Trump tortured Spicer and Priebus. Now they get to tell investigators about Trump.

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Then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer, left, and then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus in May. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus are among six current and former White House aides with whom special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is likely to seek interviews in his Russia investigation, as The Washington Post’s Carol D. Leonnig, Rosalind S. Helderman and Ashley Parker report.

The fact that top Trump aides would be interviewed isn’t hugely surprising. The probe has gradually grown in scope in recent months, and given its apparent focus on President Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James B. Comey, it seemed logical that his top spokesman and aide, among others, would be sought out for their versions of events.

But the subplots with Spicer and Priebus are particularly interesting.

Both are former Republican National Committee types — not longtime Trump aides — who joined the White House when the campaign was over. Both are also now former aides, having lasted just seven months. And perhaps most notably, both were practically tortured during their time in the White House, directly by Trump or apparently with his blessing.

Spicer resigned after Trump went against his and Priebus’s wishes by tapping Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications director. And from literally his first full day as White House press secretary — when Trump dispatched Spicer to deliver obvious falsehoods about Trump’s inauguration crowd — he seemed to put Spicer in about as many awkward situations as humanly possible. He even seemed to enjoy watching Spicer squirm and contort himself, remarking that he wouldn’t fire Spicer, because he got “great ratings” on TV.

Here’s a recap of the things Trump made Spicer defend that I put together when he resigned:

There was the inauguration crowds incident. There was the time he took issue with calling Trump’s travel ban a “ban,” despite the White House having repeatedly referred to it as such. There was the time he insisted Trump’s tweeting of the clearly misspelled word “covfefe” was actually intentional and “a small group of people know exactly what he meant.” There was the time he said Trump doesn’t have a bathrobe — only to find plenty of past photographic evidence of Trump’s affinity for them. There was the time he suggested the former head of Trump’s campaign “played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time.” And on and on and on.

Oh, and that doesn’t even include when Spicer awkwardly explained that Trump had fired Comey at the recommendation of the Justice Department, which got the ball rolling on its own. Shortly thereafter, Trump blurted out in an NBC News interview that he was going to fire Comey regardless and cited the Russia investigation as being on his mind. You can bet this sequence will be a focus for investigators; it also happened to make Spicer look like a fool.

While Spicer’s torture was more public, Priebus got a heavy helping of it, too — particularly in the brief period when Scaramucci came on board, during which Priebus exited. Not only had Priebus opposed the move, but Scaramucci proceeded to call into CNN and publicly attack Priebus, accusing him of leaking information and challenging him to prove that he wasn’t. Trump apparently signed off on the appearance, with Scaramucci saying he had just spoken with the president before calling in.

Later that day, the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza published that foul-mouthed interview with Scaramucci, in which Scaramucci called Priebus a “paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” and accused him of “cock-blocking” Scaramucci’s hiring. He also acknowledged in the interview that he was going to send a suggestive tweet about Priebus being a leaker to mess with him.

And there were other examples, as New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait recapped:

Now, the Washington Post reveals Trump ordered Priebus to kill a fly. (“As the fly continued to circle, Trump summoned his chief of staff and tasked him with killing the insect, according to someone familiar with the incident.”)

Priebus was apparently the most frequent target of Trump’s habitual bullying. The president “told associates that Priebus would make a good car salesman” and “mocked him for expressing excitement when he spotted his house from Air Force One, flying over Wisconsin,” reports Politico.

None of this is to suggest either is bent on revenge or anything like that. And a witness is always compelled to tell the truth to investigators, so any lingering hard feelings toward the president may not even affect their responses. We also don’t know exactly how those interviews will be conducted yet. Jack Sharman, who served as special counsel during Bill Clinton’s Whitewater scandal, said they will likely result in memos being produced, though those memos may not be shared publicly.

But, as Sharman also noted, Priebus and Spicer could assert their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination or try to assert executive privilege and say their conversations with Trump can’t be shared. The latter would likely result in the Supreme Court deciding whether their claims are valid, as it did during Watergate.

In other words, their level of loyalty to Trump could matter. And Trump isn’t big on loyalty to others. He is a man who isn’t afraid to needle, cajole and oftentimes embarrass those around him. That approach may not always serve him well.

Extreme Hurricane Irma closing in on Florida, posing dire threat

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(This story will be updated throughout Friday. It was last updated to incorporate the 8 p.m. National Hurricane Center advisory; some more information about storm surge was added in section on Florida effects.)

The extraordinarily large and intense Hurricane Irma is drawing ever closer to South Florida. A hurricane catastrophe has become nearly unavoidable; it’s only a matter of what areas are hardest hit and how severely.

The storm is comparable in strength to Hurricane Andrew, which devastated parts of South Florida in 1992, but much larger in size.

Based on the latest computer model projections, it’s almost impossible the storm will miss, but it’s still uncertain whether the southwest or southeast coast will catch the storm’s most destructive brunt, or somewhere in between. Computer model information late Friday afternoon suggested a track right up the spine of Florida was becoming most likely, though shifts were possible.

Irrespective of the storm’s exact track, hurricane-force winds could blast most if not all of the Florida peninsula.

[Everything you need to know about Hurricane Irma]

“Irma is likely to make landfall in Florida as a dangerous major hurricane, and will bring life-threatening wind impacts to much of the state regardless of the exact track of the center,” the National Hurricane Center said.

The Hurricane Center had hoisted hurricane warnings for much of South Florida on both coasts. Hurricane watches extended up to the central coast on both sides of the peninsula.


(National Hurricane Center)

Landfall from the storm is most likely to occur sometime between Sunday morning and afternoon, when Irma’s most destructive winds will move ashore.

A storm-surge warning was also issued for much of the South Florida coastline because of the potential for water to rise up to 6 to 12 feet above normally dry land at the coast. The Hurricane Center said this would bring the risk of “dangerous” and “life-threatening” inundation and that the threat was highest along Florida’s southwest coast.

“Few people alive have experienced a storm like this,” wrote Bryan Norcross, a hurricane specialist at Weather Channel. “It is reminiscent of the great hurricanes that unleashed their fury on Florida in the first seven decades of the 20th Century.”

By early next week, Georgia and the Carolinas could also be in the storm’s crosshairs.

In its 8 p.m. update, the National Hurricane Center said hurricane’s southern eyewall, the region of most destructive winds, was passing over the north coast of Cuba. The storm had 155-mph maximum sustained winds — and even stronger gusts — which makes it a Category 4.

The storm could yet regain Category 5 intensity as it has still to pass over some of the warmest ocean water in the world (nearly 90 degrees). Overnight Friday, the eye could pass over the north coast of Cuba. In the event the center makes landfall there, its circulation would be disrupted by the land mass which could lead to some weakening.

[Tropical triple threat: Hurricanes Jose and Katia could join Irma striking land this weekend]

The Hurricane Center said to expect fluctuations in the storm’s intensity through Sunday but that, in most scenarios, “Irma is expected to remain at least a Category 4 hurricane until landfall in Florida.”

It urged residents of Florida to rush preparations to completion.

“This hurricane is as serious as any I have seen,” tweeted Eric Blake, a forecaster at the Hurricane Center. “No hype, just the hard facts. Take every life saving precaution you can.”

[Climate scientists: ‘We can’t afford to keep pretending.’]

Meanwhile, two other hurricanes were intensifying in the eastern Atlantic and southwestern Gulf of Mexico — Jose and Katia. On Saturday, Jose could hit some of the same small islands in the northern Lesser Antilles ravaged by Irma, including Antigua and Barbuda.

Potential effects on Florida

Several storm scenarios are possible in Florida, depending on the exact track Irma takes, but they are all disastrous due to Irma’s size and strength.

Hurricane-force winds expand 70 miles from the center, and tropical-storm-force winds expand 185 miles from the center. This implies that the entire peninsula, which is about 150 miles across, will be exposed to tropical-storm-force winds and most or all of it to hurricane-force winds.

Norcross, the meteorologist who became a hero in South Florida for guiding the region through Hurricane Andrew, called the threat “EXTREME.”

Tropical-storm-force winds are expected to reach South Florida by Saturday morning as Irma approaches from the southeast.


(National Hurricane Center)

Then, the all-important northward turn is still expected to take place early Sunday, when the storm would make landfall and unleash its worst effects. The most destructive winds and largest storm surge usually focus immediately to the northeast of where the center comes ashore. So exactly where the northward turn occurs is a critical question for Florida.

As of Friday afternoon, the most likely scenario based on computer-model guidance was that the storm will track right up the spine of Florida – with landfall closest to Florida’s southwestern-most tip.


Group of simulations from American (blue) and European (red) computer models from Friday morning. Each color strand represents a different model simulation with slight tweaks to initial conditions. Note that the strands are clustered together where the forecast track is most confident but they diverge where the course of the storm is less certain. The bold red line is the average of all of the European model simulations, while the blue is the average of all the American model simulations.(StormVistaWxModels.com)

Models, however, can shift. The difference between a track just off the east coast and just off the west coast is only 150 miles, and the average error in hurricane forecasts 36 hours before landfall is about 50 (or one-third of the width of the peninsula). Irma could still reasonably track closer to the west or east coast.

[Video: Comparing Hurricane Irma with Andrew in 1992]

If the storm tracks closer to Florida’s east coast, then Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Melbourne, Daytona Beach  and Jacksonville will take devastating hits. If it runs up the spine of the peninsula, the storm will be quicker to decay, but hurricane-force winds would reach both coasts. If it buzz-saws up the west coast, then Key West, Naples, Fort Myers, Tampa and Tallahassee would face severe effects.


The European and American model forecasts run Friday morning show the storm making landfall near the southwest tip of Florida midday Sunday, and then coming up the spine of Florida. Model shifts are still possible. (WeatherBell.com)

When Irma makes its closest approach to Florida — most likely early Sunday — the Hurricane Center predicts that it will produce Category 4 winds. Here is its description of the kind of damage Category 4 winds would inflict:

Catastrophic damage will occur: Well-built framed homes can sustain severe damage with loss of most of the roof structure and/or some exterior walls. Most trees will be snapped or uprooted and power poles downed. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months.

Note that such extreme winds are typically confined to the eye wall, which is only about 10 to 15 miles wide. That is why the exact track is important in terms of where the most severe wind damage concentrates.

[Graphics: How big is Hurricane Irma?]

It’s important to note that wind speeds will increase with altitude, so high-rise buildings will be exposed to even stronger winds, up to a hurricane category stronger on the upper floors.

Due to the likelihood of widespread damaging winds, one model run by researchers at several universities projects that more than 2.5 million customers in Florida and the Southeastern United States will lose power.


“Peak power outages for Hurricane Harvey were between 300,000 and 400,000, so this is many times larger than that,” said Seth Guikema, a researcher at the University of Michigan leading this modeling effort

Regardless of exactly where Irma tracks, many coastal population centers in Florida will experience a devastating storm surge of 6 to 12 feet above normally dry land, inundating roads, homes and businesses. The most severe storm surge will focus immediately north-northeast of where the storm center crosses land – which could be near the southwest or south central tip of Florida.

The Hurricane Center predicts all of the Florida Keys to see a storm surge of 5 to 10 feet. “It’s not clear that it’s a survivable situation for anybody that is still there in the Keys,” said Ed Rappaport, acting director of the National Hurricane Center in a television interview.

Over the Florida peninsula, 8 to 20 inches of rain is forecast, with the heaviest amounts most likely in the southeast.


5-day rainfall forecast from Hurricane Irma (National Hurricane Center)

Potential effects on Georgia and the Carolinas

Beyond Florida, there is a risk for damaging winds and a serious storm surge up to Georgia and the Carolinas, but the details greatly depend on the track over Florida.

If Irma rides up the spine of Florida, even though it will lose some strength, its circulation is enormous so it would still likely push a significant storm surge toward the Georgia and South Carolina coasts. Tropical-storm and even hurricane-force winds would also likely affect much of Georgia and perhaps sections of South Carolina (especially the south and southwest).

Even a track up the west coast of Florida would likely bring strong winds and some surge to the Georgia and South Carolina coasts.

The worst case for these states, which has become less likely, would be if Irma narrowly misses the east coast of Florida, stays over warm water and then hits them while maintaining its strength. A potential landfall along the Southeast coast would be Monday — and would bring a devastating storm surge and destructive winds to coastal locations.

In any of the scenarios, there is the likelihood of very heavy rain over much of Georgia and into the Carolinas, and areas of flash flooding.

Irma’s path so far

Thursday evening, the center of the storm passed very close to the Turks and Caicos, producing potentially catastrophic Category 5 winds. The storm surge was of particular concern, as the water had the potential to rise 16 to 20 feet above normally dry land in coastal sections north of the storm center, causing extreme inundation.

A devastating storm surge and destructive winds had also likely battered the southeastern Bahamas, near Great Inagua Island.

Through early Thursday, the storm had battered islands from Puerto Rico to the northern Lesser Antilles.

While the center of Irma passed just north of Puerto Rico late Wednesday, a wind gust of 63 mph was clocked in San Juan early Wednesday evening, and more than 900,000 people were reported to be without power. In Culebra, Puerto Rico, a small island 17 miles east of the mainland, a wind gust registered 111 mph in the afternoon.

Wednesday afternoon, the storm’s eye had moved over Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands, and its southern eye wall (the region of most powerful winds) raked St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Early Wednesday afternoon, a wind gust to 131 mph was clocked on Buck Island and 87 mph on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, the hurricane passed directly over Barbuda and St. Martin in the northern Leeward Islands, the strongest hurricane ever recorded in that region and tied with the 1935 Florida Keys hurricane as the strongest Atlantic storm to strike land.

As Barbuda took a direct hit, the weather station there clocked a wind gust to 155 mph before it went offline.

The storm also passed directly over Anguilla and St. Martin early Wednesday, causing severe damage.

Irma’s place in history

Irma’s peak intensity (185 mph) ranks among the strongest in recorded history, exceeding the likes of Katrina, Andrew and Camille — whose winds peaked at 175 mph.

Among the most intense storms on record, it trails only Hurricane Allen in 1980, which had winds of 190 mph. It is tied for second-most intense with Hurricane Wilma in 2005, Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 and the 1935 Florida Keys hurricane.

The storm maintained maximum wind speeds of at least 180 mph for 37 hours, longer than any storm on Earth on record, passing Super Typhoon Haiyan, the previous record-holder (24 hours).

Late Tuesday, its pressure dropped to 914 millibars (the lower the pressure, the stronger the storm), ranking as the lowest of any storm on record outside the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico in the Atlantic basin.

The storm has generated the most “accumulated cyclone energy,” a measure of a storm’s duration and intensity, of any hurricane on record.

Without a doubt, the World Meteorological Organization will retire the names Harvey and Irma after this season. While there have been several instances of consecutive storm names getting retired (Rita and Stan 2005, Ivan and Jeanne 2004, Isabel and Juan 2003, Luis and Marilyn 1995), the United States has been hit by more than one Category 4+ hurricane in a season only one time: 1915. Two Category 4 hurricanes hit in Texas and Louisiana six weeks apart that year.

Capital Weather Gang hurricane expert Brian McNoldy contributed to this report. Credit to tropical-weather expert and occasional Capital Weather Gang contributor Phil Klotzbach for some of the statistics in this section.

Wray: No ‘whiff of interference’ with Trump-Russia probe

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Christopher Wray is pictured. | Getty Images

While President Donald Trump and his political allies have repeatedly sought to raise doubts about the impartiality of Robert Mueller and his top aides, FBI Director Christopher Wray (pictured) said he has no such worries. | Alex Wong/Getty Images

By

09/07/2017 01:56 PM EDT

Updated 09/07/2017 03:55 PM EDT


FBI Director Christopher Wray said Thursday that he has not picked up any indication that either President Donald Trump or the White House is seeking to interfere with the ongoing probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

“I can say very confidently that I have not detected any whiff of interference with that investigation,” Wray said during an intelligence-focused conference in Washington.

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Wray stressed that the probe is being directed by special counsel Robert Mueller, a former FBI director who was appointed in May to take over the inquiry.

“I have enormous respect for former Director Mueller, who I got to work with almost daily in the early 2000s, as a consummate professional,” Wray added. “He’s really running that investigation.”

While Trump and his political allies have repeatedly sought to raise doubts about the impartiality of Mueller and his top aides, Wray said he has no such worries.

“There’s a great group of people working on it, and I have confidence in them to be able to do their job,” added Wray, in his first public remarks since being sworn in as FBI chief just over a month ago.

Trump nominated Wray in June following a tumultuous search process set in motion by Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey. White House officials initially attributed the firing to Comey’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email account, but Trump later acknowledged that the dismissal was due at least in part to Comey’s conduct of the Russia-focused probe.

Wray’s comments on the Russia investigation came in response to questions from Washington Post columnist David Ignatius as he moderated a panel discussion at the Intelligence and National Security Summit.

Wray said he stands by comments he made at his confirmation hearing in July that Russia made a significant effort to interfere in last fall’s presidential election.

“Now, I’ve had the opportunity to see a lot more fully, highly classified information….I have no reason to doubt the conclusions that the hardworking people who put that together came to,” the FBI director said, referring to an intelligence community assessment produced in both classified and unclassified versions in January.

Wray noted that while Mueller is focused on what happened last year, the FBI is tasked with combating Russian intelligence operations directed at future U.S. elections.

“There’s overlapping mission there. And I’m impressed with the strides that have been made on that front as well,” the FBI director said, adding: “You can’t cover everything all the time. And that’s something I worry about.”

The new FBI chief also reported that agency is working hard on another task of keen interest to Trump: rooting out leakers.

“This is a topic that’s a very high priority for us. It’s something we take very seriously,” Wray said.

Wray, who served as a federal prosecutor before heading up the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said he believes many leaks of national security information don’t come from individuals with first-hand knowledge.

“More often than not the leaks are not coming from somebody who’s in the inside circle of knowledge in the first instance….There’s an enormous amount of attention focused on this issue. I think a lot of people are taking it very seriously,” the FBI chief said.

DeVos to scrap Obama-era school sexual assault policy

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Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is pictured.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said the Trump administration will revamp the guidance through a rule-making process that likely will take months. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP

By

09/07/2017 12:20 PM EDT

Updated 09/07/2017 06:58 PM EDT


Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said Thursday that she will rescind an Obama-era schools directive on sexual assault and develop a replacement that she said would do a better job of balancing the rights of victims and the accused.

“The truth is that the system established by the prior administration has failed too many students,” DeVos said during a half-hour speech at George Mason University where she took no questions. “Survivors, victims of a lack of due process and campus administrators have all told me that the current approach does a disservice to everyone involved.”

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But the announcement drew strong objections from womens’ groups, victims advocates and leading Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden, who said the changes were a step in the wrong direction.

“Any change that weakens Title IX protections will be devastating,” wrote Biden, who drove the Obama administration’s efforts to crack down on campus sexual assault, in a statement posted on his Facebook page.

“I’m asking everyone who has a stake in this fight to step up,” Biden said. “Students, parents, faculty, alumni. Don’t just sit and watch. Speak up. Any rollback of Title IX protections will hurt your classmates, your students, your friends, your sisters.”

The 2011 Obama guidance for the first time pushed school district, college and university leaders to combat sexual harassment, including sexual violence, saying the institutions were required to do so under Title IX, a federal law that prohibits sex discrimination. Women’s groups hailed that as a crucial step in cracking down on sexual violence on campuses. But critics said it trampled the rights of the accused.

The Trump administration will revamp the guidance through a rulemaking process that likely will take months, DeVos said, blasting the guidance for having “weaponized the Office of Civil Rights to work against schools and against students.” She said the administration will give all sides a chance to offer opinions on how it should move forward.

“We will seek public feedback and combine institutional knowledge, professional expertise and the experiences of students to replace the current approach with a workable, effective and fair system,” DeVos said. “This is not about letting institutions off the hook. They still have important work to do.”

DeVos said after the speech that she intends to revoke the Obama guidance.”The process is an extended one,” she told CBS News. “But it is the intention to revoke or rescind the previous guidance around this.”

The Education Department will issue temporary Title IX guidelines for school districts, colleges and universities as it works on a permanent replacement for Obama-era guidelines, said agency spokeswoman Liz Hill.

The far-reaching 2011 Obama-era guidance, issued in the form of a Dear Colleague Letter, was controversial from the start. It threatened a loss of funding to schools that failed to do enough to make students safe from sexual harassment, assault and rape. Critics said it pushed colleges to trample the rights of the accused. Among other things, the guidance pushed a lower standard of proof in campus disciplinary hearings than is used in criminal trials.

Many of those critics hailed DeVos’ announcement as “a really positive development.”

“I think it was a strong signal from the department that the current approach is unworkable and needs to be changed,” said Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a civil rights group that brought a court challenge to the 2011 guidance.

Chris Perry, deputy executive director of the group, Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, which represents people accused of sexual assault, said DeVos’ remarks show “the secretary is listening to folks.”

The decision to launch a notice-and-comment process was long expected. DeVos said in July — after a series of meetings with sexual assault survivors, students accused of assault and college officials — that she would overhaul the policy. She told reporters at the time that “it’s clear that there are failings in this process. A system without due process protections ultimately serves no one in the end.”

Advocacy groups — including those representing both sexual assault survivors and students accused of assault — were not invited to attend Thursday’s announcement in person, despite meeting with DeVos on the subject in July.

Instead, DeVos delivered the announcement during a tightly controlled half-hour event at the university’s Arlington, Va., campus, sponsored by the university law school chapter of the Federalist Society, a conservative group. Shouts from protesters outside could be heard as she spoke.

Advocates for survivors of sexual assault said they felt they were given short shrift and noted that research has shown false claims of rape are rare. They said DeVos had indicated she would hold similar listening sessions in other parts of the country before making a decision.

Giving them just one meeting with the secretary “feels a little bit like paying lip service to the importance of having survivors in the room,” said Jess Davidson, managing director of End Rape on Campus.

“I think there’s been a really concerning false equivalence of the concerns of survivors and the accused throughout this entire process with the Department of Education,” Davidson said.

Sexual assault survivors rallied outside the university ahead of the announcement, urging DeVos to keep what they see as crucial protections in place.

“It’s really telling us that we don’t matter, that our pain is not relevant to people in power,” said Chessy Prout, 18, who said she was assaulted as a high school freshman and subsequently had to change schools.

Advocates slammed the speech afterward. “Don’t be duped by today’s announcement,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center. “What seems procedural is a blunt attack on survivors of sexual assault. It will discourage schools from taking steps to comply with the law — just at the moment when they are finally working to get it right. And it sends a frightening message to all students: Your government does not have your back if your rights are violated. This misguided approach signals a green light to sweep sexual assault further under the rug.”

Complicating the issue for DeVos are comments made by her civil rights chief, Candice Jackson, who told The New York Times this summer that 90 percent of sexual assault claims stem from drunken and regretted sex. Another complication is President Donald Trump’s boast about groping women in the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape.

“Secretary DeVos decided today to continue a pattern of undermining survivors’ rights, once again showing a clear lack of understanding or empathy for the millions of students who have experienced sexual violence on campus,” Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat and ranking member of the Senate education committee, said in a statement.

But her announcement drew praise from at least one Republican lawmaker.

“The Department of Education is taking a positive first step in soliciting comments from stakeholders to get a better understanding of ways to better address the problem,” Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford said. “However, this is an issue where Congress must give the Department of Education clear statutory authority to properly regulate.”

Despite the administration’s plan to rewrite rules on Title IX, it’s unlikely that schools will immediately change policies that they spent the last six years writing — and sometimes rewriting — to remain in compliance with federal law.

“No school is going to go back to doing what they were doing before the 2011 guidance,” said Terry Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education.

Mel Leonor contributed to this story.

Appeals court rules against Trump administration on travel ban restrictions on refugees and close relatives

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A federal appeals court on Thursday denied the Trump administration’s request to block more foreigners from Muslim nations fand removed restrictions on all refugee resettlement.

The decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals could significantly lower the number of people blocked from travel to the U.S. under President Trump’s travel ban. The ban currently halts nearly all refugee resettlement and travel by foreign nationals from six mostly Muslim countries unless they have close connection in the U.S.

The panel of judges, Michael Hawkins, Ronald Gould and Richard Paez, did not decide whether the ban is legal. That question is left to the U.S. Supreme Court to take on when it hears arguments over the issue on Oct. 10.

Instead, the judges, all Democratic appointees, had suspended the ban for a period this year, ruled on who falls under it.

Debt-ceiling shift signifies a remarkable political evolution for Trump

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President Trump on Thursday signaled openness to a proposal to effectively eliminate the federal limit on government borrowing, a dramatic reversal from his view as a candidate and the long-standing position of the Republican Party that the debt limit should be raised only if other steps are taken to restrain the size of government.

On Wednesday, Trump and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D–N.Y.) reached what one senior White House official called a “gentlemen’s agreement” to develop a plan that would no longer require Congress to routinely raise the limit on government borrowing.

Details have not been worked out, and any plan would require approval from congressional Republicans, but the shift signifies a remarkable political evolution for Trump, who has long cheered weaponizing the debt ceiling, no matter the cost.

“I cannot believe the Republicans are extending the debt ceiling — I am a Republican I am embarrassed!” he tweeted in 2013.

On Thursday, Trump’s approach to the debt ceiling had changed markedly.

Why does the debt ceiling exist? View Graphic Why does the debt ceiling exist?

“For many years people have been talking about getting rid of [the] debt ceiling altogether and there are a lot of good reasons to do that,” he said at the White House.

Trump’s discussions with Democrats on the debt ceiling could mark the end of Congress’ greatest political weapon — a legislative hand grenade that has never exploded but unnerved financial markets for decades.

Rory Cooper, a former top adviser to House GOP leadership, said Trump’s reversal on the issue should come as no surprise, even if it insults the Republican leadership.

“There’s definitely support on the Hill on the Democratic side and even among some Republicans for doing away with debt-limit votes altogether,” Cooper said. “But President Trump is not going to be able to sustain a coalition for that so long as he is slapping leadership in the face in these negotiations.”

The U.S. government is projected to spend $4 trillion this year but bring in only $3.3 trillion through taxes and other fees. It covers the balance — known as the deficit — by issuing debt to borrow money. This debt accumulates over time, and now the federal government owes close to $20 trillion to creditors around the world.

The government can hold debt only up to a certain limit, which is set by Congress. And raising that debt limit is often politically messy, with lawmakers trying to leverage their vote in a way that can exact budget changes from the White House.

“From the economy’s perspective and from the financial markets’ perspective, removing the debt limit from that equation is probably a very, very positive thing to do,” said John Bowman, who worked on debt-ceiling issues at the Treasury Department for 15 years under presidents from both parties. “If there’s no long uncertainty about whether or not — on a date certain — the United States has the ability to pay its bills, that’s a very, very strong good government position to take.”

Then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R–Ga.) drew international attention when he flatly refused to raise it in 1995 unless President Bill Clinton agreed to a balanced-budget plan.

“I don’t care what the price is,” Gingrich said at the time. “I don’t care if we have no executive offices and no bonds for 60 days, not this time.”

It was eventually raised, but the showdown sufficiently weaponized the debt limit for both parties to use in coming years.

In 2006, then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) refused to raise the debt ceiling for President George W. Bush, trying to score political points against a weakened White House that he was hoping to soon occupy.

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure,” Obama said at the time. “It is a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay its own bills.”

It was eventually — barely — raised.

But sure enough, five years later, Obama as president flipped the script, pleading with lawmakers to raise the debt ceiling, saying failing to do so would lead to an economic calamity.

His showdown with congressional Republicans in 2011 took the U.S. government to the brink of defaulting on some of its obligations.

The debt limit was eventually raised after lawmakers agreed to spending caps and other budget changes, but the encounter sufficiently spooked financial markets. Credit rating agency Standard Poor’s stripped the U.S. government of its gold-standard rating, and top Obama advisers have described the episode as one of the most frightening periods of his presidency.

Obama would later refuse to ever negotiate with Republicans on the debt ceiling again, and they acquiesced by raising it again several times.

All told, the debt ceiling has been raised 78 times since 1960, under Democrats and Republicans. It is unclear what would happen if Congress failed to raise the debt ceiling. Wall Street analysts and economists have speculated that it would lead to a large economic crisis, as the U.S. government would effectively no longer be standing behind its debt.

Trump is the first president who had openly cheered using the debt ceiling as a political straitjacket against the White House. He has endorsed many of the Republican Party’s proposals to enforce sweeping spending cuts to programs like Medicaid, leading many lawmakers to think that he would help them use the debt ceiling to cram these changes through Congress.

But since January, Trump has showed little interest in using the debt ceiling the way he wanted to before taking office.

Neither the White House nor Senate Democrats have outlined how they would propose jettisoning the debt ceiling. Vice President Pence is advocating for an idea that would essentially automatically raise the debt ceiling every time Congress approves a budget.

In the near term, the White House and many members of Congress plan to suspend the debt ceiling until Dec. 8, giving them several months to try to come up with a permanent solution.

The Senate approved the measure, 80 to 17, on Thursday, and the House was expected to approve the measure swiftly as well. But a number of prominent Republicans, including House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), said Thursday that they opposed abolishing the debt ceiling in perpetuity.

Gingrich, in an interview on Thursday, said abolishing the debt ceiling would never happen because Republicans in Congress would never allow it.

“Presidents often have ideas,” he said. “Ideas aren’t programs. Programs aren’t laws. There are long jumps from the initial idea to getting it done.”

But Trump’s courtship with Democrats could give them outsize influence. Democrats have tried to stress that they are the ones who often need to deliver the votes to raise the debt ceiling, even when Republicans try to use it as negotiating leverage.

“Here, the currency of the realm is the vote,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters, not signaling what her long-term preference would be. “You have the votes, no discussion necessary.”

Credit giant Equifax says Social Security numbers, birth dates of 143 million consumers may have been exposed

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Equifax, one of the nation’s three major credit reporting firms, announced Thursday that its computer systems had been breached, leading to the unauthorized accessing of Social Security numbers and birth dates of up to 143 million U.S. consumers.

The Atlanta-based company said the intrusion — enabled by a website vulnerability — occurred from mid-May through July. The issue was discovered July 29, and the company spent recent weeks working with a cybersecurity consultant and authorities on an investigation, which is continuing.

Equifax said it launched a website for people to check whether their data were affected and to sign up for the company’s credit-monitoring services. But a form on the website purportedly offering to “check potential impact” instead just gives users a date on which they must return to Equifax’s website to enroll in credit monitoring.

The discrepancy drew quick scorn from consumers on social media. Equifax declined to comment on the issue. Several attempts to get through on a phone line that Equifax said was dedicated to consumer calls about the data breach resulted in a busy signal.

The tiny islands ravaged by Irma are in trouble as Hurricane Jose looms

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As Hurricane Irma left Antigua and Barbuda’s usually pristine reef-ringed beaches with the pink and white sand, islanders struggled to grasp the destruction to Barbuda’s schools, churches and the homes that many had used their life savings to build.

Irma somehow spared Antigua, which was open for business by Thursday morning. But on Barbuda, the smaller of the two islands with an area of 62 square miles, the ferocious and historic Category 5 hurricane had turned the typically gentle Caribbean winds into violent gusts that decimated Codrington, its sole town.

“Barbuda right now is literally a rubble,” Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne said.

Browne said nearly all of the government and personal property on Barbuda was damaged — including the hospital and the airport, which he said had its roof completely blown away. At least one person, a young child, was killed on the island — one of numerous deaths reported across the Caribbean in Irma’s horrific aftermath.

Now, these victims face yet another threat — a second hurricane, Jose, which appears to be coming for the same islands that are trying to dig out from Irma’s devastation.

The National Hurricane Center released an ominous bulletin Thursday about the new menace looming in the Atlantic: “…JOSE BECOMES 3RD MAJOR HURRICANE OF THE 2017 ATLANTIC SEASON…” By late afternoon, Jose had gained Category 3 strength, and Antigua and Barbuda remained in hurricane watch status.

“We are very worried about Hurricane Jose,” Browne said Thursday in a phone interview with The Washington Post, adding that Irma left about 60 percent of Barbuda’s nearly 2,000 residents homeless and destroyed or damaged 95 percent of its property.

Browne will make a determination by Thursday night about whether to order a mandatory evacuation ahead of Jose’s potential landfall, but added that those who want to leave Barbuda now are being ferried to nearby Antigua.

[Irma more likely to make landfall in South Florida as a ‘dangerous major hurricane’]

As Irma continues its merciless churn toward the U.S. mainland, the first islanders left in its wake are only beginning to decipher the scope of the storm’s ravages.

Deaths have been reported throughout the Leeward Islands, a vulnerable, isolated chain arcing southeast from Puerto Rico, which reported at least three deaths of its own.

Officials throughout the Caribbean expect the body count to rise.

After first making landfall in Barbuda, then strafing several other Leeward Islands, Irma raked the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, leaving nearly 1 million people without any electricity. The Dominican Republic, Haiti and the Turks and Caicos Islands are next in its path. Closer to Florida’s southern tip, the Bahamas remain in danger, and mass evacuations are underway.

The United Nations has said that Irma could affect as many as 37 million people. The majority are on the U.S. mainland, but the residents of tiny islands in the Eastern Caribbean were hit first — and hardest.

Browne told local media that Barbuda was left “barely habitable.”

Aerial footage showed homes with walls blown out and roofs ripped away.

“It was emotionally painful,” he told The Post. “It was sad to see such beautiful country being destroyed over a couple of hours.”

It is, he said, “one of the most significant disasters anywhere in the world” on a per capita basis: Browne said it would take an estimated $100 million to rebuild — a “monumental challenge” for a small island government.

When Craig Ryan, a 29-year-old tourism entrepreneur who lives in Antigua, reached Barbuda by boat Thursday morning, residents lined the beach waiting for rescue. “It’s such a level of devastation,” he told The Post, “that you can’t even see structures standing.”

Ryan’s family business, Tropical Adventures Antigua, dispatched a 75-foot motorboat to make the 90-minute passage between islands to ferry people off Barbuda before Jose’s potential arrival. Some residents remain stuck in isolated areas blocked by impassable roads, he said by telephone as he loaded up water and other supplies at a dock in Antigua.

“We really are in a rush against time,” Ryan said.

[Tropical triple threat: Hurricanes Jose and Katia could join Irma striking land this weekend]

Ghastly images from St. Martin and St. Barthelemy (also known as St. Barts) showed cars and trucks almost completely submerged in the storm surge, and several buildings in ruin.

Witnesses on other islands described horrific destruction and a breakdown in public order: no running water, no emergency services, no police to stop looters — and a never ending tide of newly homeless people wandering the streets amid the devastation.

“It’s like someone with a lawn mower from the sky has gone over the island,” Marilou Rohan, a Dutch vacationer in St. Maarten, which is part of the Kingdom of Netherlands, told the Dutch NOS news service. “Houses are destroyed. Some are razed to the ground. I am lucky that I was in a sturdy house, but we had to bolster the door, the wind was so hard.”

There was little sense that authorities had the situation under control, she said.

Supermarkets were being looted and no police were visible in the streets. Occasionally, soldiers have passed by, but they were doing little to impose order, she said.

“People feel powerless. They do not know what to do. You see the fear in their eyes,” she said.

Paul de Windt, the editor of the Daily Herald of Sint Maarten, told the Paradise FM radio station in Curaçao that “Many people are wandering the streets. They no longer have homes, they don’t know what to do.”


An image released Wednesday shows severe flooding in St. Martin. (AFP)

In Anguilla, part of the British West Indies, the local government is “overwhelmed” and desperate for help, Anguilla Attorney General John McKendrick told The Post late Wednesday. Officials were barely able to communicate among one another and with emergency response teams, he said. With most phone lines down, they were dependent on instant messaging.

It appears that at least one person died in Anguilla, he said.

“Roads blocked, hospital damaged. Power down. Communications badly impaired. Help needed,” McKendrick wrote in one message. In another, he said, “More people might die without further help, especially as another hurricane threatens us so soon.”

The Dutch government said that it was sending two military ships carrying smaller emergency boats, ambulances and emergency equipment to St. Maarten.

French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said 100,000 rations — or about four days’ worth of food — are en route to the victims to St. Barts and St. Martin, which could experience tropical storm conditions from Jose on Saturday, according to the National Hurricane Center. The tropical storm watch also applies to St. Maarten, Anguilla, Montserrat, St. Kitts, Nevis, Saba and St. Eustatius.

“It’s a tragedy, we’ll need to rebuild both islands,” Collomb told reporters Thursday, according to the Associated Press. “Most of the schools have been destroyed.”

British Prime Minister Theresa May said the government is allocating more than $41 million (U.S. dollars) for hurricane relief efforts.

Britain’s international development secretary, Priti Patel, announced Wednesday that the British navy, along with several Royal Marines and a contingent of military engineers, had been dispatched to the Caribbean with makeshift shelters and water purification systems. While some in England criticized the response, McKendrick told The Post that he’s worried that they, too, will quickly become overwhelmed by the amount of work that must be done to restore a sense of normalcy.

Elsewhere on Anguilla, some informal reports were less bleak. The Facebook page for Roy’s Bayside Grill, for instance, remained active as Irma passed.

Around 7:30 a.m., the page broadcast a brief live video of the storm captured from inside an unidentified building. With rain pelting the windows and wind whipping the treetops, a narrator calmly described the scene outside. “Can’t see very far at all,” he said. “We’ve got whitecaps on the pool. Water is spilling out. And it’s quite a ride. But thought I’d check in and let everyone know we’re still good.”

Phone lines to the restaurant appeared to be down by the afternoon, and messages left with the Facebook page’s administrator were not immediately returned.

About 1 p.m. Wednesday, the restaurant posted a panoramic photo on Facebook that appeared to show several buildings. The decking on one appeared to be ripped apart, and debris was scattered about the beach. One industrial building had a hole in its roof, but by and large everything was still standing.

“We made it through,” the caption read, “but there is a lot of work to be done.”


Destruction in a street in Gustavia on the French island of St. Barthelemy after Hurricane Irma. (Kevin Barrallon/AFP/Getty Images)

Michael Birnbaum and Annabell Van den Berghe contributed to this story from Brussels. Joshua Partlow contributed from Mexico City. Cleve Wootson and J. Freedom du Lac contributed from Washington. This post has been updated.

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Trump, Xi discuss NKorea as key nations split on strategy

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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump discussed North Korea’s strongest nuclear test yet with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday, as the U.S. proposed crippling new sanctions and world leaders tussled over whether pressure or dialogue was the best way to rein in the rogue nation.

The White House stressed the U.S. and Chinese leaders’ joint commitment to ridding the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons. But differences were clear on how best to reach that remote goal as fears escalate over Pyongyang’s emerging capability to strike America with a nuclear-tipped missile.

China’s state news agency said Xi expressed China’s adamant position about “resolving the nuclear issue through talks.” Trump noted China’s “essential role” and pledged more communication with China “to find a solution as early as possible,” Xinhua reported.

But Trump projected an entirely different message in a phone call a day earlier with British Prime Minister Theresa May. The American leader declared “now is not the time to talk to North Korea,” according to a White House readout, released shortly before Trump’s call with Xi.

The conversations were part of a flurry of calls Trump has made to world leaders after North Korea’s test explosion this weekend of what it called a hydrogen bomb. Trump said the U.S. is considering all options to defend itself and allies.

While Washington needs backing from allies, cooperation with traditional adversaries China and Russia is more significant. The U.S. needs both to put the squeeze on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Both are economic partners of North Korea and veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

On Wednesday, the U.S. circulated a draft Security Council resolution that would ban all oil and natural gas exports to North Korea, potentially devastating its economy. The measure also would freeze all of the North’s and Kim’s foreign financial assets, and outlaw North Korean textiles exports. Countries also would be prevented from hiring and paying North Korean workers.

But Beijing and Moscow’s support for such tough action was doubtful.

“President Xi would like to do something,” Trump told reporters after a 45-minute call with the Chinese leader. “We’ll see whether or not he can do it. But we will not be putting up with what’s happening in North Korea. I believe that President Xi agrees with me 100 percent. He doesn’t want to see what’s happening there, either.”

Asked if he was considering military action against North Korea, Trump told reporters: “Certainly that’s not our first choice, but we will see what happens.”

As Trump looked to increase the pressure, Russian President Vladimir Putin pushed in the opposite direction, warning against cornering Pyongyang.

The North’s nuclear test “flagrantly violates” international law, Putin said, but he urged talks and not more sanctions.

“We should not give in to emotions and push Pyongyang into a corner,” Putin said after meeting the president of close U.S. ally, South Korea, in Russia on Wednesday. “As never before, everyone should show restraint and refrain from steps leading to escalation and tensions.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s military, diplomacy and intelligence chiefs briefed Congress on the North Korean threat and U.S. strategy to address it. Democrats accused the administration of sending confusing signals to adversaries and allies.

“The message changes from day to day and for myself, I’m not quite sure what the policy is,” Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts said. He said he learned nothing from the closed-doors briefing by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that he hadn’t already read in newspapers.

“There is an unbelievable disconnect between the people in that room and their boss,” Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, another Democrat, said. “And that freaks the hell out of me.”

“They’re talking about a diplomacy first strategy that has been clearly rejected by their boss. And it leaves the entire world scratching their head,” Murphy added.

Trump traded threats with Pyongyang last month after it conducted two long-range missile tests. At one point, he warned of “fire and fury like the world has never seen” if North Korea continued its threats. At another, he credited Kim for a brief pause in missile tests that ended days later.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, backed Trump and said he may be employing a “good cop, bad cop” approach. Pressuring China and North Korea could force negotiations for a peaceful solution.

Otherwise, he said, “war is the next inevitable option.”

____

Associated Press writers Catherine Lucey and Darlene Superville in Washington, and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Facebook says it sold political ads to Russian company during 2016 election

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Representatives of Facebook told congressional investigators Wednesday that it has discovered it sold ads during the U.S. presidential election to a shadowy Russian company seeking to target voters, according to several people familiar with the company’s findings.

Facebook officials reported that they traced the ad sales, totaling $100,000, to a Russian “troll farm” with a history of pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda, these people said.

A small portion of the ads, which began in the summer of 2015, directly named Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, the people said. Most of the ads focused on pumping politically divisive issues such as gun rights and immigration fears, as well as gay rights and racial discrimination.

The acknowledgment by Facebook comes as congressional investigators and special counsel Robert Mueller are probing Russian interference in the U.S. election, including allegations that the Kremlin may have coordinated with the Trump campaign.

The U.S. intelligence community concluded in January that Russia had interfered in the U.S. election to help elect Trump, including by using paid social media trolls to spread fake news intended to influence public opinion.

Even though the ad spending from Russia is tiny relative to overall campaign costs, the report from Facebook that a Russian firm was able to target political messages is likely to fuel pointed questions from investigators about whether the Russians received guidance from people in the United States — a question some Democrats have been asking for months.

“I get the fact that the Russian intel services could figure out how to manipulate and use the bots. Whether they could know how to target states and levels of voters that the Democrats weren’t even aware really raises some questions. I think that’s a worthwhile area of inquiry,” Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said during a May airing of the podcast Pod Save America. “How did they know to go to that level of detail in those kinds of jurisdictions?”

An official familiar with Facebook’s internal investigation said the company does not have the ability to determine whether the ads it sold represented any sort of coordination.

The acknowledgment by Facebook follows months of criticism that the social media company served as a platform for the spread of false information before the November election. In a statement posted days after the election, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg promised to explore the issue but said that 99 percent of information found on Facebook is authentic and only “a very small amount” is fake or hoaxes. In December, however, the company announced that it would begin flagging articles that had been deemed false or fake, with the assistance of fact-checking organizations.

Facebook discovered the Russian connection as part of an investigation that began this spring looking at purchasers of politically-motivated ads, according to people familiar with the inquiry. It found that 3,300 ads had digital footprints that led to the Russian company.

Facebook teams then discovered 470 suspicious and likely fraudulent Facebook accounts and pages that it believes operated out of Russia, had links to the company and were involved in promoting the ads.

A Facebook official said “there is evidence that some of the accounts are linked to a troll farm in St. Petersburg, referred to as the Internet Research Agency, though we have no way to independently confirm.” The official declined to release any of the ads it traced to Russian companies or entities.

Who’s who in the government’s investigation into Russia ties View Graphic Who’s who in the government’s investigation into Russia ties

“Our data policy and federal law limit our ability to share user data and content, so we won’t be releasing any ads,” the official said. The official added that the ads “were directed at people on Facebook who had expressed interest in subjects explored on those pages, such as LGBT community, black social issues, the Second Amendment, and immigration.”

Alex Stamos, Facebook’s chief security officer, said in a statement that the company is committed to continuing to protect the integrity of its site and improve its ability to track fraudulent accounts. He said Facebook has shut down the accounts that remained active.

“We know we have to stay vigilant to keep ahead of people who try to misuse our platform,” he said.

Earlier this year, Facebook announced technology improvements to detect fake accounts and more recently announced it would no longer allow Facebook pages to advertise if they have a pattern of sharing false news stories. Over the past few months, Stamos said, the company has also taken action to block fake accounts tied to election meddling in France and Germany.

The Internet Research Agency has received attention in the past for its activity.

In 2013, hackers released internal company documents showing it employed 600 people across Russia. Ex-employees who have gone public with their experiences at the company in Internet postings and in media interviews have said their work entailed creating fake Twitter and Facebook accounts and using them to circulate pro-Kremlin propaganda. They said Internet Research Agency employees, for instance, spread derogatory information about Putin critic Boris Nemtsov in the days after his 2015 murder.

In 2015, the New York Times Magazine reported that social media accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency had launched social media campaigns in the United States, including a sophisticated hoax that spread false news of a chemical leak in Louisiana in 2014, apparently to sow chaos and fear.

In its unclassified report in January, the U.S. intelligence community concluded that the Internet Research Agency’s “likely financier” is a “close Putin ally with ties to Russian intelligence.”

In May, Time Magazine reported that U.S. intelligence officials had discovered evidence that Russian agents had purchased ads on Facebook to target specific populations with propaganda. A Facebook spokesman told the magazine that the company had no evidence of such buys.

Under federal law and Federal Election Commission regulations, both foreign nationals and foreign governments are prohibited from making contributions or spending money to influence a federal, state or local election in the United States. The ban includes independent expenditures made in connection with an election.

Those banned from such spending include foreign citizens, foreign governments, foreign political parties, foreign corporations, foreign associations and foreign partnerships, according to the FEC. (Permanent residents who hold green cards, however, are not considered foreign nationals.) Violators face civil penalties, as well as criminal prosecution if they are found to have knowingly broken the law.

Andrew Roth, Alice Crites and Matea Gold contributed to this report.