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Lobbying Frenzy Begins on Tax Bill

“It’s pretty weedy stuff,” said Dave Camp, a former chairman of the Ways and Means Committee who wrote a 2014 tax bill that laid some of the groundwork for the current one. Mr. Camp, who is now a senior adviser for PricewaterhouseCoopers, said that when lawmakers attempt to overhaul the code, “you get significant pushback on just about everything.”

The groups pushing back the hardest on Friday included those in the real estate industry. Some of them had raised concerns before the bill was released, only to discover their biggest fears realized in the draft legislation. The bill includes several measures long opposed by those groups, including a limit on interest deductions for new home purchases of $500,000 or more and an expansion of the standard deduction.

The Mortgage Bankers Association plans conference calls and discussions with members of Congress throughout the weekend, said David Stevens, the group’s president. Realtors are running online ads raising concerns over those provisions.

Mr. Stevens complained about the “piling-on effect” of the bill’s provisions on homeownership incentives, and said the bill is “moving really fast” through the House. “Every special interest is going to have concerns,” he said. “If Congress is going to have integrity, they’re going to listen to them and make the best decisions.”

Some of those groups were already training their efforts on a still-unfinished Senate version of the legislation, fearing that House leaders — who introduced their bill on Thursday — were intent on speeding the plan to a vote with little time or opportunity to amend it. The House bill, as one consultant to business groups put it, feels “pretty baked” already.

If Republicans decide to take aim once more at the Affordable Care Act, that would add yet another dimension to the battle over taxes.

Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said no decision had been made about whether to include repeal of the so-called individual mandate. But he said Mr. Trump wants its inclusion, and he indicated that Republicans wanted to evaluate the fiscal effects of taking that step. Senate Republicans may not be as enthused about its inclusion.

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“While I support replacing the individual mandate with an auto enrollment system that allows for a consumer to opt out, it would make it more difficult to pass a tax relief bill if it is combined with a repeal of the individual mandate,” Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said on Friday.

Members of Mr. Brady’s committee will meet Monday to begin marking up the tax bill, but lobbyists fear the process will not yield any substantive changes. Republican leaders are hoping to pass it through the House by Thanksgiving. The Senate, meanwhile, stands ready to release its bill as soon as the House committee approves its version.

Representatives from industry groups were carefully analyzing how the companies they represent would be affected by a proposal in the House bill that would create a 20 percent excise tax on payments to foreign affiliates.

A nurse attending to medical equipment at the Orange County Children’s Hospital in Orange, Calif. By ripping out a major component of President Barack Obama’s health law, Republicans could claim at least a partial victory on an issue that has stymied them all year.

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Mike Blake/Reuters

The small-government advocacy groups spearheaded by the billionaire Republican megadonor brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch have been seeking to rally opposition to the excise tax from other conservative groups, as well as trade and industry associations.

The Koch groups already have expressed concern about the provision — as well as a plan to retain an upper-income tax bracket — in meetings this week with the Speaker, Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, Mr. Brady and Senate leadership.

The proposed excise tax is “misguided” and its costs would be passed along to consumers, said Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, a nonprofit group funded by the Koch brothers and their network of donors.

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Yet Mr. Phillips said Americans for Prosperity remains supportive of the overall legislation and is walking a delicate line between trying to tweak the bill without diminishing its prospects.

“It’s important to keep this thing moving forward in the House as we try to improve it,” he said, “and then we get another bite at the apple in the Senate.”

Republican leaders warned on Thursday that interest groups would attack the bill and said they would resist efforts to keep things “status quo.”

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“You’re going to gore some sacred cows in an operation like this,” said Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma, on Friday. “But I really worry about more what happens inside the building. And as I talk to members, they’re not feeling a lot of pressure at this point against this.”

Any lobbyist push is complicated by the House’s math problem: The bill must contain enough revenue to offset its corporate and individual tax cuts. An independent analysis of the bill from the Tax Foundation on Friday suggested that problem might be larger than Republican leaders anticipated.

The analysis found that the draft legislation would cost too much to survive the budgetary requirements needed to pass the Senate on a party-line vote — a sign that Republicans will almost certainly need to rework it in order to keep their hopes alive for delivering a bill to Mr. Trump’s desk by Christmas.

The analysis found that the bill would add $2 trillion to the federal budget deficit over the next decade, an amount that shrinks to $1 trillion even when additional economic growth effects from the bill are factored in.

“This does not pay for itself,” said Scott Greenberg, a senior analyst at the Tax Foundation.

The bill would continue to add to deficits after 10 years, violating the procedural budget rules that Republicans are hoping to use to avoid a Democratic filibuster in the Senate.

The White House is projecting robust economic growth from the tax cut, and the analysis found that, if those growth projections hold, the bill would create an additional one million jobs and raise incomes for rich, poor and middle-class Americans. If those growth projections fail to materialize, the top 1 percent of earners would see income gains twice as large as those seen by middle-class workers.

When economic growth is taken into account, the gains would be more evenly distributed, with the middle class seeing the biggest income increase on a percentage basis. That is because the Tax Foundation assumes additional growth spurred by business tax cuts largely finds its way into workers’ paychecks.

Republicans are looking for other ways to squeeze more dollars out of the bill. On Friday, they released an amended version that would reduce the value of the income tax cuts for individuals by $90 billion over the course of a decade and slightly shrink the estimated cost of the legislation.

The amended bill includes a technical change that immediately adopts a revised measure of inflation, known as “chained C.P.I.,” which would change how inflation is calculated, thus slowing the speed at which tax brackets grow with inflation. As a result, Americans would more quickly find themselves in higher marginal tax brackets — jumping from a 12 percent top bracket to 25 percent, for example — as their incomes increase.

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The chained measure would also slow the value growth of some inflation-adjusted tax benefits, such as the earned-income tax credit.

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Bowe Bergdahl Avoids Prison for Desertion; Trump Calls Sentence a ‘Disgrace’

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Last year, Mr. Trump made denunciations of Sergeant Bergdahl a staple of his campaign speeches, repeatedly calling for him to be executed.

Ironically, Mr. Trump’s comments may have contributed to the decision not to sentence him to prison. After Mr. Trump seemed last month to endorse his harsh criticism from the campaign trail, Colonel Nance ruled that he would consider the comments as mitigating evidence at sentencing.

With the sentence still facing review by General Abrams and military appellate judges, Mr. Trump’s post-verdict comments on Twitter seemed to bolster efforts by the defense to have the sentence thrown out on appeal, some military law experts said, on the grounds that the president had unlawfully influenced the case.

“Trump just exponentially increased Bergdahl’s chances of getting this whole case tossed on appeal,” said Rachel VanLandingham, a professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles and a retired Air Force lawyer.

The tweet could be interpreted as an effort to pressure officers who still have some control over the sergeant’s fate not to reconsider his sentence, military law experts said.

Sergeant Bergdahl’s chief defense lawyer, Eugene R. Fidell, called the sentence “a tremendous relief” and said his client was still absorbing it.

Standing outside the military courthouse here, Mr. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School, then took sharp aim at the commander in chief.

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“President Trump’s unprincipled effort to stoke a lynch-mob atmosphere while seeking our nation’s highest office has cast a dark cloud over the case,” he said. “Every American should be offended by his assault on the fair administration of justice and disdain for basic constitutional rights.”

Even though the defense had told the judge that a dishonorable discharge would be appropriate, Mr. Fidell said he hoped that it would be overturned. He noted that such a discharge would deprive his client of health care services and other “benefits he badly needs” from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Sergeant Bergdahl is expected to return to an Army base as the case winds through the appeals process.

Sergeant Bergdahl was 23 and a private first class when he left his base in eastern Afghanistan in June 2009. Army investigators would later characterize his departure as a delusional effort to hike to a larger base and cause enough of a stir that he would get an audience with a senior officer to report what he felt were problems in his unit.

But the soldier, who is now 31, was captured by the Taliban within hours and spent five years as a prisoner, his treatment worsening after every attempt to escape. He was beaten with copper cables and held in isolation in a metal cage less than seven feet square. He suffered dysentery for most of his captivity, and cleaned feces off his hands with his own urine so that he could eat enough bread to survive.

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The military searched for him, and several troops were wounded during those missions. One of them, Sgt. First Class Mark Allen, was shot through the head and lost the ability to walk, talk or take care of himself, and now has minimal consciousness. His wife, Shannon, testified that he is not even able to hold hands with her anymore. On a separate rescue mission, Senior Chief Petty Officer Jimmy Hatch, a Navy SEAL, suffered a leg wound that required 18 surgical procedures and ended his long career in special operations.

Army investigators quickly dismissed claims that troops had died searching for Sergeant Bergdahl — who was promoted during captivity — or that he had intended to defect to the Taliban. They suggested that he could be prosecuted for desertion and for some lesser crimes. But in March 2015, the Army raised the stakes, accusing him not only of desertion but also of misbehavior before the enemy, an ancient but rarely charged crime punishable by up to life in prison. In this case, the misbehavior was endangering the troops sent to search for him.

Even so, the sergeant’s defense seemed to have some momentum. The Army’s chief investigator on the case testified at Sergeant Bergdahl’s preliminary hearing that he did not believe any jail time was warranted, and the preliminary hearing officer suggested the whole episode might have been avoided “had concerns about Sergeant Bergdahl’s mental health been properly followed up.”

But at Fort Bragg, General Abrams ordered that Sergeant Bergdahl face a general court-martial on both charges.

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Once Mr. Trump was inaugurated, Sergeant Bergdahl’s defense team demanded that the case be dismissed. There was no way the sergeant could receive a fair trial, his lawyers said, since everyone in the military justice system now reported to President Trump as commander in chief.

Colonel Nance labeled Mr. Trump’s comments about Sergeant Bergdahl “disturbing,” but declined to throw out the case. Then, last month, Mr. Trump seemed to endorse his earlier sentiments about Sergeant Bergdahl, saying, “I think people have heard my comments in the past.”

After another protest by the defense, Colonel Nance ruled that he would consider the president’s comments as mitigation evidence.

During the sentencing hearing, Sergeant Bergdahl apologized for his misconduct, saying he never intended for anyone to get hurt, and that he grieved “for those who have suffered and their families.”

He added, “I’m admitting I made a horrible mistake.”

The lead Army prosecutor, Maj. Justin Oshana, drew a comparison between Sergeant Bergdahl and those who were hurt through his actions.

“It wasn’t a mistake,” Major Oshana said of the sergeant’s decision to walk off his base. “It was a crime.”

Responding to testimony about how captivity had left Sergeant Bergdahl with physical pain, Major Oshana noted that at least the sergeant was able to talk about it. Sergeant Allen was constantly in pain, too, he said, but no longer possessed the ability to describe it.

“Sergeant Bergdahl does not have a monopoly on suffering as a result of his choices,” Major Oshana added.

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The defense argued that Sergeant Bergdahl had already suffered a severe penalty for his crimes by being tortured during five years in captivity.

“It is undisputed that Sergeant Bergdahl paid a bitter price for the decision he made,” one of his lawyers, Capt. Nina Banks, told Colonel Nance. She said that a dishonorable discharge was appropriate, but asked that he be spared prison.

The defense argued that Sergeant Bergdahl’s decision to walk away was influenced by a then-undiagnosed severe personality disorder.

Captain Banks also told the judge that the harsh comments by Mr. Trump meant that the sergeant’s persecution did not stop when he was freed.

“Sergeant Bergdahl has been punished enough,” she said.

Correction: November 3, 2017

Because of a production error, an earlier headline with this article misstated Bowe Bergdahl’s sentence. It was a dishonorable, not an honorable, discharge.

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Trump proves an eager tourist in Hawaii, but protesters have ‘no aloha for him’

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HONOLULU — President Trump — a creature of habit most comfortable when ensconced in his Trump-branded world — proved himself the unlikeliest travel archetype Friday: the eager tourist.

Stopping in Hawaii en route to his five-country, 12-day trip in Asia — his longest foreign trip since assuming office — the president appeared energetic and enthusiastic, from almost the moment Air Force One climbed into the sky.

Briefly visiting reporters in the press cabin shortly after takeoff, Trump reaffirmed his remarks early Friday morning as he departed the White House, in which he said he planned to extend his trip by a day, to attend the East Asia Summit (EAS) in the Philippines.

“We’re staying an extra day, because the following day is actually the most important day,” the president said, when asked about his abrupt and unexpected change in plans.

Though Trump had always planned to attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in the Philippines, he initially expected to head back to Washington before the additional key Asia summit the following day, which includes all the ASEAN countries, as well as eight additional ones.

Protesters with signs, including one holding a standup photo of former President Barack Obama, line up on Beretania Street during President Trump’s visit at the Capitol on Nov. 3 in Honolulu. Trump stopped in Hawaii on the eve of his first visit to Asia. (Craig T. Kojima/The Star-Advertiser via AP)

The decision not to attend had prompted much consternation in the region, which worried that Trump did not care about Southeast Asia.

After a nearly 10-hour flight, during which the president tweeted four times, Trump emerged from his plane buoyed, shaking heads with well-wishers on the tarmac for roughly 15 minutes, before heading to U.S. Pacific Command for a briefing.

“I tell you: This is very special being in Hawaii,” he said.

The president also seemed genuinely excited about his planned evening visit to Pearl Harbor, which, he said, “I’ve read about, spoken about, heard about, studied, but I haven’t seen. And that is going to be very exciting for me.”

Still, not everyone was as enthusiastic about Trump’s visit as he was. Democrats completely dominate Hawaii’s Senate, just five Republicans hold office in the state’s 51-seat House, and Trump won just 29 percent of the vote here in the 2016 presidential election.

On Friday, hundreds of protesters showed up at the Hawaii State Capitol — a much larger turnout than at most local protests here. Many said they were frustrated by Trump’s travel ban, especially because Hawaii is the most diverse state in the nation and has a large immigrant population.

“I have no aloha for him and I don’t think the state of Hawaii does either,” said protester Laura Margulies, who held a sign that read “No Aloha 4 Trump.”

Among the crowd of protesters — banging drums, dancing and honking horns — was a cardboard cutout of former president Barack Obama, donning a University of Hawaii baseball cap.

Davey Strand, a Hawaii Democrat who brought the sign, said his wife was born in the same hospital as Obama. Trump fanned the flames of birtherism, even publicly saying he had sent private investigators to the state to search for Obama’s birth certificate, and Strand called Trump’s false claims that the former president wasn’t born in United States “insulting.”

Obama is the state’s “precious local boy,” said protester Susan Bruhl. It was frustrating to watch Trump try to undo the Obama administration’s work, she said.

But Trump, whose motorcade passed only streets of almost entirely supportive residents, did not seem to be aware of the protests, nor did they dampen his zest for making the most of his layover.

The president finally arrived at Pearl Harbor at dusk, as the sun turned orange and slid low, and boarded a barge for a brief and somber visit to the USS Arizona Memorial, which commemorates the 1,177 servicemembers who died on the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

Accompanied by his wife, Melania, the president took in the nearly all-white shrine — which sits atop the wreckage of the still-buried USS Arizona — and presided over a wreath-laying ceremony before a marble wall etched with the names of those who perished. Then, the Trumps threw large white pikake flower petals into the waters below, peering down as they drifted away.

The White House had briefly signaled that Trump might make remarks at the Pearl Harbor — perhaps an early version of the bellicose speech he is expected to deliver during his trip, aimed at North Korea — but he was restrained and respectful, largely listening and taking in the memorial.

For at least one day, the saber-rattling could wait.

Trump and Sessions Denied Knowing About Russian Contacts. Records Suggest Otherwise.

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“He went into the pitch right away,” said J. D. Gordon, a campaign adviser who attended the meeting. “He said he had a friend in London, the Russian ambassador, who could help set up a meeting with Putin.”

Mr. Trump listened with interest. Mr. Sessions vehemently opposed the idea, Mr. Gordon recalled. “And he said that no one should talk about it,” because Mr. Sessions thought it was a bad idea that he did not want associated with the campaign, he said.

Several of Mr. Trump’s campaign advisers attended the March 2016 meeting, and at least two of those advisers are now in the White House: Hope Hicks, the communications director, and Stephen Miller, a senior policy adviser.

After Mr. Trump was sworn in, he could not escape questions about Russia. At a Feb. 16, 2017, White House news conference, a reporter asked Mr. Trump, “Can you say whether you are aware that anyone who advised your campaign had contacts with Russia during the course of the election?”

“No,” Mr. Trump said. “Nobody that I know of. Nobody.”

The White House has sought to portray Mr. Papa dopoulos as an insignificant figure in the campaign.

Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer dealing with matters related to Mr. Mueller’s investigation, said the White House stood behind the president’s comments.

“The media’s willingness to inflate Papadopoulos, a young unpaid volunteer and supposed energy expert, into an important thought leader in the campaign or Russian operative is ludicrous,” Mr. Cobb said. “The evidence so far suggests he attended one meeting, said something about Russia and was immediately shut down by everyone in the room. It’s very important to remember that he is not a criminal now because of anything he did for the campaign — he is a criminal because he initially lied to the F.B.I.”

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A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

Another member of the foreign policy team, Carter Page, said on Thursday that he told Mr. Sessions in passing in June 2016 that he planned to travel to Russia for a trip “completely unrelated” to his volunteer role in the campaign. “Understandably, it was as irrelevant then as it is now,” Mr. Page said. Mr. Page traveled twice to Russia in 2016.

Democrats in the Senate said on Thursday that they would push to have Mr. Sessions return to the Judiciary Committee for further questioning.

“He now needs to come back before the committee, in person, under oath, to explain why he cannot seem to provide truthful, complete answers to these important and relevant questions,” said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, who is on the Judiciary Committee.

Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, another Democrat on the committee, pointed out that Mr. Sessions’s testimony was under oath and “wasn’t just some random comment he made in passing on the street.”

Mr. Sessions faced similar questions in January before the Senate Judiciary Committee, when Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, asked him about contacts between the campaign and Russia. “I’m not aware of any of those activities,” Mr. Sessions said. He denied having any such contacts himself.

Democrats condemned those remarks as misleading when it was revealed that Mr. Sessions held meetings with the Russian ambassador during the campaign. Last month, Mr. Franken renewed his questioning.

“You don’t believe that surrogates from the Trump campaign had communications with the Russians?” he asked.

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“I did not, and I’m not aware of anyone else that did,” Mr. Sessions replied. “And I don’t believe it happened.”

He did not make any reference to Mr. Papadopoulos. Mr. Sessions has said he answered honestly because he was being questioned in the context of Russian officials continuously exchanging information with campaign advisers.

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Mr. Gordon said that while the March 2016 meeting technically contradicted Mr. Sessions’s testimony, he defended the attorney general.

“This is something he heard way back in March from some young man who was not authorized to speak for the campaign,” he said. “I don’t blame Senator Sessions for not remembering that.” He said that only in the political “gotcha game” could the matter be considered significant.

The court documents in the Papadopoulos case represent the most explicit evidence yet that Mr. Trump’s campaign was eager to coordinate with Russian officials to undermine his rival, Hillary Clinton. Federal investigators suspected that Russian intelligence services used intermediaries to contact Mr. Papadopoulos to gain influence with the campaign, offering “dirt” on Mrs. Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.” Mr. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying about those contacts and is cooperating with the F.B.I.

On Thursday, as news of Mr. Papadopoulos’s Russian ties continued to ripple through Washington, Mr. Franken sent a stern letter to Mr. Sessions. “This is another example in an alarming pattern in which you, the nation’s top law enforcement official, apparently failed to tell the truth, under oath,” he wrote.

The case against Mr. Papadopoulos was unsealed at the same time as an unrelated indictment against two other former campaign advisers, Paul J. Manafort and Rick Gates. Taken together, the three charges sent a foreboding message to a fourth adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaign, Michael T. Flynn.

White House officials and others in the case are bracing for charges against Mr. Flynn, a retired three-star general who had a short and tumultuous tenure as national security adviser. Mr. Mueller is investigating Mr. Flynn for not disclosing his Russian contacts or his foreign lobbying work.

Mr. Manafort was indicted on seldom-used charges of concealing foreign lobbying, as well as for lying on federal documents — the same activities for which Mr. Flynn is being investigated.

“It’s a bad sign,” said Paul Krieger, who until recently was the top federal fraud prosecutor in Manhattan. “It shows that the special counsel’s office will not hesitate to charge individuals connected to the administration or campaign with obstruction-like offenses.”

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Mr. Flynn, one of the architects of Mr. Trump’s “America first” foreign policy, did not disclose payments from Russia-linked entities on financial disclosure documents. He did not mention a paid speech he gave in Moscow, and he belatedly disclosed, after leaving the White House, that the Turkish government had paid him more than $500,000 for lobbying services.

Charging people for not disclosing their foreign lobbying is extremely rare, a point that Mr. Manafort’s lawyers made in documents filed in court on Thursday. Since 1966, his lawyers wrote, only six such cases have been filed and only one person has been convicted. Such violations are typically handled administratively.

“It is far from clear what activity triggers a requirement to file a report as a foreign agent,” said Kevin M. Downing, Mr. Manafort’s lawyer.

Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates appeared in court briefly on Thursday. Lawyers discussed the conditions of their house arrest and the possibility of a trial in April.

White House officials have long been anticipating the indictments of Mr. Manafort and Mr. Flynn, and have tried to distance themselves from both men. They were caught by surprise, however, by Mr. Papadopoulos’s guilty plea and the fact that he had been cooperating with the F.B.I. since July.

That cooperation agreement fueled speculation that Mr. Papadopoulos had secretly recorded his conversations with White House officials this summer. But Mr. Cobb said he had seen no evidence that Mr. Papadopoulos had visited the White House or had recent conversations with staff members.

“We have no indication that this George Papadopoulos came to this White House,” Mr. Cobb said, adding that a different person with the same name had entered the White House this year.

Court documents do not explain the extent of Mr. Papadopoulos’s cooperation with Mr. Mueller’s investigation, but prosecutors said they showed him emails, chat transcripts, text messages and other records “in an attempt to refresh his recollection” about his contacts with Russians and with members of the Trump campaign.

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Catalonia crisis: Protests as ex-ministers held in Spanish custody

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Media captionIn Barcelona’s central square, the crowd sings Freedom for Catalonia

Thousands of Catalans have protested against the detention of eight regional ministers sacked over Catalonia’s push for independence from Spain.

The officials – who appeared in Spain’s high court – are accused of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds.

Prosecutors are also seeking a European Arrest Warrant for ousted Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, who did not show up in court and is now in Belgium.

The request also covers four other ex-ministers who ignored the summons.

Spain has been gripped by a constitutional crisis since a referendum on independence from Spain was held in Catalonia on 1 October in defiance of a constitutional court ruling that had declared it illegal.

Last week, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy imposed direct rule on Catalonia, dissolving the regional parliament and calling local elections for 21 December.

This came after Catalan lawmakers voted to declare the independence of the affluent north-eastern region.

The Catalan government said that of the 43% of potential voters who took part in the referendum, 90% were in favour of independence.

Catalonia sings for its exiled leaders
Catalonia crisis in 300 words
What next for Spain?

On Thursday, thousands of people gathered outside Catalonia’s regional parliament in Barcelona.

Many carried Catalan flags and slogans that read “Freedom for political prisoners”.

Similar protest rallies were held in other Catalan towns.

Political parties and civic groups in the affluent north-eastern region also condemned the judicial move,

What happened in Spain’s high court in Madrid?

Nine out of 14 summoned Catalan ex-ministers appeared before Judge Carmen Lamela.

She said they had to be detained because they might otherwise leave the country or destroy evidence.

Image copyright
Reuters

Image caption

Seven of the eight ex-ministers were pictured turning up to court together

Those who were held are:

Former Deputy Vice-President Oriol Junqueras
Former Interior Minister Joaquim Forn
Former Foreign Affairs Minister Raül Romeva
Former Justice Minister Carles Mundó
Former Labour Minister Dolors Bassa
Former Government Presidency Councillor Jordi Turull
Former Sustainable Development Minister Josep Rull
Former Culture Minister Meritxell Borras

The ninth official, ex-Business Minister Santi Vila, was granted bail at the request of prosecutors. He quit before the Catalan parliament voted for independence last Friday.

In addition to Mr Puigdemont, prosecutors have asked Spain’s high court judge to issue European arrest warrants for the following Catalan officials:

Meritxell Serret, former agriculture minister
Antoni Comín, former health minister
Lluís Puig, former culture minister
Clara Ponsatí, former education minister

Five other senior members of the Catalan parliament, as well as Speaker Carme Forcadell, are facing the same charges but, because of their parliamentary immunity, their cases are being handled by the Supreme Court.

Their hearings have been postponed until 9 November.

How did Carles Puigdemont react?

In a statement broadcast on Catalan TV from an undisclosed location in Belgium, he described the detentions as “an act that breaks with the basic principles of democracy”.

“I demand the release of the ministers and the vice-president,” he added.

Image copyright
Radio Television Espanola

Image caption

Carles Puigdemont was pictured in a Belgian cafe

Mr Puigdemont, who was spotted in a Brussels cafe on Thursday, has said he will not return to Spain unless he receives guarantees of a fair trial. He did not specify his exact demands.

Belgium’s federal prosecutor has said the law will be applied once an arrest warrant is received, according to Efe news agency.

Mr Puigdemont’s lawyer said the climate was “not good” for him to appear in court, but he also said his client would co-operate with the authorities in Spain and Belgium.

The man who wants to break up Spain

Mr Puigdemont’s handling of the crisis has drawn criticism among some other Catalan politicians, with left-wing parliamentary deputy Joan Josep Nuet criticising him for creating “yet more bewilderment”.

Spain’s central bank warned on Thursday of the “significant risks and economic costs” resulting from the crisis, and that Catalonia’s economy could fall into recession.

Early numbers suggest that the vital tourism sector of the region has already been affected by the ongoing uncertainty.

EU arrest warrant: What happens next?

If Spain’s high court judge issues a warrant, a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) will be sent to Belgian prosecutors, who have 24 hours to decide whether the paperwork is correct. If they do, they then have 15 days to arrest Mr Puigdemont and the four others. If one or all of them appeals against it, that process could last another 15 days.

Belgium has a maximum of 60 days to return the suspects to Spain after arrest. But if the suspects do not raise legal objections, a transfer could happen within a few days.

A country can reject an EU arrest warrant if it fears that extradition would violate the suspect’s human rights. Discrimination based on politics, religion or race is grounds for refusal. So are fears that the suspect would not get a fair trial.

There is an agreed EU list of 32 offences – in Article Two of the EAW law – for which there is no requirement for the offence to be a crime in both countries. In other words, any of those offences can be a justification for extradition, provided the penalty is at least three years in jail.

However, neither “sedition” nor “rebellion” – two of the Spanish accusations against the Catalan leaders – are on that list.

How one word from Elizabeth Warren exposed the massive split in the Democratic Party

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Republican Plan Delivers Permanent Corporate Tax Cut

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Americans will still be able to make “both traditional, pretax contributions and ‘Roth’ contributions in the way that works best for them,” Republican lawmakers said in their talking points.

But the legislation includes several land mines that could complicate its passage, including limits on the popular mortgage interest deduction and caps on the state and local tax deduction, as well as its overall cost. Several Republicans from the high-tax states of New York and New Jersey said the bill would need to change to gain their support, while powerful trade groups representing the real estate industry and small businesses blasted the bill as ineffective and harmful to Americans.

“Contrary to their assertions, the Republicans are picking winners and losers,” Jerry Howard, the chief executive of the National Association of Homebuilders, said in an interview. “They are picking rich Americans and corporations over small businesses and the middle class.”

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are working on their own tax bill, and on Thursday, Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, lobbed a grenade into the House plan over its cost.

“As I have made clear from the beginning of this debate, it is my hope that the final legislation — while allowing for current policy assumptions and reasonable dynamic scoring — will not add to the deficit, sets rates that are permanent in nature and closes a minimum of $4 trillion in loopholes and special interest deductions,” Mr. Corker said.

Representative Kevin Brady, Republican of Texas and the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said that the House plan had the “full support” of Mr. Trump and predicted that it would be on the president’s desk this year. Anticipating the resistance from industry groups, Mr. Brady said, “We’re going to prove them wrong once and for all.”

Representative Peter Roskam, Republican of Illinois and a member of the Ways and Means Committee, said he was bracing for the lobbyist onslaught but would not be deterred.

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“We’ve just finished the opening ceremonies of the lobbyist Olympics. My phone has all kinds of messages and there are all kinds of criticisms,” he said. “The notion of just defending the status quo is insufferable, and we’re not going to do it.”

The bill is estimated to cost $1.5 trillion over a decade, and lawmakers must keep it at that amount if they are to pass it along party lines and avoid a filibuster by Democrats. Lawmakers have been scrambling for days to find revenue to offset tax cuts that will cost trillions of dollars. That has prompted a host of changes on the individual side, including repealing tax breaks for things like medical expenses, moving expenses, student loan interest and adoption, as well as making some business tax breaks temporary.

The benefits for individual taxpayers will be mixed and depend largely on where they fall on the income scale, where they live and the types of tax breaks they tend to claim.

Those making up to $24,000 will pay no income tax. For married taxpayers filing jointly, earnings up to $90,000 would be taxed in the 12 percent bracket; earnings up to $260,000 would fall in the 25 percent bracket; and earnings up to $1 million would be taxed at the 35 percent rate. For unmarried individuals and those filing separately, the bracket thresholds would be half of these amounts, other than the 35 percent bracket, which would be $200,000 for unmarried individuals.

The proposal roughly doubles the standard deduction for middle-class families, expanding it to $24,000 for married couples, from $12,700, and setting it at $12,000 for individuals, from $6,530 today. Republicans also plan to expand the child tax credit to $1,600 from $1,000 and add a $300 credit for each parent and nonchild dependent, such as older family members, though that credit would expire after five years.

But it also tightens rules for claiming the child tax credit, a change that would hit immigrant parents whose children were born in the United States. Filers would need to provide a “work-eligible Social Security number” rather than just a taxpayer identification number in order to claim the credit. The left-leaning Center on Budget Policy and Priorities said the bill would roll back eligibility for about three million children in working families, including about 80 percent of whom were born in the United States.

The bill includes a host of other changes that will affect taxpayers in different ways. For instance, it repeals certain tax credits, including a 15 percent credit for individuals aged 65 or over or who are retired on disability. Right now, those individuals can claim up to $7,500 for a joint return, $5,000 for a single individual, or $3,750 for a married individual filing a joint return.

The House bill would entirely repeal that tax credit. It would also repeal the adoption tax credit, no longer allow deductions for tax preparation and repeal credits for alimony payments. And deductions for moving expenses would no longer be allowed.

One of the biggest flash points is a proposed change to the popular mortgage interest deduction. Under the Republican plan, existing homeowners can keep the deduction, but future purchases will be capped at $500,000, down from the current $1 million limit.

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The National Association of Realtors came out swinging against the bill, suggesting a huge fight awaits over how real estate is treated.

“Eliminating or nullifying the tax incentives for homeownership puts home values and middle-class homeowners at risk, and from a cursory examination this legislation appears to do just that,” said William E. Brown, the president of the association. “We will have additional details upon a more thorough reading of the bill.”

Mr. Howard of the homebuilders group said the bill was a broken promise.

“It puts such severe limitations on homebuyers’ ability to use the mortgage interest deduction that home values will fall,” he said.

Another area of contention is the bill’s treatment of the state and local tax deduction, which is popular among many middle- and upper-middle-class taxpayers in high-cost states like New Jersey, New York and California. The House bill would limit the deduction to just property taxes, rather than state and local income taxes and general sales taxes, and cap the benefit at $10,000.

Several Republican lawmakers said they would oppose the bill in its current form, including Representatives Leonard Lance and Frank A. LoBiondo of New Jersey.

The proposal will double the estate tax exemption to roughly $11 million, from $5.49 million, meaning families can avoid paying taxes on large inheritance. And it eventually repeals the estate tax altogether, phasing it out entirely in six years.

Business groups that include large multinationals praised the bill effusively for lowering corporate rates permanently and sharply, and for overhauling the international tax system.

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For the first time, the United States is proposing to effectively levy a global minimum tax of 10 percent, which would apply to income that high-profit subsidiaries of American companies earn anywhere in the world. The effort is aimed at preventing companies from shifting profits abroad and grabbing back some of the tax revenue on income earned overseas. Those profits are currently not taxed until they are returned to the United States, giving companies an incentive to keep that money offshore since they are taxed at the current corporate tax rate of 35 percent.

The White House has said more than $2.5 trillion in American profits are held offshore.

The bill would force companies to pay a one-time 12 percent tax on liquid assets held overseas, like cash. The tax, which is reduced from the current 35 percent tax rate, would be payable over eight years. For illiquid assets, like equipment or property, the tax rate would be 5 percent.

It would also force American subsidiaries of foreign-owned companies to pay a 20 percent excise tax on any payments sent back to foreign affiliates.

Neil Bradley, the chief policy officer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, called the bill a “home run” for economic growth and warned other groups against blocking it. “Everyone’s going to look at this and find something they don’t like,” Mr. Bradley said. “So they are going to have to decide? Am I going to help get this done?”

Among those less sanguine about the bill are small businesses, which said the bill does not go far enough to help them reduce their tax burden. Republicans stuck to their promise of lowering the tax rate for “pass through” businesses to 25 percent. But to prevent the rate from becoming a loophole for all sorts of individuals, tax writers have created a formula they say will ensure that business owners will pay a higher individual tax rate on income that they receive as wages. The formula would be applied based on the circumstances of the business.

That provision is not enough to satisfy the National Federation of Independent Business, which said in a statement it is “unable to support the House tax reform plan in its current form.”

Placing even more pressure on lawmakers, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation is planning to spend $6 million on a nationwide ad campaign, including a TV commercial, that warns against a tax plan that adds to the national debt.

The message of the campaign is that overhauling the tax code “should grow the economy, not the debt,” said Michael A. Peterson, the president and chief executive of the foundation, which advocates reining in federal budget deficits.

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What to look for during Trump’s landmark Asia trip

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Set aside the various political battles convulsing Washington and the grim fallout of the terrorism attack in New York City. Starting this weekend, President Trump will, in theory, put domestic issues on the back burner as he embarks upon an important series of state visits in Asia.

Trump’s tour will begin in Japan with a golf outing with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Sunday, followed by meetings in Tokyo and then further stops in South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. It will be the longest trip taken by any U.S. president since George H.W. Bush traveled through Asia in 1991 — and ended the journey by vomiting in the Japanese prime minister’s lap during dinner. Officials in the White House are surely hoping for no such messes this time.

In each country, Trump will have a fair amount of work to do. In Vietnam and the Philippines, he’ll attend two key regional summits, where America’s many allies in the region are hoping to hear the reassuring words of a traditional American president, rather than Trump’s campaign-trail barking, questioning Washington’s long-standing overseas commitments.

A Chinese woman dressed in a Qing Dynasty costume takes a selfie with a wax figure of President Trump on display at a fair in northeast China’s Liaoning province on March 8. (Chinatopix via Associated Press)

Trump’s advisers have outlined three guiding themes to the trip: a tough line on North Korea’s nuclear threat; a commitment to an “open and free” Indo-Pacific region (or rather, a check on Chinese maritime pushiness); and a reckoning with Asian partners over what Trump sees as unfair trade deficits. Meanwhile, here’s what the world is wondering about Trump’s journey:

Is Trump going to embarrass himself and offend others?

Given Trump’s propensity for abrasive tweets and unscripted rants, the first concern for some of his protocol team would be the risk of causing offense in a part of the world attuned to etiquette and decorum. President Barack Obama once courted controversy by merely chewing gum while arriving at a 2014 summit in Beijing. Trump’s planned audience with Japan’s emperor may come under particular scrutiny.

“The president will use whatever language he wants to use,” said national security adviser H.R. McMaster at a Thursday press briefing when asked whether Trump would curb his sometimes incendiary rhetoric.

Trump seems to be at least aware of such worries. “I don’t want to embarrass anybody four days before I land in China,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting this weekend, after he again complained about “bad” trade deals with certain countries.

Can Trump translate good personal relationships into policy wins?

Trump has hosted Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and boasted of cultivating a good rapport with both leaders. But it remains to be seen whether such bonhomie can pay dividends on a grander scale.

In Japan, Trump has a much easier mission. Abe, a notably hawkish nationalist, is happy with Trump’s eagerness to sell more arms to American allies in the region. Trump’s arrival will be preceded by his daughter Ivanka’s star turn Friday, when she’ll address the Japanese government’s “World Assembly of Women” conference.

In China, though, Trump may face a more complicated showdown. The American president is expected to lean heavily on his Chinese counterpart to get Beijing to economically and politically isolate North Korea, while he’s also likely to clash with Xi over their differences on trade.

“I think the sense that one gets is that privately, most likely … [Trump] will effectively tell Xi Jinping, ‘I’m coming after you on trade especially,’ ” said Christopher Johnson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “And I think the Chinese, because of that concern, are very eager to use the summit meeting to try to press the reset button on the relationship between the two presidents.”

President Trump and Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago on April 7. (Alex Brandon/Associated Press)

What can Trump really achieve on North Korea?

Pyongyang’s nuclear threat will loom over most of Trump’s deliberations in East Asia. But the question remains: What will he actually do about it? So far, despite Trump’s saber-rattling tweets, U.S. actions have been more or less a continuation of Obama-era policies — that is, pursuing a tough regime of international sanctions that may compel the North Koreans to come to the table.

But any diplomatic effort will require a united front with a host of countries with varying interests. Trump’s main job may be to figure out what the next steps might be.

“Beyond pushing China to implement the sanctions already in place and perhaps getting them to introduce a few more, one option would be to bring Korea, Japan, and Russia back into the conversation,” Elizabeth Economy of the Council on Foreign Relations suggests. “In this case, five heads may well be better than two.”

Other analysts are more skeptical. Michael Auslin of the Hoover Institute thinks that North Koreans will never surrender their nuclear weapons program and, after successive presidents have failed to stop Pyogyang’s nuclear buildup, that this White House needs to learn how to live with that.

“What the president should do is simple, if radical,” Auslin wrote this year. “He should admit the failure of America’s North Korea policy since the 1990s and abandon the fantasy of ‘complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization.’ Instead, he should acknowledge that North Korea is a nuclear weapons-capable state, and that the United States will treat it as such. That means revamping U.S. policy toward explicit containment and deterrence of a nuclear North Korea.”

How will Trump articulate America’s role in Asia?

Perhaps the biggest question looming over Trump’s trip is what role the “America First” president will play not only in bilateral meetings with leaders such as Abe and Xi, but at regional summits such as the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Vietnam and the ASEAN meetings in the Philippines. Trump and a coterie of his advisers have lambasted the multilateralism pursued by American presidents and questioned the United States’ commitment to the prevailing order, underwritten by decades of U.S. military might, that brought half a century of relative stability and prosperity to East Asia. Trump can either assuage Asian partners that he’s sticking to the long-established script, or take a radical turn.

His recent praise for the political successes of both the Chinese president and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte seem to confirm something else: the absence of any real interest on his part in even rhetorically defending human rights and democracy on the global stage.

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Twitter employee on last day of job deactivated Trump’s account, company says

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President Trump’s Twitter account was briefly deactivated Thursday night by a departing Twitter employee, the company said, raising serious questions about the security of a tool the president wields to set major policy agendas, connect with his voter base and lash out at his adversaries.

The company has suspended other high-profile accounts in the past for violating its terms and conditions.

But there has not been a case where an employee has acted alone to take down the account of a well-known person, seemingly on their own.

Such an event sparks deep and troubling questions about who has access to the president’s account and the power that access holds. The deactivation also came at a time when the social network is under scrutiny for the role it played in spreading Russian propaganda during the 2016 presidential election.

[What Russian Facebook ads would you have seen? Take a look.]

Trump’s account initially disappeared at around 7 p.m. ET Thursday, with visitors to the page met with the message, “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!” For about an hour, the Twitter-sphere joked about the short-lived window of history without @realDonaldTrump.

Trump’s Twitter account has vanished pic.twitter.com/B0hQpBO9OW

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) November 2, 2017

But then at 8:05 p.m. ET, Twitter posted a statement saying Trump’s “account was inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee.”

“The account was down for 11 minutes, and has since been restored,” the statement read. “We are continuing to investigate and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again.”

However, two hours later, Twitter admitted that the deactivation wasn’t an accident at all. A preliminary investigation showed that Trump’s account was taken offline “by a Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee’s last day.”

Twitter said it would be conducting a full internal review.

The president is aware of the issue and the White House is in touch with Twitter, said an official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter.

[Strangers caught in a sex act on Delta flight could face felony charges, authorities say]

A spokeswoman from Twitter said no new information about the investigation would be released Thursday night. It was still unclear who the employee was, how that employee got access to the president’s account and whether any security breaches led to the subsequent deactivation.

“A lot” of employees can suspend a user’s account, a former senior Twitter employee told Buzzfeed. But far fewer — only hundreds — have the power to deactivate one. There was some discussion at the company about special protections on verified or high-profile accounts, but that extra measures were “never implemented,” the unnamed source said.

Trump has used the account since March 2009. He has tweeted more than 36,000 times and has 41.7 million followers.

On Twitter, some people made light of the deactivation, while others wondered about the potential consequences of Twitter employees who have access to a megaphone of the president of the United States.

Dear Twitter employee who shut down Trump’s Twitter: You made America feel better for 11 minutes. DM me I will buy you a Pizza Hut pizza. https://t.co/ruzaVBcQp1

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) November 3, 2017

Seriously, what if this person had tweeted about a fictional nuclear strike on North Korea? https://t.co/TcvpXqXk42

— Blake Hounshell (@blakehounshell) November 3, 2017

The president’s use of the social media platform is no trivial matter.

The National Archives has advised Trump to preserve all tweets as presidential records, and a professor at the U.S. Naval War College is worried that U.S. enemies could be using Trump’s tweets to build a psychological profile of the president, The Post’s Avi Selk reported.

Trump’s recent tweets on North Korea heightened tensions between the two countries, with Trump threatening that “they won’t be around much longer!” and that “only one thing will work!” In the past, North Korean officials have responded to Trump’s tweets as declarations of war.

Trump also recognizes the power of the social platform.

“Let me tell you about Twitter,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson in March. “I think maybe I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Twitter.”

A tool once used by a campaigning candidate to disparage his opponents and rally his followers is now Trump’s favorite online means of promoting his presidential agenda.

“Twitter is a wonderful thing for me because I can get the word out,” he told Carlson.

[Analysis: Elizabeth Warren and Donna Brazile both now agree the 2016 Democratic primary was rigged]

The incident also comes at a time when Twitter and other technology companies are under greater scrutiny for the way they can be abused.

Earlier this week, lawyers from Twitter, Facebook and Google testified on Capitol Hill as part of the investigation into Russia’s influence of the 2016 presidential election. In public statements, Twitter acknowledged that it had identified 2,752 accounts controlled by Russian operatives, as well as more than 36,000 bots that issued 1.4 million tweets during the election.

On Thursday, Trump used his account to congratulate the Houston Astros for winning the World Series, call on Congress to “TERMINATE” the diversity visa lottery and announce the nomination of Jerome Powell as the next chair of the Federal Reserve.

Trump was back tweeting at 8:05 p.m., praising the day’s “Great Tax Cut rollout.”

He has yet to tweet about his sudden deactivation.

Strangers caught in a sex act on Delta flight could face felony charges, authorities say

Michelle Obama to young people: Never tweet (sort of)

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Washington (CNN)Ten months removed from the White House, former first lady Michelle Obama took a subtle swipe at her old home’s current occupant without even using his name. She didn’t need to.

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