Scott Pruitt, on Capitol Hill, Deflects Blame for Ethical Lapses

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While Democrats, who have called for his resignation, sought to force Mr. Pruitt to accept culpability for a variety of ethical missteps, he denied knowledge of or responsibility for the actions in question. Republicans, after briefly chastising Mr. Pruitt in their opening remarks, asked friendly questions that appeared calculated to allow him to talk about his policy proposals.

As reports about Mr. Pruitt have continued to increase, some White House staff members have urged Mr. Trump to fire the E.P.A. chief. Some Republican leaders have called for his resignation, and many in Mr. Pruitt’s own party have called for investigations into his actions. But analysts who watched his performance on Thursday said he did well.

Representative Ken Calvert, Republican of California and chairman of the appropriations subcommittee where Mr. Pruitt testified in the afternoon, called the administrator’s appearance “very professional.”

Asked if Mr. Pruitt should resign he said, “No.”

Ultimately, of course, the only opinion about Mr. Pruitt’s fate that matters is the president’s.

“I think his effort will be well received by the president,” Mr. Maisano said. He has more explaining to do, but it was a good effort to mend fences. There were no lethal blows.”

Mr. Pruitt is now the subject of 10 federal investigations, including questions about his office’s illegal purchase of a secure phone booth, his condominium rental agreement with the wife of an energy lobbyist, and accusations that he demoted or sidelined E.P.A. employees who questioned his actions.

Committee Democrats queried him sharply about the reports of his ethical lapses and pressed Mr. Pruitt on his rollbacks of environmental rules, in particular, a new policy, proposed this week, that would limit the E.P.A.’s use of scientific research in crafting new health and environmental rules. Scientists have deplored the proposed rule, saying that it would significantly limit the agency’s use of rigorous science.

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“Administrator Pruitt has brought secrecy, conflicts of interest and scandal to the E.P.A.,” said Representative Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey, the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where Mr. Pruitt testified Thursday morning. “You are unfit to hold public office and undeserving of the public trust,” he said. “Every indication we have is you really should resign.”

Mr. Pruitt at the House Appropriations subcommittee on the Interior and E.P.A., his second appearance before House members on Thursday.


Pete Marovich for The New York Times

Greg Walden, Republican of Oregon and the chairman of the House Energy committee, offered light criticism before moving on to praising Mr. Pruitt for his efforts to roll back environmental regulations. “I am concerned that the good progress being made on the policy front is being undercut by allegations of your management of the agency and use of its resources,” he said. “These issues are too persistent to ignore.”

Conservative lawmakers from fossil-fuel producing states, who have long pushed for the rollback of E.P.A. regulations, bypassed even slight criticism of Mr. Pruitt, attributing the scrutiny on his actions to a political witch hunt.

Representative David B. McKinley, Republican of West Virginia, told Mr. Pruitt sympathetically that the attacks on him “have an echo of McCarthyism.”

In many ways, the past 14 months of Mr. Pruitt’s tenure has been building to this moment.

As Oklahoma’s attorney general, he made a name for himself aggressively battling the agency he now leads. Mr. Pruitt’s confirmation was fiercely opposed by Democrats, environmentalists and even E.P.A. employees. Since taking the helm of the agency, Mr. Pruitt has worked to strip the E.P.A. of funding, reduce its staff and curb its ability to develop new regulations on fossil fuel pollution.

No E.P.A. director in history has achieved Mr. Pruitt’s level of notoriety. Since the agency was formed, its administrators have been second-tier Washington figures. But Mr. Pruitt’s antagonism toward climate science has made him a nationally-prominent and divisive figure.

Critics said that more than the ethical and spending issues, the real damage to the E.P.A. has been Mr. Pruitt’s systematic weakening of the agency’s ability to protect the environment and public health. While Mr. Pruitt’s performance in Thursday’s hearings may make or break his future within the Trump administration, many said his legacy was already set.

“It’s just been a flagrant, shameless series of calculated decisions to dismantle the country’s most successful domestic enterprise,” William K. Reilly, who led the E.P.A. under the first President George Bush, said of Mr. Pruitt’s leadership. “It’s really a national tragedy,” he said.

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The Behavior That Put Scott Pruitt at the Center of Federal Inquiries

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency faces nearly a dozen federal inquiries into his practices. We break down the accusations by category.


At Thursday morning’s hearing, Representative Joe Barton of Texas, who has long denied the overwhelming evidence of human effects on climate change, offered sympathy. “Mr. Pruitt, you’re not the first victim of Washington politics,” he said.

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Democrats unsuccessfully sought to pin down Mr. Pruitt on questions about his expenditures, and to force him to accept culpability for some the actions now under investigation.

Representative Tony Cárdenas, a California Democrat, asked about Mr. Pruitt’s soundproof booth, installed in his E.P.A. office at a cost of $43,000. The Government Accountability Office has ruled that the expenditure broke the law.

“I was not aware of the approval of the $43,000,” Mr. Pruitt told him, “and if I had known about it, congressman, I would not have approved it.”

Mr. Cárdenas responded that “if someone was spending $43,000 in my office, I would know about it.”

Representative Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, launched into questions about Mr. Pruitt’s involvement in real estate deals in Oklahoma that have been reported in The New York Times, referring to the purchaser of his home as a “shell company.”

“It’s not a shell company,” he said quickly, and added that such financial structures were commonly used to purchase real estate in Oklahoma.

Protesters interrupted Mr. Pruitt’s testimony during the morning hearing.


Pete Marovich for The New York Times

She then asked Mr. Pruitt whether he had paid taxes on rent he received. He said the issue had been handed over to an accountant.

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“I’m not doing this to hassle you. I’m doing this as an elected official,” Ms. DeGette said as she ended her questions. “Everything we do has to be to the highest ethical standards.”

Representative Paul Tonko, the ranking Democrat on the House Energy’s subcommittee on the Environment, pressed Mr. Pruitt on his claims that he was unaware that the E.P.A. had used an obscure legal provision to grant hefty raises to political appointees, bypassing approval by the White House. Mr. Pruitt has said the decision was taken by his chief of staff, Ryan Jackson.

“Did you authorize Mr. Jackson to sign those documents for you?” Mr. Tonko asked.

“I was not aware of the amount and I was not aware of the bypassing that was going on,” Mr. Pruitt replied.

Even some Republicans criticized Mr. Pruitt for repeatedly blaming his staff.

“If you say give me a phone booth, and your staff does it, you should say, I’m at fault,” said Representative John Shimkus, Republican of Illinois, the chairman of the House Energy subcommittee, speaking to reporters after the morning hearing. “It’s never good to blame your staff. Or at least do it behind closed doors.”

And Representative Anna G. Eshoo, a California Democrat, used her turn at questioning to try to get Mr. Pruitt to accept culpability. “You have a solid record of violating ethics rules from the state level to the federal government,” she told Mr. Pruitt. “I think it’s an embarrassment.” And then she asked, “Do you have any remorse? Yes or no?”

Mr. Pruitt responded: “I think there are changes I’ve made already. I’ve made a change from first class to coach travel.” Ms. Eshoo returned to her call for a yes-or-no answer, and asked Mr. Pruitt whether he would reimburse the government. He launched into a long response, but she cut him off.

“With all due respect, I may be elected, but I’m not a fool,” she said. “This is not ‘dodge-question’ day.”

Correction: April 26, 2018

An earlier version of this story gave the incorrect home state for Representative John Shimkus. He represents Illinois, not Pennsylvania.


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Cliff Huxtable Was Bill Cosby’s Sickest Joke

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“Just like us” was the dream of the show, right? “Best behavior” blackness. That’s one way to think about it, the cynical, uncharitable, myopic way, the way you’d think about it if you wanted to psychologize Bill Cosby as Cliff Huxtable.

I couldn’t have known how vertiginous the entire Huxtable project was. I was, like, 10, 13, 15 years old when the show was a thing. But eventually, I could see that Cliff became a play for respectability. This is how you comport yourself among white people, young black child. Take a little bit of Howard with you on your way to Harvard. But then, in 2004, at an NAACP ceremony commemorating 50 years since the Brown v. Board of Education decision, he gave the notorious “Pound Cake” speech, where prodding for a particular kind of self-betterment turned tsk-y. He compared incarcerated black men to jailed civil rights activists, the apples and oranges of the black criminal-justice crisis. He ruminated on names that didn’t seem, to him, like Bill.

Mr. Cosby in 1966, the year he won an Emmy for “I Spy.”


Max B. Miller/Archive Photos, via Getty Images

“We are not Africans,” he said. “Those people are not Africans, they don’t know a damned thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Shaligua, Mohammed, and all that crap and all of them are in jail.” Maybe this was Cliff unplugged — and unhinged. Mohammed? But it was a dare to flirt with distance, to reconsider all those applications I filed, to see Bill Cosby as someone who, despite hours of comedy like “Bill Cosby Is Not Himself These Days” and “Bill Cosby: Himself,” might not be willing or able to see who “himself” actually is. I called this a speech, but he performed it like another standup special.

This is the heavy thing about this verdict. The sorting of the ironies has been left to us. Mr. Cosby made blackness palatable to a country historically conditioned to think the worst of black people. And to pull that off, he had to find a morally impeccable presentation of himself and his race. This is what Sidney Poitier, his friend and movie partner, was always up against: inhabiting the superhumanly unimpeachable. But Mr. Cosby might have managed to pull a fast one, using his power and wealth to become the predator that white America mythologized in a campaign to terrorize, torture and kill black people for centuries. Mr. Cosby told lots of jokes. This was his sickest one.

Mr. Cosby’s guilty verdict happens to fall during a week in which Kanye West brought a lot of people a lot more grief, not with new music but with a blizzard of tweets that included an expressed affinity for President Trump, right down to wearing a Make America Great Again cap of his own. Mr. West began his career as a kind of black-sheep Huxtable. (His first album was “The College Dropout.”) But he eventually gathered a sense of politics — racialized, pro-black politics. And then he married into the Kardashian family and things got as vivid and incoherent as one of Cliff’s Van Den Akker sweaters. This is how you get a blistering indictment of racial closed-mindedness like 2013’s “Black Skinhead” but also an embrace of people who’ve been reluctant to shame white supremacists.

This seems like a reasonable moment to wonder whether the Huxtable mold is one that needs breaking — or at least expansion. Mr. West presents a new vexation that’s the opposite of Mr. Cosby’s stringent black conservatism. He can be offensive and rude and self-aggrandizing. But that mind-set also feels like a way to move beyond America’s Dad. Disrespectability politics.

We’re in a moment of cleaving terrible people from their great work. It’s a luxury conundrum, one that feels like a mockery of tremendous human suffering. With Mr. Cosby, though, these are questions worth seriously considering. How do I, at least, cleave this man from the man he seduced me into becoming?


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Trump After Dark: I’m Sorry Mr. Jackson edition

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Early this morning, Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson did what many felt sure he would do eventually: He withdrew his nomination to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs.

In doing so, Jackson overshadowed a victory for President Donald Trump — the swift confirmation of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, along with the release of a photo of Pompeo meeting with Kim Jong Un. Jackson was also an unwitting spark to a new presidential feud, POLITICO’s Burgess Everett reports.

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Vulnerable Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat up for reelection, led the charge with a slew of anonymous allegations against Jackson. And Trump is livid.

“The president is enraged over Tester’s work documenting allegations of malfeasance by Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, which quickly unraveled Jackson’s nomination to be VA secretary and marks a turning point in the relationship between the moderate Democrat and Trump. As Tester’s reelection campaign kicks into high gear, Trump is more motivated than ever to campaign against him in the ruby-red state — accusing the senator of irresponsibly leaking the damaging information to undermine the president’s nominee.”

As for Jackson, he announced his decision to withdraw earlier this morning amid a wave of damaging allegations, though he insisted the allegations were false even in pulling himself out of the process to lead the VA.

“The allegations against me are completely false and fabricated,” he said. “If they had any merit, I would not have been selected, promoted and entrusted to serve in such a sensitive and important role as physician to three presidents over the past 12 years.”

PROGRAMMING NOTE: Your author is moving on, and this is the last Trump After Dark. Thank you for your readership, tolerance of puns and senses of humor. Be kind!

Elsewhere in President Trump’s orbit:

POMP, YOU UP: The Senate confirmed Mike Pompeo as secretary of state, installing a close confidant of President Trump in Foggy Bottom. The White House also released a photo of Pompeo meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

HE GOT PRUITT: EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt dodged blame, said staff were responsible for costly decisions about his security and pegged complaints to critics of President Donald Trump during a daylong congressional hearing that appeared, for now, to slow calls for his job.

NOT RUSSIAN, BUT: President Trump said at some point he may change his mind and decide to get involved in the Department of Justice’s Russia probe.

NO FRIENDS ZONE: When President Trump talked off the cuff during an interview with Fox Friends this morning he once again showed how he can disrupt his legal strategy with stray comments.

FOREVER WAR: President Trump has been at odds with the press for a long time, long before he made “fake news” a buzz phrase.

EAST MEETS WEST: The New Yorker explains why Kanye West and President Trump are drawn together.

CALL THEM RED CARDS?: President Trump hinted on Twitter that he would remove support for certain nations if they didn’t back a joint bid by the United States, Canada and Mexico to host the 2026 World Cup.

There you have it. You’re caught up on the Trump administration. TGIT.

HUD Secretary Ben Carson to propose raising rent for low-income Americans receiving federal housing subsidies

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Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson proposed far-reaching changes to federal housing subsidies Wednesday, tripling rent for the poorest households and making it easier for housing authorities to impose work requirements.

Carson’s proposals, and other initiatives aimed at low-income Americans receiving federal assistance, amount to a comprehensive effort by the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress to restrict access to the safety net and reduce the levels of assistance for those who do qualify.

The ambitious effort to shrink federal assistance has been dubbed “Welfare Reform 2.0’’, after Bill Clinton’s overhaul of the welfare system in 1996. The proposals — affecting housing, food stamps and Medicaid — would require congressional approval.

Trump earlier this month signed an executive order directing federal agencies to expand work requirements for low-income Americans receiving Medicaid, food stamps, public housing benefits and welfare. The agencies are supposed to issue recommendations to the White House within 90 days.

Just last week, House Republicans advanced a plan to strengthen work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, as part of the 2018 Farm Bill. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson proposed far-reaching changes to federal housing subsidies Wednesday, tripling rent for the poorest households and making it easier for housing authorities to impose work requirements.

The proposal approved by the House Agriculture Committee would expand work initiatives, mandating that most adult recipients under 60 work part-time or enroll in a state-run training program. It would apply to as many as 7 million adults.

The Trump administration has also started allowing states to impose work requirements on residents enrolled in Medicaid.

The initiative unveiled by Carson Wednesday would raise the rent for tenants in subsidized housing to 35 percent of gross income (or 35 percent of their earnings working 15 hours a week at the federal minimum wage), up from the current standard of 30 percent of adjusted income. About half of the 4.7 million families receiving housing benefits would be affected, HUD officials said.

The cap on rent for the poorest families would rise to about $150 a month — three times higher than the existing $50 ceiling. About 712,000 households would see their monthly rents rise to $150, the officials said.

“There is one inescapable imperative driving this reform effort,” Carson said in a call with reporters. “The current system isn’t working very well. Doing nothing is not an option.”

The HUD secretary said government spending on housing increases every year — without reaching the vast majority of those who qualify for aid. Only 1 in 4 eligible families receive housing benefits, he said. The rest remain on the waiting list for years and may never receive help.

“Every year, it takes more money, millions of dollars more, to serve the same number of households,” Carson said. “It’s clear from a budget perspective and a human point of view that the current system is unsustainable.”

He added that decades-old rules on rent calculations are “far too confusing,” often resulting in families who earn the same income paying vastly different rent “because they know how to work the system.”

HUD wants to scrap rules allowing deductions for medical and child-care costs when determining rent, which Carson said gave some tenants an unfair advantage.

“They know how to include certain deductions that other people may not be aware of,” Carson said. “We really want to level the playing field and make it much more even for everyone.”

Housing advocates criticized the HUD proposals as “cruel hypocrisy,” coming on the heels of tax breaks to wealthy Americans and corporations.

“When we are in the middle of a housing crisis that’s having the most negative impact on the lowest-income people, we shouldn’t even be considering proposals to increase their rent burdens,” said Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Carson’s proposed bill would also allow public housing authorities to impose work requirements. Currently, only 15 out of 3,100 housing authorities across the country require some sort of work or job training in return for benefits, HUD officials said.

In Atlanta and Charlotte, at least one adult needs to work 30 hours a week for a household to receive housing benefits. Chicago requires able-bodied beneficiaries to work 20 hours a week.

Seniors over the age of 65 and individuals with disabilities would be exempt from the rental increases for the first six years. They would also be exempt from any work requirements. HUD officials said that group makes up more than half of the 4.7 million families receiving subsidies.

The proposal would also move to verify tenants’ household income every three years instead of annually, which Carson said would encourage residents to work more without immediately facing a rent increase.

The Trump administration has long signaled through its budget proposals that it aims to raise the bar for federal assistance, in large part through expanding work requirements.

On food stamps, Republicans have pitched new work requirements as a way to help people out of poverty while focusing assistance on those most in need. About 42 million Americans depend on food stamps.

Democrats and anti-hunger advocates say the proposed work requirements could force as many as 1 million people off the program over the next 10 years, citing estimates from the Congressional Budget Office. They have also expressed doubts about the proposed expansion of state job training programs for recipients.

“Food is coming off the table to pay for this vast bureaucracy,” Stacy Dean, the vice president for food assistance at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said.

Separately, the Agriculture Department is reevaluating work requirements in areas that had been exempted because of high unemployment during the economic downturn.

Trump’s budget proposal also included a controversial suggestion to replace half of families’ cash benefits with a box of nonperishable, government-sourced goods.

After failing to repeal the Affordable Care Act through Congress in 2017, the Trump administration has started allowing states to impose work requirements on residents enrolled in Medicaid — a first in the history of the 53-year health care program.

Three states — Kentucky, Indiana, and Arkansas — have enacted Medicaid work requirements. Seven additional states have applied to do the same.

Kentucky says the changes will lead 95,000 people to lose Medicaid coverage over the next five years.

The Trump administration also gave states permission to impose much higher premium payments and kick people off Medicaid for failing to pay. The Obama administration had permitted more limited versions of these policies for states during the expansion of Medicaid, but Trump officials approved changes aimed solely at reducing enrollment.

“There’s a retrenchment of the policies passed under the Affordable Care Act that helped people stay enrolled on Medicaid,” said MaryBeth Musumeci, associate director of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s program on Medicaid and the uninsured.

Carson laid out the administration’s housing plans in a press call about an hour before a House Financial Services subcommittee hearing on rent reform.

“Changes that are made to the rental structure ultimately have to be approved by Congress,” Carson said. “These are the suggestions that we are making.”

Michael Cohen to Take Fifth Amendment in Stormy Daniels Lawsuit

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Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s personal lawyer and confidant, said a federal investigation in New York will keep him from testifying in a separate lawsuit brought against the president.


Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, will invoke his Fifth Amendment right in a lawsuit filed against the president by Stephanie Clifford, the pornographic film star better known as Stormy Daniels.

Mr. Cohen’s decision, disclosed Wednesday in a court filing in California, where the suit was filed, came a day before a federal judge in Manhattan was set to hold a hearing regarding materials seized from Mr. Cohen during an F.B.I. raid earlier this month.

Mr. Cohen cited the Manhattan investigation in his filing on Wednesday, saying that, if called as a witness in Ms. Clifford’s lawsuit, “I will assert my 5th Amendment rights in connection with all proceedings in this case due to the ongoing criminal investigation by the F.B.I. and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.”

Ms. Clifford was paid $130,000 to keep quiet about claims that she had an affair with Mr. Trump. She sued last month to get out of the nondisclosure agreement she signed in October 2016, alleging that it was void because Mr. Trump had never signed it.

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Citing the Fifth Amendment in the Clifford case allows Mr. Cohen to avoid being deposed and revealing sensitive information in the more important criminal investigation. That investigation — which prosecutors say has been going on for months — became public in dramatic fashion on April 9, when agents from the New York office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided Mr. Cohen’s office, apartment and a room at the Loews Regency Hotel he had been using. The inquiry is said to be focusing on hush-money payments that Mr. Cohen made to — or helped arrange for — Ms. Clifford and Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who has also said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.

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For days now, prosecutors from the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan have been sparring with Mr. Cohen’s lawyers — and with lawyers for Mr. Trump — for the right to review the records first, a step that will shape the contours of how the government presses its investigation into whether Mr. Cohen tried to suppress negative news coverage of the president in the run-up to the 2016 election.

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VA nominee accused of drunken behavior, reckless prescribing

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WASHINGTON — White House doctor Ronny Jackson exhibited a pattern of recklessly prescribing drugs and drunken behavior, including crashing a government vehicle while intoxicated and doling out such a large supply of a prescription opioid that staffers panicked because they thought the drugs were missing, according to accusations compiled by Democratic staff on the committee considering his nomination as Veterans Affairs secretary.

The summary was based on conversations with 23 of Jackson’s current and former colleagues at the White House Medical Unit. It is the latest blow to his nomination to lead the government’s second-largest Cabinet agency.

In just a matter of days, the allegations have transformed Jackson’s reputation as a celebrated doctor attending the president to an embattled nominee accused of drinking on the job and over-prescribing drugs. He was seen pacing back and forth on the White House grounds Wednesday.

And while the White House put on a full-scale defense of Jackson, spokesman Raj Shah said aides are “of course” preparing for the possibility that he might withdraw. “This is, as the president said, Dr. Jackson’s decision,” Shah said on CNN.

Jackson huddled late Wednesday evening with top White House press staff. They declined to comment on the situation.

A former colleague who spoke to The Associated Press described Jackson as a gregarious, Type A charmer who knew how to position himself for success — attentive to bosses but also causing unnecessary grief and consternation among colleagues.

He said Jackson became known as “Candyman” because of the way he handed out drugs. The ex-colleague spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear of retaliation.

The “Candyman” nickname was also cited in the summary released by the Democrats.

In a section on Jackson’s prescribing practices, the summary said that in one case, missing Percocet tabs threw members of the White House Medical Unit into a panic — but it turned out he had prescribed a “large supply” of the opioid to a White House Military Office staffer.

The allegations also referred to multiple incidents of Jackson’s intoxication while on duty, often on overseas trips. On at least one occasion he was nowhere to be found when his medical help was needed because “he was passed out drunk in his hotel room,” according to the summary.

At a Secret Service going-away party, the summary says, Jackson got drunk and wrecked a government vehicle.

Jackson has denied allegations of bad behavior and told reporters at the White House he was “still moving ahead as planned.”

“I never wrecked a car,” he said. “I have no idea where that is coming from.”

Reports of overprescribing and alcohol-related behavior problems can jeopardize a doctor’s license. Many state medical boards allow doctors to keep their licenses and return to practice if they complete special treatment programs and submit to random urine screens.

The allegations were publicly released on the day that Jackson’s confirmation hearing was to have been held. The hearing was postponed indefinitely while the allegations against him are reviewed.

“He treated the people above him very, very well. He treated the people below him very, very poorly,” Sen. Jon Tester, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, told the AP. “It’s not surprising the people above him think he was doing a really, really good job.”

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday that Jackson had passed “at least four independent background checks” that found “no areas of concern.”

“He has received more vetting than most nominees,” she said.

Marc Short, the White House legislative director, could not say he was confident the allegations were false. He was “not familiar” with car wreck episode.

But Short also suggested Tester was airing the allegations for political gain.

“It’s quite unusual for a United States senator to take allegations that have not been fully investigated, but to flaunt them to the national public to suggest he’s the ‘candyman’ I think is outrageous,” Short said.

Tester, speaking on MSNBC, acknowledged that not all the allegations had been verified.

“Am I 100% rock solid sure that he did this? No,” Tester said. “But I’ve seen a pattern here that continues on and on and on.”

Jackson met late at the Capitol with a key Republican on the Veterans Affairs Committee, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina. They discussed a variety of subjects — “some were the allegations” — as well as Jackson’s credentials for the job.

“It was just getting through the facts,” Tillis said.

Veterans groups are dismayed over the continuing uncertainty at the VA, already beset by infighting over improvements to veterans care.

“The American Legion is very concerned about the current lack of permanent leadership,” said Denise Rohan, national commander of The American Legion, the nation’s largest veterans organization.

A watchdog report requested in 2012 and reviewed by the AP found that Jackson and a rival physician exhibited “unprofessional behaviors” as they engaged in a power struggle over the White House medical unit.

That report by the Navy’s Medical Inspector General found a lack of trust in the leadership and low morale among staff members, who described the working environment as “being caught between parents going through a bitter divorce.”

It included no references to improper prescribing of drugs or the use of alcohol, as alleged in the summary compiled by the Senate Democratic staff members.

The White House has released handwritten reports from Trump and former President Barack Obama praising Jackson’s leadership and medical care and recommending him for promotion.

Trump’s first VA secretary, David Shulkin, was dismissed after an ethics scandal and mounting rebellion within the agency. But Jackson has faced numerous questions from lawmakers and veterans groups about whether he has the experience to manage the department of 360,000 employees serving 9 million veterans.

___

Associated Press writers Darlene Superville, Lisa Mascaro, Catherine Lucey, Matthew Daly and Jill Colvin in Washington and AP Medical Writer Carla K. Johnson in Seattle contributed to this report.

Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Supreme Court’s conservative justices appear to back Trump’s authority for travel ban

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The conservative majority on the Supreme Court seemed to agree Wednesday that President Trump has the authority to ban travelers from certain majority-Muslim countries if he thinks that it is necessary to protect the country.

Lower courts have struck down each of the three iterations of the president’s travel-ban proclamation, the first of which was issued just a week after he took office in January 2017. But the conservative-leaning Supreme Court may be Trump’s best hope, and it gave the administration a boost by allowing the ban to go into effect in December while considering the challenges to it.

[In travel-ban case, Supreme Court considers ‘the president’ vs. ‘this president’]

Solicitor General Noel Francisco told the justices that the president was well within his power to issue the proclamation and that it came after a thorough, worldwide review of the vetting procedures of countries.

“The vast majority of the world, including the vast majority of the Muslim world, was just fine,” Francisco said, while a “tiny” number of countries were not.

If it were meant to be a Muslim ban, he said, “it would be the most ineffective Muslim ban that one could possibly imagine, since not only does it exclude the vast majority of the Muslim world, it also omits three Muslim-majority countries that were covered by past orders.”

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was most active in advancing the notion that the president is privy to national security information that courts are ill prepared to second-guess.

And Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who always seems to occupy the pivotal position when conservative and liberal justices disagree, asked questions that mostly seemed supportive of the president’s authority.

It would seem almost impossible for challengers to prevail without one of those justices joining their colleagues on the left.

The high-profile hearing, the last of the court’s term as it turns now to writing opinions, called for the justices to balance their usual deference to the president on matters of national security with a never-before-seen barrage of campaign statements, tweets, retweets and comments from the president tying Muslims to terrorism.

Just hours after Francisco told the court the president had made it “crystal clear . . . he had no intention of imposing the Muslim ban,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders sidestepped a reporter’s question about whether the administration disavowed Trump’s campaign promise to enact one.

Sanders read a statement about the ban that said residents of many majority-Muslim countries could travel to the United States. “I think that alone in action answers your question clearly,” she said.

The court is considering the iteration of Trump’s travel ban, issued last fall, that barred various travelers from eight countries, six of them with Muslim majorities. They are Syria, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Chad, Somalia, North Korea and Venezuela. But restrictions on North Korea and Venezuela are not part of the challenge. Chad was removed from the list earlier this month.

The first questions for Francisco came from the two liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, who had noted their dissent from the high court’s earlier order to allow the ban to go into effect while challenges continued.

Sotomayor suggested that Congress had already taken steps to ensure national security by implementing a heightened vetting process for travelers from other countries.

“Where does a president get the authority to do more than Congress has already decided is adequate?” she asked.

Francisco pointed to the removal of Chad from the list as evidence that the review process was working as anticipated, by encouraging more cooperation from countries to help screen out those who might intend to harm the United States.

The challengers are led by the state of Hawaii, which said its citizens and educational institutions have suffered because of the ban.

Former Obama administration acting solicitor general Neal K. Katyal, representing Hawaii, said Trump had taken an “iron wrecking ball” to the law Congress had implemented to govern immigration and keep the nation safe.

“If you accept this order, you’re giving the president a power no president in 100 years has exercised, an executive proclamation that countermands Congress’s policy judgments,” Katyal said.

Conservative justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch, along with Roberts, peppered Katyal with questions on how the president had exceeded his lawful authority, given that Congress had granted the executive branch broad latitude to bar people’s entry into the United States.

Alito noted the law says that if the president found the entry of “any aliens” to be detrimental to U.S. interests, he could bar them. How, he asked, did the travel ban not fall “squarely” within that power?

Alito also said the ban affected only 8 percent of the world’s Muslim population.

“If you look at what was done, it does not look at all like a Muslim ban,” Alito said.

Roberts posited a hypothetical: If the intelligence agencies told the president that 20 Syrian nationals planned to enter the United States with biological weapons, could the president ban the entry of Syrians to stop them? Katyal conceded that he could, because in that instance — unlike this one — there was a true emergency.

Roberts asked whether there were a “statute of limitations” on a president’s campaign statements.

“Tomorrow, he issues a proclamation disavowing those statements, then the next day he could reenter this and your discrimination argument would not be applicable?” Roberts asked.

Katyal said that it probably would. But Trump and his administration have “rekindled” the comments.

Justice Elena Kagan similarly asked Francisco about a hypothetical anti-Semitic candidate for president who, once elected, put in place a proclamation blocking entry for citizens of Israel. She asked: Could the courts intervene in such a situation?

“This is an out-of-the-box kind of president in my hypothetical,” Kagan added, prompting laughter from the courtroom.

Francisco called it a “tough hypothetical” but said such a president could impose the measure if it came at the recommendation of staffers who had identified a genuine national security problem.

In contrast, Francisco said Trump’s travel ban is an “easy case” because it came after a multiagency review and on the advice of Cabinet officials. He conceded that if Cabinet officials knew the president was ordering a ban based on religious animus, because he told them as much, they would be “duty bound” to resign or refuse to comply with his order to come up with a justification.

“Is everything that the president said effectively that?” Kagan asked.

Kennedy picked up on Kagan’s questioning, asking Francisco to consider a local candidate for mayor who made “hateful’ comments and then upon being elected acted on those impulses. “You would say whatever he said in the campaign is irrelevant?” Kennedy asked.

Francisco said he would.

But Kennedy had more, and tougher, questions for Katyal.

When Katyal said Trump’s travel ban had no end, Kennedy said, “So you want the president to say, ‘I’m convinced that in six months we’re going to have a safe world?’ ”

And if there is a question about whether there is a threat to security, Kennedy asked Katyal, did he think “that’s for the courts to do, not the president?”

The justices are reviewing a unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco. That panel said the third version of the travel ban suffered from the deficiencies of the first two — that Trump had again exceeded his lawful authority and that he had not made a legally sufficient finding that entry of those blocked would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond struck down the ban on the constitutional question. The 9-to-4 decision took a deep dive into Trump’s statements and tweets since he became president and concluded that the proclamation, like the first two, was motivated not by national security concerns but by antipathy toward Muslims.

The case is Trump v. Hawaii. The court will issue its decision some time before the conclusion of the term at the end of June.

Ex-Cop Arrested in Golden State Killer Case: ‘We Found the Needle in the Haystack’

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He became an infamous figure, sometimes known as the Golden State Killer and other times as the East Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker. His planning was meticulous and he seemed to know precise details about his victims’ schedules. They described the gravelly, angry whisper that he used as he tormented them. He wore gloves and a mask and was a predator with quirks: As his victims lay terrified, he would pause for a snack of crackers after raping them. He placed a teacup and saucer on the bodies of some of his victims and threatened them with murder if he heard the ceramic rattle.

With communities panicking — at one point his assaults averaged two victims a month — the authorities hired a range of experts to help them break the case, among them a military special forces officer and a psychic.

Then, when the rapes and murders appeared to end in 1986, the case went cold.

National interest was reignited this year with the publication of an exhaustive investigation into the serial killer’s identity, “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark,” written by Michelle McNamara, a crime writer who died in April 2016. The book, published in February, was completed after her death by a journalist and researcher recruited by her husband, the comedian Patton Oswalt.

The authorities in California arrested Joseph James DeAngelo in connection with the infamous case.


Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department

[Read about Mr. Oswalt’s quest to finish Ms. McNamara’s book after her death.]

Mr. Oswalt spoke about the reported capture on Wednesday in a video posted on Instagram. “I think you got him, Michelle,” he said.

Mr. DeAngelo, whom the authorities suspect of a total of 12 murders, was arrested by investigators using some of the same tactics employed by the suspect to stalk his victims — the police surveilled his movements, studied his routines and pounced when he left his house.

He was arrested on a warrant stemming from the murder of the married couple in Ventura County in Southern California, but the authorities said more charges were in the works. The Orange County district attorney’s office announced four additional charges late on Wednesday.

Residents of the neighborhoods stalked by the killer said he changed the way they lived their lives. A carefree California lifestyle of open doors and children riding their bicycles to school was forever changed with the knowledge that a rapist now lurked.

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“One person can create a lot of fear,” said Tony Rackauckas, the district attorney of Orange County and one of the dozens of officials on hand in Sacramento to announce Mr. DeAngelo’s arrest. “It was like terrorism — not that it was done for the same reason — but it caused the same type of fear.”

The case had a profound impact not just on fear and public safety in California, but also on the way that rapes were investigated and how rape victims were treated, said Carol Daly, a detective in the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office at the time.

Locks sold out at hardware stores and over 6,000 guns were sold, she said. Community safety forums would be packed with hundreds of people.

Rape victims were seen and cared for faster, and pubic hair, scratches and other evidence were examined and preserved, she said. Rape kits were standardized. “Every victim went through the process,” she said.

Bruce Harrington, whose brother Keith Harrington and sister-in-law Patrice Harrington were among the murder victims, joined law enforcement officers at the news conference. It was “time for the victims to begin to heal,” he said.

“Sleep better tonight, he isn’t coming in through the window,” he said. “He’s now in jail, and he’s history.”

One victim, Jane Carson-Sandler, who was raped in 1976, said on Wednesday that she was overwhelmed with emotion.

Ms. Carson-Sandler, 72, said she had always believed that her rapist was alive and that he would be caught. The hatred and anger she felt eventually faded, she said, but she continued to pray for two things each night: that he would be identified, and that she wouldn’t dream about the rape.

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She never did dream about it, she said, and on Wednesday morning she turned on her phone to learn that a suspect had been arrested.

“I just feel so blessed that God has finally answered all of our prayers, that this monster would eventually be put behind bars,” she said.

Mr. DeAngelo, who has adult children, was twice employed as a police officer in two small California cities: In Exeter, in the Central Valley, from 1973 to 1976, and in Auburn, north of Sacramento, from 1976 to 1979, according to Mr. Jones.

He was convicted in 1979 for shoplifting a can of dog repellent and a hammer from a store in Sacramento County. The incident led to his dismissal from the Auburn police force. The arrest came amid the rash of rapes in the area.

The Golden State Killer is thought to have killed 12 people, raped 45 people and burglarized more than 120 homes in multiple communities between 1976 and 1986.


Federal Bureau of Investigation

One of the neighborhoods where the suspect repeatedly struck was Rancho Cordova, a Sacramento suburb of ranch houses, redwood and birch trees, trim lawns and rose bushes.

In one attack in 1978, Brian and Katie Maggiore, a couple living in the area, were walking their dog in their neighborhood around 9 p.m. After a “violent encounter” with the suspect, they tried to flee, ending up in a private yard, where they were fatally shot, the sheriff’s department said in February, appealing to the public for leads.

Diane Peterson, a retired teacher who lives in Rancho Cordova, said Wednesday that theories about who was behind the rapes and home intrusions had remained a topic of conversation in the neighborhood in the four decades since the attacks began.

“It never totally died down,” Ms. Peterson said. “People would have their own suspicions as to who it might be.”

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Jean McNeill, a retired employee for the state board of equalization who lives near where one of the murders took place, said she was “elated” Wednesday morning when she heard that the suspect might have been captured.

She remembered the terror that the killer instilled in the neighborhood.

“I can remember thinking, ‘It’s getting dark and no one is home with me — I’ve got to be really careful,’” she said. “That’s what made it so frightening. We didn’t know when he was going to strike next.”

After the Maggiore murders, the attacker was not believed to have struck in the Sacramento area again. But in 2001, investigators using DNA evidence linked the crime to others committed in the Bay Area, and to murders in Southern California, the sheriff’s department said.

In June 2016, the F.B.I. announced at a news conference that it would offer a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the “prolific serial rapist and murderer.”

“We came together to bring solace to the victims,” Sean Ragan, special agent in charge of the Sacramento office for the F.B.I., said Wednesday. “But we know the pain and anguish has never subsided.”


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Kim Jong-un to meet Moon Jae-in at Korean border for summit

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The heavily guarded Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) divides the two Koreas

Kim Jong-un will on Friday become the first North Korean leader since the war to cross the military demarcation line that divides the Korean peninsula.

He will be meeting South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in, the first such diplomacy in more than a decade.

In newly announced details, South Korea said Mr Moon would meet Mr Kim at the border at 09:30 local time (00:30 GMT).

The historic talks will focus on the North’s recent suggestions it could be willing to give up its nuclear weapons.

But Seoul has warned reaching an agreement on this will be “difficult”, because North Korea’s nuclear and missile technology has advanced so much since the sides last held talks.

The landmark summit is a breakthrough after years of mounting tension on the peninsula. It is the result of months of improving relations between the two Koreas and paves the way to a possible meeting between Mr Kim and US President Donald Trump.

As well as addressing Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions, the leaders are expected to discuss a path to peace on the peninsula to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War, as well as a series of economic and social issues.

How the summit will unfold

Mr Moon will personally meet Mr Kim at the border, South Korea’s presidential spokesperson Im Jong-seok told reporters on Thursday.

South Korean honour guards will then escort the leaders to a welcome ceremony at a plaza in Panmunjom, a military compound in the demilitarised zone (DMZ) between the two countries.

Official talks between Mr Moon and Mr Kim will begin at 10:30 local time (01:30 GMT) at the Peace House in Panmunjom.

The pair will break after the first session and will have lunch separately, with the delegation from the North crossing back to their side of the border.

At an afternoon ceremony, Mr Moon and Mr Kim will plant a pine tree using soil and water from both countries, to symbolise “peace and prosperity”.

Following the tree planting, they will walk together in Panmunjom before starting the next round of talks.

The summit will conclude with the leaders signing an agreement and delivering a joint statement.

A banquet will be held on the South side, and they will watch a video called “Spring of One,” before Mr Kim returns home.

Who will attend

Mr Kim will be accompanied by nine officials, including his sister, Kim Yo-jong, who led the North’s delegation to the Winter Olympics in South Korea earlier this year. Kim Yong-nam, North Korea’s nominal head of state, will also attend.

South Korea’s delegation will be made up of seven officials, including the ministers for defence, foreign affairs and unification.