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Supreme Court allows broad enforcement of travel ban — at least for a day

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U.S. officials can at least temporarily continue to block refugees with formal assurances from resettlement agencies from entering the United States after the Supreme Court intervened again Monday to save a piece of President Trump’s travel ban.

Responding to an emergency request from the Justice Department, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy stopped an earlier federal appeals court ruling that had allowed refugees with a formal assurance to enter the country.

Kennedy, who handles cases on an emergency basis from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, ordered those suing over the ban to respond by noon Tuesday, and he indicated that the appeals court ruling in their favor would be stayed “pending receipt” of their response.

The Supreme Court’s decision came not long after the Justice Department asked the justices to act. That filing, by Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey B. Wall, demonstrated the lengths to which the government is willing to go to impose its desired version of the ban, even before the high court takes up in earnest next month whether the measure is lawful at its core. At issue is whether the president can block a group of about 24,000 refugees with assurances from entering the United States after the Supreme Court decided in June to permit a limited version of his travel ban to take effect.

[Grandparents, refugees with formal assurances can enter under Trump’s travel ban, appeals court rules]

Since Trump signed his first travel ban shortly after taking office, the directive has been mired in a complicated legal battle.

The president ultimately revoked the first ban — which blocked refugees and citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States — and replaced it with a less onerous version that blocked refugees and citizens of six of the initial seven countries. The Supreme Court ultimately decided Trump could impose that measure, but not on those with a “bona fide” connection to the United States, such as having family members here, a job or a place in a U.S. university.

It is the interpretation of a “bona fide” connection to the United States that is being debated. The government initially sought to block grandparents and other extended family members of people in the United States from entering — as well as refugees with formal assurances — though a federal district judge stopped from doing so. The Supreme Court in July largely upheld that ruling, though it put on hold the portion dealing with refugees.

Last week, a federal appeals court panel weighed in, deciding that the administration could block neither grandparents nor refugees with assurances.

[Supreme Court allows Trump refugee ban but backs broader exemptions for relatives]

The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to step in again — though only to block refugees, not grandparents and other extended family members. Even those refugees with formal assurances from a resettlement agency lack the sort of connection that should exempt them from the ban, the Justice Department argued in its filing to the Supreme Court.

“The absence of a formal connection between a resettlement agency and a refugee subject to an assurance stands in stark contrast to the sort of relationships this Court identified as sufficient in its June 26 stay ruling,” Wall wrote in his filing. “Unlike students who have been admitted to study at an American university, workers who have accepted jobs at an American company, and lecturers who come to speak to an American audience, refugees do not have any free-standing connection to resettlement agencies, separate and apart from the refugee-admissions process itself, by virtue of the agencies’ assurance agreement with the government.”

Neal Katyal, a lawyer representing the state of Hawaii, which is challenging the travel ban, wrote on Twitter that he would “fight” the government’s latest request.

The government said the battle is urgent. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit had said its ruling allowing refugees with resettlement agreements would take effect Tuesday, which Wall asserted could be disruptive.

“The government began implementing the Order subject to the limitations articulated by this Court more than two months ago, on June 29, which entailed extensive, worldwide coordination among multiple agencies and the issuance of guidance to provide clarity and minimize confusion,” Wall wrote.

Time is beginning to become a factor in the broader fight over Trump’s travel ban.

The measure was supposed to have been temporary — lasting 90 days for citizens of the six affected countries, and 120 days for refugees. If the measure is considered to have taken effect when the Supreme Court allowed a partial ban, the 90 days will have passed by the time the justices hear arguments Oct. 10, and the 120 days are very likely to have passed by the time they issue a decision.

Some deadlines for reports have also seemingly passed. The Department of Homeland Security secretary was — within 20 days of the order taking effect — to have given Trump the results of a worldwide review determining what information was necessary from other countries to vet travelers. The countries that weren’t supplying adequate information were then to be given 50 days to begin doing so, and after that, top U.S. officials were to give Trump a list of countries recommended for inclusion in a more permanent travel ban.

A Homeland Security spokesman said a report was delivered to the White House in early July on the results of the review, and officials then went about assessing each country based on the information it provided. “Some provided more, some things were cleared up, and others weren’t,” David Lapan, the spokesman, said. “Now we have a comprehensive understanding of the information we receive from all foreign partners.” He said Homeland Security officials were “evaluating the information received and will provide a report to the president in the coming weeks.”

A State Department spokeswoman said Monday that the department was “engaging with foreign governments to meet these new standards for information sharing” but could not “prejudge the outcome of this engagement.”

“We recognize that many governments will need time to meet any new standards, and we will work to assess and, where necessary, work with foreign governments to design a plan to provide the information requested,” the spokeswoman said.

Robert Barnes contributed to this report.

A woman was found dead in a hotel freezer. Her family says the police haven’t done enough.

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Authorities in suburban Chicago are investigating a young woman’s mysterious death over the weekend, a case that’s gained national attention as her mother angrily suggested there was foul play and accused police and others of failing to act fast enough upon learning of the disappearance.

Kenneka L. Jenkins, 19, was found dead inside an industrial walk-in freezer at Rosemont’s Crowne Plaza around midnight Sunday, more than 24 hours after leaving her home on Chicago’s West Side to party with friends at the hotel and conference center near O’Hare International Airport.

“To me, I feel like they helped kill my child: the police department and this hotel,” Teresa Martin, Jenkins’ mother, told local media during a heart-wrenching interview alongside other family members. She said neither the authorities nor the hotel’s staff did enough to address her repeated pleas for help.

It remains unclear how Jenkins died. An autopsy was performed Sunday but proved inconclusive, the Chicago Tribune reported, and officials say it could be several weeks before toxicology results are available.

Rosemont police have released few details, citing an open investigation.

Jenkins’s mother said authorities told her the freezer, though in a vacant part of the hotel complex, was functioning and cold, the Tribune reported. It’s unclear who found Jenkins’s body, however, or whether there were signs of trauma.

A spokesman for the Rosemont police, Detective Joe Balogh, told The Washington Post on Monday that investigators are interviewing others who were with Jenkins at the hotel, and reviewing surveillance footage and various social media posts that have circulated since the incident.

One, a viral Facebook Live video apparently made during the party, appears to show Jenkins and others listening to loud music inside a hotel room. Authorities have indicated the video is a key piece of evidence, telling the Tribune that they have identified most people captured in it.

The clip has fueled speculation online that the young woman’s death was no accident, with skeptics endeavoring to decode the video and surface clues that point to a potential setup.

Jenkins was last seen on the Crowne Plaza’s ninth floor, witnesses told police. When friends were unable to find her before leaving the party, they phoned Jenkins’s mother.

Jenkins’s friends, Martin said, told her the young woman disappeared after they briefly left her alone in the hotel hallway to retrieve her car keys and cellphone from inside the room.

But Martin has since questioned that account, telling local media that the friends’ description of events keeps changing.


Teresa Martin, mother of Kenneka Jenkins, is comforted by her boyfriend as she speaks about her daughter’s death. (Chicago Tribune)

Martin has lashed out at authorities and hotel staff, who she accused of waiting too long to review surveillance footage. The hotel staff allegedly told her they required a missing person report before doing so, the Tribune reported.

The hotel also called police after Martin and members of Jenkins’s family, having returned to the hotel for a third time Saturday, began knocking on doors to look for her daughter, Martin said.

The Crowne Plaza’s general manager did not immediately return a message from The Post.

The police, Martin said, allegedly told her to wait a few hours before filing a missing person report. Had they done so sooner, she added, her daughter may have been found alive. And it was only after Martin pleaded with authorities, she said, that they agreed to look again at the hotel’s surveillance video, eventually spotting footage of Jenkins stumbling near the front desk.

Martin also complained that police refused to let her view Jenkins’s body.

“Why can’t I see my daughter?” she told reporters outside her home. “Why can’t I see how she died?”

Martin said police initially told her Jenkins was intoxicated when she entered the freezer, that “freak accidents like that do occur.” But now she questions whether her daughter, if indeed inebriated, could have summoned the strength and coordination to open the freezer’s heavy door.

Balogh, the police spokesman, told The Post that officers were following procedures while securing the crime scene and interacting with Jenkins’s family at the hotel.

“Anything further regarding what happened, in terms of her mother, we’re not really saying much about that,” he said.

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Hillary Clinton Is ‘Done,’ But Not Going Away

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Hillary Clinton at the Glazier Arboretum Park, where she often likes to hike, in Chappaqua, N.Y.

Adrienne Grunwald for NPR


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Adrienne Grunwald for NPR

Hillary Clinton at the Glazier Arboretum Park, where she often likes to hike, in Chappaqua, N.Y.

Adrienne Grunwald for NPR

Hillary Clinton’s final campaign for office ended in a shocking defeat. But she isn’t going quietly into the night.

“I think the country’s at risk, and I’m trying to sound the alarm so more people will at least pay attention,” Clinton told NPR.

That said, her career as a candidate is over.

“I’m done. I’m not running for office,” Clinton said. But for those, including Democrats, who would like her to just go away? “Well, they’re going to be disappointed,” she said.

“I’m not going anywhere. I have the experience, I have the insight, I have the scars that I think give me not only the right, but the responsibility to speak out,” Clinton said.

In her new campaign memoir, What Happened, and in interviews with Morning Edition‘s Rachel Martin and NPR’s Tamara Keith, Clinton talks about her own failings, but she doesn’t hold back on calling out sexism in American politics and heaping criticism on President Trump.

Who Is 'What Happened' For? Maybe Hillary Clinton Most Of All

“I think he’s being played,” Clinton said of Trump, suggesting that he’s given aid and comfort to Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. “I think he doesn’t even understand the kind of strategic overview of what’s happening in the world, and what we need to be doing to prepare, and so I’m gonna keep speaking out.”

Asked if she is able to turn on the news without thinking, “What would I do in this situation?” Clinton responded with a laugh.

“No, I do it every single time! Look, I was prepared to be president. I had prepared and worked at it, and I go a little bit batty when I hear him say, ‘Gee, this is a really hard job. Who knew health care was so complicated?’ I did. No, I always am responding and reacting. Sometimes I yell at the TV even.”

What Happened

But Trump is the one in the Oval Office, not Clinton, and she offers a series of explanations for what she did wrong, in the book and in her interviews with NPR.

“I take ultimate responsibility for the loss,” Clinton said. “I was the candidate. I was the person whose name was on the ballot. And I’ll never get over that.”

Transcript: Hillary Clinton's Full Interview With NPR's Rachel Martin

There was the private email server she used for official business while secretary of state, a cloud that hung over her campaign from start to finish.

“It was a dumb mistake. I think it was a dumber scandal, but it hurt,” she said.

She also describes an inability to connect with the anger coursing through the electorate.

“I understood there was anger and fear and people were really unhappy because of what had happened in the financial crash. I understood all of that,” Clinton said. “What I didn’t — and I say this in the book — I didn’t really do well is conveying how much I understood of that, conveying how I got the despair and the anger.”

Clinton had plans — so many plans — for combating the opioid crisis, for helping people in coal country, for creating jobs through infrastructure spending and more.

“I talked about it, but I didn’t really convey the emotional resonance,” she said.

While Trump was sending a signal to voters by talking about making America great again, bringing back coal jobs and building a wall, Clinton’s detailed plans didn’t break through.

“The amount of time and effort we spent not only devising the best infrastructure plan you could imagine but figuring out how it was gonna be paid for, nobody cared,” she said.

Meanwhile, she said, Trump tapped into something, even fed it.

His message was “discriminatory, it was bigoted, it was prejudiced,” Clinton said. “And yet it fed into part of the electorate that just wanted to have a primal scream. They didn’t like what was going on. They wanted something different. They weren’t interested in what you could actually do, because clearly Trump hasn’t done very much that he said he would do. But they really responded to his racial and ethnic and sexist appeals.”

And while Trump started his campaign with a memorable line, Make America Great Again, Clinton said her team was headed into the general election trying to develop a theme that fit.

“I had three different very smart groups work independently, and I asked them, ‘So what should be the theme of our general election?’ And they each, amazingly, came up with the same slogan: ‘Stronger Together.’ Because what they argued, and what I believed, was that America does better when we’re working together, when we’re helping each other, when we’re aiming toward a future of opportunity where we have broad-based economic growth that includes everybody, and where, yes, we stand up for human rights and civil rights,” Clinton said.

But, asked to choose her biggest regret, Clinton didn’t look inward.

“Losing is my biggest regret,” she said. “And losing to someone who was not qualified and did not have the experience or the temperament to be president of the United States. That is my biggest regret.”

Clinton says her biggest regret from the 2016 presidential election is losing.

Adrienne Grunwald for NPR


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Adrienne Grunwald for NPR

Clinton says her biggest regret from the 2016 presidential election is losing.

Adrienne Grunwald for NPR

Clinton deflected the question of whether another Democrat could have beaten Trump, saying, “Well, I don’t think it’s useful to speculate, because I was the nominee.”

What if Joe Biden had been the nominee?

“Well, he wasn’t. And you know he ran in ’08, and he didn’t run in this this time — if he wants to run in the future, he can do that,” she said.

Comey, The Russians, Voter Suppression And Other External Forces

In an election decided by fewer than 100,000 votes in three states, Clinton argues any number of factors could have decided the election.

“I was on the path to winning, and I felt great about the three debates,” Clinton said when asked about issues of trust that dogged her campaign. “And then unfortunately the Comey letter, aided in great measure by the Russian WikiLeaks, raised all those doubts again.”

Less than two weeks before the election, then-FBI Director James Comey told Congress the Bureau would be revisiting its investigation into the handling of classified information in connection with Clinton. On Nov. 6, he said a newly discovered trove of emails did not change the FBI’s recommendation that Clinton not be charged. Nevertheless, Clinton has repeatedly placed blame on this sequence of events for undermining her candidacy at a crucial moment.

The James Comey Saga, In Timeline Form

WikiLeaks’ release of thousands of emails allegedly tied to Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, is another frequent target of hers. The documents disclosed internal campaign deliberation about Clinton’s private email server and excerpts from her Wall Street speeches. The campaign linked the release to Russia.

In the states Clinton lost, she argues voter ID requirements and other changes in the law made it harder for people who supported her to vote.

“In Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania in particular, as well as North Carolina, there was a concerted effort to suppress the vote,” she said, recounting anecdotes about people whose identification didn’t qualify them to vote in Milwaukee.

As for Russian interference in the election, Clinton thinks that in addition to the investigation being led by special counsel Robert Mueller, there should be an independent commission, like the 9/11 Commission.

“And if we don’t come together as a country and with leadership from the White House and the Congress to combat it, to try to prevent it from happening again, we are really putting our democracy at risk,” Clinton said.

Learn More About The Trump-Russia Imbroglio

She has been following the twists and turns of the Russia investigations and devotes a chapter of her book to the topic.

“We’re only now finding out what we did try to warn people about starting last summer,” Clinton said. But back then those warnings were often dismissed as a campaign trying to distract from the damaging revelations from the WikiLeaks emails. “And I think because it was so surreal — how, what do you mean the Russians are influencing our election? Now we know. Not only were they, they did. And not only did they, they will continue to do so.”

Talking About Sexism And Misogyny

Clinton devotes a chapter of her book to being a woman in politics, and in conversations with NPR, she had a lot to say about it. Clinton said it is clear some share of the electorate “is just not ready” for a woman to be president. “They just cannot imagine it, and they are resistant to it. And I want in this book to make it very clear that what happened to me was not just about me,” Clinton said.

There were some voters who said they were open to a woman as president, just not that woman, in reference to Clinton. But she doesn’t buy that a different female candidate would have had it any easier.

“Look, if you think it’s just about me, you don’t have to deal with it. … OK, I lost, you know? Have a nice time walking in the woods. But if you think it’s endemic as I believe it is, and that when a woman sticks her head up, she gets hit from both the right and the left by men who — primarily men — who do not want to accept the reality of a woman being a leader, an executive,” Clinton said.

Her reference to men on “both the right and the left” isn’t without purpose. In the book she has harsh words for supporters of Bernie Sanders, so-called Bernie Bros, who intimidated her supporters online to the point that they hid their feelings in private Facebook groups.

'Pantsuit Nation' Serves Up Nostalgia, Uplift, Heartbreak. But Why?

“I want people to understand sexism and misogyny are real,” Clinton said. “They’re real in business, they’re real in politics, and people have to start standing up against it. And we have to equip young women to be able to ward it off and speak out, and we have to encourage men, particularly young men, not to buy into it. And we have to recognize there are deep stereotypes.”

As to the claim from some Sanders supporters that Clinton ran with a sense of entitlement, she said, “I just totally reject that.” Clinton called the criticism “off base.”

Even after she clinched the nomination, she said, Sanders “just kept going, and he and his followers’ attacks on me kept getting more and more personal, despite him asking me not to attack him personally. And you know, I really regret that. But now he’s got a chance to prove that he’s something other than a spoiler. And that is to help other Democrats. And I don’t know if he will or not, but I’m hoping he will.”

Out Of The Woods

Immediately following her election loss, Clinton returned home to Chappaqua, N.Y., and spent a lot of time hiking in the woods nearby with her husband, the former president, and their dogs.

“It was part of a process after the election to come to terms with having lost, and my personal disappointment in letting millions of people down. Also my fears about what a Trump presidency might mean for our country and the world,” Clinton said, back in the woods for her interview with Keith. “So I had a lot to think about. And I think well when I’m walking. I sort of clear my mind.”

That first day in the woods, she ran into a woman walking with her baby and dog. Her Facebook post spawned a meme, “HRC in the wild,” and rapidly led to people looking for Clinton in the woods.

“One time we drove up here to go for a walk, and there were about a dozen people lying in wait, and I thought, ‘OK we’re gonna go somewhere more peaceful than that,’ ” Clinton said.

As the interview wrapped up, Clinton was approached by two women and a yellow Labrador.

Trump’s legal team debated whether Kushner should leave White House

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A small group of White House lawyers this summer urged that President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner step down from his White House role amid a broadening probe into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russians in the 2016 election, according to multiple people familiar with the discussion.

Some of the lawyers worried that the presence of Kushner, a senior adviser with a broad domestic and foreign policy portfolio, created potential legal complications for Trump, while the probe threatened to limit Kushner’s ability to perform his job, these people said.

Kushner had several interactions with Russian officials in the campaign and transition that have drawn interest from investigators, and some White House lawyers warned that even casual discussions between him and Trump could spark additional scrutiny.

The debate, first reported Monday night by the Wall Street Journal, took place before a July shake-up of the legal team. The idea to press Kushner to leave was ultimately rejected.

In a statement Monday night, White House lawyer Ty Cobb blamed the disclosure of the internal debate on former White House staffers seeking to tarnish Kushner, who Cobb described as “among the President’s most trusted, competent, selfless and intelligent advisers.”

“Those whose agendas were and remain focused on sabotaging him and his family for misguided personal reasons are no longer around,” said Cobb, who was brought aboard in July to specialize in the Russia inquiry. “All clandestine efforts to undermine him never gained traction.”

John Dowd, also a Trump lawyer, confirmed Monday that the subject was raised, but said he heartily disagreed with the idea.

“That’s all I have to say about it,” he said.

Cobb declined to say which former staffers he believed were trying to undermine Kushner. Former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, who was dismissed last month, had been a rival to Kushner in the West Wing. Bannon did not respond to requests for comment.

Other people familiar with the Trump lawyers’ debate said Kushner’s presence in the White House created risks that were logical discussion topics for the legal team as it sought to minimize risks for Trump amid a widening investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. The lawyers “would have been dummies” not to consider walling the president off from another person who would become a major subject for the special counsel’s investigation, said one person briefed on the discussion. Kushner had met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and also with an executive from a major Russian bank.

At the time of the lawyers’ debate, Trump’s legal team was preparing for a new revelation regarding Kushner that was about to be shared with Congress. From reviewing internal emails in preparation for answering investigators’ questions, the lawyers knew about a Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 that Donald Trump Jr. had arranged after being promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

The lawyers knew that Kushner had attended the meeting, and that he had not disclosed it when reporting his contacts with foreign individuals. The New York Times first reported on that meeting July 8.

Ashley Parker contributed to this report.

After US Compromise, Security Council Strengthens North Korea Sanctions

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Either could have used their status as permanent members of the Security Council to veto the measure.

The original demands from the United States for a new resolution, made by the American ambassador, Nikki R. Haley, were toned down in negotiations that followed with her Russian and Chinese counterparts.

Late Sunday night, after a series of closed-door meetings, a revised draft emerged, setting a cap on oil exports to North Korea, but not blocking them altogether.

The resolution asks countries around the world to inspect ships going in and out of North Korea’s ports (a provision put in place by the Security Council in 2009) but does not authorize the use of force for ships that do not comply, as the Trump administration had originally proposed.

The resolution also requires those inspections to be done with the consent of the countries where the ships are registered, which opens the door to violations. Under the latest resolution, those ships could face penalties, but the original language proposed by the United States had gone much further, empowering countries to interdict ships suspected of carrying weapons material or fuel into North Korea and to use “all necessary measures” — code for military force — to enforce compliance.

The resolution also does not impose a travel ban or asset freeze on Mr. Kim, as the original American draft had set out.

And the new measure adds a caveat to the original language that would have banned the import of North Korean laborers altogether, saying that countries should not provide work authorization papers unless necessary for humanitarian assistance or denuclearization.

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The resolution does ban textile exports from North Korea, prohibits the sale of natural gas to North Korea and sets a cap on refined petroleum sales to the country of two million barrels per year. That would shave off roughly 10 percent of what North Korea currently gets from China, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency.

Even so, American officials asserted that the resolution would reduce oil imports to North Korea by 30 percent.

China had long worried that an oil cutoff altogether would lead to North Korea’s collapse.

And even some British officials warned, in private, that if the original American proposal went forward, this winter the North Koreans would be showing photographs of freezing children, and portraying the West as architects of a genocide.

A recent analysis by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies suggested that an oil embargo would not have much impact in the long run anyway; Pyongyang, the analysis said, could replace oil with liquefied coal.

Despite the weakened penalties, Ms. Haley cast the resolution as a victory in her Security Council remarks.

Ms. Haley credited what she called President Trump’s relationship with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in achieving the toughened sanctions — the second raft of United Nations penalties against North Korea since August.

Ms. Haley said the resolution demonstrated international unity against the regime in Pyongyang, and she claimed that the new sanctions, if enforced, would affect the vast majority of the country’s exports.

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But in contrast to her assertion last week that the North was “begging for war,” Ms. Haley said on Monday that Pyongyang still has room to change course. “If it agrees to stop its nuclear program it can reclaim its future,” she said. “If it proves it can live in peace, the world will live in peace with it.”

Ultimately, analysts said, diplomatic success would be measured not by the strictness of sanctions, but by the ability of world powers to persuade Pyongyang to halt its nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

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“There’s no only-sanctions strategy that will bring the North Koreans to heel,” said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a disarmament advocacy group based in Washington. “It has to be paired with a pragmatic strategy of engagement. But those talks are not yet happening.”

In a nod to Chinese and Russian arguments, the resolution also calls for resolving the crisis “through peaceful, diplomatic and political means.” That is diplomatic code to engage in negotiations.

In his remarks, the Chinese envoy, Liu Jieyi, warned the United States against efforts at “regime change” and the use of military force. “China will continue to advance dialogue,” he said.

China and Russia have jointly proposed a freeze on Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear tests in exchange for a freeze in joint military drills by South Korea and the United States. The Americans have rejected that proposal.

Russia’s envoy, Vassily A. Nebenzia, said it would be “a big mistake” to ignore the China-Russia proposal. “We will insist on it being considered,” he said.

Diplomats said the language in the new resolution, which was negotiated surprisingly swiftly after the North’s latest nuclear test, reflected a tough but balanced measure designed to address Chinese and Russian concerns.

The French ambassador François Delattre, told reporters that a unified Security Council position was “the best antidote to the risk of war.”

“By definition, this is a compromise in order to get everyone on board,” he said before the vote.

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“Everyone should be able to live with the resolution as it now stands,” said the Swedish ambassador, Olof Skoog.

There was no immediate reaction to the new resolution from North Korea. But on Sunday the North warned that it would inflict the “greatest pain and suffering” on the United States, in the event of tougher international sanctions.

The fact that Russia and China did not veto the resolution suggested that both are increasingly concerned about the behavior of Mr. Kim, who has often taunted his neighbors and suppliers. But the Chinese in particular were reluctant to pass any sanction that could destabilize Mr. Kim’s regime.

American intelligence agencies say they are expecting North Korea to test another intercontinental ballistic missile, building on two tests in July. But the new test, they speculate, will not be into a high launch into space, but will be flattened out to demonstrate how far the missile can fly.

Mr. Kim has said he would consider landing test missiles off the shore of Guam, the Pacific island where an American air base is used to fly practice bombing runs over the South Korean side of the Demilitarized Zone with the North.

In reality, the Trump administration has relatively low expectations for the new sanctions, American officials say.

But it is discussing how to use them, the officials say, with a mix of overt military pressure, covert action, and steps to punish any Chinese banks that do business with North Korea, by banning them from also doing business with the United States.

That is exactly the combination of actions that was used by the Obama administration to drive Iran into negotiations over its nuclear activities for what became the 2015 deal that Mr. Trump has often denounced as a giveaway.


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Major US allies in Asia welcome new UN Security Council sanctions on North Korea

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UNITED NATIONS/SEOUL (Reuters) – Major U.S. allies in Asia welcomed on Tuesday the U.N. Security Council’s unanimous vote to step up sanctions on North Korea, with its profitable textile exports now banned and fuel supplies to the reclusive North capped after it its sixth nuclear test.

Japan and South Korea said after the passage of the U.S.-drafted Security Council resolution they were prepared to apply more pressure if Pyongyang refused to end its aggressive development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

Monday’s decision was the ninth sanctions resolution unanimously adopted by the 15-member Security Council since 2006 over North Korea’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs.

A tougher initial U.S. draft was weakened to win the support of China, Pyongyang’s main ally and trading partner, and Russia, both of which hold veto power in the council.

“We don’t take pleasure in further strengthening sanctions today. We are not looking for war,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the council after the vote. “The North Korean regime has not yet passed the point of no return.”

“If it agrees to stop its nuclear program, it can reclaim its future … if North Korea continues its dangerous path, we will continue with further pressure,” said Haley, who credited a “strong relationship” between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping for the successful resolution negotiations.

U.N. member states are now required to halt imports of textiles from North Korea, its second largest export after coal and other minerals in 2016 that totaled $752 million and accounted for a quarter of its income from trade, according to South Korean data. Nearly 80 percent went to China.

“This resolution also puts an end to the regime making money from the 93,000 North Korean citizens it sends overseas to work and heavily taxes,” Haley said.

“This ban will eventually starve the regime of an additional $500 million or more in annual revenues,” she said.

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RESUME DIALOGUE

South Korea’s presidential Blue House said on Tuesday the only way for Pyongyang to end diplomatic isolation and become free of economic pressure was to end it nuclear program and resume dialogue.

“North Korea needs to realize that a reckless challenge against international peace will only bring about even stronger international sanctions against it,” the Blue House said.

However, China’s official Xinhua news agency said in a commentary that the Trump administration was making a mistake by rejecting diplomatic engagement with the North.

”The U.S. needs to switch from isolation to communication in order to end an ‘endless loop’ on the Korean peninsula where “nuclear and missile tests trigger tougher sanctions and tougher sanctions invite further tests,” Xinhua said.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe quickly welcomed the resolution and said after the vote it was important to change North Korea’s policy by imposing a higher level of pressure.

“U.S. GANGSTERS”

The resolution imposes a ban on condensates and natural gas liquids, a cap of 2 million barrels a year on refined petroleum products, and a cap on crude oil exports to North Korea at current levels. China supplies most of North Korea’s crude.

A U.S. official, familiar with the council negotiations and speaking on condition of anonymity, said North Korea imported some 4.5 million barrels of refined petroleum products annually and 4 million barrels of crude oil.

Pyongyang warned the United States on Monday that it would pay a “due price” for spearheading efforts on U.N. sanctions over its nuclear program, which it said was part of “legitimate self-defensive measures”.

“The world will witness how (North Korea) tames the U.S. gangsters by taking a series of actions tougher than they have ever envisaged,” the foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.

However, North Korea did not issue a response immediately after the adoption of the latest resolution.

Chinese officials have privately expressed fears that an oil embargo could risk causing massive instability in its neighbor. Russia and China have also expressed concern about the humanitarian impact of strengthening sanctions on North Korea.

Haley said the resolution aimed to hit “North Korea’s ability to fuel and fund its weapons program”. Trump has vowed not to allow North Korea to develop a nuclear missile capable of hitting the mainland United States.

INTERNATIONAL WILL

South Korean officials said after the North’s sixth nuclear test that Pyongyang could soon launch another intercontinental ballistic missile in defiance of international pressure. North Korea said its Sept. 3 test was of an advanced hydrogen bomb and was its most powerful by far.

The latest resolution contained new political language urging “further work to reduce tensions so as to advance the prospects for a comprehensive settlement”.

China’s U.N. ambassador, Liu Jieyi, called for a resumption of negotiations “sooner rather than later.” He called on North Korea to “take seriously” the will of the international community to halt its nuclear and ballistic missile development.

The resolution also calls on states to inspect vessels on the high seas, with the consent of the flag state, if they have reasonable grounds to believe the ships are carrying prohibited cargo.

It also bans joint ventures with North Korean entities, except for non-profit public utility infrastructure projects.

Additional reporting by Hyonhee Shin and Christine Kim in Seoul, Philip Wen in Beijing, Kaori Kaneko in Tokyo, David Brunnstrom in Washington

2 huge cranes atop Miami high-rises collapse in Irma’s winds; 3rd crane falls in Fort Lauderdale

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Two cranes atop high-rise buildings under construction collapsed Sunday in downtown Miami amid strong winds from Hurricane Irma.

The cranes were among two dozen such heavyweight hazards looming over the city skyline as the monster storm powered across the state.

No injuries were reported after either crash, said Miami City Manager Daniel Alfonso.

A third construction crane toppled at a project on Fort Lauderdale beach during the storm later on Sunday.

NBA’s Miami Heat play.

It was stationary after the collapse, according to the contractor operating the crane.

“All possible preparations and precautions were taken, but we believe that a micro-tornado struck this area, compromising the crane. Again, we’re grateful there have been no injuries,” said John Leete, Moriarty executive vice president.

Clinton criticizes Trump for using race to win election

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Declaring that she is done with being a candidate, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton looked back on the 2016 presidential campaign Sunday with a mix of regret and frustration over the way she thinks President Trump won the election by stoking racial grievances.

“He was quite successful in referencing a nostalgia that would give hope, comfort, settle grievances for millions of people who were upset about gains that were made by others,” Clinton said on CBS’s “Sunday Morning” ahead of the Tuesday release of her campaign memoir, “What Happened.”

Host Jane Pauley replied, “What you’re saying is millions of white people.”

“Millions of white people, yeah,” Clinton said. “Millions of white people.”

Clinton, the Democratic Party nominee in 2016, said she will not pursue the party’s 2020 presidential nomination.

“I am done with being a candidate,” Clinton said. “But I am not done with politics because I literally believe that our country’s future is at stake.”

Her remarks on Sunday came a little more than a year after she gave a major campaign speech in which she described the “disturbing” connection between Trump’s campaign and the alt-right, a small, far-right movement that seeks a whites-only state.

“He is taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over the Republican Party,” Clinton said in Reno, Nev., last year. “His disregard for the values that make our country great is profoundly dangerous.”

Trump responded at the time by saying that Clinton was using the “oldest play in the Democratic playbook.”

“She paints decent Americans, you, as racists,” Trump told a crowd in Manchester, N.H., after her speech.

In the Sunday interview, Clinton criticized Trump’s inaugural address, which she said she attended in January out of a sense of duty, as a speech that spoke to the anger of some white voters.

“I’m a former first lady, and former presidents and first ladies show up,” Clinton said. “It’s part of the demonstration of the continuity of our government. And so there I was, on the platform, you know, feeling like an out-of-body experience. And then his speech, which was a cry from the white-nationalist gut.”

Clinton also criticized Trump’s preparedness for the White House.

“We have a reality show that leads to the election of a president. He ends up in the Oval Office. He says, ‘Boy, it’s so much harder than I thought it would be. This is really tough. I had no idea,’ ” Clinton said. “Well, yeah, because it’s not a show. It’s real. It’s reality, for sure.”

The former Democratic nominee said she has moved on from her election loss but acknowledged that the sting of defeat has not entirely faded away.

“I am good,” Clinton said. “But that doesn’t mean I am complacent or resolved about what happened. It still is very painful. It hurts a lot.”

Bannon declares war with Republican leadership in Congress

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Stephen K. Bannon — President Trump’s former chief strategist who left the White House in August — declared war Sunday against the Republican congressional leadership, called on Gary Cohn, Trump’s top economic adviser, to resign, and outlined his views on issues ranging from immigration to trade.

Bannon, in an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) of “trying to nullify the 2016 election.” It was Bannon’s first television interview since leaving the White House and returning as executive chairman to Breitbart News, the conservative website he previously led.

He blamed them for failing to repeal and replace former president Barack Obama’s signature health-care law and made clear that he would use his Breitbart perch to hold Republicans accountable for not helping Trump push through his agenda.

“They’re not going to help you unless they’re put on notice,” he told CBS’s Charlie Rose. “They’re going to be held accountable if they do not support the president of the United States. Right now there’s no accountability.”

Stressing absolute loyalty to Trump, Bannon criticized members of the administration who, he said, had leaked to the news media their displeasure with the way Trump handled the white-supremacist-fueled violence in Charlottesville, which left one dead and more­ ­injured.

“You can tell him, ‘Hey, maybe you can do it a better way.’ But if you’re going to break, then resign. If you’re going to break with him, resign,” he said. “If you find it unacceptable, you should resign.”

He explicitly mentioned Cohn, Trump’s director of the National Economic Council who had criticized Trump’s response in an interview with the Financial Times, and said he “absolutely” thought Cohn should have resigned.

Bannon joined the Trump campaign in August 2016 and emerged as the president’s ideological id, channeling his populist and nationalist impulses. Though he made many enemies in the West Wing, including the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, and clashed with John F. Kelly, Trump’s second chief of staff, Bannon remains close to Trump.

Recalling a particularly low moment in the campaign — the emergence of the “Access Hollywood” tape that captured Trump bragging about groping women — Bannon dismissed it as “just locker room talk,” but he said the moment served as an important “litmus test” for loyalty to Trump.

At the time, Reince Priebus, Trump’s first chief of staff, urged the then-candidate to either drop out of the race or face a historic loss. And, Bannon said, Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.), who served as a campaign adviser overseeing Trump’s transition plan, lost a likely spot in the president’s Cabinet because of his response to the ­video.

“I told him: ‘The plane leaves at 11 o’clock in the morning. If you’re on the plane, you’re on the team,’ ” Bannon said, referring to Christie. “Didn’t make the plane.”

On China, Bannon reiterated his calls for the United States to take a tougher stance over trade and appropriating U.S. technology. “Donald Trump, for 30 years, has singled out China as the biggest single problem we have on the world stage,” he said. ‘The elites in this country have got us in a situation. We’re at not economic war with China; China is at economic war with us.”

And he also seemed to criticize the president’s recent decision to rescind protections for “dreamers” — those 690,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the country as young children — while giving Congress six months to devise a legislative solution. The move, he said, could cost Republicans the House in the 2018 election.

“If this goes all the way down to its logical conclusion, in February and March, it will be a civil war inside the Republican Party that will be every bit as vitriolic as 2013,” Bannon said. “And to me, doing that in the springboard of primary season for 2018 is extremely ­unwise.”