Prisons official says it appears OJ Simpson being moved

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LAS VEGAS — A prisons official says it appears O.J. Simpson is being moved ahead of his release on parole as early as Monday from a prison in Nevada, possibly near Las Vegas.

Nevada Department of Corrections public inmate records provided no information Saturday about Simpson’s custody status or location. Prisons spokeswoman Brooke Keast says that usually indicates an inmate is being moved in custody.

Simpson’s attorney, Malcolm LaVergne, says that when he last spoke with his client he was still at Lovelock Correctional Center in northern Nevada. Keast has said plans called for Simpson to be transferred to High Desert State Prison outside Las Vegas to be freed Sunday or after.

Officials and LaVergne haven’t said when that will be.

Simpson is now 70. He has served nine years behind bars for a 2008 armed robbery involving two sports memorabilia dealers in a Las Vegas hotel room.

The past week showed Trump is struggling to be the president he promised

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On the campaign trail, Donald Trump pitched himself as a dealmaker who would look out for the country’s “forgotten people,” “drain the swamp,” unite the country, “immediately repeal and replace Obamacare,” surround himself with “only with the best and most serious people,” and, of course, “win so much.”

But this past week made clear that Trump is falling far short of fulfilling those promises.

He launched a divisive debate with racial undertones about whether professional athletes should stand for the national anthem, lashed out at Puerto Rico’s officials for begging his administration for more help after a devastating hurricane and backed a tax plan that analysts say would greatly benefit the wealthy.

Meanwhile, his chosen candidate in the Alabama Senate race lost big to an insurgent challenger, the latest attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act failed, and his health and human services secretary resigned after using taxpayer dollars to pay for several expensive chartered flights, another major departure from the president’s top staff in the first eight months of his administration.

“He campaigned on the basis of large promises which were, in many cases, disconnected from any concrete program for achieving them,” said William A. Galston, a top policy adviser to President Bill Clinton and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “He entered office having issued a bunch of promissory notes but not having thought through how to redeem them, and that’s a very difficult way to begin an administration.”

Trump’s problems this week mirror those that have dogged his presidency since the first day, but they are becoming more troublesome for the president and his party as they come under increasing pressure to deliver on at least part their agenda.

Galston cautioned against putting too much emphasis on one week and noted that it often takes presidents at least a year or two to install the right staff and learn how Washington operates.

“Thirty-five years of experience in Washington, for better or for worse, has taught me that things change,” Galston said, explaining that Trump could still pass a package of tax cuts, the economy could continue its winning streak and Republicans could retain control of Congress during the midterm elections next year. “At this point in Bill Clinton’s presidency — and I’m not comparing the two — his popularity had fallen very sharply, his health bill was in trouble, he was a year away from a total rout in the 1994 midterm elections, and yet he was reelected president by 8 percentage points.”

[Lost weekend: How Trump’s time at his golf club hurt the response to Maria]

Trump supporters argued that the past week had its upsides.

Christopher Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax Media and a Trump friend, said it was actually “a pretty good week for the president.” Trump is “very much on top” of the crisis in Puerto Rico, earned favor with Hill Republicans by supporting Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), sided with “most Americans” on how to behave during the national anthem and pushed a tax cut that’s “going to be a massive windfall for all Americans,” according to Ruddy.

“His approval numbers have been stable and trending up,” he said Saturday afternoon. “Despite the negative press barrage, he is standing pretty tall in my book.”

Before this past week, Trump’s presidency did appear to be on the upswing as he hit more of a focused stride. His approval rating increased slightly after he worked with Democrats to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a government shutdown, rising from 35 percent in Gallup polling in mid-August to 38 percent in mid-September, a level around which it has stayed. The administration was widely praised for its initial response to hurricanes that hit Texas, Florida and other Gulf Coast states. His angry, early-morning tweets became less frequent, avoiding the distractions they almost always bring.

But then Trump traveled to northern Alabama on Sept. 22 to rally support for Sen. Luther Strange, the Republican appointed to fill Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s vacated seat. Trump was reluctant to go, and from the stage he aired his reservations about endorsing Strange instead of former state judge Roy Moore, who is popular with Trump’s supporters.

At that Friday night rally, Trump delivered a stream-of-consciousness speech that lasted nearly 90 minutes. He repeatedly cursed, jokingly threatened to fire a Cabinet member, called allegations of Russian interference in the election a “hoax” and repeatedly relived the 2016 race. He seemed angry and dispirited.

[‘I love Alabama — it’s special’: At rally for Sen. Luther Strange, Trump vents frustrations in rambling speech]

Trump told the crowd that he and Strange “are unified by the same great American values” and that they both “respect our flag.” He then launched into an attack on professional football players who kneel during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial inequality. He said such players are a “son of a b—-” and team owners should fire them for disrespecting the American flag.

“If you see it, even if it’s one player, leave the stadium,” Trump said, calling on a boycott of a major American industry. “I guarantee things will stop, things will stop. Just pick up and leave, pick up and leave. Not the same game anymore anyway.”

Starting that Sunday, the number of players who knelt during the anthem greatly increased — and they were joined by coaches and even some owners who stood with them in solidarity. Trump, who once promised to “bring us all together as Americans,” had succeeded in dividing the country over an issue with racial overtones that had previously received little attention outside the sports world. He then escalated the tensions in several morning tweetstorms.

By Monday afternoon, it became clear that Congress’s latest attempt at repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act would fail, even though Trump once said he could accomplish the goal in just one day. The president would blame the latest failure on a Republican senator who was “in the hospital” and couldn’t make the vote — even though Sen. Thad Cochran (Miss.) was never hospitalized despite undergoing some medical treatment. Regardless, Cochran was not a deciding vote; there were enough votes to kill the legislation with or without him.

[Senate GOP abandons latest effort to unwind the Affordable Care Act]

To explain his lack of legislative success, Trump often blames Republican lawmakers — even though he said in his speech accepting the Republican nomination that “I alone can fix” the country.

On Tuesday, Moore beat Strange in a Republican primary election, and Trump tweeted his support for Moore while deleting from his account some of his past tweets in support of Strange.

Meanwhile, food, water and fuel were running out in Puerto Rico, where Hurricane Maria had decimated much of the island’s roads, airports and ports, as well as its telecommunications infrastructure. Puerto Rico was almost entirely without power, a problem expected to continue for weeks, and about half of residents did not have access to clean water.

As the week progressed, conditions in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands became only more dire. For days, cable news showed endless footage of the destruction and desperation in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands — along with increasingly critical assessments of the Trump administration’s response. Reporters on the ground found that food, water and medicine had arrived to the area on boats but had not been delivered to people in need because of a shortage of truck drivers.

Trump took a much different tone in talking about Puerto Rico than he had with Texas or Florida, tweeting Monday that the island “was already suffering from broken infrastructure massive debt” before the hurricane hit.

He repeatedly praised his administration’s efforts. “Great job,” he said Tuesday. “Very proud,” he said Wednesday. “Tremendous strides,” he said Friday.

On Saturday, the president accused Puerto Rico residents — who are American citizens — of wanting “everything to be done for them.” He lashed out at San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, who has harshly criticized his administration’s response and begged for help for her constituents.

“Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help,” Trump tweeted.

The administration has defended its response to the devastation on the island, with press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Saturday tweeting a quote from Puerto Rico’s governor saying that every time he has asked for help, “they’ve executed quickly.”

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to represent “the forgotten men and women” and get them better-paying jobs and lower taxes. He said he would lower the national debt by bringing his “common-sense” business attitude to spending. This week, however, he released a tax plan that analysts said would benefit the top 1 percent more than middle-class families (although Trump continues to claim that the opposite is true) while greatly adding to the deficit.

[GOP tax plan would provide major gains for richest 1%, uneven benefits for middle class]

Meanwhile, news broke that some members of Trump’s Cabinet were using taxpayer money to fly private chartered jets along routes where much less expensive commercial flights were available. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price took more than two dozen such flights that cost taxpayers more than $400,000, according to Politico.

Trump made clear that he was “not happy” about this, and Price resigned Friday.

“I certainly don’t like the optics,” the president said as he left the White House on Friday afternoon to spend the weekend at his private golf club in New Jersey. “We renegotiate deals. We’re renegotiating trade deals. . . . I’ve saved hundreds of millions of dollars. So, I don’t like the optics of what you just saw.”

Some Republicans saw a silver lining in Price’s departure.

“I think this is an opportunity for the president to kind of put a freeze on things, re-center, refocus everybody and say, ‘Let’s not get too comfortable in our jobs, because we’re renting these positions that were offered to us by the American people,’ ” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said on Fox News on Friday evening. “So, let’s get back to our core mission.”

Catalans Defy Spain and Push Ahead With Vote on Independence

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Tractors had been used to block police access to some rural municipalities. In other places, residents simply removed the doors of polling stations to ensure the police couldn’t bolt them on Sunday.

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Catalans are voting not only without backing from Madrid, but also without any sign of support from the European Union or other important players in the international community, and in makeshift conditions, using a disputed census as the voting list.

They are relying on privately printed ballots, after millions of them were seized earlier this month by the police. A few outsiders had traveled here from other countries to act as observers, saying they wanted to make sure that the police did not use force against voters.

Catalan police officers walked by people camping out at the entrance to a Barcelona elementary school, one of the designated polling stations for the independence referendum.


Jon Nazca/Reuters

“Every person in the world should have the right to decide their present and future, which of course means the right to vote,” said Andrea Favaro, a lawyer from Venice, who waited inside a polling station early on Sunday. He said he had closely followed a similar situation at home, where the Veneto region held a nonbinding ballot on independence from Italy.

The government of Catalonia, an autonomous region in northeastern Spain, passed laws last month to approve the referendum, and Spain’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, warned that Spain would use all possible means to stop it.

Recent opinion polls suggest that slightly less than half of Catalonia’s 7.5 million people support separation from Spain, but separatist parties won a majority in the region’s Parliament in 2015 and their influence has grown.

Many say Catalonia would face a perilous and uncertain future outside Spain, the market for most of the region’s goods, and would not be assured of being readmitted to the European Union.

A tractor was used to block police access to a polling station in Sant Julià de Ramis.


David Ramos/Getty Images

Others complained that the thrust for independence had deepened divisions within the region, whose vibrant economy has attracted families from inside and outside Spain.

Olga Noheda, a doctor in Centelles, said one of her patients, an older man, began crying in her examination room, and explained that his granddaughter had begun expressing dislike for Spaniards.

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“He was very sad, because he didn’t understand where it all came from,” she said. “He migrated to Catalonia many years ago, from Seville, and he was wondering if his granddaughter was aware that he was a Spaniard.”

In the days leading up to the vote, school principals had received letters threatening them with sedition charges, which carry a 15-year prison term, if they willingly allowed their buildings to be used as polling stations.

People gathered for breakfast on Sunday inside a school designated as a polling station in Barcelona.


Josep Lago/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

City officials were told they would face criminal charges for misusing public funds. In one city, the local newspaper editor discovered he faced a criminal complaint after he printed a list of schools that would be holding votes.

Ten days ago, Spanish police detained a dozen officials of Catalan’s regional government, including its secretary general of economic affairs.

In March, the region’s former leader was fined 36,500 euros, nearly $39,000, and banned from holding public office for organizing a similar referendum in defiance of a court order in 2014.

But Sunday’s vote has left the Spanish premier in a bind, forced to choose between detaining large crowds of civilians — images that would be immediately beamed worldwide via social media — or allowing the vote to proceed, an acknowledgment that he could not control the region.

One serious vulnerability, for the Spanish government, is that the primary police force in Catalonia is an autonomous Catalan body known as the Mossos d’Esquadra, and its leaders have signaled that they would not use force on voters.

On Sunday morning, at a site in Barcelona, a Mossos officer said his orders were to intervene only if there was a risk of violence.

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“If the police leadership really want to get 500 people out of this place, let them come and do it themselves,” said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity according to protocol. “Good luck to them.”

Throughout the weekend, the polling sites had a festival atmosphere, preparing vast pans of paella and offering instruction in yoga and drumming.

“Today I am totally amazed, floating, very happy, you cannot believe,” said Carme Calderer Torres-Casana, 66, who had traveled from Minneapolis, where she lives, to her hometown Berga, near the border with France. “Everyone has unforgettable days that mark your life, and today, for me, is one of those days.”

Palko Karasz reported from Tarragona, Spain. Silvia Taulés and Marta Arias contributed reporting from Barcelona and Germán Aranda from Berga, Spain.


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Marilyn Manson Crushed by Stage Prop, Cuts New York Show Short

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Marilyn Manson cut his Saturday night show at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom short after a stage prop collapsed atop the shock rocker. The severity of Manson’s injuries was unclear at press time, but the concert was canceled after a brief delay.

“Manson suffered an injury towards the end of his incredible NYC show. He is being treated at a local hospital,” a rep for the singer told Rolling Stone.

The incident occurred roughly an hour into Manson’s concert, the third date on the North American leg of Manson’s Heaven Upside Down tour. During “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These),” Manson made his way toward the back of the stage, where a prop featuring two giant pistols suddenly fell forward onto Manson. Video from the concert shows Manson grappling the prop before it comes crashing down to the stage.

After the stage crew lifted the prop back up, Manson lay on the ground for several minutes. EMT workers also rushed to the backstage area as venue workers yelled “Ice! Ice!” repeatedly.

At Manson’s Friday night show in Pittsburgh, the rocker tumbled off the stage during his concert. After pulling himself back onstage, Manson told the crowd he broke his ankle before calling his tour manager a “fascist,” Loudwire reports.

Rolling Stone will update this story when more information regarding Manson’s status becomes available.

Watch crowd-shot video of the prop falling on Manson below:

Trump signed presidential directive ordering actions to pressure North Korea

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Early in his administration, President Trump signed a directive outlining a strategy of pressure against North Korea that involved actions across a broad spectrum of government agencies and led to the use of military cyber-capabilities, according to U.S. officials.

As part of the campaign, U.S. Cyber Command targeted hackers in North Korea’s military spy agency, the Reconnaissance General Bureau, by barraging their computer servers with traffic that choked off Internet access.

Trump’s directive, a senior administration official said, also included instructions to diplomats and officials to bring up North Korea in virtually every conversation with foreign interlocutors and urge them to sever all ties with Pyongyang. Those conversations have had significant success, particularly in recent weeks as North Korea has tested another nuclear weapon and ballistic missiles, officials said.

[The message behind the murder: Assassination sheds light on North Korea’s chemical arsenal]

So pervasive is the diplomatic campaign that some governments have found themselves scrambling to find any ties with North Korea. When Vice President Pence called on one country to break relations during a recent overseas visit, officials there reminded him that they never had relations with Pyongyang. Pence then told them, to their own surprise, that they had $2 million in trade with North Korea. Foreign officials, who asked that their country not be identified, described the exchange.

The directive also instructed the Treasury Department to outline an escalating set of sanctions against North Korean entities and individuals, and foreigners who dealt with them. Those instructions are reflected in a steady stream of U.S. and international sanctions in recent months.

The directive was not made public at the time it was signed, following a policy review in March, because “we were providing every opportunity as a new administration to North Korea to sit down and talk, to take a different approach,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss closed-door policy decisions.

“We made clear the door was open for talks before the president had even signed off on this strategy, but North Korea continued to launch missiles, continued to kidnap Americans to keep as hostages . . . all the things they did when we were early in the administration and sending signals that the door was open to talks.”

That door remains open, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Saturday in Beijing. Speaking to reporters following talks with Chinese officials, Tillerson for the first time acknowledged that the United States was in direct communication with North Korea.

“We are probing, so stay tuned,” he said. “We ask, ‘Would you like to talk?’ We have lines of communications to Pyongyang. We’re not in a dark situation, a blackout. We have a couple, three, channels open. . . . We can talk to them; we do talk to them.”

[The secret to Kim’s success? Some experts see Russian echoes in missile advances]

In Washington, however, officials quickly played down any idea that negotiations were underway or that anything had yet come of the talks. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert issued a statement saying that “North Korean officials have shown no indication that they are interested in or are ready for talks regarding denuclearization.”

The senior administration official said it would be wrong to “read too much into” Tillerson’s remarks. “The U.S. has always maintained some kind of channel, kept some channel open even in the darkest days of previous administrations.”

Those channels include conversations between the State Department’s special representative for North Korea, Joseph Yun, and Pak Song Il, a senior member of Pyongyang’s delegation to the United Nations. They have met several times this year to discuss American prisoners being held by North Korea, among other matters. Other contacts have taken place through the “track two” process, which regularly brings together nongovernmental U.S. experts — and occasionally U.S. officials — and North Korean officials.

Tillerson’s remarks Saturday came after a day of meetings with top Chinese officials, including President Xi Jinping, which saw both sides strike a careful, conciliatory tone following a new North Korean nuclear test and missile launches, and weeks of insults and threats between Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

In brief formal statements before their meetings, Chinese leaders — who have repeatedly called for restraint — did not mention North Korea. Instead, they tried to keep the focus on Trump’s upcoming Asia visit, which Xi promised would be a “special, wonderful and successful” event.

The Cyber Command operation, which was due to end Saturday, was part of the overall campaign set in motion many months ago. The effects were temporary and not destructive, officials said. Nonetheless, some North Korean hackers griped that lack of access to the Internet was interfering with their work, according to another U.S. official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a secret operation.

Cyber Command and the White House had no comment. But the senior administration official said, “What I can tell you is that North Korea has itself been guilty of cyberattacks, and we are going to take appropriate measures to defend our networks and systems.”

Eric Rosenbach, who led the Pentagon’s cyber-efforts as assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration, said the operation “could have the advantage of signaling to the North Koreans a more aggressive posture. However, there’s accompanying risk of an escalation and a North Korean cyber-counterattack.”

Rosenbach, now co-director of the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School, said that he was not aware of the actual operation but that if it is “truly a military operation,” he sees no reason to hide it. “The Department of Defense should probably own it,” he said.

Aaron Hughes, a former senior cyber-official in the Obama administration, said he, too, was not aware of the actual operation. But “if I was still in my [Pentagon] seat, I would actively be advocating we do these types of things. . . . We should be using all elements of national power to deter and message the North Koreans, to include our military, including cyber,” Hughes said.

Others said they would be cautious about using even minor ­cyber-capabilities against North Korea and doing it openly because of the risk of retaliation.

“I wonder what the disruptive payoff is that we’re getting that’s worth even a marginal extra chance of nuclear war?” said Jason Healey, a former military ­cyber-operator and now a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Rauhala reported from Beijing.

Iowa Mom Arrested After Allegedly Leaving 4 Kids Home Alone to Go on a Planned 12-Day German Vacation

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An Iowa woman was arrested Thursday after she went on a planned days-long vacation to Germany and allegedly left her four young children home alone, PEOPLE confirms.

Erin Lee Macke, 30, is charged with four counts of child endangerment, according to Johnston, Iowa, Police Department Lt. Lynn Aswegan.

Macke was released on bail on Friday. It is unclear if she has obtained an attorney or entered a plea. Her next court date is scheduled for Oct. 9.

A message left for her was not immediately returned on Friday. She has reportedly said the allegations against her are untrue and that she did not leave her kids alone.

Johnston Police Department

Aswegan tells PEOPLE that officers were first called to Macke’s home on Sept. 21 after receiving a report from the father of two of Macke’s children that she had left the day before for a 12-day vacation in Germany.

“There was nobody lined up to be with the children,” Aswegan says. “Apparently she had talked to a couple of family members that earlier on had some conflicts watching the children during that time-frame, and she gave them the indication she had it taken care of.”

According to Aswegan, “She felt comfortable that the kids were responsible enough to take care of themselves during that duration.”

• Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.

Macke was reportedly in Germany visiting a brother and a niece and “[by] all indications it was a social venture,” Aswegan says.

He says that the children had been left alone for 24 hours before police went to Macke’s apartment after 7 p.m. on Sept. 21 and found her 12-year-old twins and two younger daughters, ages 6 and 7, home alone.

“When the officer arrived, the 12 year-old did have food on the table and was preparing to feed the younger two children,” Aswegan says.

Macke was also charged with one count of transferring a firearm to a person under 21 after officers found a gun and ammunition on Macke’s bedroom shelf.

“It was not properly secured,” Aswegan says. “One of the 12-year-olds showed us where the weapon was at.”

The Iowa Department of Human Services has taken custody of the kids, he says. They are staying with relatives, according to the Des Moines Register.

Officers spoke to Macke while she was in Germany and she didn’t “understand the concern,” Aswegan says. He says she had planned to stay in the country until Oct. 1.

“She didn’t understand or agree with the concern and didn’t recognize it was a potential issue and wasn’t alarmed by it,” he says. “She had the same demeanor upon her arrest.”

• PEOPLE’s special edition True Crime Stories: 35 Real Cases That Inspired the Show Law Order is on sale now.

Macke flew back to Iowa on Thursday and was arrested at her apartment.

The father of Macke’s two youngest children, Matthew Macke, spoke to Inside Edition on Friday, saying he believed what she did was “a clear, deliberate, intentional act.”

“I’m really angry,” he said. “But I wish I could say I was surprised, but I’m not.”

“I think most people are pretty surprised,” Aswegan says. “Everyone juggles with whether or not your kids are responsible enough and you take distance and duration in account. I think everyone would raise an eyebrow on the judgment used in this decision.”

Lost weekend: How Trump’s time at his golf club hurt the response to Maria

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At first, the Trump administration seemed to be doing all the right things to respond to the disaster in Puerto Rico.

As Hurricane Maria made landfall on Wednesday, Sept. 20, there was a frenzy of activity publicly and privately. The next day, President Trump called local officials on the island, issued an emergency declaration and pledged that all federal resources would be directed to help.

But then for four days after that — as storm-ravaged Puerto Rico struggled for food and water amid the darkness of power outages — Trump and his top aides effectively went dark themselves.

Trump jetted to New Jersey that Thursday night to spend a long weekend at his private golf club there, save for a quick trip to Alabama for a political rally. Neither Trump nor any of his senior White House aides said a word publicly about the unfolding crisis.

Trump did hold a meeting at his golf club that Friday with half a dozen Cabinet officials — including acting Homeland Security secretary Elaine Duke, who oversees disaster response — but the gathering was to discuss his new travel ban, not the hurricane. Duke and Trump spoke briefly about Puerto Rico but did not talk again until Tuesday, an administration official said.

Administration officials would not say whether the president spoke with any other top officials involved in the storm response while in Bedminster, N.J. He spent much of his time over those four days fixated on his escalating public feuds with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, with fellow Republicans in Congress and with the National Football League over protests during the national anthem.

In Puerto Rico, meanwhile, the scope of the devastation was becoming clearer. Virtually the entire island was without power and much of it could be for weeks, officials estimated, and about half of the more than 3 million residents did not have access to clean water. Gas was in short supply, airports and ports were in disrepair, and telecommunications infrastructure had been destroyed.

[Trump emphasizes challenges in Puerto Rico amid criticism of hurricane response]

Federal and local officials said the lack of communications on the island made the task of assessing the widespread damage far more challenging, and even local officials were slow to recognize that for this storm, far more help would be necessary.

“I don’t think that anybody realized how bad this was going to be,” said a person familiar with discussions between Washington and officials in Puerto Rico. “Quite frankly, the level of communications and collaboration that I’ve seen with Irma and now Maria between the administration, local government and our office has been unprecedented.”

“Whether that’s been translated into effectiveness on the ground, that’s up for interpretation,” the person added.

Unlike what they faced after recent storms in Texas and Florida, the federal agencies found themselves partnered with a government completely flattened by the hurricane and operating with almost no information about the status of its citizens. The Federal Emergency Management Agency struggled to find truck drivers to deliver aid from ports to people in need, for example.

“The level of devastation and the impact on the first responders we closely work with was so great that those people were having to take care of their families and homes to an extent we don’t normally see,” said an administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want his statement to be interpreted as criticism of authorities in Puerto Rico. “The Department of Defense, FEMA and the federal government are having to step in to fulfill state and municipal functions that we normally just support.”

Even though local officials had said publicly as early as Sept. 20, the day of the storm, that the island was “destroyed,” the sense of urgency didn’t begin to penetrate the White House until Monday, when images of the utter destruction and desperation — and criticism of the administration’s response — began to appear on television, one senior administration official said.

“The Trump administration was slow off the mark,” said Rep. Darren Soto (D), the first Florida lawmaker of Puerto Rican descent elected to Congress. “. . . We’ve invaded small countries faster than we’ve been helping American citizens in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.”

Trump’s public schedule Monday was devoid of any meetings related to the storm, but he was becoming frustrated by the coverage he was seeing on TV, the senior official said.

[‘Mayday’: Puerto Rico officials decry federal hurricane response]

At a dinner Monday evening with conservative leaders at the White House, Trump opened the gathering by briefly lamenting the tragedy unfolding in Puerto Rico before launching into a lengthy diatribe against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) over his opposition to the Republicans’ failed health-care bill, according to one attendee.

After the dinner, Trump lashed out on social media. He blamed the island’s financial woes and ailing infrastructure for the difficult recovery process. He also declared that efforts to provide food, water and medical care were “doing well.”

On the ground in Puerto Rico, nothing could be further from the truth. It had taken until Monday — five days after Maria made landfall — for the first senior administration officials from Washington to touch down to survey the damage firsthand. And only after White House Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert and FEMA Director Brock Long returned to Washington did the administration leap into action. 

Trump presided over a Situation Room meeting on the federal and local efforts Tuesday, and late in the day, the White House added a Cabinet-level meeting on Hurricane Maria to the president’s schedule.

White House aides say the president was updated on progress in the recovery efforts through the weekend, and an administration official said Vice President Pence talked with Puerto Rico’s representative in Congress, Jenniffer González-Colón, over the weekend. Trump spoke to Gov. Ricardo Rosselló after Maria made landfall and again Tuesday; he spoke to González-Colón for the first time Wednesday.

The administration still fumbled at key moments after stepping up its response. A week after landfall, Trump still had not waived the Jones Act, a law that barred foreign-flagged vessels from delivering aid to Puerto Rico. Such a waiver had been granted for previous hurricanes this year.

Asked why his administration had delayed in issuing the waiver, Trump said Wednesday that “a lot of shippers and . . . a lot of people that work in the shipping industry” didn’t want it lifted.

“If this is supposed to be the ‘drain the swamp’ president, then don’t worry about the lobbyists and do what’s needed and waive the act,” said James Norton, a former deputy assistant homeland security secretary under President George W. Bush who oversaw disaster response for the agency. “We’re talking about people here.”

Trump waived the law Thursday.

After getting good marks from many for his administration’s response to Hurricanes Irma and Harvey, Trump has struggled to find the right tone to address the harsher reviews after Maria. He has repeatedly praised his administration’s actions, telling reporters Friday that it has “been incredible the results that we’ve had with respect to loss of life” in Puerto Rico. The official death toll is 16, a number that is expected to rise.

“We have done an incredible job considering there’s absolutely nothing to work with,” Trump said as he was leaving the White House for another weekend at Bedminster.

At the same time, he said that “the government of Puerto Rico will have to work with us to determine how this massive rebuilding effort . . . will be funded and organized,” and he referred to the “tremendous amount of existing debt” on the island.

[U.S. responded to Haiti quake more forcefully than to Puerto Rico disaster]

Trump’s top disaster-response aides have blanketed television in recent days in an attempt to reset the narrative. Duke, the acting DHS secretary, told reporters Thursday outside the White House that Puerto Rico was a “good news story.” The comment seemed to unleash pent-up fury from at least one local official, after days of offering praise to the Trump administration in an apparent effort to secure more federal help.

“I am asking the president of the United States to make sure somebody is in charge that is up to the task of saving lives,” San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz said at a news conference Friday. “I am done being polite, I am done being politically correct. I am mad as hell. . . . We are dying here. If we don’t get the food and the water into the people’s hands, we are going to see something close to a genocide.”

Trump’s rosy assessment of the federal response has also contrasted sharply with the comments of federal officials on the ground.

Army Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, who was named this week to lead recovery efforts, told reporters Friday that there were not enough people and assets to help Puerto Rico combat what has become a humanitarian crisis in the aftermath of the storm.

The military has significantly stepped up its mobilization to the island commonwealth, with dozens more aircraft and thousands of soldiers bringing “more logistical support” to a struggling recovery effort that has been delayed by geographical and tactical challenges. 

Buchanan said that Defense Department forces have been in place since before the storm lashed Puerto Rico but that the arrival of additional resources is part of the natural shift in operations. Sometimes troops act ahead of the local government to meet needs, but they were also waiting for an “actual request” from territorial officials to bring in more resources. Buchanan will bring together land forces, including the Puerto Rico National Guard, to begin pushing into the interior of the island, where aid has been slowed by washed-out roads and difficult terrain. The Navy previously led the military response in Puerto Rico.

“No, it’s not enough, and that’s why we are bringing a lot more,” the three-star general said of the resources in Puerto Rico thus far.

Arelis R. Hernández in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and John Wagner and Joel Achenbach in Washington contributed to this report.

Illnesses at US Embassy in Havana Prompt Evacuation of More Diplomats

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While there is no evidence so far that tourists or hotel employees have been affected, the government’s travel warning could cripple Cuba’s burgeoning tourism industry if tour operators, hotel and cruise line companies or their insurers decide that their employees and customers could be at risk.

“Right now, the most important constituency of determining the impact of this is not members of Congress or pundits; it’s the insurance companies,” said John Kavulich, the president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. “If the carriers withdraw coverage because of this warning, then everything could shut down there almost overnight.”

The timing of Mr. Tillerson’s decision and its potential fallout promises to write yet another chapter in an extraordinary history between the two countries that has included the explosion of the American battleship Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898, the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

Then, in 2014, after decades of frosty relations, constant sniping and severed diplomatic relations, President Barack Obama reversed course and reached an agreement with President Raúl Castro of Cuba to reopen embassies in the countries’ respective capitals and begin to encourage nascent tourism and business ties.

But the rapprochement was deeply unpopular among a powerful segment of Cuban émigrés in Florida, and Mr. Trump in his campaign vowed to reverse what he called a “terrible and misguided deal.” Once in office, Mr. Trump did undo crucial pieces of Mr. Obama’s policy, but kept in place others that were broadly popular, such as allowing direct flights and cruises between the United States and Cuba, and rules making it easier for American companies to do business in Cuba.

On Capitol Hill, a debate began immediately over whether Mr. Tillerson acted too quickly or not quickly enough. He has known since a few days after his confirmation on Feb. 1 that diplomats in Havana were becoming ill, but took until Friday to reduce the diplomatic and Marine Corps contingent there to 27.

Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, who fiercely opposed Mr. Obama’s decision to improve ties with Cuba, questioned the decision not to punish Cuba more forcefully.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, said punitive measures would only play into the hands of the attackers. “Whoever is doing this obviously is trying to disrupt the normalization process between the United States and Cuba,” Mr. Leahy said. “Someone or some government is trying to reverse that process.”

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A host of Latin American scholars denounced the State Department’s travel advisory as a cynical ploy to undo the last vestiges of the Obama administration’s rapprochement with Cuba. “The fact remains that Cuba is the safest place in Latin America for foreigners to visit,” said Eric Zolov, a Cuban expert at Stony Brook University. “Crime is exceptionally low and tourism is coveted by the government.”

President Trump was unapologetic about the action on Friday, saying that “some very bad things happened in Cuba.”

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But one reason Mr. Tillerson decided to keep the embassy open is a growing belief among American officials that the Cuban government was probably not responsible for them.

A former senior American official said that there was information that the Cubans were rattled by what had happened and were desperate to find the cause. The fact that a Canadian diplomat was also affected has deepened the mystery. Relations between Canada and Cuba have long been warm.

The former senior official said that F.B.I. agents who had been allowed entry to Cuba had visited the homes of the American diplomats and had not been able to detect anything. The F.B.I. has also reviewed security footage of the homes and found nothing suspicious, and the agency has been unable to duplicate the effects the diplomats have experienced in a lab.

That the Cubans offered to let the F.B.I. go to Havana and investigate was a rare level of openness and was seen as yet another indicator that the Cubans themselves have been shaken by the episode.

Of the 21 people who have become ill, 17 were government employees and four were spouses. Three of the spouses worked at the embassy. For some, the injuries appear permanent, with symptoms including hearing loss, dizziness, tinnitus, balance and visual problems, headache, fatigue, cognitive issues and difficulty sleeping. But despite an intensive investigation by the F.B.I., the cause and perpetrators of the attacks remain a mystery.

Some of those affected reported hearing odd sounds in particular rooms of their homes, leading some experts to speculate that some kind of sonic weapon or faulty surveillance device may have been at fault.

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“Just looking at the symptoms, it sounds like they’ve all had traumatic brain injuries like a concussion or a series of minor head injuries even though we know they haven’t,” said Dr. Martin Gizzi, a neurologist in Portland, Ore., who is a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology.

Dr. Gizzi said neither ultrasonic nor subsonic waves have been known to produce such injuries surreptitiously. Among the other possibilities are a virus, poison or radiation, he said.

Friday’s announcement came three days after Mr. Tillerson met with Bruno Rodríguez, Cuba’s foreign minister, in Washington, in a meeting that the Cuban government requested. That meeting did not convince Mr. Tillerson that the Cubans could guarantee the safety of the remaining American employees in Havana, prompting the decision to pull much of the embassy staff.

The remaining staff will carry out only emergency services, such as helping American citizens in need. Routine visa functions for Cuban citizens will no longer be conducted in Havana. Officials may soon direct Cubans seeking to travel to the United States to apply for visas at embassies or consulates in other countries.

American officials will continue to meet with their Cuban counterparts — but not in Cuba — until the cause of the attacks is uncovered, officials said.

In August, Heather Nauert, the State Department’s spokeswoman, said that the department was confident that the attacks were no longer occurring. But on Friday, officials conceded that the remaining 27 personnel in Havana were still at risk.


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Meet the Air Force general who delivered a powerful speech against racism

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Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria had an important message for U.S. Air Force Academy cadets at a moment of crisis.

Five black cadet candidates at the academy’s preparatory school in Colorado Springs had found racial slurs written on the message boards on their doors.

Silveria, who took over as the school’s superintendent in August, urged cadets to reach for their phones.

“I want you to videotape this so you have it, so you can use it — so that we all have the moral courage together,” he said, surrounded by 1,500 of the academy’s faculty, administrators and athletic coaches.

“If you can’t treat someone with dignity and respect, get out.”

[VA chief took in Wimbledon, river cruise on European work trip; wife’s expenses covered by taxpayers]

Silveria’s forceful denunciation has been heard far beyond the walls of the academy in Colorado, introducing the veteran officer to a national audience.

“I wanted to have a direct conversation with them about the power of diversity,” Silveria told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin on Friday, referring to the cadets. “Ultimately, these men and women are going to be lieutenants in the United States Air Force.”

Baldwin read Silveria messages of support on Twitter and asked him whether he believed Washington needed better leadership. He replied that his “message to the cadets was not about that.”

He said his speech was intended to show the cadets that they were all united “as an institution protecting these values.”

Security forces are looking into the matter, according to Lt. Col. Allen Herritage, a spokesman for the U.S. Air Force Academy. The preparatory school is designed for candidates who have shown leadership or other qualities that would make them strong applicants for the academy but who need to shore up their academic work before becoming cadets, Herritage said.

Silveria, who graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1985 with a bachelor of science degree, succeeded the academy’s first female superintendent, Lt. Gen. Michelle Johnson.

In his 32-year career, Silveria has nearly 4,000 hours of flight time, including combat missions over Iraq and the Balkans, making him one of the Air Force’s most experienced pilots, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette.

“When it came time to pick the next superintendent, Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria was the obvious choice,” Gen. David Goldfein, the branch’s chief of staff, said at Silveria’s appointment ceremony, according to the Gazette. “I don’t believe we have an officer serving in the Air Force today with more combat time, more joint credibility, or more operational understanding of the art of modern war.”

Shortly before the ceremony, Silveria, the Air Force Academy’s 20th superintendent, was promoted from major general to lieutenant general, the rank required for the position, the Gazette reported.

He was previously deputy commander of U.S. Air Forces Central Command and deputy commander of Central Command’s Combined Forces Air Component in southwest Asia, according to Military.com.

On Twitter, Silveria has been widely praised for his leadership, with some suggesting he should run for office one day.

[‘Racist propaganda’: Librarian rejects Melania Trump’s gift of Dr. Seuss books]

A video of the speech on the Air Force Academy’s Facebook page has been viewed more than 1.7 million times, and a tweet of the same has been shared more than 22,000 times. Commenters praised the general for his leadership and unequivocal response: “This is how you respond to racism in America.”

Susan Svrluga contributed to this report.

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Confused by Trump, North Korea Contacts Former US Officials to Explain President’s Behavior

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The proverbial game of chicken between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has only escalated in recent months, but amid the public name-calling and threats of annihilation, regime officials have been quietly attempting to set up meetings with Republican analysts in an apparent attempt to better understand the mixed messages coming from the Trump administration.

North Korea has consistently demonstrated that it is unwilling to engage in direct negotiations over its rapidly developing nuclear program despite Trump’s fiery rhetoric and increased sanctions — growing more defiant in the wake of several successful ballistic missile launches and its latest nuclear test.

President Donald Trump takes questions from reporters before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, Sept. 29, 2017. (Credit: Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

President Donald Trump takes questions from reporters before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, Sept. 29, 2017. (Credit: Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

While top diplomats continue to insist the US prefers a diplomatic resolution to rein in the rogue nation, there is little evidence to indicate that either side is willing to concede any ground on key issues that could open the door to formal negotiations.

The absence of official diplomatic talks has only increased the likelihood of a potential miscalculation, according to several experts, noting that Trump’s sometimes unpredictable threats of “fire and fury” and a “devastating” military option have been publicly contradicted at times by several of his top advisers hoping to strike a more cautious tone.

But amid the bluster, North Korea has attempted to engage in what the US qualifies as “track two” talks to facilitate conversation beyond formal diplomatic channels and it is not unusual for intermediaries to approach American scholars or ex-officials with particular political ties when a new administration takes office.

The White House is aware when these meetings occur and provided with any information that might be gathered, according to experts who have engaged in talks.

Outreach by North Korean government officials started in January after Trump’s inauguration with the goal of gaining a broad understanding as to how the new president’s policies might differ from those of the previous administration, according to several experts who were approached.

“They wanted to get a beat on the new president … but that did not happen,” said Douglas Paal, a member of President Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush’s National Security Council staffs who was contacted on several occasions by the North Koreans this year.

The Washington Post first reported that North Korean officials were reaching out to several Republican-linked analysts to get a better understanding of Trump’s messaging.

“I think they may have thought that reaching out to people who represent what is now the mainstream way of thinking and had who had more access to the Trump administration than people in past was a better way to send messages or get information,” said Bruce Klingner, a former CIA analyst and the top expert on North Korea at the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation.

“They are trying to piece together what they can about what the US policy is under the new administration,” he said. “But even in Washington, we are often confused or have questions about what the parameters of the policies are, so imagine trying to assess Washington from further away, in Seoul, Tokyo, and Pyongyang.”

Klingner declined an invitation from North Korea’s mission to the United Nations to visit Pyongyang for meetings but he has participated in multiple conferences involving North Korean officials.

“They are trying to discern what the policy is and possible triggers for red lines,” Klingner told CNN, adding that efforts to contact conservative or Republican analysts are likely the result of confusion over the Trump administration’s messaging in the absence of official diplomatic talks with the US government.

While these talks can provide valuable opportunities for both sides to gather information, Klingner emphasized that the North Koreans should use official channels to communicate any messages that might signal they are serious about negotiations directly to the US government.

The US has communicated directly with North Korea at times through its mission to the UN — known as the “New York Channel.”

Communications through this channel were cut off in July 2016 but re-opened to facilitate the return of Otto Warmbier — an American student who had been imprisoned in North Korea, according to Klingner, who added that efforts to engage in track two talks did not just begin with the Trump administration or while the channel was closed.

North Korea’s mission to the UN did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

However, Trump and Kim’s war of words has coincided with an uptick in outreach by North Korean intermediaries seeking to establish alternate channels of communication — but experts said they noticed a shift in tone from the North Koreans in recent months compared to meetings earlier this year.

While Klingner declined an invitation to travel to Pyongyang, he did meet with North Korean officials in June during a conference in Sweden.

“The North Koreans were much more self-assured than they had been in previous meetings,” Klingner said, adding that the message seemed to be that “denuclearization was completely off the table and there was nothing the US or Seoul could offer that would change that.”

That point was only emphasized as North Korean officials became irritated when American experts began to float possible ideas for a compromise, Klingner said.

Paal also said that the North Koreans seemed unwilling cede ground when he was approached about a possible meeting in August and viewed these meetings as an opportunity to repeat their terms.

“Our conclusion was they are still not serious about talks,” Paal told CNN, adding that he thinks North Korea won’t stop until it is nuclear capable.

And evidence suggests Pyongyang is approaching that capability at a more rapid pace than previously thought following a string of successful ballistic missile launches and its sixth nuclear test earlier this month.

But from the outside looking in, some experts said the North Koreans are continuing to reach out to these American analysts because Trump has caught Kim off guard with his bluster and there is a real concern about what could happen next.

According to Bruce Bennett, a senior researcher at the RAND Corporation who specializes in North Korea, Kim may have alluded to this point during his televised response to Trump’s speech to the UN General Assembly this month when the President warned the US would “totally destroy North Korea” if forced to defend itself or its allies.

In a rare televised address, Kim admitted that Trump’s remarks defied his own expectations before noting that “a frightened dog barks louder.”

“I believe that North Korea has sought to ‘deter by bluster’ or ‘coerce by bluster’ for years,” Bennett said, adding that Pyongyang’s rhetoric has largely been threats that they “lacked a will to execute.”

“But they have to worry that President Trump may have that will … his efforts to reach out to US conservatives also suggests a degree of desperation,” he added.

The internal pressure to maintain his “god-like” image could also be a contributing factor to Kim’s attempts to better understand Trump’s intentions, according to Bennett.

“Yes, Kim appears really worried about what Trump might do.  But I suspect he is even more worried about how what Trump says and does will undercut Kim internally, especially with the North Korean elites,” he said.