American and Japanese military forces have launched joint exercises amid tensions with North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

The 13th annual Iron Fist exercises kicked off Friday in the U.S. western state of California and will continue through February 12.

More than 500 U.S. Marines and sailors are partnering with about 350 members of the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force to train in fire support operations and amphibious assaults.

“This is realistic and challenging training in partnership with the Japanese to better prepare us and them for anything that might happen in the Pacific so that we are ready to respond,” Second Lt. Tori Simenec, a spokesman for the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit in California, told VOA.

Exercise Iron Fist comes as tensions with North Korea have put Japan, South Korea and the United States on alert. North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile in November that some experts believe is capable of hitting anywhere in the continental United States.

Earlier this month, U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un exchanged threats about the size, location and potency of their “nuclear buttons.”

The U.S. and South Korea recently postponed joint military exercises until after the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics next month. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis called the delay a “practical matter” and said exercises would resume after the March 9-18 Paralympic Games.

Simenec said there was no talk of postponing Iron Fist, which she stressed were not related to events happening in North Korea.

Iron Fist training will take place at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado and Naval Auxilliary Landing Field San Clemente Island. The main training event will be a scenario-based amphibious assault launched from the USS Rushmore amphibious landing ship, in coordination with an inland helicopter assault.

This will be the last joint exercise before Japan establishes its Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade in March. The new Japanese unit is similar to the U.S. Marines and could be used to defend contested territories.
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The U.N. human rights office has sharply criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s vulgar comments on migrants from Africa and Haiti, calling them shocking and shameful.

Trump’s reportedly crude outburst against migrants from the African continent and Haiti have set off a firestorm of global rebuke. Rupert Colville, spokesman for the U.N. Human Rights Office, calls Trump’s remarks clearly racist.

“You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as ‘s—holes’ whose entire populations, who are not white, are therefore not welcome. The positive comment on Norway makes the underlying sentiment very clear,” Colville said.

Recalling Trump’s earlier comments vilifying Mexicans who cross the border as “rapists” and Trump’s re-tweeting of anti-Muslim propaganda from a far-right British group, Colville says policy proposals targeting entire groups on grounds of nationality or religion goes against universal values.

“This is not just a story about vulgar language,” he said. “It is about opening the door to humanity’s worst side. It is about validating and encouraging racism and xenophobia that will potentially disrupt and even destroy the lives of many people.” 

Colville warns that comments by a major political figure, such as the president of the United States, can have damaging and dangerous consequences.

Trump’s remarks were made at a meeting of Congressional leaders working on a bipartisan immigration deal to allow some 800,000 so-called Dreamers to remain in the United States.

U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein has previously said the future of the Dreamers should not be used as a bargaining chip to negotiate restrictive immigration measures. The young people are human beings, not commodities, he said.
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Finger-pointing and acrimony surrounding probes of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election intensified Thursday, with the Trump White House and Democratic lawmakers trading accusations of undermining and manipulating investigations that require bipartisan buy-in to succeed.

“There’s been a lot of comments about obstruction of justice, and frankly the only people we’ve seen trying to influence the investigation are former [FBI] director [James] Comey and Democrats in Congress, and that would include Senator Feinstein,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at a briefing.

Democrat Dianne Feinstein of California caused an uproar earlier this week by releasing the transcript of private conversations between congressional investigators and a political researcher who, on behalf of Democrats, hired a former British spy in 2016 to document any ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.

In the transcript, Fusion GPS co-founder Glen Simpson said Christopher Steele uncovered “alarming” evidence of collusion between the Kremlin and Trump’s team and informed the FBI of his findings.

Trump weighed in on Twitter, blasting “Sneaky Dianne Feinstein” for releasing the transcript “in such an underhanded and possibly illegal way, totally without authorization” — an act he called “a disgrace.

The president also called the Russia probe the “greatest single Witch Hunt in American history” and urged congressional Republicans to “finally take control” of the investigation.

Democrats pushed back, defending Feinstein and saying she was forced to act in the face of mounting Republican efforts to thwart and cut short multiple Russia probes on Capitol Hill.

“Their [Republicans’] goal, it seems, is to discredit the investigation so that, ultimately, they can discredit any findings that are detrimental to their party or their president,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat. “President Trump makes this strategy manifest clear as day almost every day on his Twitter feed.”

Schumer continued, “Here is the president of the United States imploring his party to take control of the investigation. You never thought you’d hear a president saying something like this. And, frankly, you never thought you’d hear such silence from the other side of the aisle [Republicans]. All of us must choose country over party.”

While Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating ties between Russia and Trump’s inner circle on behalf of the Justice Department, House and Senate investigations were launched with the hope that Republicans and Democrats would set party interests aside and join forces in search of the truth.

“It [bipartisanship] has largely been broken,” said political analyst Norman Ornstein of the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute. “This has gotten more than acrimonious.”

Ornstein compared the Russia probes to Congress’ investigation of the Watergate scandal that caused former President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974.

“What we saw with Watergate was the model of a committee where the ranking Republican set the tone by saying the key here is what did the president know and when did he know it? — and followed through with an investigation with integrity,” he said.

Ornstein added, however, that even if congressional Russia’s probes falter on partisan lines, “The real test comes with whether the integrity of the Mueller investigation is protected and a bipartisan group of members [of Congress] make it clear that the president can’t fire [Mueller] or close off the investigation.”
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Police and immigrant-rights protesters clashed Thursday outside 26 Federal Plaza, New York City’s immigration court, after word spread that Ravi Ragbir, a well-known activist known to protect immigrant families from deportation, had himself been detained by immigration authorities inside the building.

City leaders said Ragbir passed out while in detention, which occurred during a routine check-in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Some supporters, who were already gathered outside the building for a scheduled prayer march and “vigil against deportation,” confronted a departing ambulance, resulting in multiple arrests, including those of two city councilmen. 

Others joined hands and prayed, led by the Reverend Donna Schaper, senior minister of Judson Memorial Church and co-founder of the New Sanctuary Coalition of NYC.

“When ICE does things that are just beyond understanding, when they had other choices, they only make us stronger,” Schaper told VOA. “They need to understand that.”

Ragbir, an immigrant from Trinidad, has faced the threat of deportation since he was convicted of wire fraud 16 years ago. Following removal proceedings in 2006, he spent nearly two years in immigration detention before his release in February 2008, a period during which he became a rising voice for the country’s immigrant community. He is now executive director of the New Sanctuary Coalition.

Until his detention, Ragbir had an administrative stay of removal in place, which suspends an order of removal. His attorneys said they had already filed a lawsuit.

“We came into the check-in with the hope that they would allow him to continue checking in as he has for many years, complying with all the rules that have been required of him,” said Alina Das, one of Ragbir’s attorneys who was present with him in the meeting, along with Ragbir’s wife.

“Obviously we are incredibly disappointed and, frankly, outraged by this decision,” Das told VOA. “We continue to pursue our options — the legal challenges — to see that he will hopefully be freed soon and back with his wife and with the community that loves him.”

At the time this report was published, ICE had not responded to VOA’s request for comment regarding Ragbir’s arrest.

‘Crippling’ for the immigrant community

Ragbir’s arrest followed that of Jean Montrevil, an immigrant activist from Haiti who was taken into custody last week near his Far Rockaway, New York, home, and just one day after The Associated Press reported a wave of ICE raids at convenience stores across the country.

Barbara Young, a Barbadian-American immigrant and organizer with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, was present for Thursday’s vigil in lower Manhattan. As she spoke of Ragbir and the nationwide workplace raids, tears rolled down beneath her sunglasses.

“It is crippling for the immigrant community,” Young said. “If you are here in the country and you decide to go find a job, and they’re targeting your workplace, you’re not a criminal.”

Following a group prayer, Schaper, who works closely with Ragbir, remained resilient, asserting the strength of her surrounding community.

“We have so many leaders, in addition to Ravi, whom Ravi has built up over these many, many years,” she said. “We’re not even one bit afraid.”

More protests were scheduled for Thursday evening in front of the detention center where Ragbir was being held.
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U.S. President Donald Trump will increase sanctions on Iran in the coming hours, while again stopping short of reimposing sanctions intended to push the Tehran regime to give up nuclear weapons research, according to multiple news agency reports. The president was meeting with his national security team on the Iran question late Thursday.

By law, the administration must certify every 90 days whether Iran is complying with a 2015 agreement it signed with the international community to limit its nuclear program. The most recent certification deadline is Friday.

In October, Trump said Tehran had failed to live up to the spirit of the 2015 deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, but he held off on reimposing severe sanctions on Iran’s energy industry that had existed previously.

Trump’s decision is bound to be a disappointment for exile groups and human rights activists that had hoped for tougher measures from an administration that has voiced strong support for anti-government protests in many Iranian cities and a president who has harshly criticized the Iran nuclear deal.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, in answer to a VOA question at Thursday’s White House press briefing, suggested that Trump’s actions would get the Tehran regime’s attention.

‘Very clear’ about need for changes

“The president has been very clear that many aspects of the Iran deal need to be changed,” Mnuchin said. “There are many activities outside of the Iran deal, whether it be ballistic missiles, whether it be other issues, that we will continue to sanction, that are outside the JCPOA — human rights violations — we couldn’t be more focused.”

“We have as many sanctions on Iran today as we have on any other country in the process, and we will continue to look at things,” Mnuchin told VOA.

Hours before Trump’s decision was due, he spoke by phone about the importance of the Iran nuclear deal with French President Emmanuel Macron. A French readout of the conversation said Macron said the accord should be respected by all sides, and he stressed the importance of continued dialogue with Tehran about its ballistic missile program, according to Reuters.

A White House readout of the conversation said only that Trump had “underscored that Iran must stop its destabilizing activity in the region.”

Ray Takeyh, Iran specialist and senior fellow for Middle East studies at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, said Trump was caught between keeping in tune with allies who want to preserve the accord and heeding intelligence estimates of Iran’s destabilizing role in the Middle East.

“Iran’s domestic repression, regional aggression and proliferation are a problem, and the challenge is trying to balance these concerns with a punitive policy,” he said in a telephone interview.

Takeyh, formerly a State Department adviser on Iran, told VOA the quandary facing Trump is that in the absence of European support, his ability to sanction the Tehran government is limited. “How do you unravel an arms control agreement that has the support of a number of parties that were members to it, even though that arms deal is profoundly defective?” he asked.

​Europeans back deal

Hours earlier, European parties to the deal made clear that they stood firmly in support of the JCPOA, leaving Trump diplomatically isolated.

After a meeting in Brussels, European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said that while there were concerns about Iran’s development of ballistic missiles and other activities in the Middle East, those should be dealt with separately.

Iran has maintained its nuclear program is solely peaceful in nature. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif attended the EU meeting but did not appear alongside the other diplomats as they spoke to reporters. On Wednesday, however, Zarif accused the United States of implementing destructive policies.

CFR’s Takeyh said the administration’s challenge on Iran would be in following up its tough talk with effective policy. “Its rhetoric has been fine. Now it has to deliver results,” he said. “If they are going to shrink Iran’s imperial footprint, they have to demonstrate that it is actually happening.”

The JCPOA was put in place through a U.N. Security Council resolution with monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has certified that Iran is complying with its responsibilities that include limiting its enrichment of uranium and dismantling equipment.

VOA’s Steve Herman contributed to this report.
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U.S. President Donald Trump says it “seems unlikely” that he would need to meet with special counsel Robert Mueller about Mueller’s investigation into allegations that Trump’s presidential campaign had ties with Russia.

Trump made the comment Wednesday during a news conference after a meeting with Norweigian Prime Minister Erna Solberg. 

He reiterated his statement that there was “no collusion” with Russia, adding, “It seems unlikely that you’d even have an interview.” 

“There is collusion, but it’s really with the Democrats and the Russians,” he said, adding, “the witch hunt continues.”

Mueller has reportedly indicated to Trump’s lawyers that his team would like to interview the president as part of the investigation. Trump has called the investigation a “Democratic hoax.”

So far, the investigation has resulted in the indictment of former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and a guilty plea from former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn.

Mueller’s team has interviewed a number of Trump aides, including Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.

Earlier Wednesday, Trump called the investigation “the single greatest Witch Hunt in American history.”

Trump also assailed California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, calling her “sneaky” because on Tuesday she released a transcript of an August interview with the head of a firm that produced a dossier containing allegations about Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia. 

Glenn Simpson, co-founder of the research group Fusion GPS, said he gave the dossier about Trump to the FBI because he was “very concerned” about a potential national security matter. Feinstein released a lengthy transcript of Simpson’s testimony without telling the majority Republican bloc on the committee.

Feinstein said Simpson requested the transcript of his testimony be released to the public and that the American people deserved the chance to see his words and judge for themselves.

Simpson’s firm hired Christopher Steele, a former British spy, to produce the dossier, and that research was paid for by Democrats, including the campaign of Trump’s election opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Trump has dismissed the dossier and repeatedly denied that his campaign colluded with Russia. Trump has contended that the investigations are an excuse by Democrats to explain his upset win over Clinton, a former secretary of state. 

Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, objected to Feinstein’s release of the testimony. A Grassley spokesman, Taylor Foy, called Feinstein’s actions “confounding” and said she had undermined the committee’s “ability to secure candid voluntary testimony relating to the independent recollections of future witnesses.”

The committee is conducting one of several investigations into Russian influence on the 2016 presidential election and possible connections with the Trump campaign. 

U.S. intelligence agencies assessed last year that Russia had conducted a campaign targeting the election with the goal of hurting Clinton’s chances of winning while boosting Trump.

In addition, Mueller is investigating whether Trump obstructed justice by firing former FBI chief James Comey when Comey was heading the agency’s Russia probe before Mueller was appointed to take over the investigation.
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The Trump administration’s anti-marijuana move has some members of the president’s voting base fuming.

Fans of President Donald Trump who use marijuana say Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ move to tighten federal oversight of the drug is the first time they’ve felt let down by the man they helped elect. The move feels especially punitive to Trump voters who work in the growing industry around legalized marijuana that has taken root in states of all political stripes.

It remains to be seen whether Trump’s pot-loving voters will take their anger to the ballot box in 2018 and 2020. But pro-legalization conservatives are also chiding the administration’s anti-pot move as an affront to personal liberties and states’ rights.

“Trump needs to realize that a lot of his supporters are pro-cannabis and it would be extremely hurtful to them if he allowed Sessions to move forward with this,” said Damara Kelso, a Trump voter who runs Sugar Shack Farms, a marijuana grower in Eugene, Oregon. “It’s not lazy pothead stoners smoking weed all day in their parents’ basement.”

​Legalization popular

Sessions’ move allows federal prosecutors to decide what to do when state rules conflict with federal. It comes as legalization of marijuana is at an all-time high in popularity with Republicans.

A Gallup poll from last year found 51 percent of Republicans expressed support for legalization of the drug. It was the first time a majority of GOP supporters supported the idea and represented a jump of 9 percentage points from the previous year. In the early 2000s, only about 1 in 5 Republicans agreed with legalization.

Legalization has also flourished at the state level. Maine, Nevada, Massachusetts and California all voted to make recreational marijuana use legal for adults in 2016. It is also legal in Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Alaska and Washington, D.C. Alaska and Maine gave Trump electoral votes in 2016.

Buyer’s remorse

Marijuana legalization is typically most popular with the libertarian-leaning wing of the Republican Party. But any such Republicans who felt Trump would be a pro-marijuana president were misguided, said Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard University economist who studies the economics of libertarianism with a focus on illegal drugs.

Weed-loving Trump fans might be experiencing buyer’s remorse, but it’s too early to say whether that could make a difference at the voting polls, Miron said.

“Libertarians certainly knew when he appointed Jeff Sessions that there was a serious risk in an escalation of the war on drugs,” he said. “I think you get what you pay for.”

​Trump supporters speak out

Still, some of Trump’s high-profile supporters are criticizing the move.

Roger Stone, a former Trump campaign adviser with whom the president has a long and rocky history, shared a video on Facebook on Jan. 7 urging Trump to support legalization and block Sessions’ move. And some Republicans in Congress have also slammed the decision.

“We have a Constitution to protect people from the federal government,” Republican Rep. Jason Lewis, R-Minnesota, a Trump voter, said in an interview. “This is a longstanding limited-government principle.”

Trump fans who use medical marijuana are also concerned they could lose access to treatment. In rural Fryeburg, Maine, college student Zac Mercauto drives two hours roundtrip, he said, to buy marijuana to manage chronic pain and other health problems. He said he would hate to lose that ability to federal politics.

Mercauto is also one of thousands of Mainers who helped give Trump his sole New England electoral vote. Unlike most states, Maine splits its electoral votes by congressional district, and Trump won the vast 2nd District, home to both New England conservatism and a marijuana culture.

Mercauto, who had his picture taken with Trump in 2016, said he is still a big fan of the president. But he believes the anti-pot move is bad for his state’s economy and health.

“I believe it’s going to take a hit at medical marijuana and the industry as a whole here in Maine,” he said. “It’s disappointing to see him take that stab at the industry. And I guarantee you all the tax money the state of Maine from medical marijuana really helps people all around.”
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A U.S. District Court judge denied on Wednesday a preliminary injunction filed by Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Deputy Director Leandra English seeking to stop White House budget director Mick Mulvaney from taking control of the agency.

English has challenged Mulvaney’s right to lead the consumer watchdog agency, citing her endorsement by former CFPB Director Richard Cordray, an appointee of the Obama administration who stepped down in November.

English sued the Trump administration in November, claiming that Cordray had legal grounds to name his successor until a full-time director was named by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
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