Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Trump, Republicans face tricky task of averting U.S. government shutdown

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump's overview of the budget priorities for Fiscal Year 2018 are displayed at the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) on its release by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in Washington, U.S. on March 16, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo

By Richard Cowan and David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans who control Congress face their first major budget test next week, with the threat of a U.S. government shutdown potentially hinging on his proposed Mexican border wall as well as Obamacare funding.

With Republicans controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress, keeping the federal government operating is a basic test of their ability to govern, but their task could become even more complicated if they insist on using the spending legislation to bring about contentious policy changes.

Not only must Republicans overcome intraparty ideological divisions that stopped major healthcare legislation last month, but they will have to win over some opposition Democrats with provisions that could be distasteful to conservatives.

With the Senate reconvening on Monday and the House of Representatives on Tuesday after a two-week recess, lawmakers will have only four days to pass a spending package to keep the government open beyond April 28, when funding expires for numerous federal programs.

“I think we want to keep the government open,” Trump said on Thursday, adding he thinks Congress can pass the funding legislation and perhaps also a revamped healthcare bill.

Democratic support depends on what provisions Republicans demand in the bill. Democrats have signaled they would not cooperate if it contains money for one of Trump’s top priorities, a southwestern border wall intended to combat illegal immigration, or if it ends federal subsidies to help low-income people buy health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, which Republicans want to repeal.

Democrats also want federal funds maintained for Planned Parenthood, which many Republicans oppose because the women’s healthcare provider performs abortions. Another obstacle would be if Trump demands large defense spending increases coupled with deep cuts to domestic programs Democrats want to protect.

BALANCING ACT

Late on Thursday, leading House Democrats were voicing skepticism a deal could be reached by the deadline. In a telephone call for House Democrats, Representative Nita Lowey, the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said: “I don’t see how we can meet that deadline” and avoid having to pass a short-term extension, according to an aide on the call.

The second-ranking House Democrat, Representative Steny Hoyer, told his fellow Democrats that they should only support such a short-term measure if a deal on long-term bill is reached and only finishing touches remained, the aide said.

Republican leaders face a familiar balancing act: satisfying the party’s most conservative members while not alienating its moderates.

Rules in the 100-seat Senate mean Trump’s party also would need the support of at least eight Democrats even if the Republicans remain unified, giving the opposition party leverage. House Republican leaders would need some Democratic votes if the most conservative lawmakers object to the bill, as they did to the healthcare plan championed by Speaker Paul Ryan.

With congressional elections looming next year, Republicans acknowledge the stakes are high.

“Even our most recalcitrant members understand that if you shut down the government while you’re running it and you control the House and the Senate, you can’t blame anybody but yourself,” said Representative Tom Cole, a senior House Appropriations Committee Republican.

White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said the Trump administration was willing to talk to Democrats about funding for Obamacare subsidies in exchange for their agreement to include some Trump priorities such as the wall, the defense hike and more money for immigration enforcement.

“It is ripe for some type of negotiated agreement that gives the president some of his priorities and Democrats some of their priorities. So we think we’ve opened the door for that,” Mulvaney said.

Democrats reacted negatively.

“Everything had been moving smoothly until the administration moved in with a heavy hand. Not only are Democrats opposed to the wall, there is significant Republican opposition as well,” said Matt House, a spokesman for Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.

FURLOUGH ‘LADY LIBERTY?’

The government was last forced to close in October 2013, when Republican Senator Ted Cruz and some of the most conservative House Republicans engineered a 17-day shutdown in an unsuccessful quest to kill Democratic former President Barack Obama’s healthcare law.

“These kind of bills can’t pass without a reasonable number of the party of the minority in the Senate, and we are optimistic we will be able to work all that out,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said at the start of the spring recess.

A deal is needed because Congress was unable to approve funding for the entire 2017 fiscal year that ends in September and has relied on stop-gap spending legislation.

Congress has passed no major legislation since Trump took office in January, and he has ambitious hopes for major tax-cut legislation, infrastructure spending and other bills.

With the difficulty passing a bill with so many divisive elements, lawmakers next week might need to buy time by passing a short-term bill lasting possibly one to three weeks, maintaining current spending levels.

“That would be a setback: not catastrophic, but not a good thing, and a sign that you can’t govern,” Cole said.

A federal closure would shutter National Park Service destinations like the Statue of Liberty, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. Government medical research would be suspended. Thousands of federal workers would be furloughed with thousands more working without pay until the shutdown ends, including homeland security personnel. Some veterans benefits could be suspended.

Time would stand still in the U.S. Capitol with nobody on duty to wind the 200-year-old “Ohio Clock” just outside the Senate chamber.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan and David Morgan; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Will Dunham)

Trump to order U.S. Treasury to delve into taxes, post-crisis reforms

U.S. President Donald Trump holds a joint news conference in Washington, U.S., April 20, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein

By Lisa Lambert

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump will order the Treasury on Friday to find and reduce tax burdens and review post-financial crisis reforms that banks and insurance companies have said hinder their ability to do business.

A White House official said on Thursday that Trump will issue an executive order directing the Treasury on the tax issues. He will also issue two memoranda asking for reviews of two parts of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law – the Orderly Liquidation Authority that sets out how big banks can wind down during a crisis and the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), which is made up of the country’s top regulators.

The orders, which Trump will sign at the Treasury Department, next door to the White House, comes as the president works toward making good on a major campaign promise to lower taxes.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will review significant tax regulations issued in 2016 to determine if any impose an undue financial burden on American taxpayers, add undue complexity or exceed statutory authority, the official’s statement said.

Mnuchin said earlier on Thursday that Treasury is working on tax reform “day and night” and will soon create a sweeping overhaul.

Congress recently failed in efforts to make good another Trump campaign promise to reform healthcare.

House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said this week that the country’s first tax overhaul in decades may not be done until well into 2017. The review that Trump is ordering gives the administration a way to approach the issue independent of Congress.

The liquidation authority and the FSOC were both created as part of the Dodd-Frank law intended to prevent a repeat of the 2007-09 financial crisis, when the U.S. government injected billions of dollars in aid into failing banks to keep them from destroying the country’s economy.

In February Trump ordered a review of the law, saying he wanted to cut out much of it, and Mnuchin has said he would like to look into how the council, which he chairs, works.

House Republicans are also working to loosen Dodd-Frank regulations. Banks say the regulations have hurt their liquidity and created burdensome processes.

Trump will order an assessment of how the FSOC designates a financial institution as “systemically important,” which triggers requirements to hold more capital in case it comes into crisis.

Republican lawmakers say the FSOC uses a flawed process lacking transparency to designate non-bank institutions. Only two insurers, American International Group Inc and Prudential Financial Inc, currently carry the label, and a judge last year struck down the council’s designation of MetLife Inc.

Mnuchin will have 180 days to report to Trump on the liquidation authority, a tool for federal banking regulators to use if they need to step in during a financial emergency and help a failing bank unwind. The report will offer views on using bankruptcy as an alternative, the impact of failing companies on financial stability, and whether the authority could drive up taxpayer costs or encourage excessive risk-taking.

(Writing by Eric Beech and Lisa Lambert; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Leslie Adler)

Special Report: Thousands face lead hazards as Trump eyes budget cuts

MD Chowdhury sits in his living room with his wife, Nazneen Fatema, and daughters, Nafia, 2, and Nabiha (R), 7, during an interview about lead safety improvements made to their lead contaminated home in Buffalo, New York March 30, 2017. REUTERS/Lindsay DeDario

By M.B. Pell, Joshua Schneyer and Andy Sullivan

BUFFALO, New York (Reuters) – Laicie Manzella lived in a rundown house on Buffalo’s east side when three of her children tested with dangerously high levels of lead in their blood. Her oldest son suffered nosebleeds, body rashes and a developmental disorder requiring speech therapy.

Checking her apartment, county health inspectors found 15 lead violations, all linked to old paint in this blue collar city plagued by lead poisoning.

A Reuters investigation found at least four city zip codes here where 40 percent of children tested from 2006 to 2014 had high lead levels, making Buffalo among the most dangerous lead hotspots in America. The rate of high lead tests in these areas was far worse – eight times greater – than that found among children across Flint, Michigan, during that city’s recent water crisis.

Federal support has helped Manzella and other families in Buffalo and beyond. This month, her family moved into a gleaming, lead-free apartment renovated by a local nonprofit with funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

This type of assistance may not last much longer. President Donald Trump is advocating deep federal budget cuts that would sap billions from programs used by state and local governments to protect children from the lifelong health impacts of lead exposure.

“If they go and snatch these funds away, where are we going to get help from?” Manzella said.

It’s a question being asked in cities across the United States bracing for cuts in programs that identify and eradicate lead poisoning hazards. Awareness of lead poisoning escalated following Flint’s crisis, and more recently from Reuters reporting that has identified more than 3,300 areas with childhood lead poisoning rates at least double those found in the Michigan city.

Some of the areas slated to be hit hardest supported Trump in November’s election, though he lost Erie County, where Buffalo is the county seat.

At least eight of the nine federal agencies sharing responsibility for lead poisoning prevention face potential budget cuts. But the heaviest lifting falls to HUD, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Trump’s budget would cut at least $4.7 billion from programs at HUD and the EPA that support healthy housing and lead pollution cleanup efforts, a Reuters analysis found. Funding for a CDC program that assists states with poisoning prevention is uncertain.

Cuts would be felt across the country. The Trump administration would eliminate a $27 million program that trains private contractors on lead removal, and a $21 million program that funds lead abatement projects in Alaska, Illinois, Ohio, Oklahoma and California. It would kill a program that provided funds to a Rhode Island nonprofit to upgrade housing, and end a $970 million affordable-housing program that has fixed up dilapidated homes in hundreds of U.S. cities, including Flint.

If the cuts clear Congress, some experts fear the fight against lead could stall out for years.

“We are dooming future generations,” said Dr. Gale Burstein, health commissioner in Erie County. “Exposure to high lead levels causes brain damage to kids, learning disabilities and behavioral challenges.”

Instead of saving money, the cost of inaction could spiral, Burstein said. More children would be afflicted by learning disabilities and other neurological problems, leaving localities to foot the bill for treatment programs.

White House officials declined to comment.

Decades of lead abatement have sharply curbed childhood lead levels across the United States. But studies have shown no level of lead in the blood is safe, and poisoning persists in thousands of locales.

PINPOINTING HOTSPOTS

In December, Reuters used previously undisclosed data obtained from 21 states to pinpoint nearly 3,000 U.S. neighborhoods where poisoning rates among tested children were at least twice as high as in Flint.

Reporters have since obtained testing results covering eight additional states and expanded data from two more, including New York, Louisiana, New Jersey, Virginia, New Hampshire and California. The new data reveal another 449 neighborhoods with rates that high.

The communities stretch from affluent neighborhoods in the Los Angeles area to an impoverished quarter of Shreveport, Louisiana, to a rural town in Salem County, New Jersey, where Trump won 56 percent of the vote in November.

The data paints a partial picture. Reuters has not obtained neighborhood-level testing results for 21 states and the District of Columbia. These areas cited privacy concerns or said they do not have the data.

Still, the available results show the toxic metal remains a threat to millions of children.

Federal programs fund testing for children, cleanup of industrial lead hazards and poisoning-awareness efforts. Other programs require inspections or abatement in housing built before 1978, when lead was banned from residential paint.

The few planned funding increases under Trump may not be as beneficial as they appear. HUD’s Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control Program is slated to receive a $20 million boost, but the agency has proposed eliminating $4.1 billion worth of grant programs local officials say play a bigger role in reducing risks.

“I think you’re going to see more children, not fewer children, exposed to lead,” said Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat who has sought more funding for lead-abatement programs on the Senate subcommittee that funds HUD.

Congress, which controls federal spending, may not go along. A spokeswoman for Senator Susan Collins described lead-based hazards as “one of the most prevalent health issues facing children today.” She said the Maine Republican would use her position as head of the subcommittee that controls HUD’s budget to oppose cuts.

BUFFALO A HOTBED FOR LEAD

Buffalo has long fought a legacy of lead contamination. Blood data shows 17 city zip codes where the rate of tested children with high lead levels was at least double that of Flint – about 8,000 children over nine years.

“Nobody’s talking about Buffalo as ground zero for the lead problem, but when it comes to the levels of lead that’s been identified in children, it’s higher than what you see in Flint,” said Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz.

Buffalo’s problem stems from a simple equation: Old houses plus high poverty equal lead poisoning. Older homes are often blanketed with lead paint, and the water pipes and fixtures typically contain lead. In poorer neighborhoods, homes are frequently neglected, leading to exposure from peeling paint or dust. Fifty-eight percent of the city’s housing was built before 1940; nearly 40 percent of residents live below the poverty line.

Still, Buffalo and Erie County have made progress. In 2007, three city zip codes had 50 percent of tested children with high lead levels. By 2014, the prevalence in those zip codes dropped to an improved, but still worrisome, 30 percent.

Progress came thanks to millions of dollars in federal assistance flowing to local programs.

From 2012 through 2016, Buffalo was granted $27.7 million from the now-threatened HUD HOME Investment and Partnerships Program. HUD’s blessing brought far greater resources to bear, with city, county and nonprofits using the grant to attract another $200 million to revitalize or replace 1,125 housing units, making them all lead-safe.

Among those helped: The Chowdhurys, a family of five who moved to the east side of Buffalo in 2010, settling in a neighborhood with one of the highest lead poisoning rates in the country.

Within two months, their one-year-old daughter, Nabiha, was found to have a lead level about twice that of the elevated threshold set by the CDC, five micrograms per deciliter. Any child at or above CDC’s threshold warrants a public health response, the agency says.

MD Chowdhury, a restaurant waiter, and his wife, Nazneen Fatema, didn’t know how their daughter was poisoned or how to help her, but Buffalo and Erie County did.

Local officials dispatched housing inspectors, nurses and contractors to identify and repair the lead hazards in the family’s home. Replacing the lead-paint coated windows and siding and installing a new roof cost about $40,000. Federal grant programs footed the bill.

Erie County’s Health Department receives $244,000 a year from the CDC to help fund five full-time employees and three part-time employees who refer at-risk children for testing, investigate the causes of lead poisoning and conduct educational home visits. Those staffers helped the family.

Chowdhury also took EPA-funded classes on how to safely remove lead-based-paint so he could do additional work himself.

Two years ago, the couple had another daughter. She has never tested high.

“Without these programs, it’s hard to know about lead, and my income is not enough to do all of the work we needed,” Chowdhury said.

Trump’s budget proposal would kill much of the funding that helped the family through its ordeal.

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said the case illustrates the larger peril of potential funding cuts. “There would be people who would fall through the cracks,” he said.

CARSON’S MIXED MESSAGE

While working as a pediatric neurosurgeon in Baltimore, Dr. Benjamin Carson saw the irreversible damage lead can cause in the brains of children living in substandard housing.

At his confirmation hearing in February to serve as Trump’s secretary of HUD, Carson told the Senate Banking Committee he would be “vigorous” in his efforts to reduce the tally of hundreds of thousands of poisoned children across the country.

“I’m looking forward to, you know, the Safe and Healthy Homes Program at HUD and enhancing that program very significantly,” Carson said.

But even Carson’s requested $20 million increase for HUD’s lead removal program falls short of the $29 million his agency says is needed to comply with a new policy that requires lead remediation of HUD properties where children have tested above the CDC threshold.

Other housing programs that play a bigger, if more indirect, role in protecting children’s health would be eliminated altogether.

Among them: the $125 million Choice Neighborhoods program, which provided funding to remove lead paint from New Orleans’ aging Iberville housing project, and the $970 million HOME Partnerships program, which helped the Chowdhurys clean up their house in Buffalo.

The biggest casualty could be HUD’s $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program.

Local officials use CDBG grants to fund projects from curb construction to rehabilitating old housing, with only a small portion, $10 million, directly used for lead safety standards in the most recent fiscal year.

But CDGB is crucial to poisoning prevention, since housing-related projects it helps are required to meet HUD guidelines for lead safety, said Marion McFadden, who oversaw HUD’s grant programs under President Barack Obama.

“If (cuts are) enacted, it would be a huge step backward,” McFadden said.

CDBG funds went toward lead-paint removal in cities including Milwaukee, Syracuse and Shreveport, Louisiana. All three had neighborhoods with documented lead poisoning rates at least twice Flint’s.

BUDGET CUTS IN AMISH COUNTRY

Health officials in the small city of York, Pennsylvania, two hours west of Philadelphia in Amish country, know how budget cuts like this can play out.

The city and surrounding York County, where Trump won 70 percent of the vote in November, have a serious lead poisoning problem. From 2005 through 2014, at least 30 percent of children tested in all but one of York’s census tracts had elevated lead exposure, according to CDC data. In one census tract, more than half of all tested children had high lead levels.

Trump lost the city of York, but other patches of the county hit hard by lead poisoning, including the borough of Red Lion, where 21 percent of children tested had high levels, overwhelmingly supported him.

In the mid 1990s, York had seven full-time and part-time employees working in the city’s lead prevention program who conducted screening and investigated lead exposure sources. Since then, CDC cuts have left the program with one part-time employee and no ability to conduct screening.

The results are telling. In 2005, 1,641 city children were screened for lead. In 2014, 169 kids received a lead test.

Trump’s plan to eliminate the $375,000 in Home Partnership funds the city uses to develop lead-safe housing would have dire consequences, said James Crosby, deputy director of the city’s Bureau of Housing Services.

“It would mean we would be out of business,” Crosby said. “If he eliminates the home program, we would have absolutely nothing.”

A HUD spokesman declined to comment on the impact the cuts would have. “HUD will continue to work very closely with state and local health and housing officials through targeted investments in specific programs to reduce childhood lead poisoning,” he said.

CUTS AT THE EPA

A similar pattern is emerging at the EPA, where Administrator Scott Pruitt is highlighting some lead remediation efforts while pushing to gut funding to enforce pollution laws and clean up contaminated sites.

During the confirmation process, Pruitt told lawmakers he would work to reduce exposure to lead. On Wednesday he visited East Chicago, Indiana, where the EPA has secured $42 million from chemical companies to remove contaminated soil from neighborhoods near a former lead-smelting plant. In one neighborhood, up to 20 percent of tested children had elevated lead-blood levels.

Trump’s budget proposal would preserve funding for the EPA program that helps cities like Flint buy new water pipes.

But Pruitt would slash other federal efforts, including a one-third cut of EPA’s Superfund and Brownfield programs, leaving hundreds of millions of dollars less to clean up areas contaminated by lead mining in southeast Missouri, tainted yards and parks in Omaha and old school buildings on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota.

Pruitt would also eliminate a $27 million program that trains private contractors on safe lead removal from buildings, internal documents show.

An EPA spokesman said the agency is weighing strategies to save taxpayers money while protecting the environment. “We’re trying to restore some accountability to these and other programs so that we can examine what has worked – and most especially, what hasn’t,” wrote spokesman J.P. Freire.

Funding levels for the CDC, which spent $17 million last year through the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention program to help state and local governments, have been the subject of great uncertainty.

Earlier this year Trump lobbied for a Republican health-care bill that would have repealed the Affordable Care Act. In the process, the bill would have eliminated the pool of public-health money that funds the CDC’s lead program. In March, the bill collapsed in the House of Representatives.

Last week, a White House official told Reuters the administration intends to keep funds flowing to the CDC program. By Monday, however, the official had backed away from that commitment and said the program’s fate is uncertain until the administration produces a more detailed budget proposal in May.

The last round of cuts to the CDC’s lead budget in 2011 slashed assistance to many state poisoning prevention programs.

Those cuts were a reason why Flint’s problems didn’t come to light sooner, said Mary Jean Brown, a public health specialist at Harvard University who directed CDC’s lead program at the time. Without the CDC lead program, Michigan conducted less monitoring of childhood blood levels from 2011 to 2014, and stopped reporting test results to the CDC.

This created “a big gap in data,” Brown said, contributing to Flint’s crisis going unchecked or being ignored by Michigan officials until a pediatrician, scientists and activists presented proof children had been sickened.

(Editing by Ronnie Greene)

Turkey’s Erdogan to meet U.S. President Trump on May 16-17

FILE PHOTO: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a news conference in Istanbul, Turkey, late April 16, 2017. REUTERS/Murad Sezer/File Photo

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday he would meet his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump in Washington on May 16-17, in their first meeting since Trump took office in January.

Ties between the United States and Turkey have deteriorated sharply since a failed military coup in July and disagreements over U.S. support for a Kurdish militia group fighting Islamic State in Syria. Turkey sees the group as an extension of the outlawed PKK, which has waged a three-decade insurgency for Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey.

Ankara is also pressing for the extradition of Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric living in the United States who is accused by Erdogan of engineering the failed coup.

However, Erdogan sees prospects for improvement in ties between the NATO allies under Trump. The two leaders have talked on the telephone three times since Trump took office in late January, including a call on Monday after Erdogan secured a narrow win in a referendum on constitutional changes to give the president sweeping new powers.

Speaking in an interview with broadcaster A Haber, Erdogan said challenging the results of the referendum was beyond the remit of Turkey’s Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights, after Turkey’s main opposition vowed to take legal action against what it said were irregularities.

“This is nothing but an attempt to make an election with 86 percent participation into a controversial matter,” he said.

Under the changes, the president will appoint the cabinet and vice-presidents and select and remove senior civil servants without parliamentary approval. Erdogan will also be allowed to reassume leadership in the AK Party he co-founded, where under the existing order he is nominally committed to party neutrality.

(Reporting by Ece Toksabay and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Isabel Coles)

Last stand: Nebraska farmers could derail Keystone XL pipeline

Art and Helen Tanderup are against the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline that would cut through the farm where they live near Neligh, Nebraska, U.S. April 12, 2017. REUTERS/Lane Hickenbottom

By Valerie Volcovici

Neligh, NEBRASKA (Reuters) – When President Donald Trump handed TransCanada Pipeline Co. a permit for its Keystone XL pipeline last month, he said the company could now build the long-delayed and divisive project “with efficiency and with speed.”

But Trump and the firm will have to get through Nebraska farmer Art Tanderup first, along with about 90 other landowners in the path of the pipeline.

They are mostly farmers and ranchers, making a last stand against the pipeline – the fate of which now rests with an obscure state regulatory board, the Nebraska Public Service Commission.

The group is fine-tuning an economic argument it hopes will resonate better in this politically conservative state than the environmental concerns that dominated the successful push to block Keystone under former President Barack Obama.

Backed by conservation groups, the Nebraska opponents plan to cast the project as a threat to prime farming and grazing lands – vital to Nebraska’s economy – and a foreign company’s attempt to seize American private property.

They contend the pipeline will provide mainly temporary jobs that will vanish once construction ends, and limited tax revenues that will decline over time.

They face a considerable challenge. Supporters of the pipeline as economic development include Republican Governor, Pete Ricketts, most of the state’s senators, its labor unions and chamber of commerce.

“It’s depressing to start again after Obama rejected the pipeline two years ago, but we need keep our coalition energized and strong,” said Tanderup, who grows rye, corn and soybeans on his 160-acre property.

Now Tanderup and others are gearing up for another round of battle – on a decidedly more local stage, but with potentially international impact on energy firms and consumers.

The latest Keystone XL showdown underscores the increasingly well-organized and diverse resistance to pipelines nationwide, which now stretches well beyond the environmental movement.

Last year, North Dakota’s Standing Rock Sioux, a Native American tribe, galvanized national opposition to the Energy Transfer Partners Dakota Access Pipeline. Another ETP pipeline in Louisiana has drawn protests from flood protection advocates and commercial fishermen.

The Keystone XL pipeline would cut through Tanderup’s family farm, near the two-story farmhouse built in the 1920s by his wife Helen’s grandfather.

The Tanderups have plastered the walls with aerial photos of three “#NoKXL” crop art installations they staged from 2014 to 2016. Faded signs around the farm still advertise the concert Willie Nelson and Neil Young played here in 2014 to raise money for the protests.

The stakes for the energy industry are high as the Keystone XL combatants focus on Nebraska, especially for Canadian producers that have struggled for decades to move more of that nation’s landlocked oil reserves to market. Keystone offers a path to get heavy crude from the Canada oil sands to refiners on the U.S. Gulf Coast equipped to handle it.

TransCanada has route approval in all of the U.S. states the line will cross except Nebraska, where the company says it has been unable to negotiate easements with landowners on about 9 percent of the 300-mile crossing.

So the dispute now falls to Nebraska’s five-member utility commission, an elected board with independent authority over TransCanada’s proposed route.

The commission has scheduled a public hearing in May, along with a week of testimony by pipeline supporters and opponents in August. Members face a deadline set by state law to take a vote by November.

“TENS OF THOUSANDS” OF JOBS

TransCanada has said on its website that the pipeline would create “tens of thousands” of jobs and tens of millions in tax dollars for the three states it would cross – Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska.

TransCanada declined to comment in response to Reuters inquiries seeking a more precise number and description of the jobs, including the proportion of them that are temporary – for construction – versus permanent.

Trump has been more specific, saying the project would create 28,000 U.S. jobs. But a 2014 State Department study predicted just 3,900 construction jobs and 35 permanent jobs.

Asked about the discrepancy, White House spokeswoman Kelly Love did not explain where Trump came up with his 28,000 figure, but pointed out that the State Department study also estimates that the pipeline would indirectly create thousands of additional jobs.

The study indicates those jobs would be temporary, including some 16,100 at firms with contracts for goods and services during construction, and another 26,000, depending on how workers from the original jobs spend their wages.

TransCanada estimates that state taxes on the pipeline and pumping stations would total $55.6 million across the three states during the first year.

The firm will pay property taxes on the pumping stations along the route, but not the land. It would pay a different – and lower – “personal property” tax on the pipeline itself, said Brian Jorde, a partner in the Omaha-based law firm Domina Law Group, which represents the opposition.

The personal property taxes, he said, would decline over a seven-year period and eventually disappear.

TRUMP: ‘I’ll CALL NEBRASKA’

The Nebraska utilities commission faces tremendous political pressure from well beyond the state it regulates.

“The commissioners know it is game time, and everybody is looking,” said Jane Kleeb, Nebraska’s Democratic party chair and head of the conservation group Bold Alliance, which is coordinating resistance from the landowners, Native American tribes and environmental groups.

The alliance plans to target the commissioners and their electoral districts with town halls, letter-writing campaigns, and billboards.

During the televised ceremony where Trump awarded the federal permit for the pipeline, he promised to weigh in on the Nebraska debate.

“Nebraska? I’ll call Nebraska,” he said after TransCanada Chief Executive Russell Girling said the company faced opposition there.

Love, the White House spokeswoman, said she did not know if Trump had called Nebraska officials.

The commission members – one Democrat and four Republicans – have ties to a wide range of conflicting interests in the debate, making it difficult to predict their decision.

According to state filings, one of the commissioners, Democrat Crystal Rhoades, is a member of the Sierra Club – an environmental group opposing the pipeline.

Another, Republican Rod Johnson, has a long history of campaign donations from oil and gas firms.

The others are Republicans with ties to the farming and ranching sectors – including one member that raises cattle in an area near where the pipeline would cross.

All five members declined requests for comment.

PREPPING THE WITNESSES

TransCanada has been trying since 2008 to build the 1,100-mile line – from Hardisty, Alberta to Steele City, Nebraska, where it would connect to a network feeding the Midwest and Gulf Coast refining regions. The firm had its federal permit application rejected in 2015 by the Obama administration.

Opponents want the pipeline, if not rejected outright, to be re-routed well away from Nebraska’s Sandhills region, named for its sandy soil, which overlies one of the largest freshwater aquifers in the United States.

The Ogallala aquifer supplies large-scale crop irrigation and cattle-watering operations.

“It all comes down to water,” said Terry Steskal, whose family farm lies in the pipeline’s path.

Steskal dug his boot into the ground on his property, kicking up sand to demonstrate his biggest concern about the pipeline. If the pipeline leaks, oil can easily seep through the region’s porous soil into the water, which lies near the surface.

TransCanada spokesman Terry Cunha said the company has a good environmental record with its existing Keystone pipeline network in Nebraska, which runs east of the proposed Keystone XL.

The company, however, has reported at least two big pipeline spills in other states since 2011, including some 400 barrels of oil spilled in South Dakota last year.

The Domina Law Group is helping the opposition by preparing the landowners, including the Tanderups and Steskals, for the August hearings, much as they would prepare witnesses for trial.

If the route is approved, Jorde said the firm plans to file legal challenges, potentially challenging TransCanada’s right to use eminent domain law to seize property.

Eminent domain allows for the government to expropriate private land in the public interest. But Jorde said he thinks TransCanada would struggle to meet that threshold in Nebraska.

“Some temporary jobs and some taxes is not enough to win the public interest argument,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Ethan Lou in Calgary; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Brian Thevenot)

Trump extends program allowing some veterans to use local doctors, hospitals

U.S. President Donald Trump smiles after signing S.544, the Veterans Choice Program Extension and Improvement Act, at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 19, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

By Lisa Lambert

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Wednesday moved a step closer to fulfilling his campaign promise to reform the troubled Veterans Affairs department, but some veterans groups are concerned that the administration may be working toward privatizing their healthcare.

Trump signed a law extending the pilot “Veterans Choice” program, which allows some veterans to receive healthcare from local doctors and hospitals closer to their homes than the VA’s 150 hospitals and nearly 1,000 outpatient clinics. The law eases procedures for reimbursing private providers and creates a system for sharing medical records with them.

“This new law is a good start, but there is still much work to do,” Trump said at a signing ceremony attended by VA Secretary David Shulkin and Florida Governor Rick Scott.  “We will fight each and every day to deliver the long-awaited reforms our veterans deserve.”

Trump pledged to hold a news conference next week on “all of the tremendous things that are happening at the VA and what we’ve done in terms of progress and achievement.”

Reforming the agency, rocked by a waiting-time scandal in 2014, was one of Trump’s most-repeated campaign trail promises. He has frequently suggested having the government pay outside physicians to provide veteran healthcare.

During his confirmation hearings, Shulkin said he supported overhauling the agency but did not believe in privatizing it. Still, on Tuesday the VA announced it was seeking cutting-edge treatments from the healthcare industry for brain injuries, mental health problems and chronic pain.

Extension of the “Veterans Choice” program could worry Democrats and other critics that Trump and Shulkin are inching toward sending some of the $65.6 billion the department spends annually on medical care to corporations and private businesses.

Conservatives calling for privatization say the VA provides medical services to only about 45 percent of veterans, and they point to delays and inefficiencies dogging the current system.

Some veterans groups and Democrats have warned against moving funds away from healthcare providers with expertise in injuries and illnesses unique to serving in the armed forces.

In a March report, the Government Accountability Office said veterans in the Choice program still face long wait times, mostly because cases must be referred to private contractors for scheduling.

Last year a congressionally mandated panel of experts found the Choice program was inefficient, but recommended establishing a community-based healthcare system that would include private doctors.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by David Gregorio)

White House sidewalk to be closed to public permanently

Tourists take selfies by the original South Lawn security fencing at the White House in Washington May 28, 2015. REUTERS/Gary Cameron

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Secret Service said it would end public access to a sidewalk along the south fence of the White House beginning on Wednesday night.

The sidewalk has been closed nightly from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. since 2015 and will now be off-limits around the clock, the Secret Service said in a statement.

The closure will “lessen the possibility of individuals illegally accessing the White House grounds,” Secret Service Communications Director Cathy Milhoan said.

In March, a man scaled a fence east of the White House at night and was on the property’s grounds for 16 minutes before being detained. He never entered the White House, the Secret Service said.

President Donald Trump was inside the residence at the time of the March 10 incident.

The intrusion was the latest in a series of breaches at the White House in recent years. Security has been boosted, including the installation in 2015 of sharp spikes on top of the black iron fence that circles the 18-acre (7-hectare) property.

Blocking use of the south fence sidewalk will not obstruct the public’s ability to view or photograph the White House and its grounds, the Secret Service said, adding no additional “physical” barriers would be installed.

The same restrictions are in place on the north fence of the White House grounds, according to the Secret Service.

(Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Asylum seekers crossing into Canada increase with warmer weather

A family that says they are from Colombia walks down Roxham Road toward the U.S.-Canada border leading into Hemmingford, Quebec, Canada March 26, 2017. REUTERS/Christinne Muschi

(Reuters) – Canadian authorities caught 887 asylum seekers crossing unlawfully into Canada from the United States in March, nearly triple the number in January, according to numbers released by the government Wednesday.

This brings the total number of asylum seekers caught walking across the border to 1,860 so far this year. The new statistics suggest those numbers could rise further as the weather warms.

Canada is on track to see the highest number of asylum claims in six years, given the pace of claims filed so far, as increasing numbers of people cross into Canada to make refugee claims in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s election and his crackdown on refugees and illegal immigrants.

Under the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement, Canada is required to turn asylum seekers away if they try to file refugee claims at land border crossings. But if people cross the border in between formal crossings, they are taken into custody and questioned by both police and border authorities, then allowed to file claims and stay in Canada while they await the outcome.

Refugee advocates have argued that were it not for the Safe Third Country Agreement, people would file claims at border crossings instead.

The people caught crossing unlawfully comprise a fifth of everyone who has filed asylum claims in Canada so far this year but they loom large in Canadian politics, with the federal government taking fire for its wait-and-see approach. Nearly half of the people surveyed in a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released in March wanted to deport people illegally crossing into Canada from its southern neighbor.

“The majority of irregular migrants are holders of visas for the United States,” according to a statement released Wednesday from the office of Canada’s Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale.

“Canadian authorities are managing the increase in asylum seekers in a sound and measured way. … To be clear – trying to slip across the border in an irregular manner is not a ‘free’ ticket to Canada.”

Almost three-quarters of the asylum seekers caught crossing so far this year were taken into custody in Quebec, the government data showed. Roxham Road, which straddles Champlain, New York and Hemmingford, Quebec, has become such a common spot that photographers cluster there and would-be refugees refer to it by name.

Most of the others were taken into custody in Manitoba and British Columbia – 331 and 201, respectively.

Police said Wednesday they have charged 43-year-old Michelle Omoruyi with human smuggling and conspiracy to commit human smuggling. Police allege they found Omoruyi driving nine west African asylum seekers across the U.S. border into the prairie province of Saskatchewan Friday night. The nine asylum seekers have filed refugee claims and are not in custody.

(Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny; editing by Diane Craft)

U.S. says Iran complies with nuke deal but orders review on lifting sanctions

A staff member removes the Iranian flag from the stage after a group picture with foreign ministers and representatives of the U.S., Iran, China, Russia, Britain, Germany, France and the European Union during the Iran nuclear talks in Vienna, July 2015. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

By Lesley Wroughton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration said on Tuesday it was launching an inter-agency review of whether the lifting of sanctions against Iran was in the United States’ national security interests, while acknowledging that Tehran was complying with a deal to rein in its nuclear program.

In a letter to U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, the top Republican in Congress, on Tuesday U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Iran remained compliant with the 2015 deal, but said there were concerns about its role as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Under the deal, the State Department must notify Congress every 90 days on Iran’s compliance under the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). It is the first such notification under U.S. President Donald Trump.

“The U.S. Department of State certified to U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan today that Iran is compliant through April 18 with its commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” Tillerson said in a statement.

“President Donald J. Trump has directed a National Security Council-led interagency review of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that will evaluate whether suspension of sanctions related to Iran pursuant to the JCPOA is vital to the national security interests of the United States,” Tillerson added.

He did not say how long the review would take but said in the letter to Ryan that the administration looked forward to working with Congress on the issue.

During his presidential campaign, Trump called the agreement “the worst deal ever negotiated,” raising questions over whether he would rip up the agreement once he took office.

The historic deal between Iran and six major powers restricts Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of international oil and financial sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Iran denies ever having considered developing atomic weapons although nuclear experts have warned that any U.S. violation of the nuclear deal would allow Iran also to pull back from its commitments to curb nuclear development.

Those commitments include reducing the number of its centrifuges by two-thirds, capping its level of uranium enrichment well below the level needed for bomb-grade material, reducing its enriched uranium stockpile from around 10,000 kg to 300 kg for 15 years, and submitting to international inspections to verify its compliance.

Last month Trump’s Defense Secretary James Mattis said Iran continued to behave as an exporter of terrorism and still sponsors militant activity.

The United States has long accused Iran of being the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism, saying Tehran supported conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and backed groups such as Hezbollah, its Lebanon-based ally.

(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Marines’ commander in Australia says U.S. remains committed to Asia pivot

U.S. Marines commander Lieutenant Colonel Brian Middleton (R) shakes hands with Australian Army Brigadier Ken James after arriving for the sixth annual Marines' deployment at Darwin in northern Australia, April 18, 2017. REUTERS/Tom Westbrook

By Tom Westbrook

DARWIN (Reuters) – U.S. Marines deployed to Australia’s northern city of Darwin reflect President Donald Trump’s continued commitment to a security “pivot” to Asia at a time of heightened tensions, the Marines’ commander said on Wednesday.

Some 1,250 Marines began arriving in Darwin by plane on Tuesday for joint training maneuvers under a 25-year program started by former U.S. President Barack Obama in 2011 as a part of his “pivot” to Asia policy.

Trump’s early rhetoric demanding Asian allies carry a fair share of the security burden in the region had seen a cloud over the U.S military “pivot”, but he has since committed to defend Asian allies in the face of recent North Korean threats.

“The deployment of a Marine Air Ground Taskforce to Australia certainly continues to communicate a sustained commitment to the region, I believe that’s why we continue to see the growth and the evolution of the (taskforce),” Marines’ commander Lieutenant Colonel Brian Middleton told Reuters in an interview in Darwin.

“I’m well aware of all the tensions, certainly, there’s no lack of activity and things to keep either Australian or American attention in the Pacific area of influence here.”

The strength of this year’s contingent lags well behind the initial plan to reach 2,500 Marines this year, but Middleton said the aim remains to grow the force.

“I think at the right time when our interoperability gets to the point that it needs to, and when both countries agree to it, we’ll continue to proceed and eventually get to the 2,500,” Middleton said.

Australia is a staunch U.S. ally which sent troops to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as alongside Americans in wars in Vietnam and Korea.

The 13 aircraft sent with the Marines is the largest U.S. aircraft detachment sent to Australia in peacetime history, with four tilt-rotor MV-22 Ospreys, expanding the Marines’ range to 850 nautical miles, which from their base at Australia’s Robertson Barracks includes most of eastern Indonesia.

Middleton has no plans to visit Indonesia and said his mission was mainly training inside Australia to “contribute to stability in the region and make both the Marine Corps, the United States and Australia better postured to be able to respond to crises whether or not they be natural or unnatural.”

During the Marines six-month deployment training exercises with Australian, Japanese and Chinese troops are scheduled.

(Reporting by Tom Westbrook; Editing by Michael Perry)