As the death toll in the Montecito mudslides increased to 19 on Saturday, officials announced that the 101 Freeway would remain closed indefinitely.
Search and rescue crews recovered the body of Morgan Corey, 25, who was found in debris near Mill Road about 9 a.m. Saturday, officials said. She was among at least five people who were still listed as missing.
At a late afternoon news conference at the Earl Warren Fairgrounds, Santa Barbara Fire Chief Eric Peterson spoke about the difficulties and challenges faced by emergency responders in their search for survivors.
“I have felt the heartbreak of knowing that even with all of your skill and all of your training and all of your planning, you couldn’t save everybody,” he said. “No one could have planned for the size and scope of what a 200-year storm immediately following our largest wildfire could bring.”
Emergency crews remain in search-and-rescue mode, he said. However, he added, “after every hour it becomes less likely we will find someone alive, but there is always hope.”
Highway 101, a major north-south artery that carries 100,000 vehicles through the Central Coast each day, was initially expected to open Monday, but officials said cleaning up an approximately two-mile stretch of the freeway was proving more difficult than imagined.
“It’s really an overwhelming situation and we don’t want to give an estimate that isn’t accurate,” CalTrans spokesman Colin Jones said.
CalTrans crews, aided by private contractors and the Army Corps of Engineers, have been working around the clock on the approximately two-mile stretch of the debris-strewn freeway near Montecito. Crews have removed most of the vehicles abandoned in the storm, including a number of tractor-trailers, but a significant amount of debris and mud remains.
Los Angeles Fire Department search-and-rescue team tried to sound an optimistic note — hoping for the best, bracing for the worst. Members used an arsenal of tools, technology and specially trained dogs to probe piles of debris more than 15 feet deep at the southern end of Romero Creek.
“It’s as exhausting, frustrating and tedious as looking for a needle in a haystack,” LAFD Battalion Chief Mark Akahoshi said while hunched over a topographical map of surrounding terrain studded with ranches and mansions offering panoramic views of the Pacific Ocean.
One of the region’s most famous resorts, San Ysidro Ranch, sustained extensive damage in the mudslides, McElroy said Saturday. The luxury hotel, which has counted Audrey Hepburn, Winston Churchill and honeymooners John F. and Jacqueline Kennedy as guests, is edged by a creek that became a torrent of boulders, toppled trees and muck.
Contractors and crews using earthmovers and dump trucks were streaming into the property Saturday morning. Elroy said many key structures on the property remained standing.
Michelle Williams is breaking her silence on the pay gap that surrounded the reshoots of All the Money in the World.
“Today isn’t about me,” she said in a statement sent to USA TODAY Saturday evening by her rep, Mara Buxbaum. “My fellow actresses stood by me and stood up for me, my activist friends taught me to use my voice, and the most powerful men in charge, they listened and they acted. If we truly envision an equal world, it takes equal effort and sacrifice.”
In the wake of a public outcry over the Hollywood pay gap, Mark Wahlberg and his agency William Morris Endeavor said Saturday morning they are committing $2 million to the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, in recognition of the pay discrepancy during the reshoots for All the Money in the World, according to a statement provided to USA TODAY by WME spokesperson Marie Sheehy. Wahlberg has pledged his $1.5 million fee and WME has donated $500,000. Both donations will be made in Michelle Williams’ name.
Wahlberg explained his decision on Saturday when the announcement was made. “Over the last few days my reshoot fee for All the Money in the World has become an important topic of conversation,” Wahlberg said in the statement. “I 100% support the fight for fair pay and I’m donating the $1.5M to the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund in Michelle Williams’ name.”
WME said the conversation over the pay discrepancy is “a reminder that those of us in a position of influence have a responsibility to challenge inequities, including the gender wage gap.”
“It’s crucial that this conversation continues within our community and we are committed to being part of the solution,” the company’s statement continued.
In an exclusive report, USA TODAY first reported the pay discrepancy Tuesday, revealing Williams was paid an $80 per diem totaling less than $1,000 for the reshoots while Wahlberg was paid $1.5 million. That math works out to Williams being paid less than one-tenth of 1% of her male co-star.
WME represented both Wahlberg and Williams during negotiations for All the Money in the World, including the film’s reshoots.
More: Three major arguments happening around the Hollywood pay gap, explained
USA TODAY reported Thursday that Wahlberg exercised a co-star approval clause in his contract and refused to approve Christopher Plummer as a replacement for Kevin Spacey in All the Money in the World unless he was paid over a million dollars.
The reshoots took place in Europe over the Thanksgiving holiday after All the Money star Kevin Spacey, who played billionaire J. Paul Getty in the film, became embroiled in a sexual misconduct scandal last fall.
On Saturday, WME noted the $500,000 donation in Williams’ name is in addition to the $1 million pledge the company made to the organization earlier this month.
The pay gap controversy caused an outcry in Hollywood, with stars like Jessica Chastain and Eva Longoria and more expressing outrage over the news on social media.
On Thursday night, Olivia Munn roasted Wahlberg from the stage of the Critics’ Choice Awards during a sarcastic toast segment.
Williams called the outcome of her story going public “one of the most indelible days of my life” and publicly saluted Anthony Rapp, whose early allegations against Spacey opened the door for others to come forward last fall.
“Today is one of the most indelible days of my life because of Mark Wahlberg, WME and a community of women and men who share in this accomplishment,” said the actress. “Anthony Rapp, for all the shoulders you stood on, now we stand on yours.”
Last year the United States ambassador to Britain, Woody Johnson, said that he hoped Mr. Trump would visit in early 2018 and dedicate the new embassy, providing the opportunity for a symbolically important, but lower-key, visit to a close ally.
No official statement had been made about the visit, and no formal invitation had been issued, although diplomats were known to be trying to organize a meeting, and the embassy opening was an obvious moment at which to do so.
Then, late on Thursday night, the president took to his favorite medium, Twitter, and announced that he had scrapped his trip because he was unhappy with the new building, and the decision to quit the old site in central London, which has been taken over by the Qatari royal family’s property company, which plans to convert it into a luxury hotel.
Reason I canceled my trip to London is that I am not a big fan of the Obama Administration having sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London for “peanuts,” only to build a new one in an off location for 1.2 billion dollars. Bad deal. Wanted me to cut ribbon-NO!
His critics in Britain gave that explanation little credence. Ed Miliband, the former Labour Party leader, responded to Mr. Trump’s announcement on Twitter, saying: “Nope. It’s because nobody wanted you to come. And you got the message.”
Nope it’s because nobody wanted you to come. And you got the message. https://t.co/9xV7bFZQgL
The old United States Embassy, in a famous square in the exclusive Mayfair neighborhood, was deemed to be vulnerable to terrorist attacks. The new one, which includes a small moat, is a high-tech construction in a former rail yard on the South Bank of the Thames.
Though Mr. Trump blamed the Obama administration for the move, the first announcement of new embassy site had been made in 2008 during the administration of President George W. Bush.
In a statement released on Friday the United States Embassy in London said that, in 2007, a plan was developed “to finance a new embassy project through a property swap for existing U.S. government property in London. This solution allowed construction of a new chancery that meets all security standards, yet used no tax payer dollars to fund the project.”
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Britons Protest May’s Support of Trump
Demonstrators marched in London and other British cities on Monday to voice their displeasure for President Trump and to protest the backing he has received from Prime Minister Theresa May.
By CAMILLA SCHICK, ROBIN LINDSAY, ILIANA MAGRA and CLAIRE BARTHELEMY on Publish Date January 30, 2017.
“The project budget was approximately $1 billion and includes the site purchase, design, and construction costs. The project has been executed within the established budget,” the statement added.
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In response to Mr. Trump’s statement, Britain’s foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, accused the opposition Labour Party’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and the London major, Sadiq Khan, of having endangered the trans-Atlantic relationship.
The US is the biggest single investor in the UK – yet Khan Corbyn seem determined to put this crucial relationship at risk. We will not allow US-UK relations to be endangered by some puffed up pompous popinjay in City Hall.
But the furor illustrates the extent to which any potential visit by Mr. Trump to Britain has become politically polarizing, even as the country’s establishment grapples with the question of whether to invite the president to the wedding of Prince Harry and the American actress Meghan Markle.
Mr. Trump visited several continental European countries last year, including France, where President Emmanuel Macron’s handling of his American counterpart appeared to make the British look fumbling.
“Macron treated Trump with respect and warmth on the one hand,” said Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a research institute, “but on the other hand was principled in defense of French interests, and didn’t give an iota on the substance.”
By contrast, Mrs. May was “all over the place,” Mr. Leonard added.
“There was the attempt to rush over to the U.S. to embrace him, then she became implicated in the things he was doing, and then she had to pull back, so she’s been zigzagging,” he said. “Britain then gets the worst of all worlds because it has confused everyone.”
While Mrs. May is keen to create closer ties with Washington, on many global issues her approach is more closely aligned with the positions of the European Union. She has expressed support both for the Paris climate change accord and the Iran nuclear deal, for example.
Mr. Khan said the president’s Twitter postings made clear that Mrs. May had been mistaken to extend an invitation to Mr. Trump so quickly. “It appears that President Trump got the message from the many Londoners who love and admire America and Americans but find his policies and actions the polar opposite of our city’s values of inclusion, diversity and tolerance,” he said Friday in a Twitter post.
Many Londoners have made it clear that Donald Trump is not welcome here while he is pursuing such a divisive agenda. It seems he’s finally got that message. pic.twitter.com/YD0ZHuWtr3
Mr. Trump’s most vocal supporter in Britain, Nigel Farage, former leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, told the BBC that he regretted that the president would not be opening the embassy.
“It’s disappointing. He’s been to countries all over the world and yet he’s not been to the one with whom he’s closest. I would say it’s disappointing.
“But maybe, just maybe, Sadiq Khan, Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party planning mass protests, maybe those optics he didn’t like the look of,” Mr. Farage added.
Yet there was no disguising the delight of some of Mr. Trump’s critics at the news. One opposition Labour Party lawmaker, David Lammy, wrote on Twitter: “Happy Friday everyone.”
SANTA ANA – A friend of slain pre-med student Blaze Bernstein was arrested Friday afternoon in connection with the death of the University of Pennsylvania sophomore, whose body was found near a Foothill Ranch park on Tuesday, a week after the 19-year-old disappeared.
Samuel Woodward, 21, was taken into custody Friday shortly after leaving his home in Newport Beach, according to a source with knowledge of the case. Woodward had told homicide investigators that he drove Bernstein to Borrego Ranch Park on Jan. 2, the night Bernstein disappeared.
Around 1:15 p.m., two sheriff’s investigators brought the handcuffed man to the Orange County Jail. He had on a sweatshirt that read, “Keep the peace.”
The suspect and the arrested man had attended the Orange County School of the Arts in Santa Ana at the same time at one point.
“Finally,” Blaze Bernstein’s mother said on on Twitter. “My thoughts are: Revenge is empty. It will never bring back my son. My only hopes are that he will never have the opportunity to hurt anyone else again and that something meaningful can come from the senseless act of Blaze’s murder. Now Do Good for Blaze Bernstein.”
Woodward appeared nervous while being interviewed by sheriff’s investigators, before the body had been found, saying Bernstein walked into the park after exiting the vehicle and he didn’t see him again, according to a search warrant affidavit obtained earlier this week by the Southern California News Group.
According to the affidavit, Woodward said he left the park, visited a girlfriend and went back to look for Bernstein hours later in the early morning. Woodward’s hands were scratched and had dirt on them one of the times he was interviewed by detectives, the document says. He told them the scratches and dirt came from participating in a fight club.
Woodward, according to the affidavit, said he did not remember his girlfriend’s last name or where she lived. While leaving the sheriff’s facility during an interview, he covered his hands with clothing before touching the door knobs, the affidavit says.
Officials say they will talk about the case later this afternoon with the media.
How do you tell your father that you’ve just won $451 million? For 20-year-old Shane Missler, it was over coffee the day after he hit the lottery jackpot.
Missler, from Port Richey, a suburb of Tampa, is the winner of the whopping $451 million Mega Millions prize, the Florida Lottery announced on Friday.
He has since retired from his job at a local background screening company, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
The winning numbers, drawn last Friday night, were 28, 30, 39, 59, 70 and 10. Missler bought the quick-pick ticket at a 7-Eleven in town last week; the retailer received a $100,000 bonus, the Lottery said.
But it was Missler who went home with the big haul, which was the fourth-biggest in the multistate lottery’s 15-year-old history. According to the Lottery, Missler elected to receive his payment as a one-time lump sum, which amounted to just over $280 million. That’s about the net worth of Taylor Swift, according to a Forbes article from 2017, but a touch under Judge Judy’s.
“If there is one thing I have learned thus far in my short time on this earth it is that those who maintain a positive mind-set and stay true to themselves get rewarded,” Missler said, in a statement quoted by the Times. “I look forward to the future.”
The newspaper reported Missler had turned his winning ticket in on Friday, “grinning widely.”
Missler had told the Lottery that he had “a feeling” that he might win. His brother was the first person he called after learning of the extraordinary news, before telling his father the next morning, the Lottery reported.
The money will be paid to a trust run by Missler, the Times said. Missler told the paper that he planned to help his family, have some fun along the way, and make sure his financial success extended far into the future.
“Although I’m young, I’ve had a crash course this week in financial management and I feel so fortunate to have this incredible wealth and team behind me,” Missler said in his statement to the Times.
Missler’s lawyer, Walt Blenner, could not be immediately reached for comment.
All lottery winnings are subject to a 25 percent federal tax withholding, The Washington Post’s Jonnelle Marte writes. Most states also charge taxes, but Florida does not.
This win comes just a few years after another Florida winner split a sizable haul with a winner from Maryland. Winners from the two states won the $414 million Mega Millions jackpot in 2014.
The odds of winning the jackpot are about one in 302 million.
Millions of Americans will need to use a new Internal Revenue Service online calculator to ensure their new paychecks are accurate, Trump administration officials said Thursday as they issued guidelines for implementing the recently passed tax law.
The guidelines are necessary for businesses to calculate how much to withhold in taxes from employees’ paychecks beginning as soon as next month. The White House said Thursday that businesses should make these adjustments by Feb. 15, part of the administration’s push for millions of workers to see bigger paychecks as quickly as possible.
In rushing the process, the Treasury Department is asking companies to rely on outdated forms to help determine how much to withhold.
A senior IRS official said Thursday that Americans with simple tax situations are likely to get accurate paychecks next month. But many Americans, including those who tend to itemize their tax returns, will need to use the online tool to ensure they are not dramatically overpaying or underpaying their taxes. The online calculator will not be available until sometime next month.
If they find their paychecks are inaccurate, it will be incumbent on the employees to tell their employers to make corrections.
“This will provide [Americans] with certainty so they are neither over-withheld or under-withheld,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday.
The new guidelines incorporate lower tax rates that were central to Congress’s December tax overhaul. Trump administration officials said that the guidelines should lead to bigger paychecks for 90 percent of all wage earners.
But these tax withholding decisions are based on tax forms Americans file with their employers, known as W-4s, that were written to apply to an outdated tax system. The Treasury Department and IRS are designing new W-4 forms that millions of Americans will probably be able to fill out later this year to make their tax withholdings more accurate in the future, but they will not be ready in time for the paycheck adjustments next month.
“We had an existing form,” Mnuchin said. “We had existing technology. We had to figure out how to fit this in this format.”
Senior Treasury Department officials said they expect employers to update their systems so that the new withholding tables go into effect by Feb. 15.
Americans typically have federal income taxes withheld from their paychecks, money that is aggregated over the course of the year to account for a person’s federal tax liability. When they file their tax returns, if their tax payments were too high or too low, they must account for the difference through a refund or payment. Currently, 76 percent of Americans who file their taxes receive a tax refund. A senior IRS official said he expected that level to fall just a bit next year to around 73 percent.
But Democrats have alleged the number could fall much more, accusing the White House of changing the tax tables in a way that will lead to Americans dramatically under-withholding their tax payments during the year, only to be hit with big tax bills next year. They have ordered a review by the Government Accountability Office to determine whether the new tax guidelines are accurate.
“Republicans are using brute force and speed to implement a law that will deliver a financial blow to hardworking Americans all across the country,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a statement. “I look forward to GAO’s independent review of these tables, which will expose whether the Trump administration is tampering with Americans’ paychecks, resulting in a whopping tax bill next year.”
Many Americans are likely to see changes and adjustments this year in their tax payments as the law goes into effect.
The law lowers tax rates, which is the primary reason Americans will see bigger paychecks next month, but it also limits or scales back tax deductions, changes that might not be realized until Americans file their tax returns.
For example, there is a new $10,000 limit on the amount of state and local taxes a household can deduct from federal income. There are also new limits on the mortgage interest deduction, and the child tax credit was expanded.
Senior IRS and Treasury Department officials told reporters Thursday that they would be encouraging all Americans to proactively use a new IRS tax calculator in late February to help them determine whether their paychecks are accurate. If they determine they are paying too much or too little in taxes, based on the size of their family or other variables, they can direct their employer to make changes.
Americans will not be asked to input personal information such as names or Social Security Numbers into this online calculator, but they will need to input their income levels, family status and a number of other details.
The tax law is projected to add between $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion to the debt over 10 years because of a fall in revenue, something Democrats have decried but Republicans have said will help spur economic growth.
Employers must now rush to incorporate the new tax withholding tables into their payroll systems, a process that is expected to take several weeks.
The lower rates, an expanded standard deduction, and a larger Child Tax Credit are projected to reduce taxes for American workers and business owners by $180 billion in 2018, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
But that will be partially offset by new curbs on numerous tax breaks, including the elimination of personal exemptions and the new cap on state and local taxes.
These tax changes are all scheduled to expire after 2025, though Republicans have said they want to make them permanent.
President TrumpDonald John TrumpHouse Democrat slams Donald Trump Jr. for ‘serious case of amnesia’ after testimony Skier Lindsey Vonn: I don’t want to represent Trump at Olympics Poll: 4 in 10 Republicans think senior Trump advisers had improper dealings with Russia MORE said in a new interview Thursday that he “probably” has a “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a day after expressing his willingness to enter talks with the country over its nuclear program.
“I probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un,” Trump said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “I have relationships with people. I think you people are surprised.”
When Trump was asked if he has spoken with Kim, Trump said he didn’t want to comment.
“I’m not saying I have or haven’t,” Trump said. “I just don’t want to comment.”
Trump also told The Journal that his tweets on North Korea, in which he’s dubbed Kim as “Little Rocket Man” and labeled him a “maniac,” are part of a larger strategy.
“You’ll see that a lot with me,” Trump said about his fiery tweets. “And then all of the sudden somebody’s my best friend. I could give you 20 examples. You could give me 30. I’m a very flexible person.”
Trump’s remarks to the newspaper come one day after he told South Korea’s leader that he was open to direct talks with North Korea on its nuclear program.
On Saturday, Trump told reporters he would be open to speaking with Kim, but not without preconditions.
“Sure. I always believe in talking,” he told reporters at Camp David. “If something can happen and something can come out of those talks, that would be a great thing for all of humanity.”
Trump has previously dismissed the idea of direct talks with North Korea, tweeting in October that negotiations with the country were a waste of time.
“I told Rex TillersonRex Wayne TillersonOvernight Defense: Trump recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital | Mattis, Tillerson reportedly opposed move | Pentagon admits 2,000 US troops are in Syria | Trump calls on Saudis to ‘immediately’ lift Yemen blockade Trump has yet to name ambassadors to key nations in Mideast Mattis, Tillerson warned Trump of security concerns in Israel embassy move MORE, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,” he said on Twitter. “Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!”
Effectively, the vote was almost certainly the end of a debate over 21st-century surveillance and privacy rights that broke out in 2013 after the leaks by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden.
The Senate began considering the newly approved House bill on Thursday afternoon; Senators Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, and Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, are expected to oppose the measure in the coming days. But Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, moved to essentially ensure that no amendments to the House legislation would be considered, and it appeared to be on a path to final approval when senators return to Washington next week.
Mr. Snowden’s disclosures in 2013 ushered in a period of intense interest in surveillance. Civil libertarians and conservative skeptics of government power worked together to push for new limits, while intelligence and law enforcement agencies and their backers in Congress from across party lines — and in both the Obama and Trump administrations — tried to hold the line.
The post-Snowden privacy movement secured its largest victory in 2015 when Congress voted to end and replace one of the programs that Mr. Snowden exposed, under which the N.S.A. had been secretly collecting logs of Americans’ domestic phone calls in bulk. But lawmakers who hoped to add significant privacy constraints to the warrantless surveillance program, too, fell short on Thursday.
Before voting to extend the law, known as Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, the House rejected an amendment that would have imposed a series of new safeguards. That proposal included a requirement that officials obtain warrants in most cases before hunting for, and reading, emails and other messages of Americans that were swept up under the surveillance.
Supporters of those changes contended that the overhaul was needed to preserve Fourth Amendment privacy rights in the internet era. But intelligence and law enforcement officials argued that it was unnecessary, and dangerous, to limit security officials from being able to freely gain access to information the government already possessed.
Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican of California who leads the House Intelligence Committee, celebrated the outcome. “The House of Representatives has taken a big step to ensure the continuation of one of the intelligence community’s most vital tools for tracking foreign terrorists,” he said.
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The program’s surveillance can be used for all foreign intelligence purposes. The sharpest points of the debate centered on when information about Americans that is gathered by the program can be used for criminal investigations unrelated to terrorism.
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President Trump posted his tweet shortly after a Fox News legal analyst appealed directly to him during a Thursday morning segment about the upcoming House vote. Credit
Tom Brenner/The New York Times
Representative Justin Amash, the Republican of Michigan who sponsored the privacy measures, expressed disappointment but vowed to keep fighting.
“We had a bipartisan coalition who worked very hard to protect people’s rights, and we will continue to fight and continue to educate our colleagues about it,” Mr. Amash said.
The House bill that was approved on Thursday does contain a gesture toward requiring officials to obtain a warrant to read Americans’ emails that are collected under the program. But it is written so narrowly that it will not protect the overwhelming majority of citizens’ information that is queried in the warrantless surveillance repository.
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Specifically, a warrant would be required only if an F.B.I. agent wants to look at emails about a subject of an open criminal investigation for which there is no national security angle. It would not apply to security-related queries by any intelligence or law-enforcement agency, nor to requests from F.B.I. agents who are following up on criminal tips but have not yet opened formal investigations.
Matthew Olsen, a former general counsel of the National Security Agency and the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said that while he had concerns about how the F.B.I. would distinguish between criminal and national security cases, the overall thrust of the bill was a positive step.
“Congress has made clear that it is lawful to search using U.S. person identifiers for information that could help stop terror attacks and catch spies without a warrant,” he said. “That is the way the intelligence community has been operating under 702, and that is the way it will continue to operate if this bill becomes law.”
But Mr. Amash expressed hope that Mr. Trump might yet intervene to push for more changes to the legislation in the Senate.
Just before debate began on Thursday, the president posted a statement on Twitter that suggested skepticism about the surveillance bill.
“House votes on controversial FISA ACT today.” This is the act that may have been used, with the help of the discredited and phony Dossier, to so badly surveil and abuse the Trump Campaign by the previous administration and others?
Mr. Trump wrote the message shortly after a libertarian legal analyst on “Fox Friends,” Andrew Napolitano, appealed directly to him to go another route. Mr. Napolitano added that Mr. Trump’s “woes” began with surveillance.
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The president’s tweet enraged Republican congressional leaders who have been trying to renew the 702 law more or less intact. Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Mr. Trump spoke by phone until he posted his next message, a senior Republican congressional aide said.
Fewer than two hours later, the president appeared to reverse himself on the issue in another statement on Twitter.
With that being said, I have personally directed the fix to the unmasking process since taking office and today’s vote is about foreign surveillance of foreign bad guys on foreign land. We need it! Get smart!
Despite the confusion, Republican leaders pushed forward, counting on moderate Democrats and Republicans to reject the proposed overhaul and pass the extension bill. John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, lobbied members in a House cloakroom before the vote.
Some of the most conservative Republicans in the House joined with some of the most liberal Democrats in the failed bid for more privacy protections. Ultimately, 58 Republicans joined 125 Democrats in voting for the overhaul amendment, while 55 Democrats joined 178 Republicans in rejecting it. On Twitter, Mr. Snowden observed that it would have passed had fewer Democrats broken ranks.
House votes 256-164 to expand Trump’s warrantless surveillance powers for the next six years. The vote to reform warrantless searches of Americans’ phone calls and e-mails failed, needing the support of 26 more. Dems could have swung it, but 55 of them voted with the Trump camp.
But Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said afterward that by rejecting the overhaul amendment, the House had avoided imposing “a crippling requirement in national security and terrorism cases.”
“We were certainly thrown into plenty of turmoil with the president’s tweets this morning and that made everything look quite speculative,” Mr. Schiff said. “I do think the underlying bill makes a sensible compromise.”
“President Trump’s threat to revise our country’s libel laws is, frankly, not credible,” the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement on Wednesday.
Mr. Trump’s remarks reflected a broader frustration in his inner circle over critical coverage in recent days that has cast him as an erratic and ill-prepared commander in chief.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, filed a defamation lawsuit against BuzzFeed News for publishing, last January, a salacious and mostly unsubstantiated intelligence dossier that purported to describe how Russia had aided the Trump campaign. The dossier characterized Mr. Cohen as a central figure in what it described as a globe-spanning conspiracy.
Mr. Cohen also filed a separate suit in federal court against Fusion GPS, the research firm that prepared the dossier. Fusion GPS and BuzzFeed both said they would aggressively defend themselves against the suits.
Last week, a lawyer working on Mr. Trump’s behalf, Charles J. Harder of Harder Mirell Abrams in Beverly Hills, Calif., sent an 11-page cease-and-desist letter to the publisher of Mr. Wolff’s book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.”
Mr. Harder’s letter demanded that the publisher, Henry Holt and Company, withdraw the book from stores and apologize; the publisher responded by moving up the book’s release date and increasing its first print run to one million copies, from 150,000.
Mr. Trump’s remarks on Wednesday about libel law seemed, at times, to refer obliquely to the book, which debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list, and has provided fodder for dozens of news articles, opinion pieces and cable news segments.
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“We want fairness,” the president said. “Can’t say things that are false, knowingly false, and be able to smile as money pours into your bank account. We are going to take a very, very strong look at that, and I think what the American people want to see is fairness.”
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As a presidential candidate, Mr. Trump made sport of the reporters who stood in fenced-off areas during his speeches, often whipping up the crowd against them.
He also said on the campaign trail that he would “open up” the country’s libel laws — although he later backed off that pledge in an interview with editors and writers at The Times, joking that he personally might be in trouble if the laws were loosened.
“Somebody said to me on that, they said, ‘You know, it’s a great idea softening up those laws, but you may get sued a lot more,’” Mr. Trump, who propagated false rumors that Barack Obama was born in Africa and that the father of Senator Ted Cruz had aided the assassination of John F. Kennedy, said at the time.
Mr. Trump is no stranger to defamation claims, having filed several of them himself, without success. In 2009, a New Jersey judge dismissed a $5 billion suit brought by Mr. Trump against a biographer, Timothy L. O’Brien; Mr. Trump had claimed that Mr. O’Brien understated his personal wealth.
The president’s comments about the news media on Wednesday also extended to one of his favorite punching bags: network news. He taunted the television reporters in the room, saying they were dependent on his activities for ratings.
“If Trump doesn’t win in three years, they’re all out of business,” the president said. “You’re all out of business.”
He also claimed that network anchors had sent him “letters of congratulations” on Tuesday about a cabinet meeting that was broadcast on television that day.
“A lot of those anchors sent us letters saying that was one of the greatest meetings they’ve ever witnessed,” Mr. Trump said, adding that he had received “about two hours” of positive coverage from news networks, “and then they went a little bit south on us.” (White House aides said later that the “letters” in question referred to complimentary tweets from journalists.)
“They probably wish they didn’t send us those letter of congratulations, but it was good,” Mr. Trump added. “I’m sure their ratings were fantastic.”
Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican whose seat was considered vulnerable in the midterm elections, announced Wednesday that he will retire from Congress at the end of this year.
Issa, a member of the House since 2001, called his time in office “the privilege of a lifetime.”
“While my service to California’s 49th district will be coming to an end, I will continue advocating on behalf of the causes that are most important to me, advancing on behalf of the causes that are most important to me, advancing public policy where I believe I can make a true and lasting difference, and continuing the fight to make our incredible nation an even better place to call home,” he said in a statement.
Issa was a national figure and a staple on cable talk shows when he chaired the House Oversight House Oversight and Government Reform Committee from from 2011 to 2015. He was a relentless critic of the Obama administration and led the investigation of the 2012 terror attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi until GOP leaders decided to create a special committee to handle that probe.
Generally described as the richest member of Congress, Issa bankrolled the successful 2003 effort to recall California governor Gray Davis, leading to the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Issa joins the wave of GOP lawmakers who have announced that they won’t run for re-election this year.
Issa was narrowly re-elected to his seat in 2016, when he won with 50.3% of the votes. The district — a part of Southern California that swung in favor of Hillary Clinton in 2016 — has since been listed as a top target by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
So far, four Democrats have announced their intention to run for the seat: Doug Applegate, Sara Jacobs, Paul Kerr and Mike Levin. Applegate was Issa’s 2016 opponent.
