In Brief: Nation & World: 3-6-17
Trump seeks Congress’ help on wiretap claim; FBI disputes it
PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump turned to Congress on Sunday for help finding evidence to support his unsubstantiated claim that former President Barack Obama had Trump’s telephones tapped during the election. Obama’s intelligence chief said no such action was ever carried out, and a U.S. official said the FBI has asked the Justice Department to dispute the allegation.
Republican leaders of Congress appeared willing to honor the president’s request, but the move has potential risks for the president, particularly if the House and Senate intelligence committees unearth damaging information about Trump, his aides or his associates.
Trump claimed in a series of tweets without evidence Saturday that his predecessor had tried to undermine him by tapping the telephones at Trump Tower, the New York skyscraper where Trump based his campaign and transition operations, and maintains a home.
Obama’s director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said nothing matching Trump’s claims had taken place.
“Absolutely, I can deny it,” said Clapper, who left government when Trump took office in January. Other representatives for the former president also denied Trump’s allegation.
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AP-NORC Poll: Divided Americans fret country losing identity
NEW YORK (AP) — Add one more to the list of things dividing left and right in this country: We can’t even agree what it means to be an American.
A new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds Republicans are far more likely to cite a culture grounded in Christian beliefs and the traditions of early European immigrants as essential to U.S. identity.
Democrats are more apt to point to the country’s history of mixing of people from around the globe and a tradition of offering refuge to the persecuted.
While there’s disagreement on what makes up the American identity, 7 in 10 people — regardless of party — say the country is losing that identity.
“It’s such stark divisions,” said Lynele Jones, a 65-year-old accountant in Boulder, Colorado. Like many Democrats, Jones pointed to diversity and openness to refugees and other immigrants as central components of being American.
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Republicans in Maine, Utah want Trump to undo monuments
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Republican leaders in Maine and Utah are asking President Donald Trump to step into uncharted territory and rescind national monument designations made by his predecessor.
The Antiquities Act of 1906 doesn’t give the president power to undo a designation, and no president has ever taken such a step. But Trump isn’t like other presidents.
Former President Barack Obama used his power under the act to permanently preserve more land and water using national monument designations than any other president. The land is generally off limits to timber harvesting, mining and pipelines, and commercial development.
Obama created the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine last summer on 87,500 acres of donated forestland. The expanse includes part of the Penobscot River and stunning views of Mount Katahdin, Maine’s tallest mountain. In Utah, the former president created Bears Ears National Monument on 1.3 million acres of land that’s sacred to Native Americans and is home to tens of thousands of archaeological sites, including ancient cliff dwellings.
Trump’s staff is now reviewing those decisions by the Obama administration to determine economic impacts, whether the law was followed and whether there was appropriate consultation with local officials, the White House told The Associated Press.
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Trump hotel may be political capital of the nation’s capital
WASHINGTON (AP) — At a circular booth in the middle of the Trump International Hotel’s balcony restaurant, President Donald Trump dined on his steak — well-done, with ketchup — while chatting with British Brexit politician Nigel Farage.
A few days later, major Republican donors Doug Deason and Doug Manchester, in town for the president’s address to Congress, sipped coffee at the hotel with Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.
After Trump’s speech, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin returned to his Washington residence — the hotel — and strode past the gigantic American flag in the soaring lobby. With his tiny terrier tucked under an arm, Mnuchin stepped into an elevator with reality TV star and hotel guest Dog the Bounty Hunter, who particularly enjoyed the Trump-stamped chocolates in his room.
It’s just another week at the new political capital of the nation’s capital.
The $200 million hotel inside the federally owned Old Post Office building has become the place to see, be seen, drink, network — even live — for the still-emerging Trump set. It’s a rich environment for lobbyists and anyone hoping to rub elbows with Trump-related politicos — despite a veil of ethics questions that hangs overhead.
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Trump expected to sign new travel ban order
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is preparing to sign a revised executive order temporarily barring the entry of people from certain Muslim-majority countries and halting the nation’s refugee program.
A White House official says plans to roll out the order are on track for Monday. The official insisted on anonymity in order to discuss the order ahead of the official announcement.
The new order has been in the works since shortly after a federal court blocked Trump’s initial effort, but the administration has repeatedly pushed back the signing.
Trump administration officials have said the new order aims to overcome the legal challenges to the first. Its goal will be the same: keep would-be terrorists out of the United States while the government reviews the vetting system for refugees and visa applicants from certain parts of the world.
Trump’s original orders temporarily blocked citizens of Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Syria and Libya from coming to the United States and put on hold the U.S. refugee program.
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Seoul: North Korea fires 4 ballistic missiles into ocean
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea on Monday fired four banned ballistic missiles that flew about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles), with three of them landing in Japan’s exclusive economic zone, South Korean and Japanese officials said, in an apparent reaction to huge military drills by Washington and Seoul that Pyongyang insists are an invasion rehearsal.
It was not immediately clear the exact type of missile fired; Pyongyang has staged a series of missile test-launches of various ranges in recent months, including a new intermediate-range missile in February. The ramped-up tests come as leader Kim Jong Un pushes for a nuclear and missile program that can deter what he calls U.S. and South Korean hostility toward the North.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Monday’s firing shows that North Korea has become “a new kind of threat.” Japanese officials said three of the four missiles landed in the 200-nautical-mile offshore area where Tokyo has sovereign rights for exploring and exploiting resources.
South Korea’s Joint Chief of Staff said in a statement that Monday’s launches were made from the Tongchang-ri area in North Pyongan province. The area is the home of the North’s Seohae Satellite Station where it has conducted prohibited long-range rocket launches in recent years.
Seoul and Washington call their military drills on the Korean Peninsula, which remains in a technical state of war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice and not a peace treaty, defensive and routine.
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Income tax audits plummet as IRS loses agents to budget cuts
WASHINGTON (AP) — As millions of Americans file their income tax returns, their chances of getting audited by the IRS have rarely been so low.
The number of people audited by the IRS in 2016 year dropped for the sixth straight year, to just over 1 million. The last time so few people were audited was 2004. Since then, the U.S. has added about 30 million people.
The IRS blames budget cuts as money for the agency shrunk from $12.2 billion in 2010 to $11.2 billion last year. Over that period, the agency has lost more than 17,000 employees, including nearly 7,000 enforcement agents. A little more than 80,000 people work at the IRS.
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said budget cuts are costing the federal government between $4 billion and $8 billion a year in uncollected taxes.
“We are the only agency if you give us more people and money, we give you more money back,” Koskinen said in an interview.
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Liver transplant surgical pioneer Dr. Thomas Starzl dies
PITTSBURGH (AP) — Dr. Thomas Starzl, who pioneered liver transplant surgery in the 1960s and was a leading researcher into anti-rejection drugs, has died. He was 90.
The University of Pittsburgh, speaking on behalf of Starzl’s family, said the renowned doctor died Saturday at his home in Pittsburgh.
Starzl performed the world’s first liver transplant in 1963 and the world’s first successful liver transplant in 1967, and pioneered kidney transplantation from cadavers. He later perfected the process by using identical twins and, eventually, other blood relatives as donors.
Since Starzl’s first successful liver transplant, thousands of lives have been saved by similar operations.
“We regard him as the father of transplantation,” said Dr. Abhinav Humar, clinical director of the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute. “His legacy in transplantation is hard to put into words — it’s really immense.”
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What to do when pulled over: A new chapter for driver’s ed?
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Deadly encounters between police officers and motorists have lawmakers across the country thinking driver’s education should require students to be taught what to do in a traffic stop.
A North Carolina bill would require instructors to describe “appropriate interactions with law enforcement officers.” Illinois passed a similar law recently, and another awaits the Virginia governor’s signature. Mississippi, New Jersey and Rhode Island also are considering them.
Many lawmakers want to make police interactions more transparent and improve community relations, in particular with people who feel unjustly targeted or mistreated because of their skin color.
Most don’t pretend to legislate exactly how drivers should react, leaving the details to be worked out by state law enforcement or education and driver’s license agencies. The 2017 “Rules of the Road” for Illinois , published in February, could provide a model, making detailed “suggestions” about proper driver behavior.
“The goal here is to reduce what could be a tense situation that can be very stressful on both sides,” said Dave Druker, with the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office, which oversees licensing 2.2 million new and veteran drivers annually.
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Flip the script: Cursive sees revival in school instruction
NEW YORK (AP) — Cursive writing is looping back into style in schools across the country after a generation of students who know only keyboarding, texting and printing out their words longhand.
Alabama and Louisiana passed laws in 2016 mandating cursive proficiency in public schools, the latest of 14 states that require cursive. And last fall, the 1.1 million-student New York City schools, the nation’s largest public school system, encouraged the teaching of cursive to students, generally in the third grade.
“It’s definitely not necessary but I think it’s, like, cool to have it,” said Emily Ma, a 17-year-old senior at New York City’s academically rigorous Stuyvesant High School who was never taught cursive in school and had to learn it on her own.
Penmanship proponents say writing words in an unbroken line of swooshing l’s and three-humped m’s is just a faster, easier way of taking notes. Others say students should be able to understand documents written in cursive, such as, say, a letter from Grandma. And still more say it’s just a good life skill to have, especially when it comes to signing your name.
That was where New York state Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis drew the line on the cursive generation gap, when she encountered an 18-year-old at a voter registration event who printed out his name in block letters.
