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.

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.”

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.”

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

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.”

Newsletter Sign Up

Continue reading the main story

Thank you for subscribing.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

View all New York Times newsletters.

• See Sample
• Manage Email Preferences
• Not you?
• Privacy Policy
• Opt out or contact us anytime

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.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

“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.

Continue reading the main story

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)

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.

A strange night in Green Bay, interrupted by a 47-minute lightning delay, ended in a familiar fashion. The Packers’ 35-14 victory over the visiting Chicago Bears was notable for its total lack of suspense, the home team holding a two-touchdown lead before the Bears even ran a second offensive play.

The comfortable margin of victory comes at a great time for a Packers team beset by injuries and erratic play through September. Coach Mike McCarthy’s crew hasn’t played particularly well yet and they have been particularly unlucky, yet the team hits the quarter mark of the season at 3-1. That’s how successful organizations manage the schedule and the Packers should be happy to avoid digging another early season hole to the season. Here’s what we learned:

1. This felt like a Pyrrhic victory in some ways for the Packers because of all the injuries. The scariest one happened when wide receiver Davante Adams was taken off the field in a stretcher after taking a vicious hit to the helmet from Bears linebacker Danny Trevathan. (Adams was taken to a hospital for evaluation with a head and neck injury. He was conscious and had feeling in all his extremities.)

It wasn’t the only Packers injury. As NFL Network’s Rich Eisen sagely put it, the annual ritual of the Packers being forced to play a running back you’ve never heard of has arrived. Starter Ty Montgomery, who has played a higher percentage of snaps than any running back in football, broke his ribs early on the team’s first drive, stayed in for several carries, and left after five rushes for 26 yards. Montgomery’s backup Jamaal Williams subsequently hurt his knee, leaving rookie runner Aaron Jones and fullback Aaron Ripkowski to take over. Packers inside linebacker Joe Thomas, who made a crucial pass breakup early in the game, left with a knee injury.

2. Trevathan is at risk of facing a hefty fine or even possibly a suspension for the hit. The league’s ownership made a point of emphasis this offseason that a player can be ejected immediately for a particularly egregious hit to the helmet and a suspension is possible even for a first-time offender. Trevathan was not ejected, but could be at risk of missing time.

3. Playing without both his starting tackles, Aaron Rodgers did a great job managing this game. He threw for four touchdowns and 179 yards on only 26 attempts because he wasn’t required to do more. Rodgers got the ball out of his hands quickly on the team’s opening drive and didn’t force the issue for much of the night. His 58-yard completion to Jordy Nelson late in the first half, in which Rodgers avoided pressure to step up in the pocket and flip the ball deep downfield, is a play that perhaps no other quarterback could make.

“I’m so proud of my guys up front,” Rodgers told CBS sideline reporter Tracy Wolfson after the game. “Those guys battled all night, I’m really proud of them. That’s a great group of guys … they had a great approach tonight. We kind of have a mantra going on right now, ‘no excuses.’ Those guys stepped up and played really well tonight and I’m proud of them.”

4. This Packers defense is completely different when outside linebacker Clay Matthews is playing well. Matthews was off to his best start in years leading into Thursday night, then set the tone in this game with a sack-fumble on Chicago’s first offensive play. Matthews became the franchise’s all-time sack leader with the play. After a few down years, it would be a huge boon to Green Bay if they can get Matthews and fellow edge rusher Nick Perry cooking at the same time.

5. Bears starting quarterback Mike Glennon had a night to forget. He lost a fumble on his first dropback and watched a bad snap bounce off his knee right back to the Packers later in the first quarter. Glennon mixed in some nice throws while completing 21 of 33 passes for 218 yards and a score, but he threw two ugly interceptions. Glennon has five interceptions and five fumbles in four games. Coach John Fox is not a fan of playing rookies early, but No. 2 overall pick Mitchell Trubisky could give this team a spark. At 1-3, Fox could be staring at his final season as Bears head coach unless he does the most un-Fox thing possible and plays a rookie quarterback.

“We have 11 days to evaluate, do things necessary for us to improve, and that’s across the board,” Fox said. “We need to make a lot of changes. We will evaluate everything. We got a lot of work to do here before we line up here against Minnesota on Monday night, and we will evaluate everything.”

6. The Packers’ defense did a great job limiting Bears running backs Jordan Howard and Tarik Cohen to a combined 77 yards on 24 carries. As CBS analyst Tony Romo pointed out, the Bears’ running game is limited by Glennon’s lack of mobility and inability to run bootlegs and pass plays with a moving pocket. A change is gonna come at quarterback in Chicago. The only question is when.

Ms. Haley’s remarks were the strongest she has yet made on the crisis, and raised the possibility that the United States might reimpose sanctions on Myanmar that were rescinded under the Obama administration.

Mr. Guterres, who led United Nations refugee operations for 10 years, demanded an immediate halt to military operations by Myanmar’s security forces against Rohingya civilians and called for unfettered access by aid groups to areas that have been cut off.

“We have received bone-chilling accounts from those who had fled — mainly women, children and the elderly,” he told the Security Council.

Myanmar’s national security adviser, U Thaung Tun, who also attended the meeting, reiterated the government’s rejection of accusations that it has systematically persecuted the Rohingya. He described the military’s actions in Rakhine State, the center of the crisis, as counterterrorism operations against Rohingya militants who killed members of the security forces on Aug. 25.

He also asserted that Myanmar wanted friendly relations with Bangladesh, where the total population of Rohingya refugees is nearing one million. Myanmar’s outreach to Bangladesh, he said, “gives the lie to the assertion that there is a policy of ethnic cleansing on our part.”

Hours before the Security Council meeting, officials in Myanmar abruptly postponed a planned visit by representatives of United Nations aid agencies and diplomats to Rakhine State.

The hosts blamed bad weather and said the trip would be postponed until Oct. 2, even though the envoys had gathered at the airport in Yangon, Myanmar’s commercial capital, to board their flight.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Thousands of Rohingya refugees continue to flee into Bangladesh. A Bangladeshi diplomat said 20,000 had arrived on Wednesday alone.

Some have walked for days in search of safety, others have made the dangerous journey by boat, made even more treacherous by the monsoon rains.

Newsletter Sign Up

Continue reading the main story

Thank you for subscribing.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

View all New York Times newsletters.

• See Sample
• Manage Email Preferences
• Not you?
• Privacy Policy
• Opt out or contact us anytime

At least 15 Rohingya people, including nine children, were killed Thursday when the trawler carrying them capsized in the Bay of Bengal. Their bodies washed up on the shore alongside some survivors.

“The women and children couldn’t swim,” one survivor, Nuru Salam, 22, told reporters. He had tried to cross with his entire family, he said, when the boat tipped. His son drowned, and he was still searching for his wife.

The International Organization for Migration, the United Nations agency that has been monitoring the influx of Rohingya into Bangladesh, said about 100 people had boarded the vessel a day earlier.

A young women who made it to shore said the captain had tried to anchor the boat in rough seas and lost control. Local residents saw the boat capsize from shore.

“These people thought they had finally arrived to safety but died before even touching land,” said Abdullah Al Mamoun, an International Organization for Migration staff member.

Nearly half of Myanmar’s Rohingya population has fled into Bangladesh since the government crackdown began. Survivors have recounted massacres in their villages in Rakhine State, both by government security forces and allied mobs.

Those who reach Bangladesh face overcrowded, unsanitary conditions in the makeshift camps for the displaced. The United Nations refugee agency has expressed concern about a health crisis.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

“We are trying to prepare ourselves, but if not enough is done, and not done quickly enough, then there is a risk of a disaster within a disaster,” said Hervé Isambert, the refugee agency’s senior public health officer.

Those Rohingya left behind in Myanmar have been cut off from aid.

In a statement on Thursday, aid groups, including Oxfam and Save the Children, called on the Myanmar government to allow free access to Rakhine so they could “provide lifesaving humanitarian assistance.”

Officials associated with the office of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto leader, have accused international aid groups of abetting Rohingya militants. Aid groups have rejected the accusations.

Continue reading the main story

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. — A massive rock fall Wednesday on the granite face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park killed one person and injured another at the height of climbing season, an official said. 

At least 30 climbers were on the wall at the time, but it was not clear if the victims were climbers or tourists, ranger Scott Gediman said.

“It was witnessed by a lot of people,” he said.

The injured person was taken to a hospital near the park. The extent of the surviving climber’s injuries are unknown, CBS Sacramento reports. No names were immediately released. 

El Capitan is one of the world’s largest granite monoliths towering 4,000 feet above Yosemite Valley. It appears to have happened near the Waterfall Route on the east buttress of El Capitan, where Horsetail Fall flows in the winter and spring.

Several people made emergency calls, reporting the rock fall from the Waterfall route on the east buttress of El Capitan.

Officials didn’t provide details on the size of the rock fall, but climbers posted pictures on social media from hundreds of feet up the wall showing billowing white dust moments after the crash.

Mountaineers from around the world travel to the park in the Sierra Nevada to scale El Capitan’s sheer face. Fall is one of the peak seasons because the days are long and the weather is warm.

Ken Yager, president and founder of the Yosemite Climbing Association, reviewed photos of the cliff face and debris field, estimating the relatively thin piece that broke off covered an area big enough to fit five houses.

“It cratered and sent stuff mushrooming out in all directions,” said Yager, fearing that its victim was someone he knew from the climbing community.

Rock falls are common in Yosemite but seldom fatal.

Climber Kevin Jorgeson said he and climbing partner Tommy Caldwell witnessed a massive rock fall in the same area while they prepared for a trek that made them the first people to free-climb the Dawn Wall on El Capitan in 2015.

First they heard a rumble and then they saw a white cloud of dust.

“Yosemite is just a really active, wild place. It’s always changing,” Jorgeson said. “It doesn’t make it any less tragic when someone gets in the way of that.”

In 2013, a rock dislodged and severed the rope of a Montana climber who was scaling El Capitan.

Mason Robison, 38, fell about 230 feet to his death. It was Robison’s gear digging into the side of the mountain that caused the rock to dislodge.

Yosemite remained open after Wednesday’s rock fall, and other activities throughout the park weren’t affected, rangers said. 

SAN JUAN — As Puerto Rico slips deeper into what many call a humanitarian crisis following Hurricane Maria, the island is primed for a mass exodus of what could be 1 million people — a sizable number of whom are expected to settle in Florida, the nation’s biggest swing state.

That could well prove to be a boon to Democrats in a state which the past four top-of-the-ticket races have been decided by about a percentage point.

Story Continued Below

“It’s going to mean a lot more people voting Democrat in Florida,” Marco Rigau, president of the San Juan municipal assembly, told POLITICO Wednesday, a week ahead of President Donald Trump’s scheduled visit to the commonwealth. “Puerto Ricans don’t like President Trump. When he shows on Tuesday, he’ll say ‘The Puerto Ricans love me’ because people won’t be picketing. But he has no idea.”

Rigau was speaking on the tarmac of Puerto Rico’s Isla Grande Airport, where Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine, a likely Democratic candidate for Florida governor next year, was delivering 7,000 pounds of supplies a week after Hurricane Maria knocked out power and crippled roads across the island. The relief mission underscored how Florida Democrats like Levine are trying to fashion themselves as the party of solutions while portraying Republicans, led by Trump, as feckless. (A POLITICO reporter was one of two journalists invited to accompany Levine on the trip.)

Local Republicans clearly hear the criticism. Just hours after Levine landed in San Juan and met with its mayor, who hugged and praised him, Florida Gov. Rick Scott — a top Trump surrogate — announced he would travel to Puerto Rico on Thursday to help with relief efforts at the invitation of Puerto Rico’s governor, Ricardo Rosselló.

Scott himself had been facing Democratic calls to do more in Maria’s aftermath. He leaves office next year due to term limits and is considering a bid against Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat who might join a Florida congressional delegation trip to the island on Friday.

Scott’s decision to go to Puerto Rico came as the White House public relations apparatus sought to stem growing criticism that Trump has not done enough to respond, even as he posts Twitter messages about NFL players refusing to stand for the national anthem.

White House officials pointed out Wednesday that Puerto Rico’s governor had said Trump had been “phenomenal in this situation,” although Rosselló and others have repeatedly called for more resources and less red tape. They also need a distribution network. The port has loads of supplies baking in unopened shipping containers that haven’t been moved due to a lack of trucks or passable roads.

The intense awareness of Puerto Rican affairs in Florida highlights how crucial the populace is in the Sunshine State, which has more than 1 million people with roots on the island — about the same number as New York. Concentrated largely around Orlando, Puerto Ricans increasingly have become a left-leaning counterweight to Republican-performing Cuban-Americans in the Miami area.

But once in Florida, Puerto Rican voters have proven tough to motivate for the Democratic Party, despite being generally more aligned with liberals than conservatives. Many are registered as independent, no party affiliation voters — and not as Democrats — because they “have seen the failure of partisan politics back home, and that’s why the Puerto Rican vote in Florida is so abysmally low,” said Jorge Bonilla, a Central Florida Republican and Puerto Rican activist.

Bonilla acknowledged Democrats could stand to gain more than Republicans after more Puerto Ricans move here, if the Maria response is botched. But he said Republican Sen. Marco Rubio’s understanding of the crisis, and his decision to raise the alarm about conditions in Puerto Rico, have started to endear him to the community at large.

Rubio said earlier this week he wanted to make sure that post-Maria Puerto Rico didn’t become a Hurricane “Katrina-style” disaster. Progressives have started to call Maria “Trump’s Katrina” and compared conditions at the San Juan airport to the Superdome during the 2005 storm that wrecked New Orleans and damaged President George W. Bush’s approval ratings.

At Isla Grande Airport on Wednesday, Levine stopped short of comparing the two GOP presidents’ responses to the two hurricanes. But he said more needed to be done by the U.S. government and, specifically, by the military.

“If we were attacked by a foreign power, our military would treat this like a war zone. And we need to declare war on this devastation,” Levine said. “Trump is a bad CEO, and it shows.”

San Juan’s mayor, Carmen Yulín Cruz, was more circumspect than Levine when it came to rating the president’s performance. She said Levine “had answered our S.O.S.” but said the call still hasn’t been fully heeded by the federal government. Behind the scenes, there’s also tension between Cruz and the governor, Rosselló, whom she is considering challenging in his reelection.

Asked what message she would like Trump to hear, Cruz quoted John 13:27, where Jesus tells Judas: “What you are going to do, do quickly.”

Cruz estimated that as many as 30 percent of the island’s 3.4 million residents could flee Puerto Rico if it remains in such bad shape. And many will show up in Florida, where the culture, climate and distance are closer to Puerto Rico than New York’s.

David Efron, an attorney who splits his time between Miami and San Juan and traveled with Levine on Wednesday, said the political consequences could be steep for Trump if there’s a mass exodus.

“Trump should be doing everything in his power to rebuild Puerto Rico and keep people here. Otherwise they’re coming to Florida,” he said, “and they’re not voting for Trump.”

Since last month, researchers at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan initiative of the German Marshall Fund, a public policy research group in Washington, have been publicly tracking 600 Twitter accounts — human users and suspected bots alike — they have linked to Russian influence operations. Those were the accounts pushing the opposing messages on the N.F.L. and the national anthem.

Of 80 news stories promoted last week by those accounts, more than 25 percent “had a primary theme of anti-Americanism,” the researchers found. About 15 percent were critical of Hillary Clinton, falsely accusing her of funding left-wing antifa — short for anti-fascist — protesters, tying her to the lethal terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 and discussing her daughter Chelsea’s use of Twitter. Eleven percent focused on wiretapping in the federal investigation into Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, with most of them treated the news as a vindication for President Trump’s earlier wiretapping claims.

In the face of such public scrutiny, Twitter has said almost nothing about what it knows about Russia’s use of its platform. But Representative Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he would like to know exactly what the company has done to find covert Russian activity and what it has discovered so far about fake accounts — including their reach and impact.

“I think right now the public is aware of only a subset of a subset of Russian activity online,” Mr. Schiff said in an interview. He said Facebook long denied that there had been Russian exploitation of its system, before reversing course on Sept. 6.

Mr. Schiff said the tech companies have asked for assistance from American intelligence agencies in trying to find and stop illicit interference from other countries, a request he said he supports.

The House Intelligence Committee announced on Wednesday that it would hold a public hearing on the matter of Russian influence next month, and a Senate aide said Facebook, Twitter and Google have been invited to testify at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Nov. 1.

This month, The New York Times reported on evidence of Russian operators creating hundreds or thousands of fake Twitter accounts to flood the network with anti-Clinton messages during the campaign. The cybersecurity company FireEye identified what it called “warlists” of accounts linked to Russian intelligence that sometimes spewed messages like #WarAgainstDemocrats several times a minute.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Both DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, which spread the leaked emails and documents and were identified as having been created by Russian intelligence, used accounts that Twitter has not suspended, though they have been dormant for months. In some cases, the Russian exploitation of Facebook and Twitter was linked: “Heart of Texas,” a Facebook page advocating the secession of Texas that was identified as one of 470 fake profiles and pages linked to Russia, also had a Twitter feed — now suspended — called @itstimetosecede.

Experts on Russia inside and outside the government say President Vladimir V. Putin had multiple goals in last year’s campaign of hacking, leaking and stealth propaganda. He hoped to damage, if not defeat, Mrs. Clinton, whom he blamed for encouraging pro-democracy protests in Russia and neighboring states.

But Mr. Putin also sought to darken the image of the United States, making it a less attractive model for other countries and reducing its international influence, said Mark R. Jacobson, a Georgetown professor and co-author of a new report on Russian influence operations.

Last week, Facebook said it was turning over more than 3,000 Russia-linked ads to Congress. Many of those ads, like the opposing Twitter hashtags on the N.F.L. anthem issue, targeted divisions in American society by simultaneously sending conflicting messages to different users segmented by political and racial characteristics.

“What we see over and over again is that a lot of the messaging isn’t about politics, a specific politician, or political parties,” said Laura Rosenberger, director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy. “It’s about creating societal division, identifying divisive issues and fanning the flames.”

Her group’s web “dashboard” is called Hamilton 68. It is named for No. 68 of the Federalist Papers, believed to have been written by Alexander Hamilton, which warns of foreign meddling in American elections. The tool does not identify the activity of specific Twitter users but highlights the activity of the 600 accounts that researchers believe are either tied to the Russian government or repeat the themes of its propaganda.

For its part, Twitter has not said much about what it plans to say in the Congressional briefing.

“Twitter deeply respects the integrity of the election process, a cornerstone of all democracies, and will continue to strengthen our platform against bots and other forms of manipulation that violate our Terms of Service,” Twitter said in a statement.

Twitter has also said it was working to crack down on bots that distribute tweets en masse or that attempt to manipulate the platform’s trending topics.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Colin Crowell, Twitter’s vice president of public policy, government and philanthropy, said in a blog post in June that the company should not be an arbiter of whether a tweet is truthful or not. Because Twitter is open and real-time, he said the platform is the best antidote to misinformation, when “journalists, experts and engaged citizens Tweet side-by-side correcting and challenging public discourse in seconds.”

Karen North, a social media professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, said the company’s defense has some merit.

“Twitter functions more like a broadcast network,” she said. “People say things and everyone can hear it. When false information is stated, people can jump on false statements and challenge it.”

Continue reading the main story