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Catalonia’s Independence Vote Descends Into Chaos and Clashes

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

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

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

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

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

In Barcelona’s Placa de Catalunya late Sunday night, voters chanted and celebrated the referendum, even if it remained very unclear how the separatist leaders hope to enforce its outcome.

“We’ve shown our way of making politics and changing things is very different to that of Spain,” said Marti Feliu, 21, a history student at Barcelona University. “It’s our opportunity to create a different kind of country, even if we don’t yet know exactly how and when.”


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Prisons official says it appears OJ Simpson being moved

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

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

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

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

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

Catalans Defy Spain and Push Ahead With Vote on Independence

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

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

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

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


Jon Nazca/Reuters

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

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

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

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

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


David Ramos/Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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


Josep Lago/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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Trump signed presidential directive ordering actions to pressure North Korea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rauhala reported from Beijing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump waived the law Thursday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Susan Svrluga contributed to this report.

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Trump’s breaking point with Price

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Tom Price’s downfall was his penchant for pricey jets.

But his demise was months in the making, as the president continued to lose trust in the Health and Human Services secretary who rarely attended Oval Office strategy meetings, had little sway or influence on Capitol Hill, and was associated in the president’s mind with one of the administration’s biggest defeats — the failure to repeal Obamacare.

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Of particular notoriety: A picture of Price in March drinking at Bullfeathers, a famed Capitol Hill bar, as his colleagues tried to wrangle votes for the president’s signature initiative.

Price’s lack of goodwill with Trump and other senior administration officials ultimately doomed his chances of survival, even though many administration officials believed the furor would blow over when news first broke that Price spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on private jets.

By early this week, however, it became clear that the growing firestorm over Price’s travel was only getting worse. A number of officials in the White House said HHS had badly handled the response to the controversy — and was caught off guard by the facts. And it was hard to find a power player in the White House who would defend Price to the president.

POLITICO published five stories over the last 10 days that revealed Price had spent more than $1 million in taxpayer money on travel since May, including overseas flights on military aircrafts and more than two dozen domestic trips on private planes.

Other media outlets amplified the revelations, with cable news frequently running damaging chyrons and reporters peppering Trump and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders about the growing scandal throughout the week.

The president grew more angry, fuming to West Wing aides about the optics of a member of the administration spending so lavishly. The almost daily drip of revelations — including that Price took a government-funded private jet in August to get to a Georgia resort where he and his wife own land — further incensed the president.

Meanwhile, Trump was intensely frustrated by his unsuccessful health care push and associated Price with the failure, several aides said. He joked at a rally in July he would fire Price if he didn’t get the votes for the Obamacare repeal.

While the White House has weathered a steady stream of mini-scandals since Trump took office, this one was different, according to administration officials, because it made Price look like the kind of creature of Washington that the president had railed against on the campaign trail.

Trump himself blasted Price on Friday for what he suggested was frivolous spending in light of the administration’s efforts to impose fiscal conservatism on the federal government.

“I’ve saved hundreds of millions of dollars,” the president told reporters on Friday when he was asked if he had lost confidence in Price. “So I don’t like the optics of what you just saw.”

Administration officials grew increasingly certain on Friday that Price would be ousted, but the final decision happened quickly, according to aides, who had cautioned as late as Friday afternoon that Trump might change his mind.

Though he nurtured a reputation as a ruthless boss on The Apprentice, Trump often hesitates to fire people — and sometimes takes weeks to make a final decision. In this case though, the president was counseled that the travel stories had become a distraction from his policy agenda, especially his tax reform push, according to an administration official.

There was also little personal chemistry between the two men.

The president was initially attracted to Price because he was a doctor, a supporter and “looked the part,” one adviser with direct knowledge said, plus he was given positive reviews from House Speaker Paul Ryan and others on Capitol Hill.

He soon became a bit player in the administration.

Price was often left out of senior level meetings in the Oval Office on Obamacare repeal, even as other top deputies attended, according to several people with knowledge of the matter.

The president and a number of top aides had little faith in his political instincts.

Leading the effort to negotiate with senators on the Hill was Seema Verma from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Marc Short, head of legislative affairs. Two senior White House officials said Price’s relationships at the Capitol were not as good as he promised — and that some members preferred not to deal with him. Many members saw him as prickly and not particularly likable, one senior GOP aide said, damaging his ability to negotiate.

Andrew Bremberg, the head of the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, was more involved in policy decisions than Price, these people said.

Price was often out of town during key stretches of the presidency, and while several senior officials said they weren’t aware of his private jet use, there was a general consensus that he was often nowhere to be found.

“I didn’t know he was on private jets,” one senior administration official said. “I knew he was never there.”

Price’s press office initially reassured the White House that the story would quickly pass and argued that Price needed charter jets to respond to public health emergencies like the recent hurricanes.

After POLITICO identified at least 17 charter flights that took place before the first storm — Hurricane Harvey — hit in late August, and included flights that did not appear to be for urgent public health priorities, HHS then changed its argument: Price needed charter aircraft “to accommodate his demanding schedule,” a spokesperson allowed last week.

As he often does when making a big decision, the president began making calls on Thursday night and Friday morning to ask whether he should fire Price.

Trump also told aides that if Price had a defense, he would give it. “I don’t think he has any defense for it,” one person said, summarizing Trump’s comments. “He is just taking it.”

Price did make a last-ditch effort to save his job, announcing on Thursday that he would reimburse the federal government for the cost of his seat on the domestic flights, a figure that reportedly totals nearly $52,000 — just a fraction of the total cost of the trips. The president didn’t like that Price was only offering to pay back some of the flights, and was struck by TV coverage that showed the total cost as more than $1 million, officials said.

The secretary also tried to go on Fox News and assuage the president. It didn’t work.

Rumors began swirling in HHS early Friday that Price might be fired. But, in an apparent sign of how quickly the final decision was made, Price was conducting business as usual late Friday.

Just minutes before Price’s resignation became official, the secretary sent an email to HHS officials outlining next steps on the “Reimagine HHS initiative,” a broad reorganizational effort of the department that was expected to result in staff reductions. The email outlined senior HHS officials who will be spearheading the process.

“Thank you for all your dedication and support, and we look forward to being in touch soon,” Price wrote, according to the email, which was obtained by POLITICO.

Across town at the White House, Trump’s chief of staff John Kelly was calling Hill leadership to tell them Price was out.

One senior official said the tipping point was when the White House couldn’t contain the scandal and it became an administration-wide story.

Other members of Trump’s Cabinet were coming under increased criticism for their use of military and private aircraft, including Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

“Got to the point he was causing problems for everybody,” this person said. “He could have lasted maybe if it didn’t just get worse every day.”

Elon Musk’s Mars colonization update: start time, streaming, and what to expect

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One year after Elon Musk unveiled his grand plans to send humans to Mars, the SpaceX CEO is ready to make some refinements. Musk is returning to the same annual space conference where he made that original announcement, the International Astronautical Congress, to detail the new version of those plans. His speech starts tonight at 12:30AM ET (September 29th), and you can watch it above (or right here on YouTube).

We already know Musk’s revamped solar system colonization plan will now include a focus on the Moon, because earlier this evening he posted a rendering of a SpaceX Moon base on Instagram. The photo shows two of the company’s futuristic Mars Colonial Transporters sitting on the surface of the Moon with the Earth in the background.

What we hope to learn during his speech is not just what Musk thinks SpaceX could do on the Moon, but the reason for this recapitulation. After all, it was at last year’s IAC that he said that a permanent human presence on the Moon would be “challenging.” It could be a commercial play — after all, going to the Moon would be cheaper, and Musk has openly joked that he’s not sure how he will fund this massive spaceship or the launcher it requires. It could also be a nod to the shifting winds of the space industry, which have changed thanks to the priorities of the Trump administration.

Fear not, though, Mars fans. Musk also showed off a rendering of a “Mars city” on Instagram this evening, and so he likely has lots more in store for the speech. (This is an eccentric billionaire we’re talking about, after all.) There are also tons of questions still left unanswered from last year’s presentation. If you want to get educated — or speculate — while you wait, our own space reporter Loren Grush broke down what to expect from tonight’s talk earlier this week.