‘Extreme Vetting’ Also Threatens Privacy of Americans

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The “extreme vetting” proposals floated this week by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly include the idea of making visitors to the U.S. open their phones and disclose their contacts, passwords and social media handles to immigration authorities. This might potentially be constitutional, because visitors outside the U.S. don’t necessarily have privacy protection. But it’s a serious threat to Americans’ constitutional rights anyway. The intrusion into core privacy of visa applicants through the fiction of consent can easily be extended to U.S. citizens in a wide range of situations.

There’s a theoretical legal basis for the vetting proposals: because there’s no inherent legal or constitutional right for foreigners (other than lawful permanent residents) to visit the U.S., there’s nothing wrong with conditioning entry on disclosure of private information.

I’m not sure this argument holds water. It’s true that non-Americans outside the U.S. don’t always have constitutional rights. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that the government could impose every conceivable condition on their entry, without constitutional limits.

For example, could the government tell foreigners seeking visas that if they enter the U.S., they must agree to discriminate on the basis of race while here? Surely not — because the government would itself be discriminating through that condition. (Read more from “‘Extreme Vetting’ Also Threatens Privacy of Americans” HERE)

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Dems Will Win Fight on Border Wall Unless Trump Starts Hammering RINO Collaborators

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. . .Despite President Trump’s request for more than $1 billion to fund the Mexican border wall this year, GOP leaders are expected to exclude the money in the spending bill being prepared to keep the government open beyond April 28.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) says the choice is pragmatic and the money will come later.

But the issue has become a political thorn in the side of GOP leaders who are facing pushback from Republicans voicing concerns over the diplomatic fallout, the disruption to local communities and the enormous cost of the project, estimated to be anywhere from $22 billion to $40 billion.

With Democrats united against new wall funding, it’s unlikely the Republicans have the votes to get it through and prevent a government shutdown.

Among the loudest GOP skeptics are those representing border districts. Reps. Will Hurd (R-Texas) and Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), for instance, hail from districts that span a combined 880 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. They’re pressing the administration to justify the huge costs. (Read more from “Dems Will Win Fight on Border Wall Unless Trump Starts Hammering RINO Collaborators” HERE)

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Where Obamacare Repeal Stands and What It Means for House Republicans

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The House left for its two-week Easter recess Thursday without passing its Obamacare repeal bill, leaving questions about what comes next in terms of health-care reform.

Leadership announced a last-minute Rules Committee meeting on an amendment to the American Health Care Act — put forward by House Freedom Caucus members Gary Palmer of Alabama and David Schweikert of Arizona — allowing them to go back to their districts with the message they are making progress on the bill. But some speculate if members can’t strike a deal, it could be catastrophic for some of their political futures.

White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus told House Speaker Paul Ryan his job could be at risk if he fails to get something passed during a meeting with White House officials Wednesday night, Politico reports.

The administration is calling on leadership to push members to come to a consensus following the bill being pulled off the floor in March due to a lack of votes — a major blow to the GOP’s message of unity. In the wake of the political blunder, top Republicans have been cautious in their approach, saying they are taking a bottom-up approach, allowing conservatives and moderates to come together on changes. Ryan, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise have all repeatedly said they don’t want to put an “artificial timeline” in place, as it might be counterproductive to making improvements to the bill. With the White House looking for a win, the pressure is on for Congress to get something done quickly.

Leadership has largely taken a back seat on their second attempt to make good on their campaign promise, allowing Vice President Mike Pence, Budget Director Mick Mulvaney and Priebus to take the reins on the negotiation process. Pence, Mulvaney and Priebus met with top members of the three largest House GOP caucuses, which represent the different factions of the conference — the House Freedom Caucus, Republican Study Committee and Tuesday Group — Tuesday evening in an attempt to strike a deal. But despite members leaving the meeting asserting progress had been made, bill text remained unseen and finger-pointing continued Wednesday. (Read more from “Where Obamacare Repeal Stands and What It Means for House Republicans” HERE)

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Gorsuch May Be Decisive Vote in Divisive Supreme Court Cases

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With Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation as the 113th Supreme Court justice Friday, it won’t be long before he starts revealing what he really thinks about a range of hot topics he repeatedly sidestepped during his confirmation hearing.

In less than two weeks, the justices will take up a Missouri church’s claim that the state is stepping on its religious freedom. It’s a case about Missouri’s ban on public money going to religious institutions and it carries with it potential implications for vouchers to attend private, religious schools.

Other cases the court could soon decide to hear involve gun rights, voting rights and a Colorado baker’s refusal to design a cake for a same-sex couple’s wedding. Some of those cases may come up April 13, which could be Gorsuch’s first private conference — where justices decide whether to hear a case. It takes four votes to do so, though the court does not generally announce each justice’s decision. (Read more from “Gorsuch May Be Decisive Vote in Divisive Supreme Court Cases” HERE)

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Trump’s First Big Foreign Policy Move a Departure From Stump Speeches

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In what will almost certainly be the defining foreign policy decision of President Donald Trump’s first 100 days seems to be a significant shift from his noninterventionist rhetoric on the campaign trail in facing down Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, longtime critics of the president, praised Trump’s decision to launch 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Syrian government’s Shayrat airfield, where a chemical weapons attack was launched that killed more than 70 Syrian civilians, including children.

Conversely, Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah stressed that Trump should have sought congressional approval before the strikes. Meanwhile, conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham noted the major policy shift.

While some Trump supporters on the pundit side might have been surprised by the strikes, it’s not likely to hurt the president with his supporters throughout the country, said Richard Benedetto, an adjunct professor of government at American University.

“Some Trump folks will be disappointed,” Benedetto told The Daily Signal. “Many of the so-called blue-collar Trump supporters backed him because they did not like to see America get pushed around.”

As a candidate, Trump heavily criticized George W. Bush, a former president of his own party, for launching the Iraq War, while in 2013, he tweeted that President Barack Obama shouldn’t intervene in Syria.

This doesn’t necessarily mean Trump has shifted away from a cautious attitude toward foreign entanglements, said Benedetto, a former White House correspondent for USA Today.

“He could still be a noninterventionist compared to Bush, but at the same time, wants to make it clear he is not Obama,” Benedetto said. “It doesn’t mean he will be an interventionist in other things. But this means he takes chemical weapons seriously and he believes he had to do something.”

During a Rose Garden press conference Wednesday, the president telegraphed a shift before the strike, stating he is flexible.

I don’t have to have one specific way, and if the world changes, I go the same way … I do change and I am flexible and I’m proud of that flexibility, and I will tell you that attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me, big impact. That was a horrible, horrible thing and I’ve been watching it and seeing it, and it doesn’t get any worse than that. And I have that flexibility and it’s very, very possible, and I will tell you it’s already happened that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much.

The New York Times ran a story with the headline “Trump’s Far-Right Supporters Turn on Him Over Syria Strike.” However, the story focused mostly on more extreme elements rather than the general Trump supporter or conservatives.

The expectations of Trump as a “restrictionist, realist, or isolationist” during the presidential campaign were miscalculated from the beginning, said Emma Ashford, a research fellow for defense and foreign policy at the libertarian Cato Institute.

“He talked in the campaign about staying out of stupid Middle East wars, but he also talked about Iraq and how we should have taken their oil, and how he would bomb the hell out of ISIS,” Ashford told The Daily Signal. “People tend to focus on whether he is a neocon or like Ron or Rand Paul. They ignore the third way, which is being a restrictionist on humanitarian matters but interventionist in other areas.”

Ashford noted that military presence in the Middle East has increased since Trump became president.

Ashford said that Obama’s decision not to strike Syria in 2013 was sound.

“It worked in that Assad did not use chemical weapons again while Obama was president,” Ashford said.

The change between campaign rhetoric and international affairs isn’t unusual for presidents. Woodrow Wilson campaigned on staying out of World War I. Franklin Roosevelt campaigned on staying out of World War II. Richard Nixon campaigned on exiting the Vietnam War, and George W. Bush shunned nation building, experts said.

“Campaign rhetoric is just designed to get votes,” James Carafano, a national security expert at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal. “Look at John McCain and Barack Obama in 2008, and they sounded almost identical. There was no way anyone could have predicted Barack Obama’s foreign policy over the next eight years.”

He continued that this is what one should expect from Trump as a businessman.

“This is who Trump is. He deals with what he is dealt,” Carafano said. “If profits are down, he doesn’t hold a press conference to pretend they are not. He deals with it.” (For more from the author of “Trump’s First Big Foreign Policy Move a Departure From Stump Speeches” please click HERE)

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Obama Gave $68 Million to Pro-Abortion UN Population Control Agency, Here’s How Much Trump Is Giving

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The Trump Administration reinstated a policy Monday evening directing United States foreign assistance dollars away from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) on the basis that its activities in China are complicit with that nation’s coercive population control program, the implementation of which includes forced abortion and involuntary sterilization. United States funding will be directed instead to other family planning and health programs not involved in China’s population control program.

“We congratulate President Trump and his administration for making it abundantly clear the United States will not support a United Nations agency that cooperates in China’s brutally repressive population control policies,” said National Right to Life President Carol Tobias. “I heartily applaud what we at National Right to Life are seeing from this pro-life administration.”

The State Department memorandum issued Monday determined that the UNFPA was in violation of the Kemp-Kasten anti-coercion law. The amendment prohibits giving U.S. “population assistance” funds to “any organization or program which, as determined by the President of the United States, supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.”

As the memo states:

The Chinese Government’s Population and Family Planning Law, even as amended in 2015, and related regulations and practices at the central and Provincial levels, clearly constitute a “program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization,” and are an integral part of the comprehensive population-control program the Chinese Government advances. While there is no evidence that UNFPA directly engages in coercive abortions or involuntary sterilizations in China, the agency continues to partner with the [National Health and Family Planning Commission] on family planning, and thus can be found to support, or participate in the management of China’s coercive policies for purposes of the Kemp-Kasten Amendment. (Read more from “Obama Gave $68 Million to Pro-Abortion UN Population Control Agency, Here’s How Much Trump Is Giving” HERE)

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Bannon Wants a War on Washington. Now He’s Part of One Inside the White House.

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By Ashley Parker, Robert Costa and Abby Phillip. Stephen K. Bannon — the combative architect of the nationalistic strategy that delivered President Trump to the White House — now finds himself losing ground in an internecine battle within the West Wing that pits the “Bannonites” against a growing and powerful faction of centrist financiers led by the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Less than 100 days into Trump’s chaotic presidency, the White House is splintering over policy issues ranging from taxes to trade. The daily tumult has created an atmosphere of tension and panic around the president, leaving aides fearing for their jobs and cleaving former allies into rivals sniping at one another in the media.

The infighting spilled into full view this week after Trump removed Bannon from the National Security Council’s “principals committee,” a reshuffling that left the president’s chief strategist less fully involved in the administration’s daily national security policy while further empowering Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Trump’s new national security adviser. (Read more from “Bannon Wants a War on Washington. Now He’s Part of One Inside the White House.” HERE)

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Pence: Bannon’s Removal From National Security Council Part of ‘Routine Evolution’ of National Security Team

By Melanie Arter. Vice President Mike Pence, in an interview with Fox News’s “The First 100 Days,” said Wednesday that White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s removal from the National Security Council “represents a very routine evolution of the national security team around the president.”

“With H.R. McMaster as our national security adviser, I think the president’s action, adding the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, adding the director of national intelligence, and moving a couple of our senior personnel off the National Security Council just simply represents a very routine evolution of the National Security team around the president,” Pence told Fox News’ Martha MacCallum.

Bannon was part of the Principals Committee, “a group of high-ranking officials who meet to discuss pressing important national security priorities,” the Associated Press reported.

Tom Bossert, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, “also had his role downgraded as part of the changes,” according to the AP.

Pence said the move is not a demotion for Bannon. (Read more from “Pence: Bannon’s Removal From National Security Council Part of ‘Routine Evolution’ of National Security Team” HERE)

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Pentagon Plans Next Major Missile Intercept Test for Late May

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The Pentagon has tentatively scheduled for late May the next intercept test of its $36 billion ground-based missile defense system — the first in nearly three years, according to a spokesman.

With North Korea ramping up its ballistic missile development and President Donald Trump vowing to rein in Kim Jong-un’s regime, the success of missile defense efforts has taken on heightened importance in Washington. The head of the U.S. Strategic Command, Air Force General John Hyten, told a Senate panel this week that “although North Korea is not an existential threat,” it’s “the most dangerous and unpredictable actor in the Pacific region.”

While confirming the May target, the next missile defense test remains contingent on the availability of testing resources, Missile Defense Agency spokesman Christopher Johnson said via email. Interceptors are located at Fort Greely in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The system is managed by Boeing Co.

North Korea’s weapons program is expected to be a major subject of talks between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Florida starting Thursday. The U.S. president has said Beijing can do more to rein in North Korea. Beijing, in turn, has protested an Obama administration decision to deploy an Army missile system called Thaad in South Korea designed to intercept short and medium-range systems. (Read more from “Pentagon Plans Next Major Missile Intercept Test for Late May” HERE)

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Ben Carson Finds $500 Billion (Billion!) in Errors During Audit of Obama HUD

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. . .President Trump picked Carson to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development, whose budget grew by leaps and bounds under Barack Obama.

In one of his first acts as HUD Secretary, Carson ordered an audit of the agency. What he found was staggering: $520 billion in bookkeeping errors . . .

But there were plenty of other problems, too.

There were several other unresolved audit matters, which restricted our ability to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to express an opinion. These unresolved audit matters relate to (1) the Office of General Counsel’s refusal to sign the management representation letter, (2) HUD’s improper use of cumulative and first-in, first-out budgetary accounting methods of disbursing community planning and development program funds, (3) the $4.2 billion in nonpooled loan assets from Ginnie Mae’s stand-alone financial statements that we could not audit due to inadequate support, (4) the improper accounting for certain HUD assets and liabilities, and (5) material differences between HUD’s subledger and general ledger accounts. This audit report contains 11 material weaknesses, 7 significant deficiencies, and 5 instances of noncompliance with applicable laws and regulations.

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This Is Apparently What Drove Devin Nunes to Finally Step Aside From the Trump-Russia Probe

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House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has temporarily stepped aside from the committee’s probe into Russia’s interference in the US election and whether President Donald Trump’s campaign was involved.

His announcement comes as he has become the subject of an ethics investigation.

Nunes has come under intense scrutiny after his decision last month to bypass the rest of his committee and brief Trump on classified executive-branch documents he said showed that members of Trump’s transition team had been swept up in government surveillance.

Nunes repeatedly had said he did not intend to step aside, but there have been questions about his ability to lead an independent investigation. Reports have said he obtained the documents from White House officials, despite his claims to the contrary.

But in a statement on Thursday, Nunes said he would allow Rep. Mike Conaway to lead the investigation while he waited for the House Ethics Committee to look into complaints filed against him by what he said were “several left-wing activist groups.” (Read more from “This Is Apparently What Drove Devin Nunes to Finally Step Aside From the Trump-Russia Probe” HERE)

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