Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Trump’s election panel puts hold on voter data request

FILE PHOTO - A member of the ACLU observes a polling station during voting in the 2016 presidential election at Desert Pines High School in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. on November 8, 2016. REUTERS/David Becker/File Photo

By Julia Jacobs and Bernie Woodall

(Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s commission to investigate possible election fraud on Monday put a freeze on its effort to collect sensitive voter data from states in the face of growing legal challenges.

In an email, the panel’s designated officer, Andrew Kossack, asked state elections officers to “hold on submitting any data,” the commission said in court filings.

Several state elections officials confirmed receiving a letter from the panel stating that it would provide further instructions after a federal judge had ruled on a complaint filed by a watchdog group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), which is seeking a temporary restraining order.

Earlier on Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, alleging violations of federal law requiring transparent government.

The bipartisan panel, led by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, asked the 50 U.S. states for a host of voter data, including birth dates and the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers.

Most U.S. states have rejected full compliance, which many called unnecessary and a violation of privacy.

“This has been a misadventure from the get-go,” Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin, who had refused to give the commission any data, said by phone.

In Wisconsin, elections officials halted plans to inform the commission how it could purchase for $12,500 its public voter data, not including Social Security numbers or birth dates.

“We’re just putting everything on hold,” said Reid Magney, spokesman for the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Arkansas, however, had already sent in a limited batch of publicly available data, according to the office of Secretary of State Mark Martin,

In a court document, the government said it would not download the information from Arkansas and would instead delete it.

Representatives for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The commission last week said it would meet on July 19 in Washington near the White House.

On Monday, critics cheered the move and expressed hope the commission would permanently abandon efforts to collect voter data.

“The commission has effectively conceded,” EPIC President Marc Rotenberg said by phone.

State officials from both parties and election experts widely agree that voter fraud is rare. Civil rights groups called the commission a voter suppression tactic by Trump.

The Republican president created the panel in May following his claim, without evidence, that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election.

(Reporting by Julia Jacobs in Chicago, Bernie Woodall in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and Susan Heavey in Washington; Writing by Letitia Stein; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

China says ‘China responsibility theory’ on North Korea has to stop

The intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-14 is seen in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang July 5, 2017. KCNA/via REUTERS

BEIJING (Reuters) – China hit back on Tuesday in unusually strong terms at repeated calls from the United States to put more pressure on North Korea, urging a halt to what it called the “China responsibility theory”, and saying all parties needed to pull their weight.

U.S President Trump took a more conciliatory tone at a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday, but he has expressed some impatience that China, with its close economic and diplomatic ties to Pyongyang, is not doing enough to rein in North Korea.

That feeling has become particularly acute since Pyongyang launched an intercontinental ballistic missile that some experts believe could have the range to reach Alaska, and parts of the U.S. West Coast.

Asked about calls from the United States, Japan and others for China to put more pressure on North Korea, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said it was not China ratcheting up tension and the key to a resolution did not lie with Beijing.

“Recently, certain people, talking about the Korean peninsula nuclear issue, have been exaggerating and giving prominence to the so-called ‘China responsibility theory,'” Geng told a daily news briefing, without naming any parties.

“I think this either shows lack of a full, correct knowledge of the issue, or there are ulterior motives for it, trying to shift responsibility,” he added.

China has been making unremitting efforts and has played a constructive role, but all parties have to meet each other half way, Geng said.

“Asking others to do work, but doing nothing themselves is not OK,” he added. “Being stabbed in the back is really not OK.”

While China has been angered by North Korea’s repeated nuclear and missile tests, it also blames the United States and South Korea for worsening tension with their military exercises.

China has been upset with the U.S. deployment of an advanced anti-missile system in South Korea too, which it says threatens its own security and will do nothing to ease tensions.

Additionally, Beijing has complained about Washington putting unilateral sanctions on Chinese companies and individuals for their dealings with North Korea.

Geng questioned how China’s efforts could bear fruit if, while it tried to put out the flames, others added oil to the fire, and if, while it enforced U.N. resolutions, others harmed its interests.

Everyone needed to accept their responsibilities to get the North Korea issue back on the correct track of a peaceful resolution through talks, he added.

“The ‘China responsibility theory’ on the peninsula nuclear issue can stop,” Geng said.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

At G20 summit, Trump promises $639 million in food, humanitarian aid

U.S. President Donald Trump attends a working session at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, northern Germany, Saturday, July 8, 2017.REUTERS/Markus Schreiber, Pool

HAMBURG (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday promised $639 million in funding for humanitarian programs, including $331 million to help feed starving people in four famine-hit countries – Somalia, South Sudan, Nigeria and Yemen.

Trump’s pledge came during a working session of the G20 summit of world leaders in Hamburg, providing a “godsend” to the U.N. World Food Programme, the group’s executive director, David Beasley, told Reuters on the sidelines of the meeting.

“We’re facing the worst humanitarian crisis since World War Two,” said Beasley, a Republican and former South Carolina governor who was nominated by Trump to head the world’s largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide.

He said the additional funding was about a third of what the agency estimated was required this year to deal with urgent food needs in the four countries facing famine and in other areas.

The WFP estimates that 109 million people around the world will need food assistance this year, up from 80 million last year, with 10 of the 13 worst affected zones stemming from wars and “man-made” crises, Beasley said.

“We estimated that if we didn’t receive the funding we needed immediately that 400,000 to 600,000 children would be dying in the next four months,” he said.

Trump’s announcement came after his administration proposed sharp cuts in funding for the U.S. State Department and other humanitarian missions as part of his “America First” policy.

Beasley said the agency had worked hard with the White House and the U.S. government to secure the funding, but Trump would insist that other countries contributed more as well.

A WPF spokesman said Germany recently pledged an additional 200 million euros for food relief.

The United States has long been the largest donor to the WFP.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; editing by John Stonestreet)

U.S. appeals court denies Hawaii bid to narrow Trump travel ban

U.S. President Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump are seen at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay

By Dan Levine

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court on Friday rejected Hawaii’s request to issue an emergency order blocking parts of President Donald Trump’s temporary travel ban while the state sought clarification over what groups of people would be barred from travel.

The U.S. Supreme Court last month let the ban on travel from six Muslim-majority countries go forward with a limited scope, saying it could not apply to anyone with a credible “bona fide relationship” with a U.S. person or entity.

The Trump administration then decided that spouses, parents, children, fiancés and siblings would be exempt from the ban, while grandparents and other family members traveling from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen would be barred.

Trump said the measure was necessary to prevent attacks. However, opponents including states and refugee advocacy groups sued to stop it, disputing its security rationale and saying it discriminated against Muslims.

A Honolulu judge this week rejected Hawaii’s request to clarify the Supreme Court ruling and narrow the government’s implementation of the ban.

Hawaii appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, saying in a filing on Friday that the appeals court has the power to narrow the travel ban while it decides how to interpret the Supreme Court’s ruling.

A three-judge 9th Circuit panel on Friday rejected that argument and said it did not have jurisdiction to hear Hawaii’s appeal.

The 9th Circuit said the Honolulu judge could issue an injunction against the government in the future, if he believed it misapplied the Supreme Court’s ruling to a particular person harmed by the travel ban.

But the judge did not have the authority to simply clarify the Supreme Court’s instructions now, the appeals court said.

In a statement, Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin said he appreciated that the 9th Circuit ruled so quickly, and that the state will comply.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

Justice Department lawyers have argued that its definition of close family “hews closely” to language found in U.S. immigration law, while Hawaii’s attorney general’s office said other parts of immigration law include grandparents in that group.

The roll-out of the narrowed version of the ban was more subdued last week than in January when Trump first signed a more expansive version of the order. That sparked protests and chaos at airports around the country and the world.

(Reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Lisa Shumaker)

Mexico, U.S. vow to bolster joint fight against drug cartels

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly shake hands with Mexico's Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong after deliver a joint message at the Secretary of Interior Building in Mexico City, Mexico, July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico and the United States are seeking to forge closer ties to fight arms trafficking and organized crime, Mexico’s interior minister said on Friday, as he and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly vowed to redouble efforts to battle drug cartels.

“We’re looking at new forms of cooperation on issues like arms trafficking … and obviously combating international criminal organizations dedicated to drug trafficking,” Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong told a news conference.

Osorio Chong did not provide details as he spoke alongside Kelly, who was coming to the end of a three-day visit to Mexico.

Kelly, who on Thursday traveled to one of Mexico’s most lawless regions to discuss the military’s efforts to battle drug traffickers and observe opium poppy eradication, said the two sides aimed to strengthen joint security cooperation.

“We are also working together to defeat the scourge of illegal drugs, with special emphasis on the heroin, cocaine and fentanyl that is flooding the hemisphere and resulting in deaths in both of our countries,” Kelly said.

U.S. deaths from opiates including fentanyl and heroin have risen sharply in the last few years, putting the issue at center stage in efforts to strengthen cooperation on security matters between Mexico and the United States.

Kelly said U.S. President Donald Trump aimed to create “stronger, durable bonds” between the two neighbors, which have been at starkly at odds on some areas of policy under Trump, particularly the Republican leader’s plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

(Reporting by Michael O’Boyle; Editing by Tom Brown)

Trump’s voter fraud panel to meet as U.S. states’ refusals mount

FILE PHOTO: A ballot is placed into a locked ballot box by a poll worker as people line-up to vote early at the San Diego County Elections Office in San Diego, California, U.S., November 7, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s commission to investigate possible election fraud will convene this month, a government notice said on Friday, as more U.S. states have refused to hand over at least some voter data.

Trump created the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in May, after claiming without evidence that millions of people voted illegally for his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 election.

U.S. civil rights groups and Democratic lawmakers have called the panel a voter suppression tactic by Trump, a Republican who won the presidential election by securing a majority in the Electoral College tally of delegates even as he lost the popular vote to Clinton by some 3 million votes.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a watchdog group, has filed a lawsuit to block the commission’s data request until its privacy impact can be weighed. A hearing in the case was scheduled for Friday afternoon.

There is a wide consensus among state officials from both parties and election experts that voter fraud is rare. States rejecting the commission’s attempts to gather voter information have called it unnecessary and a violation of privacy.

The commission will meet on July 19 to swear in members, formulate objectives and discuss next steps after asking the 50 states to turn over potentially sensitive voter information, according to a General Services Administration (GSA) notice published in the Federal Register.

A June 28 letter from the election panel sought names, the last four digits of Social Security numbers, addresses, birth dates, political affiliations, felony convictions and voting histories.

As of Wednesday, at least 44 states had refused to hand over at least some of the data requested, the Washington Post said. Republican Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the commission vice chairman, on Wednesday said such reports were false. He said in a statement sent by the White House that 14 states and Washington, D.C., had rejected the request outright.

Matthew Dunlap, Maine’s Democratic secretary of state and a commission member, on Friday dismissed Trump’s claim that millions of voters illegally cast ballots. “We just don’t see that,” he told CNN. “People are incredibly law abiding.”

Although Maine is one state that has pushed back at the commission’s request, Dunlap said he hopes the panel can tackle voting issues including ballot access and hacking.

A Republican commission member, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, defended the panel, telling CNN on Thursday that fraud with even “one vote per precinct … can change the course of history.”

A court filing in the Electronic Privacy Information Center case also showed the panel plans to house data on White House computers rather than at the GSA. The Washington Post, which earlier reported the filing, noted GSA would be required to follow specific privacy requirements.

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Moscow tried to tilt the election in Trump’s favor. Moscow has dismissed the accusations. Trump has denied any collusion and has questioned the agencies’ conclusion as well as any Russian role.

(Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Howard Goller and David Gregorio)

Cities dubbed immigrant ‘sanctuaries’ hit back on Trump funding threat

Immigrant supporters protest during the Los Angeles City Council ad hoc committee on immigration meeting in Los Angeles, California, U.S., March 30, 2017. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

By Mica Rosenberg and Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Department of Justice is reviewing letters from 10 local jurisdictions that said they are in compliance with U.S. immigration law, to determine whether to cut federal funding, officials said Thursday, heating up a dispute between so-called sanctuary cities and President Donald Trump’s administration.

In April, the department had asked a handful of states and cities to document by June 30 their compliance with a statute that says local governments cannot prevent their employees from sharing information with U.S. immigration officials.

The Trump administration has said jurisdictions that do not fully cooperate are shielding “criminal illegal aliens,” and has promised to crack down on cities that do not comply. The sanctuary jurisdictions say they are following the law and do not want to spend local resources on immigration enforcement.

“It is not enough to assert compliance, the jurisdictions must actually be in compliance,” U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement on Thursday. He said the 10 jurisdictions had written in with “alleged compliance information” and that the government would “examine these claims carefully.”

Sessions’ statement said “some of these jurisdictions have boldly asserted they will not comply with requests from federal immigration authorities.” If the government finds the cities are violating the statute, known as Section 1373, it could decide to cut federal funds.

In the letters seen by Reuters, the jurisdictions say they are following the law even though some do not honor all “detainer” requests sent by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE.) A “detainer” asks local authorities to hold people in jail up to 48 hours beyond when they are set to be released so immigration officials can take them into custody.

Many of the letters noted that compliance with detainer requests is voluntary and is not required under the statute. The jurisdictions targeted are the states of California and Connecticut, Chicago and Cook County in Illinois, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Miami, Milwaukee and New York.

At least one of the jurisdictions – Nevada’s Clark County, which is dominated by Las Vegas – has a long-standing formal agreement with ICE in which local police officers help with federal immigration enforcement.

New York City said it complies with detainer requests for people who have been convicted of certain “violent or serious” crimes, so long as the request is accompanied by a judicial warrant. Like other cities, New York said its priority is creating trust between immigrant communities and local police to encourage residents, even if they are living in the country illegally, to report crimes.

Mitchell Landrieu, the Mayor of New Orleans made a similar argument in a letter to Sessions. He said the administration has erroneously characterized sanctuary cities as havens for Central American gangs. Landrieu said an audit of gangs in New Orleans did not find a single Latino-dominated group.

“Undocumented people who commit violent crimes must face the criminal and immigration legal systems of this country. But that does not mean that all people are illegal immigrants that are part of violent gangs,” Landrieu wrote.

Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele called the Justice Department’s statement on Thursday “inflammatory.”

The county is at risk of losing more than $6 million in revenue if the Justice Department follows through, a June 28 letter from its lawyers said. It said Milwaukee would “avail itself of all legal options available” to “protect its grant funding.”

Trump’s executive order early in his presidency pledging to cut funding to sanctuary cities has been challenged in the courts. In April, a federal judge in San Francisco said in a case brought by Santa Clara county that cities were likely to succeed in proving Trump’s order unconstitutional.

The California county wrote in a court filing on Thursday that top administration officials have repeatedly stated that federal funding should be tied to local willingness to honor ICE detainer requests.

(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg and Jonathan Allen in New York; additional reporting by Dan Levine in San Francisco; editing by Grant McCool)

Trump pledges to act on North Korean threat

U.S. President Donald Trump gives a public speech in front of the Warsaw Uprising Monument at Krasinski Square in Warsaw, Poland July 6, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

By Jeff Mason and Roberta Rampton

WARSAW (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump vowed on Thursday to confront North Korea “very strongly” following its latest missile test and urged nations to show Pyongyang that there would be consequences for its weapons program.

North Korea on Tuesday test-launched an intercontinental ballistic missile that some experts believe has the range to reach the U.S. states of Alaska and Hawaii and perhaps the U.S. Pacific Northwest. North Korea said it could carry a large nuclear warhead.

Speaking at a news conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda, Trump said Korea was “a threat, and we will confront it very strongly”.

He said the United States was considering “severe things” for North Korea, but that he would not draw a “red line” of the kind that his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, had drawn but not enforced on the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

Trump added: “… they are behaving in a very, very dangerous manner and something will have to be done.”

The issue presents Trump, who took office in January, with perhaps his biggest foreign policy challenge. It has put pressure on his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom Trump had pressed without success to rein in Pyongyang.

The United States said on Wednesday that it was ready to use force if necessary to stop North Korea’s nuclear missile program. But China on Thursday called for restraint and made clear it did not want to be targeted by U.S. sanctions.

Meeting in Germany ahead of a G20 summit, Xi told South Korean President Moon Jae-in that “China upholds the denuclearization of the peninsula, maintaining its peace and stability, resolving the issue via dialogue and consultation, and that all sides strictly abide by relevant resolutions of the U.N. Security Council”, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

And Chinese Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao said that, while China would implement relevant U.N. resolutions, “the U.S. should not use their domestic laws as excuses to levy sanctions against Chinese financial institutions”.

“BAD BEHAVIOR”

Trump flew on to Hamburg on Thursday to attend the summit, and was due to meet with Xi there.

His frustration that Beijing has not done more to clamp down on North Korea prompted him to tweet on Wednesday: “Trade between China and North Korea grew almost 40% in the first quarter. So much for China working with us – but we had to give it a try!”

Trump did not mention China specifically in his remarks in Poland, but his message that other countries needed to do more was clearly meant for Beijing.

“President Duda and I call on all nations to confront this global threat and publicly demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences for their very, very bad behavior,” he said.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday that the United States would propose new U.N. sanctions in coming days, and that if Russia and China did not support the move, then “we will go our own path”.

Some diplomats say Beijing has not been fully enforcing existing international sanctions on its neighbor and has resisted tougher measures, such as an oil embargo, bans on the North Korean airline and guest workers, and measures against Chinese banks and other firms doing business with the North.

U.S. officials have said the United States might specifically seek unilaterally to sanction more Chinese companies that do business with North Korea, especially banks – echoing a tactic it used to pressurize to Iran to curb its nuclear program.

South Korean presidential spokesman Park Su-hyun gave a somewhat different account of the Xi-Moon meeting. He told reporters that the two men had agreed North Korea’s missile test was “unforgivable”, and had discussed stepping up pressure and sanctions.

(This story has been refiled to make explicit that Trump was speaking in paragraph 5)

(additional reporting by Marcin Goettig; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Trump again demands more NATO spending, mulls ‘severe things’ on North Korea

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks as Polish President Andrzej Duda and Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic listen during the Three Seas Initiative Summit in Warsaw, Poland July 6, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

By Marcin Goclowski and Roberta Rampton

WARSAW (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump once more urged NATO allies in Europe on Thursday to spend more on defense, on a visit to Poland that had been billed as an opportunity for him to patch up relations after a tense alliance summit in May.

He also said Washington was thinking about “severe things” in response to North Korea’s test-launch this week of an intercontinental ballistic missile with the potential to reach Alaska.

Trump told a joint news conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda on Thursday that it was “past time” for all countries in the alliance to “get going” on their financial obligations.

The White House had said Trump would use the stopover in Warsaw to showcase his commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which he once called “obsolete”, bemoaning allies’ repeated failure to spend the recommended 2 percent of GDP on defense.

He had unnerved allies in May, not least those in the east concerned about Russia’s more assertive military posture, by failing to explicitly endorse the principle of collective defense enshrined in the NATO treaty.

While he did not directly mention that principle in Warsaw, he did say that the United States was working with Poland to address Russia’s “destabilising behavior”. Duda for his part said he believed Trump took Poland’s security seriously.

Trump said the United States would confront the threat from North Korea very strongly, and that nations must publicly demonstrate to North Korea that there were consequences for bad behavior.

Trump has this week expressed frustration that North Korea’s neighbor China has not put more pressure on Pyongyang, notably through trade, to try to rein in its weapons program.

Trump said “something” would have to be done about North Korea. He said he did not draw “red lines”, but that Washington would take a look over the coming weeks and months with regard to North Korea.

En route to a potentially fractious G20 summit in Germany, Trump was due to take part in a gathering of leaders from central Europe, Baltic states and the Balkans, an event convened by Poland and Croatia to boost regional trade and infrastructure.

Trump said the United States strongly backed their “Three Seas” initiative.

(Writing by Kevin Liffey; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Can U.S. defend against North Korea missiles? Not everyone agrees

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspects the intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-14 in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang July 5, 2017. KCNA/via REUTERS

By Mike Stone

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Not everybody asserts as confidently as the Pentagon that the U.S. military can defend the United States from the growing threat posed by North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile capability.

Pyongyang’s first test on Tuesday of an ICBM with a potential to strike the state of Alaska has raised the question: How capable is the U.S. military of knocking down an incoming missile or barrage of missiles?

Briefing reporters on Wednesday, Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said: “We do have confidence in our ability to defend against the limited threat, the nascent threat that is there.”

Davis cited a successful test in May in which a U.S.-based missile interceptor knocked down a simulated incoming North Korean ICBM. But he acknowledged the test program’s track program was not perfect.

“It’s something we have mixed results on. But we also have an ability to shoot more than one interceptor,” Davis said.

An internal memo seen by Reuters also showed that the Pentagon upgraded its assessment of U.S. defenses after the May test.

Despite hundreds of billions of dollars spent on a multi-layered missile defense system, the United States may not be able to seal itself off entirely from a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile attack.

Experts caution that U.S. missile defenses are now geared to shooting down one, or perhaps a small number of basic, incoming missiles. Were North Korea’s technology and production to keep advancing, U.S. defenses could be overwhelmed unless they keep pace with the threat.

“Over the next four years, the United States has to increase its current capacity of our deployed systems, aggressively push for more and faster deployment,” said Riki Ellison, founder of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance.

MIXED RESULTS

The test records of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA), charged with the mission to develop, test and field a ballistic missile defense system, also show mixed results.

MDA systems have multiple layers and ranges and use sensors in space at sea and on land that altogether form a defense for different U.S. regions and territories.

One component, the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system (GMD), demonstrated a success rate just above 55 percent. A second component, the Aegis system deployed aboard U.S. Navy ships and on land, had about an 83 percent success rate, according to the agency.

A third, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, anti-missile system, has a 100 percent success rate in 13 tests conducted since 2006, according to the MDA.

Lockheed Martin Corp is the prime contractor for THAAD and Aegis. Boeing Co is the lead contractor for GMD.

Since President Ronald Reagan’s administration in the 1980s, the U.S. government has spent more than $200 billion to develop and field a range of ballistic missile defense systems ranging from satellite detection to the sea-based Aegis system, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Funding for MDA was on average $8.12 billion during President Barack Obama’s administration that ended on Jan. 20. President Donald Trump has requested $7.8 billion for fiscal year 2018.

‘ANOTHER YEAR OR TWO’

Last month, Vice Admiral James Syring, then director of the Missile Defense Agency, told a congressional panel that North Korean advancements in the past six months had caused him great concern.

U.S.-based missile expert John Schilling, a contributor to the Washington-based North Korea monitoring project 38 North said the pace of North Korea’s missile development was quicker than expected.

“However, it will probably require another year or two of development before this missile can reliably and accurately hit high-value continental U.S. targets, particularly if fired under wartime conditions,” he said.

Michael Elleman, a fellow for Missile Defence at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that although North Korea was several steps from creating a dependable ICBM, “There are absolutely no guarantees” the United States can protect itself.

In missile defense, “Even if it had a test record of 100 percent, there are no guarantees.”

(Reporting by Mike Stone; Additional reporting by Phil Stewart in Washington; Editing by Chris Sanders, Howard Goller and Peter Cooney)