A former star of pornographic movies received a $130,000 payment a month before the 2016 election that was part of an agreement to keep her from publicly discussing a sexual encounter she claimed to have had with Donald J. Trump, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday afternoon.
The Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that Michael D. Cohen, who was a top lawyer at the Trump Organization, arranged the payment to the woman, Stephanie Clifford, after her lawyer negotiated a nondisclosure agreement.
Ms. Clifford, who was billed as Stormy Daniels in her videos, said the encounter with Mr. Trump took place in July 2006 after a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, The Journal reported. Mr. Trump married Melania Trump in 2005.
In a statement to The Journal, Mr. Cohen said of the alleged sexual encounter that “President Trump once again vehemently denies any such occurrence as has Ms. Daniels.”
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He added, “You have attempted to perpetuate this false narrative for over a year; a narrative that has been consistently denied by all parties since at least 2011.”
Photo
Stephanie Clifford at a Trump Vodka launch party in 2008. Credit
Chad Buchanan/Getty Images
The payment was made to Ms. Clifford through her lawyer, Keith Davidson, with funds sent to Mr. Davidson’s client-trust account at City National Bank in Los Angeles, The Journal reported.
One barnyard epithet and the leader of the free world was now definitively a racist or, alternatively, was back in the good graces of those who had worried he’d been wavering in his nationalism.
One ugly denunciation of the population of much of the planet, and President Trump had once again propelled himself to center stage — boxing out discussion of any number of world crises and, more immediately, freezing progress toward a bipartisan deal on immigration policy.
Trump’s slur Thursday against the “shithole countries” from which he’d rather the United States take fewer immigrants sparked a louder than usual tempest Friday, but the storm took a very familiar shape.
Each side reacted more or less according to script: ever-more frustrated expressions of outrage from those who believe the president has confirmed his racism, and ever-more fervent defense from those who supported Trump in the first place because, as many of them have argued for two years, he says what many Americans think.
“Well, being president, I think he should be more careful with what he says,” said Marjorie Caddick, 93, a longtime Republican who lives in Munster, Ind., and voted for Trump. “He’s laughable and he doesn’t get the respect that he should have because he says these things.” But Caddick said that even if Trump is “too loose with his tongue . . . he means well.”
President Trump speaks during a press conference with cabinet members and Republican leadership at Camp David on Jan. 6. (Chris Kleponis/Bloomberg)
She also agreed with Trump on the need to tighten up on immigration: “These are poor countries, and . . . we’ve given them so much money, and it doesn’t get better.”
The storm over Trump’s comments — in which he was bemoaning immigration from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries rather than from wealthier nations like Norway — has taken the year-old debate over Trump’s demolition of presidential tradition to new terrain. For the first time in diplomatic history, nations around the world inserted a gutter vulgarity into official statements. The U.N.’s High Commissioner on Human Rights, Rupert Colville, declared that “there is no other word one can use but ‘racist.’”
“With one word,” wrote the New Yorker’s Robin Wright, Trump “has demolished his ability to be taken seriously on the global stage.”
But did he, really? Is Trump’s latest comment a showstopper — or just another scene in a long-running production that wins audiences through pugnacious behavior, profane language and all manner of provocation?
“This is par for the course,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a supporter of the president who is writing a book about Trump’s America. “Trump relies on the fact that his opponents are so nihilistic and elitist that they’ll react hysterically to something like this. And his base isn’t remotely corroded by this. Almost anything he does that is outside the establishment resonates in the end with people who say well, at least he’s sticking it to the powerful.”
Gingrich said the normal concerns that presidents and other politicians have about their legacy and reputation don’t seem to apply to Trump, who has made smashing conventions the core of his brand for nearly half a century.
President Trump listens as Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson speaks during an event to honor Martin Luther King Jr., at the White House Friday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Critics of the president argued that the main issue is not Trump’s language or even what’s in his heart, but rather the policies he’s enacting and the midterm elections coming up this year.
“We’ve got to get beyond the antics and address the policy,” said Rev. William J. Barber II, a member of the NAACP’s national board who has been rallying progressives to “put checks and balances on Trump’s power by changing the makeup of the Congress.”
“It’s not just Trump,” Barber said. “Everyone in his administration . . . is participating in systemic racism . . . We turn our outrage into sustained organizing, protests, voter registration, and voter mobilization.”
Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights activist and TV talk host, said the fact that Trump’s slur came during a meeting about immigration policy put it in a different category from past controversial remarks. “Some of the stuff he said in the past was just as offensive and insulting,” he said, but this time, Trump was “framing 21st century Jim Crow immigration law.”
Sharpton plans to campaign for a congressional censure of the president. “The threat is not his rhetoric, it’s what he’s doing,” he said. “He’s making laws out of this . . . We have trade agreements with people in Africa. We work on security issues with African nations; that’s where ISIS is, that’s where al-Qaeda is. What do we get out of Norway? … If we insult everybody in Africa, how can we have intel on the ground for fighting ISIS and al-Qaeda?”
To Tiffany Mock, 50, a teacher and Trump supporter who lives in Cumberland, Md., Trump was simply noting that many more people from impoverished countries want to immigrate to the United States than from affluent nations like Norway.
“I don’t like the language or the comments that he made, but I do like that he’s putting America first,” she said, adding that she didn’t hear Trump favoring white immigrants over other races. “I didn’t take it as racist. He’s not a racist. I’m not a racist — although they say you’re a racist if you say that you’re not a racist.”
Right-wing extremists and white supremacists welcomed Trump’s comment. Former Ku Klux Klan leader and Louisiana legislator David Duke said the president “restores a lot of love in us by saying blunt but truthful things that no other president in our lifetime would dare say!”
On cable TV and social media, the president’s language became fodder for round-the-clock hardening of long-standing views about Trump’s unsuitability to hold office, or, conversely, his heroic championing of ordinary Americans.
“The president of the United States is racist,” CNN anchor Don Lemon began on his broadcast Thursday night.
But over on Fox News Channel, Jesse Watters concluded that “This is how the forgotten men and women of America talk at the bar . . . Is it graceful? No . . . Is it a little offensive? Of course it is. But you know what? This doesn’t move the needle at all. This is who Trump is.”
For career politicians in his own party, confrontations with Trump’s vocabulary of insults and exaggerations make for repeated awkward moments. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) Friday called Trump’s choice of words “very unfortunate, unhelpful” and praised African immigrants in his hometown, but said nothing about racism.
Before Trump won, Ryan was more pointed in his criticism. During the 2016 campaign, the speaker called Trump’s attack on a federal judge because of his Mexican heritage the “textbook definition of a racist comment.”
Although this week’s example of Trump’s rhetoric was not intended for public consumption, it mirrored a number of incidents in which the president has attached stereotypes to people based on their background — his comments about Muslims; his description of blacks as living in war zones and having nothing to lose; his singling out of a lone black man at a rally as “my African American.”
Last March, at a meeting with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Trump asked his guests if they knew Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, the only African American in his cabinet, NBC News reported Friday, citing sources who were in the room. The president was surprised when it turned out that none of the lawmakers knew Carson. The same report also said that Trump suggested during a briefing that a career intelligence analyst should be negotiating with North Korea because she was a “pretty Korean lady.”
In the tumult following the report of Trump’s immigration comment, which he seemed to deny in a tweet Friday morning, a few voices broke through party lines. Former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, asked if he thought Trump is racist, said in a TV interview, “Yeah, I do. At this point, the evidence is incontrovertible.”
In a separate interview with The Washington Post, Steele said the difference between Trump’s past slurs and this incident was the connection to national policy: When Trump launched his campaign in 2015 by stating that Mexican immigrants were “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists,” he was “speaking in broad brushes, reflecting his own internalized view of Mexicans,” Steele said. “This time around, it’s in the context of policy. This is about using the resources of the federal government to aid and assist people who are seeking a better life for themselves . . . and his view of this is ‘why should we help them, they’re from shithole countries.’”
Steele called it “disappointing as hell” that Republicans in Congress have not had “a more forceful rhetorical response to the president, particularly by the members who were in the room and heard it.” This fall, he said, voters will hold their representatives to account.
“This is no longer about what Donald Trump, what he said and did,” Steele said. “All presidents come to reflect America, our values, reflect who we are and the question we have to ask ourselves is, is this an accurate reflection of who we are?”
Walmart confirmed Thursday that it is closing dozens of Sam’s Club warehouse stores — a move that a union-backed group estimated could cost thousands of jobs — on the same day the company announced that it was boosting its starting salary for U.S. workers and handing out bonuses.
The world’s largest private employer said it was closing 63 of its 660 Sam’s Clubs over the next weeks, with some shut already. Ten are being converted into e-commerce distribution centers, according to a company official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss details of the decision publicly.
He said it was too early to say how many people overall would lose their jobs since some will be placed at other Walmart locations or rehired at the e-commerce sites. Making Change at Walmart, a campaign backed by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, estimates that 150 to 160 people work at each Sam’s Club store, meaning the closures could affect about 10,000 people.
Lauren Fitz, 22, said she was at her other job as a church secretary when a colleague texted to say that the Sam’s Club where they both worked in Loveland, Ohio, had closed. Fitz had been pleased earlier to read the news that Walmart was boosting starting salaries and offering bonuses.
“I thought, ‘This is really cool.’ And then to find out that my store is closing,” said Fitz, who said she had worked as a sales associate in the jewelry department for two months. At home, she got a call from her manager and had a letter in the mail saying the store had closed and she could seek employment at another Sam’s Club or Walmart store.
“It was very sudden and very shocking,” Fitz said. “I don’t think our managers had any inkling yesterday. It was a normal shift.”
On Twitter, Sam’s Club responded to people’s queries by saying, “After a thorough review of our existing portfolio, we’ve decided to close a series of clubs and better align our locations with our strategy.”
Local news reports said Sam’s Clubs stores were closing in Texas, California, New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana and Alaska, among other states.
Earlier in the day, Walmart had cited the sweeping Republican tax overhaul that will save it money in announcing the higher hourly wages, one-time bonuses and expanded parental benefits that will affect more than a million hourly workers in the U.S.
President Donald Trump cheered the announcement with a tweet, saying, “Great news, as a result of our TAX CUTS JOBS ACT!” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders later said she would not comment on the Sam’s Club closings but that the wage increases were a sign that the tax measures “are having the impact that we had hoped.”
Walmart representatives did not respond to a question about the timing of the dual developments.
“This is nothing but another public relations stunt from Walmart to distract from the reality that they are laying off thousands of workers,” said Randy Parraz, a director of Making Change at Walmart.
Rising wages reflect a generally tight labor market. The conversion of stores to e-commerce sites also illustrates how companies are trying to leverage their store locations to better compete against Amazon as shopping moves online.
Walmart announced years ago that it would actively manage its store portfolio as it strives to put a dent in Amazon’s dominance online. With Thursday’s closing, that strategy is now extending to Sam’s Club.
Online retailers typically pay warehouse employees who pack and ship orders more than store jobs pay. Job postings at an Amazon warehouse in Ohio, for example, offer a starting pay of $14.50 an hour.
“This is about the evolution of retail,” said Michael Mandel, chief economic strategist at the Progressive Policy Institute. “The rise of e-commerce is leading to higher wages.”
Large employers also have been under pressure to boost benefits for workers because unemployment rates are at historic lows, allowing job seekers to be pickier.
But the low unemployment has meant that retailers have had trouble attracting and keeping talented workers, experts said. Walmart employees previously started at $9 an hour, with a rise to $10 after completing a training program. Target had raised its minimum hourly wage to $11 in October, and said it would raise wages to $15 by the end of 2020.
“They raised the minimum wage because they have to,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said about Walmart. “The labor market is tight and getting tighter.”
While many department store chains such as Macy’s and Sears are struggling, retailers as a whole are still trying to hire. The retail industry is seeking to fill 711,000 open jobs, the highest on records dating back to 2001, according to government data. The longer those jobs go unfilled, the greater pressure on employers to offer higher wages.
Walmart, which reported annual revenue of nearly $486 billion in the most recent fiscal year, said the wage increases will cost it an additional $300 million in the next fiscal year. The bonuses will cost it about $400 million in this fiscal year, which ends on Jan. 31.
It joins dozens of companies including American Airlines and Bank of America that have announced worker bonuses following the passage of the Republican tax plan that slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. “Tax reform gives us the opportunity to be more competitive globally and to accelerate plans for the U.S.,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said Thursday.
The company said the wage increase benefits all hourly U.S. workers at its stores, including Sam’s Club, as well as hourly employees at its websites, distribution centers and its Bentonville, Arkansas, headquarters. The one-time bonus between $200 and $1,000 will be given to Walmart employees who won’t receive a pay raise.
In all, Walmart employs 2.3 million people around the world, 1.5 million of which are in the U.S.
Walmart also announced that full-time hourly U.S. employees can get 10 weeks of paid maternity leave and six weeks of paid parental leave. Before, full-time hourly workers received 50 percent of their pay for leave. Salaried employees, who already had 10 weeks paid maternity leave, will receive more paid parental leave.
For the first time, Walmart also promised to help with adoptions, offering full-time hourly and salaried workers $5,000 per child that can be used for expenses such as adoption agency fees, translation fees and legal or court costs.
———
AP Business writers Michelle Chapman in Newark, New Jersey; Chris Rugaber in Washington, D.C.; and Joyce M. Rosenberg in New York contributed to this report.
In a statement, 7-Eleven Inc., which is based in Irving, Tex., distanced itself from its franchisees, saying they were independent business owners who “are solely responsible for their employees, including deciding who to hire and verifying their eligibility to work in the United States.”
“7-Eleven takes compliance with immigration laws seriously and has terminated the franchise agreements of franchisees convicted of violating these laws,” the company said.
If ICE hoped to make a bold statement, it could hardly pick a more iconic target than 7-Eleven, a chain known for its ubiquitous stores that are open all the time and sell the much-loved Slurpees and Big Gulps. Many a franchise has been a steppingstone for new, legal immigrants who want to own and run their own small businesses.
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Not all franchisees have been scrupulous about whom they hire. ICE called its Wednesday sweep a “follow-up” of a 2013 investigation that resulted in the arrests of nine 7-Eleven franchise owners and managers on Long Island and in Virginia on charges of employing undocumented workers. Several have pleaded guilty and forfeited their franchises, and were ordered to pay millions in back wages owed to the workers.
“This definitely sends a message to employers,” said Ira Mehlman, the spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors more limits on immigration and stricter enforcement.
According to ICE, federal agents served inspection notices to 7-Eleven franchises in California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and Washington, D.C.
Under President George W. Bush, ICE tended to make deportation arrests at worksites the government had reason to believe hired undocumented workers. The agency under President Barack Obama performed more inspections of the I-9 forms employers are required to fill out and keep to verify their workers’ eligibility.
One of the biggest workplace immigration raids, in July 2008, resulted in the detention of nearly 400 undocumented immigrants, including several children, at an Iowa meatpacking plant. Sholom Rubashkin, the chief executive of the Agriprocessors plant, then the largest kosher meatpacking operation in the country, was eventually convicted of bank fraud in federal court.
President Trump commuted Mr. Rubashkin’s 27-year prison sentence last month, after years of lobbying by a number of prominent lawyers and politicians who considered his term unduly harsh, and perhaps even anti-Semitic.
The death toll from a massive debris flow that buried homes and cars under a torrent of mud and boulders rose to 15 in Montecito, where local personnel and the U.S. Coast Guard continued rescue operations Wednesday morning.
About 300 people remained stuck in their homes in Montecito’s Romero Canyon neighborhood and throughout the debris field, where authorities launched helicopter rescues at daybreak.
The mudslides began around 2:30 a.m. Tuesday, when intense rains dislodged boulders and caused heavy mudflow along hillsides that were scarred by the sprawling Thomas fire late last year. A number of homes were ripped from their foundations, with some pulled more than a half-mile by water and mud before they broke apart.
“It looked like a World War I battlefield,” Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said Tuesday.
Sources: Santa Barbara county, Mapzen, OpenStreetMap @latimesgraphics
The death toll rose to 15 overnight, according to Amber Anderson, a public information officer for the multi-agency response to the disaster. At least 28 others had been reported injured, and 24 more are missing, she said. Approximately 100 homes were destroyed and 300 were damaged in the mudslide, according to Anderson. Eight commercial properties were also destroyed, she said.
Officials have yet to publicly identify any of those killed in the mudslides. Mike Eliason, public information officer for the Santa Barbara County Fire Department, said there were juveniles among the deceased.
With much of the area still inaccessible, officials have said they fear the number of people killed in the mudslides could rise.
Sheriffs deputies carry a body from the debris near Hot Springs Road in Montecito after a major storm hit the burn area Tuesday. Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times
Southern California was drenched Tuesday, but nowhere did the rainstorm inflict more pain than in Montecito, just weeks after the coastal community dealt with the devastating Thomas fire.
Some 500 firefighters from across the state rushed to help, with crews struggling through clogged roads, waist-deep mud and downed trees throughout the day in search of victims. Dozens of survivors were hoisted to safety in helicopters.
The rain overwhelmed the south-facing slopes above Montecito, flooding the creek and sending mud and boulders into residential neighborhoods, officials said.
On Wednesday morning, the noise of construction crews using bulldozers to move boulders and fallen trees along Sycamore Canyon Road and Hot Springs road echoed down empty streets. Thick mud and downed power lines filled the streets. As the rescue crews tried to open pathways, some residents walked through the mud hoping to aid in the search for missing relatives and friends.
With a shovel in one hand, a man who asked to be identified only as Mikey smoked a cigarette and then started shoveling mud and debris from the intersection.
He had been out since 5 a.m looking for his girlfriend’s missing sisters: Morgan and Sawyer Corey. He said their house, located roughly a half mile away in Sycamore Canyon Road, had been swept away.
“They are good people,” he said with tears in his eyes. “I’m hoping to find them.”
As he waded through deep mud, Montecito resident Ben Ekler said his friend’s mother and two children were swept away during Tuesday morning’s deluge. The mother and one of the children were found and are recovering at an area hospital, he said.
But the other child is still missing.
At least 7,000 people have been evacuated from the area. As part of ongoing rescue efforts, a “public safety exclusion zone” has been established in Montecito.
Residents in areas west of Sheffield Drive, East Valley Road and Ladera Lane, east of Olive Mill and Hot Springs Road, north of the ocean, and south of the U.S. Forest Service boundary are being asked to shelter in place and not move around the area. The move is designed to ease the task faced by rescue personnel, and those spotted in the area without approval could face arrest, authorities said.
A number of helicopter rescues are planned Wednesday in Romero Canyon, an area where about 300 people remain trapped in their homes. Rescue officials do not believe the people stuck there are injured, but the mudslides have made the area inaccessible by ground.
“So far there isn’t a concern about anybody being in any potential danger in that area,” said Rosie Narez, a spokeswoman for the multi-agency storm response. “There’s no way in or out, so I mean, at some point … you’re going to run out of stuff, so you’re going to need help.”
Wednesday’s rescue efforts will focus on the aerial evacuation of those trapped in Romero Canyon, as well as clearing mud-caked roadways so emergency personnel can access homes that were hit hard by the debris flow, according to Eliason.
Helicopters and rescue workers from the U.S. Coast Guard and National Guard, as well as firefighters and helicopters from fire departments in Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties have all descended on Montecito, Eliason said.
An airship with night-vision capabilities hovered over the damaged area through the early morning hours. With the rain stopped, Eliason said rescue crews remain hopeful they can soon reach others who are trapped.
“The weather was favorable. Search and rescue is still very confident that we’re still in that window for rescue mode,” he said. “We’re actively pursuing trying to get in there as quick as we can to get those people to safety.”
Rescuing those trapped in Romero Canyon and reaching other homes that were made inaccessible by the mudslides remains a priority, he said, because many of those people could be without crucial supplies.
“A majority of Montecito and that whole area is in the Stone Age right now,” Eliason said. “There is no water. There is no gas. There is no electricity.”
The storm system that hit Southern California beginning Monday dumped more than 5 inches of rain on some parts of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, and officials had been concerned that sections of the state damaged by last month’s wildfires would be susceptible to heavy mudflows. Soil scorched by fire is less able to absorb water.
Mudflows washed out a nearly 30-mile stretch of the 101 Freeway between Santa Barbara and Ventura, and also prompted evacuations in parts of Burbank and Los Angeles on Tuesday. The heavy weather also caused a surge in motor vehicle accidents across the Southland, according to the California Highway Patrol.
But Santa Barbara County clearly took the brunt of the damage, where mud, boulders, husks of cars and housing frames were common sights. The section of Montecito that was hit hardest was actually south of the Thomas fire’s burn scar, and not subject to mandatory evacuation, according to Eliason.
But a creek that feeds the Pacific Ocean swelled early Tuesday morning, raining boulders and flood waters onto residents as they slept.
The rains were like a starter’s gun for many in Montecito and nearby Carpinteria. Peter Lapidus said the sound of droplets pummeling his home forced him out of bed around 4 a.m. Tuesday.
“It was like a bomb went off,” he said. “It wasn’t raining hard, and then it was like you flipped a switch.”
Maude Feil, who was traversing the mud on Olive Mill Road with a walking stick Wednesday morning, said the area looked “like an apocalypse happened” when she first emerged from her home the day before.
As she walked, she made a grim discovery when she spotted what she thought was a mannequin beneath railroad tricks
“It was a woman’s body,” she said.
Feil had to evacuate during the Thomas fire, and said she was worried survivors who managed to get through the wildfire unscathed may have lost everything they own in Tuesday’s debris flow
“I’ve never been so close to a fire in my whole entire life, then this,” she said. “People who didn’t lose their house in the fire — they just lost huge things in the mud. It’s like a war zone or something.”
Etehad and Mejia reported from Montecito. Queally reported from Los Angeles. Times Staff Writers Joseph Serna, Alene Tchhekmedyian and Hailey Branson-Potts contributed to this report.
1:30 p.m.: This post was updated with additional information about the number of people injured and the number of buildings that were damaged or destroyed in the mudslide.
9:10 a.m.: This post was updated with comments from Montecito residents searching for missing relatives and friends.
8:30 a.m.: This post was updated with the number of people missing and injured and additional details about rescue efforts.
7:55 a.m.: This post was updated with details on the public safety exclusion zone.
This article was originally published at 6:55 a.m.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Wednesday it “seems unlikely” that he’ll have to meet with special counsel Robert Mueller about the investigation into allegations that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election, repeatedly insisting there was “no collusion.”
“When they have no collusion … it seems unlikely that you’d even have an interview,” Trump said during a news conference at the White House in which he called the Russia investigation a “Democratic hoax.”
As far as any potential interview with Mueller, Trump left things vague, saying “certainly, we’ll see what happens,” while suggesting that it might not be necessary.
“There is collusion, but it’s really with the Democrats and the Russians,” Trump said, telling reporters “the witch hunt continues.”
The president’s comments Wednesday were a departure from his previously expressed willingness to meet with the special counsel. In June 2017, Trump said he was “100 percent” willing to testify under oath about his conversations with former FBI Director James Comey. The circumstances around Trump’s unexpected firing of Comey are among the topics being focused on by Mueller’s team, who could be looking into whether Trump obstructed justice in his firing of Comey.
But asked by a reporter Saturday at Camp David if he was still open to speaking with Mueller, Trump demurred, first saying “yeah,” but not committing to an interview.
“There’s been no collusion, there’s been no crime, and in theory everybody tells me I’m not under investigation,” he told reporters. “Maybe Hillary [Clinton] is, I don’t know, but I’m not,” he said. “But we have been very open. We could have done it two ways. We could have been very closed, and it would have taken years. But you know, sort of like when you’ve done nothing wrong, let’s be open and get it over with.”
Later in the news conference, Trump told reporters he thought it was “better to work with Russia” on matters of international importance — like North Korea — but said that his actions on energy development, as well as rebuilding the military, weren’t policies that would earn him any praise from the Kremlin.
“(Russia President Vladimir) Putin can’t love that,” Trump said.
The Russia investigation has hovered over the administration as Trump continues to try to tackle complex domestic issues, specifically immigration reform that both addresses the legal status of those covered by an Obama-era immigration policy allowing people brought to the United States illegally as children to remain in the country (known as Dreamers), as well as funding for his long-promised border wall.
Any deal on immigration “has to include the wall,” Trump said Wednesday, “because without the wall, it all doesn’t work.” The wall, he continued, was necessary for security, safety and stopping drugs from coming into the United States.
One day earlier Trump seemed open to a “clean” deal on Dreamers when it was proposed by Democrats during a bipartisan meeting, but at the time it was unclear whether a clean deal meant the wall in addition to a solution for Dreamers.
GOP support is building for an immigration bill authored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob GoodlatteRobert (Bob) William GoodlatteRosenstein to testify before House Judiciary Committee next week Conservative pressure on Sessions grows Clock ticking down on NSA surveillance powers MORE (R-Va.) as House Republicans seek to avoid getting jammed by the White House and Senate.
The Goodlatte bill would call for more aggressive enforcement measures and would address thousands of young undocumented immigrants whose fate has been in limbo for months.
The stand-alone legislation, which Goodlatte plans to unveil Wednesday, is backed by Speaker Paul RyanPaul Davis RyanMcConnell names Senate GOP tax conferees House Republican: ‘I worry about both sides’ of the aisle on DACA Overnight Health Care: 3.6M signed up for ObamaCare in first month | Ryan pledges ‘entitlement reform’ next year | Dems push for more money to fight opioids MORE’s leadership team.
It has attracted support from both the moderate and conservative wings of the 239-member House Republican Conference, including centrist Rep. Martha McSallyMartha Elizabeth McSallyHouse Dems highlight promising new candidates Trump poised for a September fight over border wall GOP rep weighs in on House dress code during floor speech MORE (Ariz.) and the Freedom Caucus’s Rep. Raúl Labrador (Idaho).
There are doubts, however, that it could clear the Senate, senior lawmakers said.
The White House and congressional leaders have been scrambling to figure out a solution for recipients of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which Trump is ending in March. Democrats are demanding protections from young immigrants enrolled in the program, but Republicans want to beef up border security and tackle other immigration issues in exchange for any DACA deal.
At a White House meeting with GOP and Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday, Trump appeared eager to strike a broader immigration deal. He proposed a two-step agreement where Congress would pass a major overhaul of the immigration system after dealing with the DACA recipients and securing the border.
“If you want to take it that further step, I’ll take the heat,” Trump told lawmakers. “You are not that far away from comprehensive immigration reform.”
In an interview, Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark MeadowsMark Randall MeadowsTrump rips Dems a day ahead of key White House meeting Overnight Health Care: 3.6M signed up for ObamaCare in first month | Ryan pledges ‘entitlement reform’ next year | Dems push for more money to fight opioids Overnight Finance: Trump says shutdown ‘could happen’ | Ryan, conservatives inch closer to spending deal | Senate approves motion to go to tax conference | Ryan promises ‘entitlement reform’ in 2018 MORE (R-N.C.) said Tuesday he’s “inclined” to back the Goodlatte bill based on what he’s heard so far.
“I am very supportive of the work that Chairman Goodlatte has put forth in designing a bill to address the broader immigration issues we are facing,” said Meadows, who has not seen the final text yet. “I am inclined to support it based on the overview I have been briefed on.”
Goodlatte pitched his legislation during a GOP conference meeting Tuesday morning ahead of a bipartisan meeting at the White House aimed at hashing out a DACA solution.
The Judiciary chairman also took part in Tuesday’s White House meeting in which Trump and lawmakers agreed to limit future talks to four issues: shielding the young immigrant “Dreamers” from deportation, border security, chain migration and the visa lottery.
“Addressing these four issues — border security, the visa lottery, chain migration, and then something for DACA recipients — is a great first step,” Goodlatte told reporters as he returned to the Capitol. “I think there are a lot of other things that need to be done on immigration.”
While Goodlatte’s bill is expected to include those four categories, the chairman and others indicated that the House measure is expected to be more expansive by reflecting other conservative priorities. It is likely to include mandatory verification requirements for workers, known as E-Verify, according to CNN.
“That bill has some of those things, but has a lot more. That’s a lot bigger,” said Rep. Mario Diaz-BalartMario Rafael Diaz-BalartLawmakers call on Treasury to take tougher stance on Hamas in Qatar Congress barreling toward explosive immigration fight Future of DACA up in the air as deadline looms MORE (R-Fla.), who also attended the White House meeting.
Supporters of Goodlatte’s bill argue that it could garner 218 Republican votes in the House, which could help them avoid getting jammed with an unpopular immigration deal from the Senate.
“What we don’t want to take place is to get jammed by some Dreamer Act bill from the Senate, which some of us are concerned about,” said Rep. Mark WalkerBradley (Mark) Mark WalkerRight scrambles GOP budget strategy Conservative lawmakers met to discuss GOP chairman’s ouster Overnight Finance: GOP delays work on funding bill amid conservative demands | Senate panel approves Fed nominee Powell | Dodd-Frank rollback advances | WH disputes report Mueller subpoenaed Trump bank records MORE (R-N.C.), chairman of the Republican Study Committee. “We hope that [Trump] supports what Goodlatte and people come up with.”
Trump did not take a position on Goodlatte’s proposal, though he called it a “good starting point” on Tuesday and insisted any legislation should be a “bill of love.”
But House GOP leadership has not yet committed to bringing the chairman’s bill to the floor.
“For whatever reason, there seems to be a little bit of internal debate over where that gets to the floor,” Walker said. “Leadership, they’re keeping their cards close to the vest.”
He added, however, that no one spoke out against the legislation during the conference meeting.
Other Republicans were far more skeptical that a Goodlatte bill could garner 218 GOP votes in the House — or that such a measure could pass the Senate, where nine Democrats are needed to overcome a filibuster.
“Even if we did have 218 Republican votes for a DACA bill, it’s not going to be close to what the Senate passes. … We need to pass a DACA bill with over 300 votes,” said Rep. Charlie DentCharles(Charlie) Wieder DentJuan Williams: The GOP has divided America Republicans pursue two-week spending bill GOP could punt funding fight to January MORE (R-Pa.), co-chairman of the moderate Tuesday Group.
“We we can go through this exercise for a while, until we ultimately get jammed by the Senate. We’ll indulge all these folks with this fanciful notion that we’ll somehow pass a DACA bill with 218 Republican votes — and then unicorns fly.”
Heavy rains make Southern California vulnerable to flooding and debris flows, especially after fires that strip steep hillsides of vegetation.
Mudflows, mudslides and landslides often are used interchangeably when disaster strikes, but the terms have distinctions.
A mudflow is “a river of liquid and flowing mud on the surfaces of normally dry land areas,” according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“Other earth movements, such as landslide, slope failure or a saturated soil mass moving by liquidity down a slope, are not mudflows,” it says.
FEMA sees a mudflow as similar to a milkshake, while the more solid mudslide is comparable to a cake.
The US Geological Survey dismisses mudslide as an “imprecise but popular term … frequently used by laymen and the news media to describe a wide scope of events, ranging from debris-laden floods to landslides.”
