In Boston, a clutch of Second Amendment supporters gathered in front of the Statehouse with signs that said, “Come and take it.”
“We believe in the Second Amendment,” said Paul Allen, 62, a retired construction worker who lives in Salisbury, Mass. “You people will interpret it the way you want and we’ll interpret it for what it is — that law-abiding citizens who are true patriots have the right to bear arms.”
Mr. Allen described supporters of gun control as “ignorant sheep who are being spoon-fed by liberal teachers.”
“They haven’t read the Constitution and they don’t know what it means,” he said.
Gun rights organizations were mostly quiet about the demonstrations on Saturday. A spokesman for the N.R.A. did not answer several emails requesting comment.
On the eve of the march, Colion Noir, a host on NRATV, an online video channel produced by the gun group, lashed out at the Parkland students, saying that “no one would know your names” if someone with a weapon had stopped the gunman at their school.
“These kids ought to be marching against their own hypocritical belief structures,” he said in the video, adding, “The only reason we’ve ever heard of them is because the guns didn’t come soon enough.”
Demonstrators gathered in gun-friendly states.
In places where gun control is less popular, demonstrators pooled together, trying to show that support for their cause extends beyond large, predominantly liberal cities.
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In Vermont, a rural state with a rich hunting culture and some of the nation’s weakest gun laws, marchers gathered at the Capitol in Montpelier. Organizers hoped that thousands would turn out by the end of the day — an ambitious goal in a city of 7,500 people.
“I hope the national march is going to be impactful, but at least we know state by state that we can make change,” said Madison Knoop, a college freshman who organized the rally.
In Dahlonega, Ga., several hundred people gathered outside a museum, a surprising show of strength for gun control in an overwhelmingly conservative region.
“We’re going to be the generation that takes down the gun lobby,” Marisa Pyle, 20, said through a megaphone.
Ms. Pyle, a student at the University of Georgia and an organizer of Saturday’s rally in Lumpkin County, challenged critics of the demonstrations across the country.
“I’m starting to think they just want to shut us up because they’re scared of what we have to say,” Ms. Pyle said.
Young people were scattered in a crowd dominated by people in middle age and older. There were few signs of counterprotesters. But as Ms. Pyle led a roll call of the Stoneman Douglas victims, a man in a passing vehicle yelled: “Trump! Trump! Trump!”
In Anchorage, the largest city in Alaska, marchers gathered in weather that peaked above freezing around noon.
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Alaska has not seen a school shooting in two decades, but it has the highest rates of both gun-related deaths and suicides in the nation.
High schoolers turned out in jean jackets and hoodies, and shoveled snow to clear paths for one another in the 24-degree weather.
“Do you know how it feels to have the principal pretend over the intercom that the shooter is walking your way?” Elsa Hoppenworth, a 16-year-old junior at West Anchorage High School, asked a cheering crowd. “Those who do not contribute to change contribute to our death.”
Melanie Anderson, a 44-year-old middle school teacher, held up a sign that said “teacher, not sharp shooter.”
Keenly aware that Alaska is a pro-gun state, the students who marched and made speeches were careful to make clear that they were seeking modest reinforcements on existing gun laws, rather than all-out bans.
The message resonated for Chicago residents all too familiar with gun violence.
President TrumpDonald John TrumpPoll: Both parties need to do more on drug prices Senate approves .3 trillion spending bill, sending to Trump White House: Trump will delay steel tariffs for EU, six countries MORE is moving aggressively to reshape his team, and the unexpected moves are causing turmoil within his embattled staff.
The president’s supporters are cheering his decision to replace national security adviser H.R. McMaster with former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, whose views are more in line with those of the president.
That sudden move comes after Trump replaced his secretary of State and national economic adviser in recent weeks — long-anticipated changes that nonetheless happened abruptly and sent shockwaves through Washington.
The staff shake-up reveals the president’s frustration with members of his old team who encouraged him to back away from or delay key policy decisions, which he frequently makes based on gut instinct.
Bolton, the hawkish former Bush administration official, has pledged to implement Trump’s agenda, even on matters in which they might disagree.
The president’s allies had grown frustrated with McMaster, believing he slow-walked the president’s agenda or sought to implement his own.
“Bolton is coming in to prosecute the president’s agenda, which sets him apart from McMaster who tried to advance his own policies and beliefs,” said a former White House official. “If Bolton sticks to that plan, he will be a success. The president wants people in the administration who, when he makes a decision, will follow through on it.”
Bolton will be Trump’s third national security adviser in just 14 months, adding to a level of turnover the White House not seen in decades.
The reshuffle is far from over.
The National Security Council is now bracing for a shake-up under Bolton’s leadership. There is hope among Trump’s allies that Bolton will put an end to the damaging leaks from the National Security Council and rid the council of Obama-era holdovers — or anyone viewed as insufficiently loyal to the president.
Sources close to the council say spokesman Michael Anton and deputy national security adviser Nadia Schadlow could be among those on the way out.
One of Bolton’s top advisers, Richard Grenell, will not be joining Bolton in the White House. Trump has tapped Grenell to be ambassador to Germany, although Grenell is still waiting on his Senate confirmation.
But Bolton has other advisers who could be in line for key posts, including Sarah Tinsley, a longtime ally who is currently at Bolton’s super PAC, and Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst.
“Obviously, you have some folks on the [National Security Council] who are completely against this,” said one administration official. “They are bracing for a shake-up when he comes because we know he’ll want to bring in his own people. But he’s also bringing a much different worldview than what they’ve had there. It could be a tenuous situation early on.”
Bolton is not in lockstep with Trump on all national security matters. He has a strong personality and could clash with Defense Secretary James MattisJames Norman MattisOvernight Defense: Trump replaces McMaster with Bolton | .3T omnibus awaits Senate vote | Bill gives Pentagon flexibility on spending | State approves B arms sale to Saudis State Dept. announces B in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia Mattis: Saudi Arabia ‘part of the solution’ in Yemen civil war MORE and chief of staff John KellyJohn Francis KellyMORE, both of whom eventually soured on McMaster.
Bolton is said not to be the favored pick of Kelly or Mattis.
But his choice was cheered by Trump allies, who predicted he would find more success than McMaster, who also had ideological differences with Trump.
“It is a good move,” said Walid Phares, who was one of Trump’s national security advisers during the campaign.
“The White House and Congress both need him there at this particular junction,” Phares said.
In addition to serving as George W. Bush’s U.N. ambassador, Bolton also held key roles in the George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan administrations.
His critics have cast him as a “warmonger” whose impulse is always for military intervention.
Bolton has been vocal about ripping up the Obama administration’s deal with Iran — a position that the president shares. But he has also advocated for a military strike on North Korea at a time when the administration is pushing sanctions and potential talks between the countries.
Bolton’s allies say his reputation as a “warmonger” is overblown and that, at the end of the day, he and Trump both prescribe to Reagan’s “peace through strength” maxim.
“John understands that people view him as a warmonger but he’s really not,” said one person close to him. “He’s never worked in military planning or the Pentagon. He’s a diplomat who understands there’s no better reinforcement for American diplomacy than having the credible threat of military action behind you, and he uses that to gain a diplomatic edge. You need hard-edged diplomats like that to avoid wars. You get into wars with weak diplomacy.”
Trump’s abrupt personnel changes are still reverberating throughout the White House.
Trump’s move to replace McMaster with Bolton caught Kelly and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders by surprise. Less than a week ago, Sanders insisted there were no changes coming.
The Bolton episode highlighted Trump’s volatile decisionmaking process, which has frustrated some members of his team.
Rumors of McMaster’s exit had swirled for months, and Kelly worked behind the scenes to craft a transition plan that would allow McMaster to land on his feet.
After Trump axed Secretary of State Rex TillersonRex Wayne TillersonWhite House aides planned to announce McMaster with other departures: report Trump considered ousting Kelly and serving as his own chief of staff: report Trump replaces McMaster with Bolton as national security adviser MORE last week, speculation mounted that McMaster would be the next to go. But White House officials, including Sanders, publicly batted down the speculation after huddling with the president.
Bolton himself seemed to be taken by surprise by the offer, which followed a Thursday afternoon meeting in the West Wing.
“Obviously it caught us off guard,” said an administration official.
But Trump’s allies say White House staff understand Trump’s volatile nature and will get over it. In the long run, they believe Bolton gives the administration a well-regarded establishment figure with broad support in the conservative foreign policy sphere.
“Bolton is a hard-nosed guy. He is not a wallflower,” the official said. “He also knows how to operate the levers of power. He is not a rookie at this, so he will be a force to be reckoned with.”
An Iowa family of four was found dead in the condominium where they stayed while on vacation in Tulum, Mexico, police confirmed Friday.
Kevin Wayne Sharp, 41, his wife, Amy Marie Sharp, 38, and their children, Sterling Wayne Sharp, 12, and Adrianna Marie Sharp, 7, were reported missing by their immediate family members early Friday morning to police in Creston, Iowa, which is about 70 miles southwest of Des Moines and 100 miles southeast of Omaha
The Sharps had planned to return home Wednesday, family members said.
Investigators quickly made contact with the U.S. State Department, Creston police said in a statement. A welfare check at the condominium where the family was thought to be staying led to the discovery of the four bodies.
Autopsies are being performed in Mexico. It is not immediately clear what led to the deaths, but Creston Police Chief Paul Ver Meer told KCCI that there were no signs of traumatic injury.
Local Mexican authorities have taken over the investigation, according to the State Department. The Mexican Tourism Board said in a statement obtained by CBS that “preliminary reports from local officials conclude that there were no signs of violence or struggle.”
Ashli Peterson, a relative of the Sharps’, posted about the family’s disappearance on Facebook on Thursday night, around the time that relatives contacted police. The post was shared hundreds of thousands of times. On Friday afternoon, Peterson posted an update.
“Please respect the family at this time as they go through the grieving process,” she wrote. “Thank you for all the posts, shares, and kind words.”
Kevin Sharp was an avid stock car racer known as “The Sharpshooter” in the local racing scene, and he often competed in events in a neighboring county, Cliff Baldwin, his friend and fellow racer, told the Des Moines Register. He said he knew Sharp and his family his entire life, and that he and Kevin shared a love for the University of Iowa and the Kansas City Chiefs.
“He was a great personal friend,” Baldwin told the Des Moines Register. “It’s hard to talk about. The more I think about him and the family, the harder it is.”
“Creston is close-knit like all small towns in Iowa,” he added. “He’s a big part of that community there.”
Sharp and his family left the United States for Cancun, Mexico, on March 15, according to Peterson’s post. The family then rented a car and drove to Tulum, where they were renting a condo, according to Amy Sharp’s sister Renee Hoyt, who spoke with the Creston News Advertiser.
It was the family’s second time in Mexico, according to Amy Sharp’s cousin, Jana Weland, who told ABC News that the family had planned to meet up with some friends at a water park.
But “they never showed up at that water park to meet them,” Weland said.
The Sharps were supposed to return to the United States about 2:45 p.m. Wednesday from Cancun and arrive in St. Louis about 6 p.m.
From there, they would travel to Danville, Ill., to attend Thursday’s Southwestern Community College men’s basketball game, Peterson said. The Sharps were avid Southwestern fans, and the college on Friday extended its condolences to their friends and family members. Head basketball coach Todd Lorensen called the family “loyal, caring, supportive and generous.”
“If our guys play that way we will be successful,” Lorensen wrote in a Facebook post.
The Sharps had informed their family members on March 15 that they had arrived safely at their condominium in Tulum. So when family members didn’t hear from them on Thursday — after they were supposed to have arrived in St. Louis — they became worried.
“We have filed a missing persons report through the US Embassy in Mexico already. We have also pinged cells phones and show that they are still in Mexico with no movement on their phones. Social media is also inactive,” Peterson said in her Facebook post late Thursday night.
UPDATE: The Sharps have been located. They were found last night in their condo deceased. There was no foul play! At…
Hoyt, Amy Sharp’s sister, told the Creston News Advertiser that Kevin Sharp’s phone was tracked using Apple’s Find iPhone app, which it pinged in Mexico. The phone had not moved from its location since Thursday morning.
Relatives of the Sharp family could not immediately be reached for comment.
The family’s mysterious deaths come amid increased warnings about travel to Quintana Roo state, which is home to Tulum — a popular destination for those looking to explore Mayan ruins or snorkel in limestone sinkholes. The State Department issued a level 2 advisory to those traveling to Quintana Roo on March 16, meaning visitors should be cautious because of increased crime there. Department officials cited a surge in Quintana Roo’s homicide rate since 2016.
Last month, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published an investigation that identified more than 150 reports from travelers who said they blacked out or became violently ill after having just one or two drinks at dozens of Mexican resorts in Cancun, Playa del Carmen, Puerta Vallarta and Los Cabos. It is unclear whether those tourists were deliberately drugged or became random victims of tainted alcohol, according to the investigation.
Another Journal Sentinel investigation from November looked at repeated instances where the travel and restaurant review website TripAdvisor removed posts warning of alleged rape, assault or other injuries at some Mexican resorts. And a July investigation into the death of a Wisconsin college student in Mexico uncovered widespread safety shortcoming, including those tied to tainted alcohol, at Mexican resorts.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
President Trump jolted Washington on Friday when he began the day tweeting that he might veto a massive spending bill needed to prevent a government shutdown — and then appearing in front of cameras five hours later to say that he had signed the legislation.
Trump ripped into the $1.3 trillion funding package in remarks at the White House shortly after 1 p.m., calling it a “ridiculous situation,” filled with overspending yet lacking enough money for his border wall or a deal to resolve the future of the young, undocumented immigrants known as “dreamers.” He said he was only signing the bill because it contained a boost for the military.
“I looked very seriously at the veto,” Trump told reporters. “I was thinking about doing the veto. But because of the incredible gains that we’ve been able to make for the military, that overrode any of our thinking.”
Friday’s five hours of confusion showed once again how nothing is certain in Trump’s Washington and any deal is at risk of being blown up by the mercurial president. On Thursday, administration officials and congressional leaders said that the president would sign the bill — even though for days he had privately complained about the package in late-night phone calls and early morning rants — and the White House issued a news release touting its accomplishments.
It also highlighted Trump’s desire to be seen as his own political entity and still an outsider, separate at times from the Republican Party he leads. During his remarks at the White House, Trump sought to distance himself from a bill unpopular with his base but that his aides helped craft and the GOP-led Congress passed. At times he went so far as to portray himself as being almost helpless and having little choice but to accept the spending package.
“As a matter of national security, I’ve signed this omnibus budget bill,” he said. “There are a lot of things that I’m unhappy about in this bill. There are a lot of things that we shouldn’t have had in this bill, but we were, in a sense, forced — if we want to build our military — we were forced to have.”
The president’s unhappiness was fueled Friday morning, as it often is, with Trump in the residence watching “Fox and Friends.” For days, he heard that Republicans were getting rolled in the spending negotiations, and that message was now being delivered by his favorite morning show.
“This is a swamp budget, this is a Mitch McConnell special, this is a dysfunctional Senate,” Fox News personality Pete Hegseth vented, referring to the Senate majority leader. “There’s no wall. Ultimately, the Democrats controlled the process in the Senate. That’s why Chuck Schumer was so happy.”
Trump had confided to several advisers that he was tired of watching Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) crow on TV — or hearing that he was being snookered by Democrats. He gets particularly agitated over Schumer’s statements, two of these people said.
On Friday morning, he also heard from Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), who said that he should not sign the spending package. Trump seemed to agree. The president had already talked to a number of other conservatives and friends, including Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), the leader of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus.
None of the reviews coming in from his favorite media outlets, including Fox News and the conservative website Newsmax, about the bill were positive, even with a big uptick in military spending that Trump so prized. The president was told about radio show host Rush Limbaugh’s rant against the bill.
“The president was really sold a bill of goods here,” said Christopher Ruddy, Newsmax’s chief executive, who speaks frequently to the president. “Conservatives look at this omnibus bill and say, ‘This is not why they elected Donald Trump. This is not a good bill for him to sign.’ ”
The spending bill is widely expected to be the last major piece of legislation that Congress will pass before the November midterm elections, which increased pressure to jam it full of legislative odds and ends, including provisions on guns and combating invasive carp. The bill funds the federal government through Sept. 30, and provides $700 billion for the military and $591 billion for domestic agencies.
Conservatives and some of Trump’s top supporters found plenty they did not like about the package. The House and Senate both passed it just more than 24 hours after it was released, drawing complaints that there was little time to review its contents. Overall, critics on the right said that it spent too much money, yet only included a pittance for Trump’s proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Immigration seemed to frustrate Trump the most. He secured $1.6 billion for some fencing and levees on the border; it comes with strings attached and the amount fell far short of the $25 billion requested for a wall. He was also eager to blame Democrats for the failure to reach a deal to protect dreamers by coming up with an alternative to the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) that he ended last year.
Even Friday morning, Trump asked aides how he could still get more money for the border wall and whether some of the items that Democrats celebrated were in the bill — such as money for what are known as sanctuary cities and Planned Parenthood — were really included in the package, according to people familiar with the discussions who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity.
He was told that it was unlikely he could get more wall funding and that Democrats did secure the items they were touting. He grew angry. So, shortly before 9 a.m., Trump took to Twitter.
“I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded,” Trump tweeted.
Inside the White House, senior officials such as Vice President Pence, legislative director Marc Short and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis were summoned to persuade the president to sign the bill and avoid a shutdown.
Mattis stressed that the Pentagon desperately needed the funding boost — a $66 billion increase over last year’s levels — that the bill would provide. Aides told Trump it would be “historic” funding, a word that he likes to hear.
Short argued that the funding package would give the president money for immigration and infrastructure programs and that the White House had already committed to signing the bill.
Trump was given a list of all the planes, submarines and other military equipment the bill would fund, a list the president would rattle off later in his hastily organized appearance in the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) made his own pitch, calling the president about 30 minutes after the veto threat. Trump continued to say the bill was terrible, but Ryan again touted benefits for the military. McConnell (R-Ky.) called Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, two White House aides said, to keep tabs on the situation.
Hill staffers and lawmakers were frustrated, if not surprised.
Last year, Trump also threatened to veto a large spending bill in April on the day he was supposed to sign it, leading Ryan to rush over to the White House. Trump was set off by an episode of “Fox and Friends” and was confused about the legislation, advisers said.
The details of this spending package should not have been new to the president. Short, Jonathan Slemrod and Kathleen Kraninger — all administration aides — were involved in the negotiations in recent days that went until the wee hours of the morning with congressional appropriators, according to three people familiar with the talks.
At times, they would go outside to call others in the White House to ask for approval on certain parts of the bill. The arguments were sometimes tense and lasted until 3 a.m.
So members were perplexed when Trump, all of a sudden, seemed to not know what was in the bill Friday and said he might not sign it.
One senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that Stephen Miller, the White House’s senior policy adviser, and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen were critical of the spending measure because it did not do enough to advance Trump’s priorities on combating illegal immigration. Miller had eventually relented after realizing that there were no good options if the president vetoed the bill, officials said.
While Trump was not all that concerned about the cost, he kept reminding aides that many legislators, including the Freedom Caucus, hated the spending.
“The president’s instincts were right,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a member of the caucus. “The bill is terrible. We still wish he would have vetoed it. It is a bill that funds items we said we would not fund while not funding items we promised we would.”
Some lawmakers and White House officials were confident that Trump’s veto tweet was a bluff and that he was just letting off steam.
Eventually, White House officials said, Trump demanded having a public event, where he could show his political supporters that he didn’t like the bill while attacking Democrats — and labeling it all for the military.
Before cameras at the White House, Trump vented about the parts of the bill he disliked and called for the power to issue line-item vetoes — something the Supreme Court has deemed unconstitutional — and urged the Senate to junk the legislative filibuster, which has little support among senators.
But this battle was already over. He signed the bill before appearing before reporters.
John Wagner, Mike DeBonis, Erica Werner and Sean Sullivan contributed to this report.
President Trump took the first steps toward imposing tariffs on $60 billion in Chinese goods and limiting China’s ability to invest in the U.S. technology industry Thursday, saying the moves were a response to Beijing’s history of forcing U.S. companies to surrender their trade secrets to do business in China.
The president directed U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer to announce within 15 days a proposed list of products to be hit with tariff increases. After a public comment period, the final list, designed to target Chinese products that benefited from improper access to U.S. technology, will be made public.
“We’re doing things for this country that should have been done for many, many years,” the president said before signing a memorandum setting in motion the trade actions.
The president blamed China for the loss of 60,000 factories and 6 million jobs, a number that most economists say blends the impact on U.S. employment of both Chinese competition and automation.
Trump said that unfair Chinese trade practices are responsible for the yawning U.S. trade deficit with China, which has reached a record $375 billion on his watch.
“Anyway you look at it, it’s the largest of any country in the history of our world,” the president said. “It’s out of control.”
The White House expects the new taxes, which could reach up to 1,300 specific imports, will have a “minimal impact” upon consumers.
“There is no way to impose $50 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports without it having a negative impact on American consumers. Make no mistake, these tariffs may be aimed at China, but the bill will be charged to American consumers who will pay more at the checkout for the items they shop for every day,” said Hun Quach, vice president for international trade at the retail Industry Leaders Association.
Trump and his aides provided varying estimates of the value of the Chinese goods at issue. The president referred in his Roosevelt Room remarks to “about $60 billion” while a senior White House aide who briefed reporters two hours before the president spoke put the figure at “about $50 billion.”
The official can not be identified under the ground rules for such White House briefings.
Trump also ordered Lighthizer to complain to the World Trade Organization about China’s discriminatory licensing practices for foreign companies, an effort U.S. officials hope will draw support from U.S. allies in Europe and Japan.
On Capitol Hill Thursday, Lighthizer said that several U.S. allies would be spared unrelated tariffs on imported steel and aluminum — at least temporarily — while they negotiate possible permanent exemptions.
Lighthizer told the Senate Finance Committee that the European Union, Argentina, Australia, Brazil and South Korea will not be hit by the tariffs, which take effect at 12:01 a.m. Friday. Trump already had exempted Canada and Mexico from the import levies for the duration of talks aimed at renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The president described the actions against China as part of a broader reappraisal of U.S. global relationships, featuring a willingness to use tariff threats to force concessions from U.S. trading partners.
“We will end up negotiating these things rather than fighting over them,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said, in an apparent reference to fears of a trade war.
The president also alluded to political calculations, saying that voter concerns over economic losses from bad trade deals was “maybe one of the main reasons” he won the White House.
“The era of economic surrender is over,” added Vice President Michael Pence.
But the trade moves drew fire from the conservative National Taxpayers Union’s Bryan Riley, who called the proposed China tariffs “self-destructive and reckless.”
Under the measures targeting Beijing announced Thursday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will draw up new investment restrictions to address concerns about Chinese investors, including state-sponsored investment funds, acquiring American companies to gain access to their technology.
“The end objective of this is to get China to modify its unfair trading practices,” said Everett Eissenstat, deputy assistant to the president for international economic affairs.
Since taking office 14 months ago, the president’s remarks on China have swung between effusive praise for Chinese President Xi Jinping and tough talk about its trade practices. In recent months, Trump has adopted an increasingly bellicose tone, with the White House billing Thursday’s action as “targeting China’s economic aggression” and the president’s trade agenda released in February labeling the country a “hostile” economic power.
“China is engaged in practices which harm this country,” said Peter Navarro, director of the White House office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy.
Trump’s trade moves potentially mark a sharp break with decades of growing U.S. economic engagement with China, which began in the late 1970s as the country emerged from Maoist autarky.
Years of commercial delegations and diplomatic dialogue saw trade between the two countries mushroom to $635 billion from $116 billion in 2000. Yet at the same time, U.S. companies complained about strict restraints on their operations in the Chinese market. Government regulations typically limited them to a minority stake alongside a local partner.
Both the Bush and Obama administrations sought to persuade the Chinese to embrace more fully a market-oriented policy. Through 2013, when a high-level Communist Party conclave proclaimed a “decisive role” for the market and officials promised to pare back the state’s role in the economy, U.S. officials believed China was headed in the right direction.
“That process has failed,” said Navarro.
Trump administration officials now say that China’s economic policies are distorting global markets for key products such as steel. and threaten to have the same effect on more advanced industries like semiconductors and artificial intelligence.
Washington’s long-standing belief that increased economic ties between the world’s two largest economies would benefit the Chinese and American peoples have been scrapped by the Trump team. “China benefits far more from the U.S.-China relationship than the U.S. does,” Navarro said.
China has repeatedly urged the United States to refrain from taking action that might provoke a trade war, arguing that both countries would be hurt.
Premier Li Keqiang this week urged Washington to “act rationally instead of being led by emotions,” while the China Daily newspaper urged the administration to “come to its senses” and stop pushing for a trade war.
Chinese media has repeatedly hinted at retaliation against U.S. soybean imports or orders of Boeing aircraft.
Li also took a conciliatory step this week, promising that China would open its economy further to foreign companies and investors and not force them to surrender their technology.
But Li conditioned any such opening on the U.S.removing its restrictions on high-tech exports to China, which Washington refuses on national security grounds.
“We all know that in trade it is unrealistic and unreasonable to pursue absolute equivalence,” Hua Chunying, a foreign ministry spokeswoman, said Thursday. “…If the U.S. on one hand wants China to buy what it wants to sell, while on the other hand refuses to sell to China what China wants, and makes accusations against China about trade imbalances: Is this fair?”
Simon Denyer in Beijing contributed to this report.
“H.R. McMaster has served his country with distinction for more than 30 years. He has won many battles and his bravery and toughness are legendary,” Mr. Trump said in a statement. “General McMaster’s leadership of the National Security Council staff has helped my administration accomplish great things to bolster America’s national security.”
General McMaster had struggled for months to impose order not only on a fractious national security team but on a president who resisted the sort of discipline customary in the military. Although General McMaster has been a maverick voice at times during a long military career, the Washington foreign policy establishment had hoped he would keep the president from making rash decisions.
Yet the president and the general, who had never met before Mr. Trump interviewed General McMaster for the post, had little chemistry from the start, and often clashed behind the scenes.
General McMaster’s serious, somber style and preference for order made him an uncomfortable fit with a president whose style is looser, and who has little patience for the detail and nuance of complex national security issues. They had differed on policy, with General McMaster cautioning against ripping up the nuclear deal with Iran without a strategy for what would come next, and tangling with Mr. Trump over the strategy for American forces in Afghanistan.
Their tensions seeped into public view in February, when General McMaster said at a security conference in Munich that the evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was beyond dispute. The statement drew a swift rebuke from the president, who vented his anger on Twitter.
“General McMaster forgot to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the Russians and that the only Collusion was between Russia and Crooked H, the DNC and the Dems,” Mr. Trump wrote, using his campaign nickname for Hillary Clinton. “Remember the Dirty Dossier, Uranium, Speeches, Emails and the Podesta Company!”
Mr. Trump selected General McMaster last February after pushing out Michael T. Flynn, his first national security adviser, for not being forthright about a conversation with Russia’s ambassador at the time. (Mr. Flynn has since pleaded guilty of making a false statement to the F.B.I. and is cooperating with Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.)
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General McMaster carried out a slow-rolling purge of hard-liners at the National Security Council who had been installed by Mr. Flynn and were allied ideologically with Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, earning the ire of conservatives who complained that his moves represented the foreign policy establishment reasserting itself over a president who had promised a different approach.
General McMaster’s position at the White House had been seen as precarious for months, and he had become the target of a concerted campaign by hard-line activists outside the administration who accused him of undermining the president’s agenda and pushed for his ouster, even creating a social media effort branded with a #FireMcMaster hashtag.
Last summer, Mr. Trump balked at a plan General McMaster presented to bolster the presence of United States forces in Afghanistan, although the president ultimately embraced a strategy that would require thousands more American troops.
General McMaster had been among the most hard-line administration officials in his approach to North Korea, publicly raising the specter of a “preventive war” against the North. He was among those who expressed concerns about Mr. Trump’s abrupt decision this month to meet Kim Jong-un, according to a senior official.
WASHINGTON—The Federal Reserve said it would raise short-term interest rates a quarter-percentage point and signaled it could lift them at a slightly more aggressive pace in coming years to keep the strengthening economy on an even keel.
Fed officials said they would increase their benchmark federal-funds rate to a range between 1.5% and 1.75% and penciled in a total of three rate increases for this year.
A storm dubbed #DeleteFacebook is brewing in techie communities, on Twitter and — irony alert — on Facebook. The idea is this time is different from all the other times the social network has violated our trust. The co-founder of WhatsApp Brian Acton, who became a billionaire when Facebook purchased his app in 2014, tweeted Tuesday, “It is time. #deletefacebook.”
Is this the beginning of a movement? Here’s the difficult truth: Holding Facebook accountable for data abuses through a mass walkout would be very hard because it is woven into so many lives. But Facebook members are not without recourse to help bring change. We should follow the money.
I agree enough is enough. In the last week, we learned Facebook allowed our likes, our religions, our network of friends — data that millions of us didn’t intend to share — to be weaponized in political campaigns. A political marketing firm that worked for the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, is in trouble for what it did with the data. But what’s really scary is that it didn’t have to hack into anything to get it. Facebook was designed to collect all that info and handed it over without policing how it was being used. Now Facebook’s having an overdue existential crisis about being a spy machine.
But Facebook isn’t like other products you boycott. Last year’s #DeleteUber movement, which attracted an estimated 200,000, helped drive a management change at the start-up because it hit Uber’s bottom line. We don’t buy products from Facebook — we are its product. We’ve given it our information for free. And in North America, we were each worth $26.76 to Facebook in the fourth quarter of 2017.
Facebook became America’s fifth most-valuable public company (worth about $490 billion as of Wednesday) by selling advertisers highly targeted access to us. It takes data about what we and our friends do and then combines that with data from other places to make all sorts of inferences about us.
It’s true that Facebook needs our eyeballs to sell ads to marketers, and is very attuned to how much time people spend looking at its apps. But you quitting — or even 200,000 people quitting — wouldn’t make much of a dent in its 2.2 billion sets of eyeballs. #DeleteFacebook doesn’t work as a phenomenon only among the elite — it would take tens of millions.
And while it’s easy to press the button to quit Facebook (here’s a link), it’s spectacularly difficult in practice. Facebook has a hold on us because of its network effect: Even if you don’t like Facebook, you might still need it to stay in touch with your mom, your second cousin or even your boss. They’d have to quit, also — and all their friends, too. Many people rely on Facebook to sign in to other websites, dating services and other apps.
There aren’t great alternatives, either. Several of the most popular other social apps in the United States — Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp — are also owned by Facebook. People peeved at Facebook’s data practices have tried making new services, but none took off.
Follow the money
There have been many calls to boycott Facebook for past indiscretions. If we want the result to be any different this time, we need to address the broader problem.
Aside from a dramatic change of heart from founder Mark Zuckerberg, getting Facebook to reform what data it collects and how it uses it requires destabilizing its business. And that boils down to this: Making Facebook an unreliable or expensive way for marketers to reach us.
“The only way the boycott will be effective is if it creates enough reputational damage that regulation becomes a reasonable option or if advertisers leave en masse,” says Brayden King, a professor at the Northwestern Kellogg School of Management who studies how social movement activists influence corporate social responsibility and policymaking. Just the threat of either of those made Facebook’s stock price drop by 7 percent this week.
Comments made by Unilever chief marketing officer Keith Weed in February sound mighty relevant in the light of Cambridge Analytica: “It is acutely clear from the groundswell of consumer voices over recent months that people are becoming increasingly concerned about the impact of digital on well-being, on democracy — and on truth itself,” Weed said. “This is not something that can be brushed aside or ignored. Consumers are also demanding platforms which make a positive contribution to society.”
(Unilever didn’t respond to questions about whether it followed up on Weed’s threat, or how it views the Facebook after the Cambridge Analytica flap.)
And the ad industry already has an action force: an anonymous group called Sleeping Giants, which has been effective at getting advertisers to step away from Breitbart News and other outlets the group accuses of racist or sexist content. A member of Sleeping Giants who asked to remain anonymous says it doesn’t currently have plans to target Facebook, but it is watching closely. “What is clear now is they are being irresponsible with information. Advertisers need to be aware of that and ask themselves what they want to support,” he said.
Option B is more of a hammer: If governments force Facebook to change the way it uses data, advertisers may become less enamored with Facebook just because it won’t be as effective.
Current U.S. privacy laws go deep on areas like children and health data. But there’s no general-purpose privacy law. Some members of the U.S. Congress have this week renewed calls for Facebook — even Zuckerberg himself — to testify on the Cambridge Analytica case. But turning that into laws is a long, slow process. Not even last year’s massive Equifax hack got lawmakers to act.
The world will soon get one kind of control from the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which requires more transparency from companies about the data they collect and how they use it.
In the short term, Federal Trade Commission may also step in and fine Facebook. It happened to have an agreement in place with Facebook from 2011 that holds the social network accountable for incidents where its data gets shared without members’ explicit consent.
The regulation question is: What exactly should change? There will be many ideas floated in the months ahead. One intriguing argument is that policing data is more than just a Facebook problem, so we need an independent agency (beyond the FTC) to deal with it.
We’ve allowed an data-gathering industry to flourish with very few consequences and responsibilities. Now we’re learning just how badly that can end up.
And quitting Facebook alone won’t solve the bigger problem. The biggest consumer challenge of our era calls for a broader consumer movement. Tweeted another celebrity, Jim Carrey, “Who are you sharing your life with? #regulatefacebook.”
A city that has been on edge for weeks as several makeshift bombs exploded without warning — on doorsteps, on a sidewalk and, most recently, in a FedEx shipping center — saw the long-running drama coming to an end. But authorities warned that with the bomber’s obviously extensive preparations, it might not be entirely over.
“Two very important things before we can put this to rest. One, we don’t know if there are any other bombs out there and if so, how many and where they may be,” Mr. Abbott said on Fox News.
“Second, very importantly, we need to go throughout the day to make sure that we rule out whether there was anybody else involved in this process,” he said.
PhotoLaw enforcement responded to an area of Round Rock, Tex., where the police say a bombing suspect blew himself up in his vehicle. Credit
Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas, told a local television affiliate that Mr. Conditt bought at least some of his bomb-making supplies from a Home Depot in Pflugerville, a small town about 20 miles northeast of Austin where the suspect lived.
“He did have a battery pack, and he had nails,” Mr. McCaul said.
The crucial break for investigators, Mr. McCaul said, came when Mr. Conditt walked into a FedEx office to mail a package earlier this week.
“From there, we could get surveillance video of him, get his vehicle, his license plate number, identify the individual, go to the Home Depot where he bought the stuff, and eventually, with his cellphone, be able to locate him, which they did this morning,” Mr. McCaul said.
A federal criminal complaint charging Mr. Conditt with unlawful possession and transfer of a destructive device was filed on Tuesday night, the authorities said Wednesday, along with a warrant for his arrest.
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Also on Wednesday, the Austin Police said they had detained Mr. Conditt’s two roommates. One was questioned and released; the other was still being questioned as of Wednesday afternoon. Neither roommate was identified.
Earlier in the day, local police and state troopers went door-to-door in the five blocks around Mr. Conditt’s house and told residents they were evacuating the area for their safety as federal agents worked to remove and dispose of homemade explosives found inside the residence.
As they arrived, federal agents notified neighbors, and then approached someone at Mr. Conditt’s home, said Mark Roessler, 57, an information technology manager who lives across the street.
“I watched the truck come down the street and shove the car out of the way, and they started announcing, ‘This is the F.B.I. We’re here to serve search warrants,’” Mr. Roessler recounted. “And then within a few minutes this individual came out the front door. They were giving him clear instructions, had him remove his shirt, and walk toward them.”
Mr. Roessler said he had never seen the person who emerged from the house. “He was wearing some dark pants and a white T-shirt, looked like he had just woken up,” he said.
Law enforcement authorities spent hours closeted with Mr. Conditt’s parents in their white clapboard home with an American flag hanging outside.
“We do not understand what motivated him to do what he did,” the Austin police chief, Brian Manley, told reporters.
Mr. Conditt was a quiet, “nerdy” young man who came from a “tight-knit, godly family,” said Donna Sebastian Harp, who had known the family for nearly 18 years.
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He was the oldest of four children who had all been home-schooled by their mother, Ms. Harp said, but he had also attended Austin Community College, although college officials said he did not graduate.
“He was always kind of quiet,” she said. “He was a nerd, always reading, devouring books and computers and things like that.”
She said there had never been any hints of violence, until Wednesday morning, when she received a text message from Mr. Conditt’s mother. It read, “Pray for our family. We are under attack” — a reference to a spiritual assault by Satan, Ms. Harp said.
The Conditt family is affiliated with Calvary Chapel of Austin, according to the church’s office manager, Dean Miller. It is an evangelical church that meets in a former grocery store in Pflugerville. Its members believe the Bible prohibits same-sex marriage.
It was not immediately clear how involved Mr. Conditt was in the church, but he argued against same-sex marriage in a post he wrote on a blog he created for a political science class at the community college.
“Political protection of a sexual practice is ludicrous,” Mr. Conditt wrote. “I do not believe it is proper to pass laws stating that homosexuals have ‘rights.’”
PhotoInvestigators at the scene in Round Rock, just north of Austin. Credit
Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
McKenna McIntosh, another student in the course, said Mr. Conditt’s views as reflected on his blog were “clear as day.” In a biography on the site, Mr. Conditt described himself as a conservative but said he was “not that politically inclined.” His six posts, which date from January to March 2012, also included arguments in favor of the end of sex-offender registries and in support of the death penalty.
“Living criminals harm and murder, again,” he wrote, “executed ones do not.”
In the post, he pointed to Larry James Harper, a Texas fugitive who killed himself in 2001 as the police closed in after he escaped from prison. He compared him to another escapee, George Rivas, who was captured.
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It seemed almost to foreshadow his own fate.
“If he had wanted or wished for death, he would have just shot himself, like his fellow Texas 7 escapee, Larry Harper, who committed suicide, rather than be captured and re-incarcerated,” Mr. Conditt wrote.
Detective David Fugitt with the Austin police said Mr. Conditt’s family was cooperating and was allowing investigators to search the property, including several backyard sheds.
“We are devastated and broken at the news that our family member could be involved in such an awful way,” the family said in a statement published by CNN. “We had no idea of the darkness that Mark must have been in. Our family is a normal family in every way. We love, we pray, and we try to inspire and serve others. Right now, our prayers are for the families who’ve lost loved ones, for those impacted in any way, and for the soul of our Mark. We are grieving and in shock.”
Real estate records show that Mr. Conditt and his father, William Conditt, bought a house together in Pflugerville in 2017, and family friends said the younger Mr. Conditt was remodeling it.
But neighbors said they saw little of him.
“I think he was pretty much a loner,” said Jay Schulze, a network engineer who lived about two blocks down, adding that Mr. Conditt spent most of his time with his parents.
A neighbor of Mr. Conditt’s parents, Jeff Reeb, 75, said the Conditts had never expressed concerns about their son to him.
“I can tell you nothing about him personally, except that he was a nice, young kid,” Mr. Reeb said. “He always seemed like he was smart. And he always seemed like he was very polite.”
Mr. Reeb added: “My summation is it doesn’t make any sense.”
Austin has been in the grip of the wave of attacks since March 2.
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The first explosions hit African-American residents whose families are well-known in the city’s black community, though two white men were injured by an explosive triggered by a tripwire on Sunday.
The suspect is believed to be responsible for at least six bombs that killed at least two people and wounded five. Four bombs detonated in various locations in Austin where they had been left. Another detonated at a FedEx distribution center in Schertz, Tex., near San Antonio, and a sixth was found, unexploded, in a FedEx facility near Austin’s airport.
The attacks began when a package bomb detonated on the porch of an Austin home, killing Anthony Stephan House, 39. That was followed 10 days later by two bombs that were found outside homes, one of which killed a 17-year-old man.
The first three bombs were apparently detonated when they were picked up or jostled. Later, a package bomb exploded outside another Austin home, set off by a tripwire. The bombs at the FedEx centers were found on Tuesday.
The suspect’s vehicle was traced to a hotel in Round Rock, just north of Austin, Chief Manley said, where a SWAT team surreptitiously surrounded the hotel and called other specialized units. But the suspect drove away before those teams could arrive.
Officers followed the suspect, who stopped in a ditch off Interstate 35, and SWAT officers approached the vehicle on foot.
“The suspect detonated a bomb inside of the vehicle, knocking one officer back” and slightly injuring him, the police chief said. Another officer fired his gun at the vehicle.
Michael Luna, a guest at a Red Roof Inn near the confrontation, told a local news channel that he heard the explosion from the bomb, which sounded as if it had gone off 100 to 200 yards away, when he was smoking a cigarette in the parking lot. Mr. Luna, who said he had been in the military, said that the explosion sounded like two grenades going off at the same time, and that he heard a pop afterward that might have been gunfire.
The section of Interstate 35 near that confrontation was a traffic nightmare for hours as commuters moved at a glacial pace in the southbound lanes, many of them presumably unaware of what had happened. State troopers barred access at several ramps along that stretch of the highway.
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By Wednesday morning, aerial video footage of the area from KVUE, a local television affiliate, showed a red sport utility vehicle with blown-out windows next to a blue tarp, surrounded by investigators’ vehicles.
