U.S. President Donald Trump forced House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to cancel a planned trip to Afghanistan and Brussels on Thursday, the latest maneuver in a bitter political battle over the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

In a letter to the speaker of the House, Trump denied Pelosi and members of Congress the use of a military plane to meet with NATO allies in Brussels and U.S. troops in Afghanistan, writing “in light of the 800,000 great American workers not receiving pay, I am sure you would agree that postponing this public relations event is totally appropriate.”

A spokesperson for Pelosi’s office said the trip would have provided “critical national security and intelligence briefings,” as well as serving as an opportunity for Pelosi to thank the troops.

The president’s letter did not directly address Pelosi’s call Wednesday for Trump to delay his scheduled Jan. 29 State of the Union address until government funding is restored and the shutdown ends.

“This is completely inappropriate by the president,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff told reporters outside Pelosi’s office. “We’re not going to allow the president of the United States to tell the Congress it can’t fulfill its oversight responsibilities.”

The back-and-forth between the White House and the speaker of the House meant there is no end in sight for a partial federal government shutdown, which will soon enter its fifth week. The shutdown was triggered by a standoff between Democrats and Republicans over funding for construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“While many Democrats in the House and Senate would like to make a deal, Speaker Pelosi won’t let them negotiate,” Trump said in a speech at the Defense Department. “Hopefully, Democrat lawmakers will step forward to do what is right for our country, and what’s right for our country is border security at the strongest level.”

Criticism for Trump

Democrats insist they will negotiate stronger, more effective border security measures once the government reopens, but that a border wall would be wasteful, ineffective and a blight on America’s image.

Pelosi, the top-ranking congressional Democrat, said Trump’s “insistence on the wall is a luxury we can no longer afford.”

Later Thursday, Trump also canceled a planned trip by a U.S. delegation to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The delegation, consisting  of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer and assistant to the president Chris Liddell, was scheduled to travel next week.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said the president wanted to make sure “his team can assist as needed” during the government shutdown. 

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers missed a paycheck last week and are set to miss another next week.

“Not only are these workers not paid, they are not appreciated by this administration,” said Pelosi, who leads the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. “We should respect what they do for their country.”

Criticism for Pelosi

Pelosi’s move on the State of the Union address drew sharp criticism from Senate Republicans.

“By disinviting POTUS for SOTU, Pelosi erased any pretext for her unwillingness to negotiate an end to the shutdown. It is personal, petty, and vindictive,” Sen. John Cornyn from Texas tweeted Thursday.

While many Democratic lawmakers applauded Pelosi, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia told MSNBC, “I think this [delaying the State of the Union address] is the wrong approach to be taking. … We should try to have every type of respectful dialogue that we possibly can. Where I come from in West Virginia, we just don’t act this way.”

Lawmakers of both parties are wary of the shutdown’s impact on their home states and constituencies. Georgia Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper he fears a lack of Transportation Security Administration airport screeners will make it impossible for travelers to come for next month’s American football Super Bowl.

“We’ve got a Super Bowl coming to Atlanta in about three weeks, the biggest tourism event in the world this year,” Isakson said. “What if the largest airport in the world, that’s going to bring people to the largest football game in the world, goes out of business because the TSA strikes? Then you’ve just cost millions of dollars to the United States of America, my home city of Atlanta and others.”

Trump has called for more than $5 billion in taxpayer funding for the wall, while Democrats have offered $1.3 billion in new money for border security, but none specifically for a wall.

VOA’s Michael Bowman and Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report.
…

your ad here

The Trump administration is putting “all options on the table” to pressure Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro government as the White House considers whether to recognize opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s legitimate head of state.

Guaido is president of the National Assembly, Venezuela’s opposition-controlled legislative body.

“We have a range of options in our diplomatic, political and economic toolbox,” a senior administration official told VOA. “Frankly, we haven’t even scratched the surface of where we can go.”

The options include implementing an oil embargo and putting the country on the U.S. State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.

However, the official said that military action, something President Donald Trump hinted at in 2017, was not one of those options.

The Trump administration has placed a series of sanctions on the Maduro government and is evaluating whether to impose tougher sanctions on the country’s military and vital oil industry.

An oil embargo would be devastating to Venezuela, as oil accounts for 95 percent of its export earnings and 25 percent of its gross domestic product.

Maduro or Guaido?

Since Maduro’s Jan. 10 inauguration, 19 countries on the Organization of American States’ permanent council, including the United States, have voted to not recognize Maduro’s new term.

In a statement, White House national security adviser John Bolton said the U.S. does not recognize “Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro’s illegitimate claim to power.”

After Guaido announced he was willing to step in as interim president, Luis Almagro, president of the OAS, tweeted his support.

On Tuesday, the National Assembly officially declared Maduro a “usurper” to trigger a constitutional mechanism that would allow Guaido as the head of the assembly to take over the country’s leadership.

Some Venezuelan experts are urging the international community to recognize Guaido as the legitimate interim president.

Once they do, “governments, companies and international organizations will be able to begin channeling aid and contracts through the National Assembly,” said Moises Rendon, associate director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington research group.

Rendon added that this would “strike a monumental blow to the Maduro regime,” as international aid is a major source of its income.

But other analysts are warning that recognizing Guaido may not be the best option at this stage.

“Guaido and the National Assembly are carefully threading the needle and not trying to play all their cards at once,” said David Smilde, senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights advocacy organization. “Ham-fisted efforts by international allies to force the situation will short-circuit the process.”

Smilde urged the administration to coordinate its strategy with Guaido and the National Assembly, and “not seek to pre-empt it.”

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said he had spoken by phone Tuesday with Guaido to express the administration’s support for the National Assembly as the “only legitimate democratic body in the country.”

According to a readout of the call from the vice president’s office, Pence “encouraged Mr. Guaido to build unity among political groups, and pledged continued support from the United States until democracy is restored.”

Maduro ‘illegitimate’

Since Maduro won another term in office last May in an election that was widely considered fraudulent, his government has been confronted with international condemnation and a growing list of sanctions.

“A concerted attempt by the international community to force Maduro from office by challenging his legitimacy may help Venezuelans get their country back,” Rendon said.

On top of pressing sanctions, Rendon said, the international community can challenge Maduro’s right to continue in office by reducing or cutting diplomatic ties, prohibiting “further international agreements with the Maduro regime” and, “in the event of illicit activities, preparing for detention and prosecution.”

The U.S. has accused Maduro’s government of crimes, including narco-trafficking, and has labeled Maduro a dictator who has implemented failed policies that triggered the country’s worst economic crisis.

Maduro contends he is the target of a U.S.-led “economic war” aimed at forcing him out of office.

Support from U.S. Congress

The Venezuelan opposition is receiving support from U.S. lawmakers, including Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who has urged that the U.S. officially recognize Guaido.

On Thursday, Democratic Rep. Darren Soto and Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, both of Florida, introduced the Venezuela TPS Act of 2019, which would allow Venezuelan nationals to become eligible for Temporary Protected Status in the U.S. That status would grant them work authorization and shield them from deportation.

Other Democrats in Congress, including Donna Shalala and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, both of Florida, are also pushing for tougher actions against Maduro. In the coming weeks, they plan to introduce a series of bills targeting weapons exports to Venezuela and providing humanitarian assistance to the Venezuelan people.
…

your ad here

The Trump administration will roll out a new strategy for a more aggressive space-based missile defense system to protect against existing threats from North Korea and Iran and counter advanced weapon systems being developed by Russia and China.

Details about the administration’s Missile Defense Review — the first compiled since 2010 — are expected to be released during President Donald Trump’s visit to the Pentagon with top members of his administration.

The new review concludes that in order to adequately protect America, the Pentagon must expand defense technologies in space and use those systems to more quickly detect, track and ultimately defeat incoming missiles.

Recognizing the potential concerns surrounding any perceived weaponization of space, the strategy pushes for studies. No testing is mandated, and no final decisions have been made.

​Missile sensors in space

Specifically, the U.S. is looking at putting a layer of sensors in space to more quickly detect enemy missiles when they are launched, according to a senior administration official, who briefed reporters Wednesday. The U.S. sees space as a critical area for advanced, next-generation capabilities to stay ahead of the threats, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose details of the review before it was released.

The administration also plans to study the idea of basing interceptors in space, so the U.S. can strike incoming enemy missiles during the first minutes of flight when the booster engines are still burning.

Congress, which ordered this review, has directed the Pentagon to push harder on this “boost-phase” approach, but officials want to study the feasibility of the idea and explore ways it could be done.

The new strategy is aimed at better defending the U.S. against potential adversaries, such as Russia and China, who have been developing and fielding a much more expansive range of advanced offensive missiles that could threaten America and its allies. The threat is not only coming from traditional cruise and ballistic missiles, but also from hypersonic weapons.

For example, Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled new strategic weapons he claims can’t be intercepted. One is a hypersonic glide vehicle, which could fly 20 times faster than the speed of sound and make sharp maneuvers to avoid being detected by missile defense systems.

“Developments in hypersonic propulsion will revolutionize warfare by providing the ability to strike targets more quickly, at greater distances, and with greater firepower,” Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Congress last year. “China is also developing increasingly sophisticated ballistic missile warheads and hypersonic glide vehicles in an attempt to counter ballistic missile defense systems.”

Current U.S. missile defense weapons are based on land and aboard ships. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have both emphasized space-based capabilities as the next step of missile defense.

Senior administration officials earlier signaled their interest in developing and deploying more effective means of detecting and tracking missiles with a constellation of satellites in space that can, for example, use advanced sensors to follow the full path of a hostile missile so that an anti-missile weapon can be directed into its flight path.

Implications for diplomacy

Any expansion of the scope and cost of missile defenses would compete with other defense priorities, including the billions of extra dollars the Trump administration has committed to spending on a new generation of nuclear weapons. An expansion also would have important implications for American diplomacy, given long-standing Russian hostility to even the most rudimentary U.S. missile defenses and China’s worry that longer-range U.S. missile defenses in Asia could undermine Chinese national security.

Asked about the implications for Trump’s efforts to improve relations with Russia and strike better trade relations with China, the administration official said that the U.S. defense capabilities are purely defensive and that the U.S. has been very upfront with Moscow and Beijing about its missile defense posture.

The release of the strategy was postponed last year for unexplained reasons, though it came as Trump was trying to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

While the U.S. continues to pursue peace with North Korea, Pyongyang has made threats of nuclear missile attacks against the U.S. and its allies in the past and has worked to improve its ballistic missile technology. It is still considered a serious threat to America. Iran, meanwhile, has continued to develop more sophisticated ballistic missiles, increasing their numbers and their capabilities.
…

your ad here