nationwide enrollment total won’t be known for weeks, since some states running their own health insurance markets – or exchanges – continue signing up customers through January.

 

Total national enrollment could wind up near last year’s final number of 12.2 million.

 

“We know anecdotally that many state exchanges are running ahead of last year, (and) we could actually make up the national enrollment deficit with higher state-run exchange enrollment,” said Chris Sloan of the consulting firm Avalere Health.

 

Among the HealthCare.gov states, Florida led in enrollments, with 1.7 million people so far. Texas was next, with 1.1 million. Sign-ups for those states could rise, since a deadline extension is available for people in hurricane-affected areas.

 

In Austin, Texas, a nonprofit group that helps low-income working people surpassed its enrollments for last year, and then some. Foundation Communities signed up 5,323 people this year, or about 20 percent more than last year.

 

‘Obamacare is working’

Health insurance program director Elizabeth Colvin credited squads of volunteers who helped steer consumers through a sign-up process that includes having to estimate their income for next year and other challenges.

 

“The number that came out today proves that Obamacare is working,” said Colvin.

 

Lori Lodes, a former Obama administration official who once helped direct the enrollment campaign, said it’s likely that last week saw the biggest number of sign-ups in the program’s history.

 

That’s certain to lead to more criticism of the Trump administration for shortening open enrollment and other actions that Democrats call “sabotage.”

 

“The American people surged to defend this historic law from the cruelty of Trumpcare, and they enrolled at a record pace in quality, affordable health coverage on HealthCare.gov,” said House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California.

 

However, the administration also took other less noticed steps to facilitate enrollment, such as creating an easier path for insurers and brokers to sign up customers.

 

The strong numbers for HealthCare.gov came a day after Trump proclaimed that the GOP tax bill “essentially repealed Obamacare.”

 

But the tax overhaul only repealed the health law’s fines on people who don’t carry health insurance, starting in 2019. Other major elements of former president Barack Obama’s law remain in place, including its Medicaid expansion tailored to low-income adults, protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions, subsidies to help consumers pay their premiums, and requirements that insurers cover “essential” health benefits.

 

First word of the enrollment numbers came via Twitter from Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

 

She struck an upbeat tone:

 

“We take pride in providing great customer service,” she wrote, congratulating her agency on “the smoothest experience for consumers to date.”

 

In an interview Thursday with The Associated Press, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, indicated he’s skeptical at best about revisiting botched efforts to dismantle the health care law.

 

Bipartisan legislation to shore up insurance markets is pending before the Senate, but its fate is also uncertain.

 
…

your ad here

Three opera singers and a classical musician say that world-renowned conductor Charles Dutoit sexually assaulted them — physically restraining them, forcing his body against theirs, sometimes thrusting his tongue into their mouths, and in one case, sticking one of their hands down his pants.

In separate interviews with The Associated Press, the accusers provided detailed accounts of incidents they say occurred between 1985 and 2010 in a moving car, the two-time Grammy winner’s hotel suite, his dressing room, an elevator and the darkness of backstage.

The women accuse the 81-year-old artistic director and principal conductor of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of sexual misconduct on the sidelines of rehearsals and performances in five cities — Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Saratoga Springs, New York.

“He threw me against the wall, shoved my hand down his pants and shoved his tongue down my throat,” retired mezzo-soprano Paula Rasmussen recounted of an incident she said occurred in his dressing room at the LA Opera in September 1991. She refused to ever be alone with the Swiss-born conductor again, she said.

Soprano Sylvia McNair, herself a two-time Grammy winner, said Dutoit “tried to have his way” with her at a hotel after a rehearsal with the Minnesota Orchestra in 1985.

“As soon as it was just the two of us in the elevator, Charles Dutoit pushed me back against the elevator wall and pressed his knee way up between my legs and pressed himself all over me,” she said.

The other two accusers did not want to be identified, saying they feared speaking up because the power the famous maestro wields could lead to them being blacklisted from the industry. 

Dutoit, who holds the titles of conductor laureate of the Philadelphia Orchestra and conductor emeritus of the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo, did not respond to multiple attempts to reach him through the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and his office in Montreal. The Royal Philharmonic said Dutoit was currently on vacation, but that it had forwarded the AP’s emailed requests for comment directly to him. The AP also reached out to Dutoit’s office with several phone calls and emails. 

Citing the “extremely troubling” allegations contained in the AP story, the Boston Symphony Orchestra said later Thursday Dutoit would “no longer appear as a guest conductor.”

“The Boston Symphony Orchestra is committed to a zero tolerance policy toward anyone who exhibits inappropriate behavior in the workplace, and behavior that runs counter to these core values will always be met with serious consequences,” the statement said.

Dutoit, a guest conductor there since 1981, had been scheduled to conduct at Boston’s Symphony Hall in February and in August during the orchestra’s summer season in Tanglewood.

In a long, distinguished career, he also has led highly regarded orchestras in Paris and Montreal, and traveled the globe as a guest conductor. He is scheduled to conduct the New York Philharmonic next month in a four-day program honoring Ravel. 

All four accusers’ stories are similar, and the AP spoke with their colleagues and friends, who confirmed that each of the women shared details of their experiences at the time.

One of the women who asked not to be identified said Dutoit attacked her three times in 2006 and once in 2010, grabbing her breasts, pinning her wrists against his dressing room wall and telling her that they would make better music if she willingly kissed him.

All four women said Dutoit either lured them to a private place to discuss or practice music, or simply seized a moment alone to make his move. The women all said they resisted him and escaped. They said they never filed formal complaints because they were young and Dutoit was the maestro. 

In interviews with the AP, more than a dozen singers, musicians and stage staff spoke of a culture of sexual misconduct in the classical music world that they said has long been implicitly tolerated by people in positions of authority.

Dutoit’s accusers said they felt inspired by all the women speaking out about sexual misconduct by powerful men in Hollywood, politics, the media and other industries, and ultimately felt empowered to break their silence after the Metropolitan Opera suspended conductor James Levine earlier this month when misconduct accusations surfaced.

Cornered in an elevator

“I never went to the police. I never went to company management. Like everyone else, I looked the other way,” said Sylvia McNair, now 61. “But it is time now to speak out.”

McNair was 28 in March 1985 when she worked with Dutoit at the Minnesota Orchestra where he was conducting and she was singing the Bach B Minor Mass.

After a rehearsal, McNair said she returned to her hotel with Dutoit and other performers and that the elevator gradually emptied until only she and the conductor remained. Dutoit immediately jumped her, she said, forcefully restraining her against the elevator wall and pushing his body into hers. 

“I managed to shove him off and right at that moment, the elevator door opened. I remember saying, ‘Stop it!’ And I made a dash for it,” she said. 

When she got to her room, she said she almost immediately called another singer who had been in the elevator with them. 

The AP spoke to the colleague, who confirmed receiving the call, saying “she was frantic because Dutoit had pressed her against the side of the elevator, pressing into her with his whole body.” He said he asked McNair the next day if Dutoit had apologized and she said he had not, and instead acted as if nothing had happened. The colleague asked not to be identified because he feared speaking out could harm his career.

McNair, who went on to perform with many of the world’s major orchestras and opera companies, said she does not feel traumatized by Dutoit’s behavior 32 years ago. “But what he did was wrong,” she said.  

Summoned to his dressing room

In September 1991, when she was 26 and trying to build her career, Paula Rasmussen landed a principal role with the LA Opera in “Les Troyens.” Dutoit showed special interest in her at rehearsals, she said, prompting a veteran soprano, now deceased, to warn her to watch out for him.

Rasmussen had dealt with inappropriate behavior before, she said, but her inner alarm bells did not sound when Dutoit summoned her. She assumed the maestro wanted to talk business.

“He called me into his dressing room right before a dress rehearsal. Over the loudspeaker: ‘Ms. Rasmussen to Mr. Dutoit’s dressing room,'” she said. 

Rasmussen, 52, now an attorney in the San Francisco area, said she recalls feeling momentarily paralyzed after Dutoit grabbed her hand and stuck it down his pants and forced his tongue into her mouth. Then came a knock on the door. The conductor opened it, she said, “and I went past him, and ran up to my dressing room.”

It was the only time she ever went to Dutoit’s dressing room unaccompanied, she said.

“He called me back repeatedly that night, and up until we opened,” Rasmussen said. “Every time he wanted to give me notes on the performance after that, somebody would go with me.”

Baritone John Atkins, who was part of the production, said he remembers Rasmussen being reticent upon getting called to Dutoit’s dressing room after the incident. “I volunteered myself to stand at the dressing room door, as a witness, for lack of a better term, to be there while she went to get notes,” he said. 

Atkins said he still remembers the cold stare from Dutoit. “He looked at me like, ‘Why are you standing here?’ And I looked at him like, ‘You know why.'”

The AP also spoke with a member of the production’s staging staff who said it was known backstage that Dutoit had approached Rasmussen “in an unwanted manner” and that the singer had been visibly upset that night. The staffer asked not to be identified for fear of losing work in the industry. 

On a subsequent occasion, Rasmussen said the conductor passed her in a hallway and whispered, “You kissed me back,” which she assumed meant to suggest that she had invited his behavior.

Rasmussen said she is breaking her years of silence “because people are listening — and nobody would listen before.”

‘Grabbed’ in a car and backstage

A third singer told the AP that Dutoit assaulted her on four different occasions when she was in her 30s during performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra — first in 2006 at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in upstate New York and then in 2010 in Philadelphia. 

She didn’t see it coming the first time, the soprano said, considering it “the chance of a lifetime” to work with the famed conductor as a featured soloist. When Dutoit offered her a ride to their hotel in Saratoga Springs after the first rehearsal, she happily accepted, she said.

“We get in his car, he starts driving down the road and he literally starts grabbing for whatever he can get,” including her breasts, she said. “For a minute, in my mind I thought, ‘Is he having a stroke?'”

She said she batted his hand away and put her bag between them until he dropped her off at the hotel. 

After the next rehearsal, she said Dutoit called a meeting in his dressing room but that she felt safe because other people were there. At one point, when she looked up from the score, she realized they were alone, however. 

As she walked toward the door, she said, Dutoit pressed her against the wall, restrained her wrists and pushed himself against her, telling her she would relax if she kissed him. He suggested they become friends, she said, and told her she should come to his hotel room. 

The AP spoke with the woman’s voice teacher, who recalled an occasion where the conductor told the soprano he wanted to speak to her. “I physically see her start to shake,” said the teacher, who requested anonymity to protect the soprano’s identity. “She grabbed my hand and said, ‘Don’t leave me alone.'”

A final act of aggression that season came on opening night, the soprano said.

Just before the performance, the soprano said she was standing on the side of the stage in her evening gown when Dutoit approached in his tuxedo. “Toi, toi, toi, maestro,” she said, meaning “good luck.” In response, she said, “He turns around, he inspects me, reaches out, grabs both my breasts and keeps walking” onto the stage. 

The woman said she worked with Dutoit again four years later at the orchestra’s home base in Philadelphia’s Verizon Hall.

When she was instructed to deliver a message to the conductor in his dressing room, she said, “it was almost worse, because I knew what I was walking into.” In a repeat of the 2006 incident, she said he pushed her against the wall, forcing his mouth on hers. 

“I was so angry that I had let it happen again,” she said. “I felt like I was in hell.”

Of Dutoit, she said, “There is nothing wrong with him as a musician, but he has been allowed to operate as a predator off the stage.”

‘Lunch’ in his hotel suite

The fourth accuser was a 24-year-old musician with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago when Dutoit came to town in spring 2006 to guest-conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. 

After a few rehearsals, the musician — who now works with a different orchestra — said Dutoit offered her a seat in his box for a concert. She assumed others were joining them, since a box typically seats a half-dozen people. But they were alone, she said.

As the music played, she said, Dutoit reached for her hand, then tried to grab it repeatedly as she pushed him away. “All the while I kept thinking, ‘How do I handle this? I can’t make him mad. I’ll try to laugh it away.'”

After a few more rehearsals, she said, he suggested they meet for lunch at a restaurant but then changed the venue to his suite at the Four Seasons Hotel. “At the time, I thought I could handle myself,” she said.

But once she arrived at the suite, Dutoit forced himself on her, she recalled. “He was just pushing himself against me, trying to kiss me, grabbing hold of my body, pushing his body on me,” she said. “I absolutely said no, pushed him away, went to the other side of the room.”

He didn’t chase her, she said, but tried to coax her to stay and even invited her to visit his apartment in Paris.

A former member of the orchestra said the woman spoke to him at the time about Dutoit, recalling she felt “utter disgust” at his advances. The man asked not to be identified to protect the musician’s identity.

After he attacked her, the musician said, Dutoit emailed her about a dozen times. She would not show the AP the emails, saying she did not want them published, but read excerpts over the phone.

In one, she said, Dutoit wrote that he was unaware “that an affectionate hug and kiss could have such a negative effect,” adding, “Of course, I forgot you are still a child.”

“You could tell this was business as usual,” the musician told the AP. “Like he knew what he was doing, and didn’t seem put off by the fact that I was saying no.”
…

your ad here

The Republican-led Congress narrowly passed a temporary spending bill to avert a government shutdown Thursday, doing the bare minimum in a sprint toward the holidays and punting disputes on immigration, health care and the budget to next year.

The measure passed the House on a 231-188 vote over Democratic opposition and then cleared the Senate, 66-32, with Democrats from Republican-leaning states providing just enough votes. President Donald Trump is expected to sign the measure.

The stopgap legislation would keep the government from closing down at midnight Friday. It has traversed a tortured path, encountering resistance from the GOP’s most ardent allies of the military, as well as opposition from Democrats who demanded but were denied a vote on giving immigrants brought to the country as children and in the country illegally an opportunity to become citizens.

The wrap-up measure allows Republicans controlling Washington to savor their win on this week’s $1.5 trillion tax package — even as they kick a full lineup of leftover work into the new year. Congress will return in January facing enormous challenges on immigration, the federal budget, health care and national security along with legislation to increase the government’s authority to borrow money.

Each of those items is sure to test the unity that Republicans are enjoying now.

“Now it gets down to some very difficult decisions on how we move forward in the first and second quarter of next year,” said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., a leader of a powerful faction of hard-right Republicans. “There is a lot to do next month. I’m not worried today. I’ll wait until January to be worried, OK?”

Democrats had initially pressed for adding their priorities to the measure, but once rebuffed on immigration they worked to keep the bill mostly free of add-ons, figuring that they’ll hold greater leverage next month.

Among the items left behind was $81 billion worth of disaster aid, which passed the House on a bipartisan 251-169 tally but stalled in the Senate. The measure would have brought this year’s tally for aid to hurricane victims in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and other parts of the Caribbean, as well as fire-ravaged California, to more than $130 billion. But both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate want changes, and it was among the items Democrats sought to hold onto for leverage next year.

“Democrats want to make sure that we have equal bargaining, and we’re not going to allow things like disaster relief go forward without discussing some of the other issues we care about,” said powerful Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Immigration is among the most difficult issues confronting lawmakers in January.

President Donald Trump rescinded a Barack Obama order giving these so-called Dreamers protection against deportation, kicking the issue to Congress with a March deadline.

“They embody the best in our nation: patriotism, hard work, perseverance,” House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California told the chamber’s Rules Committee on Thursday. “We should not leave them to celebrate the holidays in fear.”

Trump and Republicans are pushing for additional border security and other immigration steps in exchange.

“The vast majority of Republicans want to see a DACA solution. They just want to see a DACA solution that’s balanced,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., referring to the program’s name, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals

Also left unfinished were bipartisan efforts to smash budget limits that are imposing a freeze on the Pentagon and domestic agencies, a long-term extension of the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program for 9 million low-income kids and Senate legislation aimed at stabilizing health insurance markets.

Instead, lawmakers struggled to achieve the must-do: a $2.1 billion fix for an expiring program that pays for veterans to seek care outside the Department of Veterans Affairs system; a temporary fix to ensure states facing shortfalls from the Children’s Health Insurance Program won’t have to purge children from the program; and a short-term extension for an expiring overseas wiretapping program aimed at tracking terrorists.

Trump weighed in on Twitter on Thursday morning to offer a boost — and a slap at Democrats.

“House Democrats want a SHUTDOWN for the holidays in order to distract from the very popular, just passed, Tax Cuts. House Republicans, don’t let this happen. Pass the C.R. TODAY and keep our Government OPEN!” Trump tweeted.

Among Republicans, opposition to the temporary measure came mostly from the party’s defense hawks, who had hoped to enact record increases for the military this year and force the Senate to debate a full-year, $658 billion defense spending measure. But that idea was a nonstarter with Senate Democrats, who will only agree to Pentagon increases if domestic programs get a comparable hike.

The short-term spending bill does contain about $5 billion to upgrade missile defenses to respond to the threat from North Korea and to repair two destroyers damaged in accidents this year in the Pacific.

The legislation also has a provision to turn off automatic cuts to many “mandatory” spending programs, including Medicare, that would otherwise be triggered by the tax cut bill. Democrats had sought to highlight the looming spending cuts in arguing against the tax measure.

“At some point we’ve got to make the hard decisions,” said Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota.
…

your ad here

Afghanistan made improvements on a number of fronts this year but still faces major challenges, ranging from the rejuvenated Taliban and other opposition forces to widespread corruption, challenges in putting together elections, a boom in heroin production and ongoing tensions with neighboring Pakistan, an annual U.N. report says.

After decades of war and chaos, the country again appears to be at a crossroads that depends in part on whether the Taliban will give up terrorism and crime in exchange for dialogue with the government aimed at fostering a lasting peace.

“The security situation remained highly volatile, as the Taliban and Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant-Khorasan Province (ISIL-KP) showed continued capacity for inflicting mass casualties amid increased Afghan and international air strikes,” said the report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

The report was the topic for a series of speeches at the U.N. Security Council on Thursday, with hopes raised that several international efforts to bridge political divides may eventually yield success, while diplomats from several countries expressed concerns about the drug boom and the long-term prospect of instability and terrorism spreading from Afghanistan.

The U.S. expressed willingness to “partner with anyone” to bring peace to Afghanistan, and Kabul’s U.N. ambassador said he hopes “cooperation will foster cooperation.”

While Pakistan was rarely mentioned by name, there were repeated references to the need for Afghanistan’s neighbors to be fully engaged and committed to the peace process, saying there is no military solution to the violence.

President Donald Trump’s new policy for Afghanistan has included pressuring Pakistan to do more to track down on terror groups that are believed to have taken refuge there. Islamabad has sharply denied the allegations and claims no such groups are living on its soil.

While tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan spiked several times during the year, leading Islamabad to shut border crossings for extended periods and start to build a border wall, there also have been some recent positive signs. Islamabad has separately sent its military chief and a parliamentary delegation to Kabul for talks.

Another recurring theme at the Security Council underscored the need for continued international assistance, with speakers saying Afghanistan is not capable of self-reliance yet but that it must play the leading role in working out a peace deal.

And endemic corruption continues to plague the country.

“The National Unity Government continued to prioritize its reform agenda, with an emphasis on anti-corruption measures and security sector reform, in the face of ongoing security and governance challenges,” the U.N. report said.

The election process has been slowed by a series of setbacks that have undercut public confidence, though plans still call for parliamentary and district council polls in 2018.

More children were in school and getting vaccinations this year, while women were making advancements, including greater political involvement. Production of several major crops jumped, particularly saffron.

But the biggest money crop — opium poppies — also skyrocketed. The Taliban relies on revenue from opium and heroin to fund its operations.

Heroin production was up 87 percent, leading to a U.S.-led bombing campaign against drug labs.

VOA Afghan contributed to this report.
…

your ad here