Despite saying days earlier that North Korea was no longer a nuclear threat, Trump – with no fanfare whatsoever – signed an executive order on Friday and extended for one year the so-called “national emergency” with respect to the nuclear-armed nation, re-authorizing economic restrictions against it. Nine days after Trump tweeted: “There is no longer…
Hours after President Trump suggested on Twitter on Wednesday morning that he is uninterested in using diplomacy to ease tensions with North Korea, his own defense secretary rebuked him. “The U.S. has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money, for 25 year,” the president tweeted. “Talking is not the answer!” In direct…
The U.S. is planning to send almost 4,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, according to a Trump administration official. Defense Secretary James Mattis could announce the deployment—the largest so far under President Donald Trump—as early as next week. The military’s top commander in Afghanistan has said he needs more forces to fight a reinvigorated Taliban insurgency…
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Tuesday seemingly argued that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is worse than Adolf Hitler. “You had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons,” Spicer said, comparing last week’s chemical weapon attack in Syria that killed dozens to Hitler’s poison gas chambers, which killed…
Speaking to reporters a week before his scheduled trip to Moscow, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Wednesday there is “no doubt in our mind” that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government is behind a chemical attack that killed dozens of Syrians on Tuesday, and “it’s time that the Russians really need to think carefully about…
Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, made an unannounced trip to Iraq over the weekend with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Joseph Dunford, a senior U.S. official said Sunday. The official said that Kushner wanted to show his support for Iraq’s government, and get a better understanding of…
Following pressure from the Pentagon and State Department, President Trump’s next executive order on immigration will take Iraq off the list of countries whose citizens are temporarily barred from entering the United States, several U.S. officials told The Associated Press. The officials said that Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen will stay on the…
President Trump’s nominee for U.S. commerce secretary won Senate confirmation on Monday, paving the way for work to begin on renegotiating trade deals with China and Mexico. Billionaire Wilbur Ross was confirmed with a Senate vote of 72-27, with support from 19 Democrats. Ross will now be at the helm of an agency with over…
Robert Harward confirmed Thursday night he did not accept President Trump’s offer to become the next national security adviser. Harward, a retired vice admiral who once served as deputy commander of U.S. Central Command and is now a senior executive at Lockheed Martin, told The Associated Press it was “purely a personal issue. I’m in…
President Trump is preparing a sweeping executive order that would clear the way for the C.I.A. to reopen overseas “black site” prisons, like those where it detained and tortured terrorism suspects before former President Barack Obama shut them down. President Trump’s three-page draft order, titled “Detention and Interrogation of Enemy Combatants” and obtained by The…
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen retired Marine Gen. James Mattis to be his secretary of defense, he confirmed during a rally Thursday in Ohio. Mattis is respected in the field and has a reputation for strong, aggressive thinking, and like Trump favors a more adversarial stance against potential enemies abroad. Mattis retired in early 2013…
