The biggest U.S. force in years joined an annual military exercise in Thailand on Tuesday despite controversy over the Thai junta’s invitation to neighboring Myanmar’s army, which has been accused of ethnic cleansing.

The United States scaled back attendance at Cobra Gold, Asia’s largest multilateral military exercise, after a 2014 coup in Thailand. But relations between the junta and the United States have improved under President Donald Trump.

The presence of the 6,800 U.S. personnel – nearly double last year’s number – was a demonstration of America’s continuing muscle in a region where China is growing ever more powerful.

The Cobra Gold military exercise has been held for more than three decades. This year’s Cobra Gold will be attended by some 11,075 personnel from 29 countries.

“This exercise is the largest multilateral exercise in the Indo-Pacific region. It speaks to the commitment of the U.S. in the region,” Steve Castonguay, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, told Reuters.

This year’s exercise has been marked by Thailand’s controversial invitation to Myanmar, where 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled military action that the United Nations has denounced as ethnic cleansing in response to insurgent attacks.

Castonguay confirmed an army major from Myanmar was attending the opening ceremony but that Myanmar would not participate in any military drills.

The United States has pushed for the restoration of democracy in Thailand, its oldest regional ally.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha had promised an election would take place in November this year, but the junta last month said it could be delayed until February 2019 – which would be the latest of several postponements.
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Highlights from President Donald Trump’s budget for fiscal year 2019, released Monday.

Defense

Trump’s budget for 2019 shows the administration’s concern about the threat from North Korea and its missile program.

The Pentagon is proposing to spend hundreds of millions more in 2019 on missile defense.

The budget calls for increasing the number of strategic missile interceptors from 44 to 64 and boosting other elements of missile defense.

The additional 20 interceptors would be based at Fort Greely, Alaska. Critics question the reliability of the interceptors, arguing that years of testing has yet to prove them to be sufficiently effective against a sophisticated threat.

The Pentagon also would invest more heavily in other missile defense systems, including the ship-based Aegis system and the Army’s Patriot air and missile defense system, both of which are designed to defend against missiles of various ranges short of the intercontinental ballistic missile that is of greatest U.S. concern in the context of North Korea.

Border wall

 The second stage of Trump’s proposed border wall in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley would be 65 miles (104 kilometers) long, costing an average of $24.6 million a mile, according to the president’s 2019 budget.

That matches the amount requested in Trump’s 2018 budget to build or replace 74 miles (118 kilometers) in San Diego and Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings.

Walls currently cover about one-third of the border with Mexico, and the administration wants eventually to spend up to $18 billion to extend the wall to nearly half the border. Trump has insisted Mexico pay for it; Mexico says that’s a non-starter.

The proposal sets aside $782 million to hire 2,000 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, whose responsibilities include making deportation arrests, and 750 more Border Patrol agents toward Trump’s long-term goal of 5,000. The proposal comes even as the administration has been unable to fill vacancies caused by attrition.

The administration also wants to raise capacity at its immigration detention facilities to 52,000 people.

It wants to collect $208 million in fees on “legitimate trade and travel” to pay for investigations into fraud and employers who hire people in the country illegally.

The budget also calls for adding 450 Secret Service agents and support staff to reach 7,600 this year and inch toward a long-term goal of 9,500. It sets aside $6.9 billion for disaster relief.

Medicare

Trump’s budget proposes major changes to Medicare’s popular prescription benefit, creating winners and losers among the 42 million seniors with drug coverage.

On the plus side for seniors, the budget requires the insurance plans that deliver the prescription benefit to share with beneficiaries a substantial portion of rebates they receive from drug makers.

The budget also eliminates the 5 percent share of costs that an estimated 1 million beneficiaries with very high drug bills now must keep paying when they reach Medicare’s “catastrophic” coverage. Instead seniors would pay nothing once they reach Medicare’s catastrophic coverage level, currently $8,418 in total costs.

But on the minus side, the budget calls for changing the way Medicare accounts for certain discounts that drug makers now provide to seniors with significant drug bills.

That complex change would mean fewer seniors reach catastrophic coverage, and some will end up paying more than they do now.

“It will increase costs for some, while saving money for others,” said Tricia Neuman of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. “Overall it could be a wash.”

The budget also makes multiple cuts in different streams of Medicare payments going to hospitals and rehabilitation centers.

Medicare spending totals more than $700 billion a year, and hospitals represent the single biggest category of costs.

Overall, the budget calls for about $500 billion over 10 years in cuts from projected Medicare spending.

Education

School choice advocates will find something to cheer in Trump’s budget.

Fulfilling a campaign promise, he is proposing to put “more decision-making power in the hands of parents and families” in choosing schools for their children with a $1.5 billion investment for the coming year. The budget would expand both private and public school choice.

A new Opportunity Grants program would provide money for states to give scholarships to low-income students to attend private schools, as well as expand charter schools across the nation. Charters are financed by taxpayer dollars but usually run independently of school district requirements.

The budget also calls for increased spending to expand the number of magnet schools that offer specialized instruction usually focused on specific curricula.

Last year, the Trump administration also called for boosting charter and private school funding, but those initiatives didn’t win the approval of Congress.

Among other key components is spending $200 million on STEM education and $43 million to implement school-based opioid abuse prevention strategies.

Overall, the budget calls for a $7.1 billion, a 10.5 percent decrease from 2017. On the chopping block is $5.9 million in teacher preparation and aftercare programs. Last year, proposals for similar cuts were met with harsh criticism from teachers’ unions and educators across the country.

Environmental Protection Agency 

Climate change research is on the Environmental Protection Agency’s chopping block.

Trump’s proposed 2019 budget calls for slashing funding for the Environmental Protection Agency by more than one third, including ending the Climate Change Research and Partnership Programs.

The president’s budget would also make deep cuts to funding for cleaning up the nation’s most polluted sites, even as EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has said that is one of his top priorities. Trump’s budget would allocate just $762 million for the Hazardous Substance Superfund Account, a reduction of more than 30 percent.

Current spending for Superfund is already down to about half of what it was in the 1990s. Despite the cut, the White House’s budget statement says the administration plans to “accelerate” site cleanups by bringing “more private funding to the table for redevelopment.”

After the president’s budget was developed, Congress reached a bipartisan agreement that would boost non-defense domestic spending for the next fiscal year. In response, Trump budget director Mick Mulvaney filed an addendum that seeks to restore about $724 million to EPA, including additional money for Superfund cleanups and drinking water infrastructure grants.

Still, Trump’s budget calls for cutting programs that fight ocean pollution and raise public awareness about environmental issues and problems. The budget also would eliminate money for the popular Energy Star program, seeking instead to raise “a modest fee” from appliance and electronics manufacturers who seek to label their products as being energy efficient.

Agency staffing would be cut by more than 20 percent from budgeted 2018 levels, from 15,400 full-time positions to 12,250. EPA’s workforce has already shrunk dramatically in Trump’s first year, as career employees left in droves while hiring has largely been frozen. There are currently 14,162 employees at the agency, the lowest staffing levels since the mid-1980s.

Like Trump, Pruitt has expressed doubt about the consensus of climate scientists, including those at his own agency, that man-made carbon emissions are the primary driver of increasing average temperatures observed around the globe. The nation’s top environmental official has instead advocated for the increased production and burning of fossil fuels.

“Obamacare”

The budget assumes that Congress will repeal and replace former President Barack Obama’s health care law, although there’s little evidence that Republican leaders have the appetite for another battle over “Obamacare.”

Repeal of the Affordable Care Act should happen “as soon as possible,” say the budget documents.

The Obama health law would be replaced with legislation modeled after an ill-fated GOP bill whose lead authors were Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said it would leave millions more uninsured.

The budget calls for a program of block grants that states could use to set up their own programs for covering the uninsured.

Veterans

The Veterans Choice health care program would get a big boost under Trump’s 2019 budget.

The budget proposes an overall increase of $8.7 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs, primarily to strengthen medical care for more than 9 million enrolled veterans. A key component is a proposed $11.9 billion to revamp the Veterans Choice program, a Trump campaign priority. The planned expansion would give veterans wider freedom to receive government-paid care from private doctors and MinuteClinics outside the VA system. It has yet to be approved by Congress, however, in part due to disagreement over rising costs and concerns over privatizing VA.

Under the increased budget caps approved by Congress last week, the Trump administration also tacked on an additional $2.4 billion for Choice and other expenses. Lawmakers’ delay in reaching agreement has meant that a larger overhaul of VA Choice isn’t likely to be fully implemented until 2019 or later.

VA Secretary David Shulkin says Choice will help significantly reduce wait times at VA medical centers.

The program was put in place after a 2014 wait-time scandal that was discovered at the Phoenix VA hospital and elsewhere throughout the country. Veterans waited weeks or months for appointments, while phony records covered up the lengthy waits. The program allows veterans to go to private doctors if they endure long waits for VA appointments, but it has suffered extended wait times of its own.

State 

Trump’s budget includes a modest increase of $191 million for what’s known as “overseas contingency operations,” or active war zones like Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had argued in the past that the impending resolution of major global conflicts would decrease the need for U.S. spending and allow the Trump administration to significantly reduce what it spends overseas.

Some of the most dramatic proposed cuts affect the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which would see its budget cut by about $126 million, a reduction of nearly half of what it received in the past.

Interior

The Interior Department’s proposed $11.7 billion budget includes $1.3 billion to address a growing backlog of projects to maintain and improve roads, bridges, park buildings and other infrastructure. The agency has an estimated $16 billion deferred maintenance backlog, including more than $11 billion for the National Park Service alone.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said the nation’s parks and wildlife refuges “are being loved to death” and need significant work to keep pace with an increased number of visitors. The National Mall in Washington, for instance, needs at least $800 million in maintenance, Zinke said.

As part of the Trump administration’s infrastructure plan, officials have proposed an $18 billion public lands infrastructure fund to help pay for repairs and improvements in national parks, wildlife refuges and schools overseen by the Bureau of Indian Education, an Interior agency. The fund, which needs congressional approval, would be paid for in part through a projected 50 percent increase in energy leasing and development on federal lands, part of the administration’s strategy to achieve U.S. “energy dominance” in the global market.

The budget also includes $17.5 million to begin to implement Zinke’s plan to reorganize the department and shift staffers at some agency headquarters, including the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureaus of Land Management and Reclamation, to the West.

Energy 

The Trump administration is seeking $30.6 billion for the Energy Department, a figure that includes an additional $1.5 billion authorized under a two-year budget deal that Congress approved last week. Much of the additional funding, $1.2 billion, goes to the Office of Science to pay for basic scientific research.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry said in a statement that the budget request supports the agency’s push to enhance energy security and modernize the nuclear weapons stockpile while boosting funding for cybersecurity and emphasizing the role of the 17 national laboratories that do cutting-edge research on everything from clean energy technologies to supercomputing to nuclear science.

The budget again proposes steep cuts to energy efficiency and renewable-energy programs and calls for eliminating DOE’s loan program and the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, DOE’s innovation arm. Members of Congress from both parties support all the programs and are likely to restore much of the funding, although the loan program could face cuts. The Senate approved record funding levels for ARPA-E for the current budget year despite Trump’s plan to dismantle it.

Trump’s budget again proposes $120 million to revive a long-stalled nuclear waste dump at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. The state’s Republican governor and lawmakers from both parties oppose the plan.

Housing

The budget proposes deep cuts to funding for rental assistance programs, eliminates community block grants and references future legislation that will implement work requirements for some tenants receiving public assistance.

Trump’s proposal reduces the budget for rental assistance programs by more than 11 percent compared with 2017. It also eliminates funding for the Public Housing Capital Fund, dedicated to supporting public housing complexes, and Community Development Block Grants, which are doled out to cities, counties and communities for development projects.

The budget also requests legislation that would require able-bodied tenants who are receiving federal housing assistance to work.

In a two-year agreement passed last week and signed by the president, Congress included an additional $2 billion earmarked for HUD. That addendum adds $1 billion to “avoid rent increases on elderly and disabled families receiving rental increases.” It also adds another $700 million toward housing vouchers for low-income individuals and families, and $300 million to aide public housing authorities.

Housing advocates say Trump’s proposal is “cruel and unconscionable.”

“President Trump is making clear, in no uncertain terms, his willingness to increase evictions and homelessness for the families who could lose their rental assistance through severe funding cuts, and for the low-income and vulnerable seniors, people with disabilities and families with kids who will be unable to manage having to spend more of their very limited income to cover rent hikes,” National Low Income Housing Coalition president and CEO Diane Yentel said in a statement.

 

Justice

Trump’s 2019 Justice Department budget reiterates the administration’s priorities: fighting the opioid epidemic, fighting violent crime and drug trafficking gangs while providing tough immigration enforcement. It seeks more than $109 million for crime-fighting efforts, including $70 million for a partnership with state and local authorities called Project Safe Neighborhoods that targets gun offenders.

It would also move the tobacco and alcohol-related responsibilities of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives into the Treasury Department, which officials say would eliminate duplicative duties and allow the agency to focus more closely on fighting street crime.

There’s also a request for $13.2 million and 25 new positions to help “modernize” and speed up the ATF’s ability to register restricted weapons, such as machine guns and suppressors, after a steady increase in applications.

The budget also seeks $295 million directed toward the opioid epidemic. That includes a proposed $31.2 million for eight new “heroin enforcement groups” to be sent to hard-hit Drug Enforcement Administration offices. Additional agents would target Mexican drug gangs.

The proposal also seeks $39.8 million for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees immigration courts and is still experiencing a backlog of immigration cases. That would include 75 new immigration judges and additional attorneys. The administration wants $25 million for a technological boost for that office, which it says still struggles with a “wholly paper-based system that is both cumbersome and inefficient.”

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team investigating possible Trump campaign ties to Russia is funded separately and not affected by budget requests to Congress.

Food stamps

Trump’s budget proposes massive cuts to the program that provides more than 42 million Americans with food stamps.

The budget also floats the idea of new legislation that would require able-bodied adults to work or participate in a work program in order to receive benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

The president’s budget would reduce the SNAP program by roughly $213 billion over the next ten years.

The budget calls for a $17 billion reduction in 2019, and proposes “a bold new approach” to administering SNAP that will include a combination of traditional food stamps and packages of “100 percent American grown foods provided directly to households.”

Stacy Dean, vice president for food assistance policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the proposed cuts to SNAP account for nearly 30 percent of the program.

She said the proposal, if enacted, “would be devastating for the one-in-eight Americans who use SNAP to put food on the table every day.”

“It would reduce benefits and undercut the program’s efficiency and effectiveness,” she said.

International Space Station

The Trump administration wants NASA out of the International Space Station by 2025 and to have private businesses running the place instead.

Under Trump’s 2019 proposed budget, U.S. government funding for the space station would end by 2025. The government would set aside $150 million to encourage commercial development.

Many space experts are expressing concern. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who rocketed into orbit in 1986, said “turning off the lights and walking away from our sole outpost in space” makes no sense.

Retired NASA historian and Smithsonian curator Roger Launius notes that any such move will affect all the other countries involved in the space station; Russia is a major player, as are Europe, Japan and Canada. “I suspect this will be a major aspect of any decisions about ISS’s future,” Launius wrote in an email.

NASA has spent close to $100 billion on the orbiting outpost since the 1990s. The first piece was launched in 1998, and the complex was essentially completed with the retirement of NASA’s space shuttles in 2011.

Private businesses already have a hand in the project. The end of the shuttle program prompted NASA to turn over supply runs to the commercial sector. SpaceX and Orbital ATK have been making deliveries since 2012, and Sierra Nevada Corp. will begin making shipments with its crewless mini shuttles in a few years.

The arts

Trump’s budget calls for the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities, two prominent grant programs founded in the 1960s that Trump proposed ending in last year’s budget. Under his proposal, the NEA and NEH would “begin” shutting down in 2019. Neither organization should be considered “core Federal responsibilities.” Each program currently receives just under $150 million.

Although some conservatives have long complained about the NEA and NEH, the programs have bipartisan support and funding for them was restored by Congress in 2017. Trump is also seeking to shut down other arts and scholarly programs that Congress has backed, including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
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The B-52, which people have called “aging” seemingly for ages, is now likely to outlive its younger, snazzier brother bombers, the swing-wing B-1 and the stealthy B-2.

Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson announced Monday that her service will begin retiring the B-1 and B-2 fleets as soon as it has built enough B-21s, the next-generation bomber that is still on the drawing board and is expected to begin entering service in the mid-2020s. The pace of retirement will depend on how quickly the B-21 is acquired.

An Air Force spokeswoman, Ann Stefanek, said the B-1 and B-2 are likely to keep flying into the early 2030s.

The B-52 is expected to soar past those timelines, remaining part of the combat force until mid-century.

Aware of the political ramifications of any change in the structure of the bomber force, Wilson said the number of bomber bases will not shrink.

“If the force structure we have proposed is supported by the Congress, bases that have bombers now will have bombers in the future,” Wilson said. “They will be B-52s and B-21s.”

Officially nicknamed the Stratofortress and informally known as the Big Ugly Fat Fellow, the B-52 gained lasting fame in Vietnam as an aerial terror. It is scheduled to stay in service until 2050, assuming its gets planned upgrades, including new engines. In its 2019 budget request Monday, the Air Force asked for $280 million for B-52 upgrades.

Boeing built eight different models of the B-52 between 1952 and 1962. There are 75 planes left, split between Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and Barksdale Air Force in Louisiana. No longer the saturation bomber associated with the Vietnam war, the B-52 had been updated and adapted to a range of combat missions. It has been used extensively in the war in Afghanistan, as well as in the air campaign against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

Just last week a B-52 pummeled a Taliban site in northern Afghanistan.

“The aircraft has played a leading role in Air Force operations for decades, and was recently reconfigured with a conventional rotary launcher to increase its reach and lethality,” the U.S. military said in announcing the Afghanistan attack.

​Hefty price tag

The B-1 has an unusual history. It was initially developed in the 1970s, canceled and then revived by President Ronald Reagan. It originally was designed for either nuclear or conventional attack but is now strictly for non-nuclear combat.

The B-2, the world’s first radar-evading bomber, was developed in secrecy by Northrop (now known as Northrop Grumman) in the 1980s and was initially best-known for its stunning price tag of more than $1 billion per aircraft, of which 21 were built.

The Air Force now has 20 B-2s, all based at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, and 62 B-1s at several bases including Dyess Air Force Base in Texas.
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As the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics get underway in South Korea, here in the U.S., a group of schoolchildren is hitting the slopes in Vernon, New Jersey, enjoying the expensive sport of skiing for the very first time thanks to a non-profit foundation. Faiza Elmasry has this story narrated by Faith Lapidus.
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Building on Vice President Mike Pence’s recent visit to Cairo, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson plans to strengthen a shared commitment between the United States and Egypt to fight terrorism.

Tillerson is in Cairo to begin a five-country Middle East trip. He is also visiting Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, and Kuwait from February 11-16.

 

The chief U.S. diplomat is meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi and Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry to discuss other regional security issues such as Libya and Syria, as well as Israeli-Palestinian issues.

Egypt has launched a major military offensive against militants on the Sinai peninsula, said to be a major counterterrorism operation.

 

Turkey

In Ankara, Tillerson will press Turkey to release Americans detained by Ankara, and urge the NATO ally to show restraint in military operations in northern Syria, according to senior U.S. officials.

“At times like this, engagement is all the more important,” said a State Department official on Friday, while acknowledging, “It’s going to be a difficult conversation.”

The top U.S. diplomat’s visit to Ankara comes amid escalated tensions between the two NATO allies over a series of disagreements, including human rights cases and the Syria crisis.

 

“Look, it’s difficult. The rhetoric is hot, the Turks are angry and this is a difficult time to do business, but it’s our belief that there are still some very fundamental underlying shared interests,” the senior official said Friday.

The State Department says U.S. citizen Serkan Golge, a NASA scientist who was arrested in July 2016, was convicted “without credible evidence” on February 8 by Turkish authorities for being a member of a terror organization. On February 1, Amnesty International’s Turkey chairman, Taner Kilic, was re-arrested and placed back in pretrial detention. Kilic is facing terrorism charges.

The State Department said it is deeply troubled by those cases and urged the Turkish government to “end the protracted state of emergency, to release those detained arbitrarily under emergency authorities, and to safeguard the rule of law consistent with Turkey’s own domestic and international obligations and commitments.”

In the year after a failed coup in July 2016, Turkey arrested more than 40,000 people and fired 125,000, including many from the police, army and judiciary.

 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Fethullah Gulen, an exiled cleric based in the Unitewd States, of orchestrating the attempted coup. Gulen has denied any role in the plot. Ankara has also asked Washington to extradite Gulen.

The lack of trust between Washington and Ankara grew after Turkey started an air and ground offensive in Afrin, Syria, against a Kurdish group known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG. Turkey considers the YPG to be a terrorist organization, alleging it is an extension of a Kurdish group fighting for autonomy in Turkey for decades.

 

The United States denies those connections and sees the YPG as a key ally in the battle against Islamic State militants.

“We are urging them [Turkish authorities] to show restraint in their operations in Afrin, and to show restraint further along the line across the border in northern Syria,” said a senior State Department official.

 

“We can work with them to address their legitimate security concerns while, at the same time, minimizing civilian casualties and above all else, keeping everything focused on the defeat ISIS fight, which is not over,” he added, using the acronym of the Islamic State militants.

Jordan and Lebanon

In Amman, Tillerson will meet with the Jordanian leadership on the conclusion of a new memorandum of understanding on bilateral assistance, and discuss key regional issues, such as the ongoing crisis in Syria and Jordan’s support for Middle East peace.

In Beirut, he will meet with Lebanese President Michel Aoun, Prime Minister Saad Hariri, and Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri to emphasize U.S. support for the Lebanese people and the Lebanese armed forces.

Ministerial meeting in Kuwait

The chief U.S. diplomat will also lead a delegation to the ministerial meeting in Kuwait of the 74-member Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. He will also participate in the Iraq Reconstruction Conference, which is the first since Islamic State was defeated in Raqqa, Syria and Iraq declared some of its own territory liberated.

The three-day Iraq Reconstruction Conference will showcase private sector investment opportunities and international support for Iraq.

 

 
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