A tumultuous year in Afghanistan is ending with a renewed push and newfound hopes that the start of a dialogue with the Taliban may be in sight. The U.S. increased its air campaign in the country, leading to a rise in civilian casualties, but the Taliban gained territory. U.S. generals think Afghan military’s losses are unsustainable. Ayesha Tanzeem looks at the ups and downs of Afghanistan in 2018.
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As the first two years of President Donald Trump’s administration close, Republican allies still haven’t figured out how best to influence a leader who takes cues from the forces that swept him to office and seems to fear losing them above all else.

Republicans on Capitol Hill and even the president’s closest advisers have been whipsawed over a series of recent actions that show how intently Trump relies on what is sometimes called his gut — an adherence to campaign promises he made that are being reinforced by a constellation of election gurus, Fox News personalities and others who hold sway like few others.

“I know he can be a handful, but he is the president,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told The Associated Press.

On the domestic front, no sooner had Trump signaled he might be backing off his demand for $5 billion to build a border wall with Mexico — easing away from a partial government shutdown — than he took a U-turn after being scolded by conservative allies and pundits, who accused him of wavering on a campaign promise. Now, three days into the shutdown, his budget chief says it could drag into the New Year.

On issues abroad, Trump acted against the advice of his national security advisers and issued a surprise decision to pull troops from Syria. That prompted Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to step down and Trump’s special envoy to the coalition fighting Islamic State militants, Brett McGurk, to resign. A drawdown of troops in Afghanistan also appeared to be in the works.

As the stock market tumbled on Christmas Eve, Trump lashed out at the Federal Reserve sowing more uncertainty over his public criticism of chairman Jerome Powell.

Now, as Republicans prepare to relinquish their hold on government, with Democrats taking control of the House in January, the opportunities — and limits — of the GOP alliance with the Trump White House may be running their course.

“I am all alone [poor me] in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come back and make a deal,” the president tweeted.

Over and again, Trump has shown himself to be more of a tactical, than strategic, thinker, acting to avoid short-term pain rather than seeking long-term gain.

When Congress was about to keep the government running without a fight over border wall money, Trump felt the outcry from his base and intervened.

Trump told House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders at the White House he wouldn’t sign a Senate-passed compromise bill, which would have kept border security money at $1.3 billion, not the $5 billion he wanted for the wall with Mexico.

The House and Senate gaveled in for a brief Christmas Eve session Monday only to close up quickly for the holidays.

“Trump is plunging the country into chaos,” the Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement. “Instead of bringing certainty into people’s lives, he’s continuing the Trump Shutdown just to please right-wing radio and TV hosts.”

Trump’s sudden moves on Syria left top Republicans on Capitol Hill criticizing his decision to pull out all of the roughly 2,000 U.S. troops. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., signed on to a letter with other GOP senators urging Trump to reconsider.

Graham used a weekend luncheon with conservative lawmakers at the White House to impress on the president the rightness of his instinct on both the border wall and the troop withdrawal in Syria, while also sharing with Trump some ideas for smoothing the policy around both issues.

“I told the president, I’m not arguing with your general philosophy,” Graham said. “He’s a good listener.”

Graham reminded Trump that while shoring up the border wall is important, “a Southern wall isn’t going to protect you against ISIS.”

It’s unclear if Trump was listening. The Pentagon said Monday that Mattis has already signed the order to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria.

And Mattis, who was also unhappy with Trump’s order to develop plans to pull out half of the 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, was being pushed out two months early. Irritated by a surge of criticism over his decision, Trump said Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan will take over as acting secretary on Jan. 1.

Trump’s allies chock up the president’s year-end moves to a wager that the intense support from his base of voters will continue to propel his electoral chances in 2020 — even if polling suggests otherwise.

An analysis of VoteCast, a nationwide poll of more than 115,000 midterm voters conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago, highlights the fractures.

A small, but significant slice of voters — the 18 percent who described themselves as only “somewhat” approving of the president — expressed concerns.

Compared with the 27 percent of voters who describe themselves as strong Trump supporters, the “somewhat” Trump voters are much more likely to disapprove of Trump on key issues and have reservations about his personality.

In a warning signs for Republicans, who just lost their House majority in the November election, those voters are more likely to have voted for Democrats in 2018. They are more educated, somewhat more likely to be women, and more likely to live in suburbs.

The president has been busy on the phone to allies on Capitol Hill, talking late into the night with some.

Trump seemed “exuberant” at the luncheon, said one Republican, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, who was the only member of the GOP leadership to attend.

Ryan, who is retiring, and McConnell have become almost side actors to the year-end shutdown they both tried to avoid, but now will partly own. Both offices said it was up to Trump and Democrats to cut a deal.

Shelby said that at lunch Trump did seem like he wanted to reach a deal. At the same time, it’s not always clear whether any of the hours of conversation result in decisions that drift too far from Trump’s own instinct to stay close to his base.

“I don’t think it’s imminent we’re going to reach a deal,” Shelby said. “I wish we could.”

 
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A judge on Monday ordered the U.S. government not to deport a Honduran woman, whose lawyers worry about her being separated from her 15-year-old daughter who has been detained with her for six months.

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss issued the temporary restraining order at the request of the woman’s lawyers, who feared U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement might deport her before they could appeal after Christmas and leave the teenager alone in government custody.

The lawyers say the woman and her daughter came to the U.S. two years ago after gang members in Honduras held them at gunpoint and demanded they pay protection money.

The mother and daughter are detained together at the family detention center in the South Texas city of Dilley. While the daughter has a case for asylum pending, an immigration judge on Friday denied the mother’s request to reopen her immigration case.

Shalyn Fluharty, who is managing attorney of the Dilley Pro Bono Project and representing the mother and daughter, said that the teen has tried to take her own life at least once in detention and that she needs her mother.

“Her psychological well-being is in a critical state,” Fluharty said.

The mother and daughter were initially allowed out of detention while their immigration cases proceeded, but ICE detained them both in June. The daughter had her 15th birthday in detention last week.

The Dilley facility, which has a capacity of 2,400, is used by ICE to hold mothers and daughters together. Fluharty said she had never heard of anyone being detained at Dilley for six months. An agreement known as the Flores settlement bars the prolonged detention of immigrant children.

Fluharty said the teen and her mother fear that she would be sexually assaulted or killed if sent back to Honduras.

But if the mother was deported and the daughter kept in the U.S., the teen would likely be placed in a government facility for unaccompanied minors. That’s what occurred with hundreds of children earlier this year after their parents were deported under a zero-tolerance immigration policy that led to large-scale family separations.

More than 14,000 minors were in government custody last week, many in large, crowded facilities that pediatricians and mental health experts say are unsuitable for children.

“That choice is fundamentally unfair and should never be posed to a child,” Fluharty said.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat who has visited several facilities in Texas to call attention to immigration detention, met with the detained Honduran mother during a visit to Dilley and has called attention to her and her daughter’s case.

Merkley questioned whether the U.S. government was using the threat of deporting the mother to force the teen to give up her own asylum case.

“This is a form of psychological pressure,” Merkley said Monday. “We need to have the best interest of the child in mind, and that means not separating her from the mother and not keeping her in prison.”

Fluharty said she plans to appeal the mother’s case Wednesday after the government holiday for Christmas. It’s unclear whether immigration courts will be open due to the partial government shutdown that began Saturday.

A spokeswoman for ICE said the agency could not comment on the case due to the shutdown. The U.S. Department of Justice did not return messages seeking comment Monday.

 
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U.S. stock markets fell sharply on Monday with the S&P 500 down more than two percent and the Dow off nearly three percent.

President Donald Trump is blaming the Federal Reserve (central bank) for stock market declines and other economic problems.

In tweets, Trump has said the only U.S. economic problem is rising interest rates. He accused Fed chief Jerome Powell of not understanding the market and damaging the economy with rate hikes.

The Fed slashed the key interest rate nearly to zero to boost growth during the recession that started in 2007. The central bank kept rates low for several years.

Eventually, growth recovered, and unemployment dropped to its lowest level in 49 years, and Fed officials judged that the emergency stimulus was no longer needed. Fed leaders voted to reduce the stimulus by raising interest rates gradually. The concern was that too much stimulus could spark inflation. Experts say such a sharp increase in prices could prompt a damaging cycle of price increases leading to rising wage demands, which would spark another round of price hikes.

Analysts quoted in the financial press say Trump’s attacks on the Fed make investors worry that the central bank might lose the independence that allows it to make decisions based on economic factors rather than what is politically popular.

Some economists say investor confidence has also been shaken by Trump’s tariffs on major trading partners. Raising trade costs can reduce trade and cutting trade cuts demand for goods and services, which slows economic growth.

Investor confidence, or a lack of it, can cause stock and other markets to decline as worried stock holders sell shares and prospective investors stop buying available stocks. When buyer demand drops, prices fall.

Another factor hurting investor confidence is the political impasse in Washington over money for Trump’s border wall with Mexico. The bickering means Trump and congress can not agree on spending priorities, so legislation paying some government employees has lapsed.

In an effort to calm turbulent markets, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin spoke with leaders of top U.S. banks in an unusual session Sunday. He says they have the money they need for routine operations.
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As Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recovers from surgery on Friday for early stage lung cancer, two new films are paying tribute to her life and many accomplishments. VOA’s Penelope Poulou reports how the senior justice of Court’s liberal wing is being portrayed on film.
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The U.S. Treasury Secretary said on Sunday he had held a series of phone conversations with top American bankers in what appeared to be a bid to ease nerves in financial markets.

U.S. stocks have plunged in recent weeks on concerns over slowing economic growth, with the S&P 500 index on pace for its biggest percentage decline in December since the Great Depression.

“Today I convened individual calls with the CEOs of the nation’s six largest banks,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Twitter.

The Treasury said in a statement that Mnuchin talked with the chief executives at Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo.

“The CEOs confirmed that they have ample liquidity available for lending,” the Treasury said.
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