After criticism, Trump pushes out Mattis sooner than planned
WASHINGTON — Irritated with the criticism and fallout from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ resignation, President Donald Trump on Sunday pushed the Pentagon chief out the door two months earlier than planned, an acrimonious end to a tense relationship that had been eroding in recent months.
In a series of tweets, Trump appeared to question why he had put Mattis in his Cabinet in the first place and said Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan will take over as acting secretary on Jan. 1 to cover the accelerated departure.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, not the president, notified Mattis of the decision, said a senior administration official who insisted on anonymity to discuss personnel issues.
The sudden change strips Mattis of any chance to further frame national security policy or smooth rattled relations with allies through the originally planned transition at the end of February. And it reflects White House displeasure with the retired Marine Corps general’s blistering resignation letter, which he delivered to Trump on Thursday.
Mattis resigned in protest over Trump’s decision to pull all U.S. troops out of Syria. U.S. officials, however, said that the reaction to his decision to leave — including the shock and dismay expressed on Capitol Hill — annoyed Trump and likely led to Mattis leaving earlier than planned.
Documents detail how absentee ballots gathered in NC vote
RALEIGH, N.C. — Affidavits released Sunday by North Carolina’s elections board allege absentee ballots were collected from voters by the man at the center of vote fraud allegations or those working for him.
These latest documents focus on last month’s disputed 9th Congressional District race, the year’s only unresolved congressional election. Investigators are looking into whether McCrae Dowless and others working on behalf of GOP candidate Mark Harris ran an illegal operation to collect large numbers of absentee ballots from voters in at least two counties.
In the batch of affidavits released Sunday, registered voter Christopher Eason of Bladenboro alleges he gave his signed but otherwise blank mail-in absentee ballot directly to Dowless, who had been hired by the chief strategist for Harris’ campaign. It’s illegal for anyone other than a close relative or guardian to take a person’s ballot.
Body of girl who died at US border returns to Guatemala
GUATEMALA CITY — The body of a 7-year-old girl who died while in custody of the U.S. Border Patrol arrived in her native Guatemala on Sunday and was being driven hours into the countryside to be handed over to family members for a last goodbye.
A white coffin containing Jakelin Caal was received in the afternoon at Guatemala City’s international airport by representatives of the country’s Foreign Ministry and then loaded into the back of a black hearse by workers in orange vests.
No family members were on hand. Domingo Caal, the girl’s grandfather, told The Associated Press that the family didn’t have money to travel from their poor hamlet to Guatemala’s capital.
At Domingo Caal’s home in the village of San Antonio Secortez, in the department of Alta Verapaz, relatives set up a small wooden altar flanked by vases overflowing with flowers, with photographs of Jakelin and the hand-lettered message, “We miss you.” Behind the house, dozens of women prepared tamales and beans to feed mourners.
Relatives expected the body to arrive in the pre-dawn hours Monday in the hamlet of about 420 people who mostly live off growing of corn and beans. The village has no paved streets, running water or electricity, and residents say declining crop yields and a lack of work have pushed many in the community to emigrate in recent years.
From wire sources
“I signed the absentee ballot envelope but left the ballot completely blank. I did not make any selections in any of the contests on the ballot,” Eason said in his affidavit signed Dec. 7, adding Dowless came to his home and asked for his absentee ballot.
Another voter, Hazel Guyton of Bladenboro, said in an affidavit that she filled out her absentee ballot and Dowless and a woman stopped by to pick it up. She said he’d been “doing that for me for several years,” though she states she suffers no legal disabilities.
___
London airport open, but location of drone culprit up in air
LONDON — London’s Gatwick Airport operated without problems Sunday, but the fugitive drone operators who brought incoming and outgoing flights to a standstill over multiple days remained at large — and a potential threat — after police cleared two local residents who were arrested as suspects.
Sussex Police were hopeful they had halted the disruptive and costly drone incursions during one of the heaviest travel periods of the year with Friday’s arrests of a couple who live near the airport. But they were released Sunday, and police said they were no longer suspects.
Tens of thousands of passengers suffered through long flight delays or were stranded by cancellations after two drones were reported seen above the airfield at Gatwick on Wednesday night, prompting an immediate suspension of all air traffic.
Sussex Chief Detective Jason Tingley said Sunday he could not rule out new drone activity at Gatwick or other U.K. airports. He also said it was possible that witnesses who reported sightings after the first ones aroused alarm were mistaken.
“Of course, that’s a possibility. We are working with human beings saying they have seen something,” Tingley told the BBC.
___
China’s Huawei faces new setbacks in Europe’s telecom market
LONDON — The U.S. dispute with China over a ban on tech giant Huawei is spilling over to Europe, the company’s biggest foreign market, where some countries are also starting to shun its network systems over data security concerns.
Some European governments and telecom companies are following the U.S.’s lead in questioning whether using Huawei for vital infrastructure for mobile networks could leave them exposed to snooping by the Chinese government.
Bans in Europe could significantly increase the financial pressures on Huawei. They would also cost Europe tens of billions of dollars as the region looks to build up “5G” networks, which are meant to support a vast expansion in internet-connected things, from self-driving cars to factory robots and remote surgery.
“Europe is still divided over Huawei, but the trendline is moving in a fairly clear direction” as the U.S. exerts pressure on allies to block it, said Thorsten Benner, director of the Berlin-based Global Public Policy Institute think tank.
Geopolitical tensions over Huawei intensified after its chief financial officer, who is also the daughter of founder Ren Zhengfei, was arrested Dec. 1 in Canada in connection with U.S. accusations that the company violated restrictions on sales of American technology to Iran.
___
Trump’s coalition cracking over his policies and personality
BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. — Jill Mott doesn’t like the tweets. The hard line on the border is too hard. And when asked whether she will vote for President Donald Trump a second time, she lets out a long, deep sigh.
“That is the question,” said Mott, a Republican from suburban Detroit.
In her moment of hesitancy, Mott is the portrait of a small, but significant slice of voters poised to wield considerable influence in the 2020 presidential campaign. They are the 18 percent of voters who described themselves as only “somewhat” approving of the president.
It’s a group whose backing for Trump is most tenuous and whose reservations about his personality and his policies reveal warning signs for Republicans, perhaps even more so as he dug in on his demand for a U.S.-Mexico border wall, leading to a budget impasse with Congress that has shut down the government around Christmas.
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.
