https://twitter.com/45_Schedule/status/1120868894443491329
POTUS_Schedule
@45_Schedule
Daily Public Schedule for April 24, 2019:
10:40AM POTUS & FLOTUS depart the White House en route to Joint Base Andrews.
11:00AM POTUS & FLOTUS depart Washington, D.C., en route to Atlanta, GA.
1:15PM POTUS & FLOTUS deliver remarks at the Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit.
2:40PM POTUS & FLOTUS depart Atlanta, GA, en route to Washington, D.C.
4:25PM POTUS & FLOTUS arrive at the White House.
Supreme Court conservatives appear ready to OK Trump’s census citizenship question
By David G. Savage
Apr 23, 2019 | 1:50 PM
| Washington
The Supreme Court’s conservative justices appeared ready on Tuesday to uphold the Trump administration’s plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census and deal a defeat to California and other states with large numbers of immigrants.
It is a politically charged dispute over how to conduct the once-a-decade count of the U.S. population, and the justices sounded sharply split along familiar ideological lines.
The five conservatives, all of whom are Republican appointees, expressed support for the administration plan.
The law “gives huge discretion to the Secretary [of Commerce Wilbur Ross] on what to put on the form,” said Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. Agreeing with Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, he said history and international practice are on the side of the administration. Through most of American history, the census asked all or some households about the citizenship of their residents, he said, and most leading countries in the world do the same.
The four liberals, all Democratic appointees, were even more vehement in describing the citizenship question as a scheme hatched by Trump’s advisors to drive down the population count in the states and cities that favor Democrats.
None of the justices sounded torn or uncertain. By the argument’s end, it appeared the high court would hand down a 5-4 ruling for the Trump administration, probably in late June.
Debates over the census are usually reserved for demographers and statisticians, but the dispute over the citizenship question is one of high politics.
Lawyers for California and other blue states with large numbers of immigrants fear that millions of households will refuse to fill out the census forms if the citizen question is included out of concern that the confidential information will be shared with immigration agents.
The states worry a potential undercount will cost them billions of dollars in federal funds as well as political clout.
Seats in the House of Representatives and in state legislatures are allocated based on census data. And the Constitution calls for “the actual Enumeration” of the population and says “representatives shall be apportioned … counting the whole number of persons in each state.” This has been understood to mean that all residents are counted, regardless of whether they are citizens.
Ross said he shared the goal of “obtaining complete and accurate data” on the U.S. population. But he announced last year that he had overruled census experts and decided to add a citizenship question for all households for the first time since 1950. Since 1960, the government has used separate surveys or a “long form” census given to a sample to gather data on the growing population of foreign-born residents and naturalized citizens.
Ross said he chose to add the new question to improve compliance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But lawyers and judges scoffed at this explanation as far-fetched. Federal attorneys have enforced the Voting Rights Act for more than 50 years without needing block-by-block data on the citizenship of the residents, they said.
During Tuesday’s argument, Justice Elena Kagan called the administration’s arguments “contrived.” Before making a major change that could affect millions of people for a decade, a top official needs to give an explanation, she said. “I searched the record, and I don’t see any reason,” she said.
The tenor of Tuesday’s argument was similar to last year’s dispute over Trump’s travel ban, which barred most visitors and immigrants from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. Democratic attorneys general on the West Coast and East Coast went to court and won rulings blocking the president’s order as exceeding his authority and discriminating unconstitutionally based on religion.
However those arguments fell flat in the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. spoke for a 5-4 majority to rule that Trump’s order was well with the president’s power under the immigration laws.
So far, the dispute over the citizenship question has followed a similar path. The attorneys general of New York, California and Maryland went to court and argued Ross’ order violated federal administrative law because it conflicted with the advice of census experts inside and outside the government. They won rulings from district judges in New York, San Francisco and Maryland, all of whom were Obama appointees.
U.S. Solicitor Gen. Noel Francisco took the issue directly to the Supreme Court. The justices agreed to bypass the appellate courts and hear the case now because the government plans to begin printing census forms in the summer.
Leaders of several progressive groups warned that conservative justices were risking the reputation of the high court as well as the accuracy of the census.
“Nothing less than the integrity of the Supreme Court is on the line for Chief Justice Roberts,” said Elizabeth Wydra, president of the Constitutional Accountability Center. “The record is replete with evidence of Secretary Ross’ mendacity in engineering this bogus question intended to skew the census’ constitutionally mandated count. For the Roberts court to uphold this effort would do lasting damage to the apolitical status and perception of the court that the chief justice says he wants to protect.”
If next year’s census asks about citizenship, California officials have said they will spend heavily on a promotion campaign to encourage all residents to fill out the census forms. They hope to reassure those who are not citizens that census data is kept confidential by law.
Lawyers said Tuesday that nation is believed to have about 22 million noncitizens. About half of them are legal residents and the rest are here illegally.
Census experts predicted that 6.5 million or more people will go uncounted if the citizenship question is added. In the trial in San Francisco, some experts predicted California would suffer the most because more than one-fourth its households include one or more noncitizens.
It is also possible the citizenship data could lead to a major political realignment in Republican-led states like Texas and Florida. Four years ago, the court debated but did not finally decide whether states could choose to draw the electoral districts for their states and county boards based on the count of voting-age citizens, not the whole population. Political experts say this would shift power toward older white and conservative communities — which often vote Republican — and away from communities with more immigrants.
Migrants fearful after hundreds arrested in Mexico raid
Bymark stevenson and sonia pérez d., associated press
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/migrants-anxious-mexican-authorities-raid-caravan-62567042
TONALA, Mexico — Apr 23, 2019, 11:14 PM ET
Central American migrants traveling through southern Mexico toward the U.S. on Tuesday fearfully recalled their frantic escape from police the previous day, scuttling under barbed wire fences into pastures and then spending the night in the woods after hundreds were detained in a raid.
In the Chiapas state town of Tonala, migrants flocked to one of the few places they felt they could be safe — the local Roman Catholic church — only to start with fear at the sound of a passing ambulance's siren.
"There are people still lost up in the woods. The woods are very dangerous," said Arturo Hernández, a sinewy 59-year-old farmer from Comayagua, Honduras, who fled through the woods with his grandson. "They waited until we were resting and fell upon us, grabbing children and women."
Mexican immigration authorities said 371 people were detained Monday in what was the largest single raid so far on a migrant caravan since the groups started moving through the country last year.
The once large caravan of about 3,000 people was essentially broken up by the raid, as migrants fled into the hills, took refuge at shelters and churches or hopped passing freight trains. A brave few groups straggled along the highways, but with dozens of police and immigration checkpoints, they were bound to be caught.
Journalists from The Associated Press saw police target isolated groups at the tail end of the caravan near Pijijiapan Monday, wrestling migrants into police vehicles for transport and presumably deportation as children wailed.
Now terrified of walking exposed on the highways, some turned in desperation to a tactic that used to be a popular way north, clambering aboard a passing freight train bound for the neighboring state of Tabasco. It's been years since migrants hopped trains in large numbers.
Javier Núñez, a 25-year-old Honduran, said he and his family walked through the hills, along a river and by some train tracks after Monday's raid before venturing into the town of Pijijiapan to find something to eat. But agents appeared again Monday night and detained his wife and son, who he said were taken to an immigration facility in Tapachula for deportation processing.
"They were hunting us," Núñez said. As he sees it, the only thing to do is go on alone, see how far he can make it. "Now we are afraid of everyone who looks at us or approaches."
Asked about the detentions at a Tuesday morning news conference, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador acknowledged that the government is not letting migrants simply go wherever they please. He denied taking a hard line, saying controls are for migrants' security because human traffickers are allegedly infiltrated among the caravans.
"We don't want for them to just have free passage, not just out of legal concerns but for questions of safety," López Obrador said.
His immigration chief, Tonatiuh Guillén, said later that Monday's incident was "regrettable," particularly in the case of the children who were frightened.
He said it was not something he wanted to repeat. But he also maintained it was a normal migration enforcement action.
Guillén said Mexico has deported 11,800 migrants so far this month and is being more selective in who is given a humanitarian visa, which allows a migrant to remain in the country and work.
Interior Secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero said the migrants who were detained Monday had refused to register for a regional visa that would have allowed them to remain in southern Mexico.
While U.S. President Donald Trump has ramped up public pressure on Mexico to do more to stem the flow of Central American migration through its territory, López Obrador has rejected criticism from some that the immigration policy seems unclear or even contradictory.
In recent months Mexico has deported thousands of migrants. It has also issued more than 15,000 humanitarian visas.
AP journalists who were present for the raid did not witness any initial violent behavior by the migrants, though immigration authorities said otherwise. During a second detention operation, some from the caravan took up rocks and clubs and at least one stone was thrown, but authorities did not report any injuries to agents.
It was "a planned ambush … to break up this caravan," said Denis Aguilar, a factory union leader from San Pedro Sula, Honduras. "They grabbed the children … the strollers are abandoned there."
Aguilar said he and his brother fled through the woods until they found a ranch house whose residents took them in. In the morning, the family drove them to a bus stop.
Maria Mesa, a homemaker from La Esperanza, Honduras, said she saw officials tugging children as their mothers battled to pull them through the barbed wire fences. She saw other children weeping, alone, on the edge of the woods. Mesa has kids of her own, but left them home because she knew it would be a hard journey.
Her decision to go alone contrasts with the many thousands of others from Central America migrating with relatives toward the U.S. border, where detentions of people traveling in families have spiked. They typically say they are fleeing violence and poverty in their home countries, and many hope to seek asylum.
Those who arrive at the U.S. border must contend with policies limiting how many are allowed to apply for refuge each day. The United States has also returned some to wait in Mexico while their asylum cases inch through a backlogged court system. Trump recently told migrants not to come, saying: "Our country is full, turn around."
Migrants who opt to join caravans do so figuring there is safety in numbers and also because it is a relatively inexpensive alternative to paying thousands of dollars to a "coyote," or smuggler.
But they are finding it a much tougher go through Mexico than before. In addition to Monday's dramatic raid, migrants have experienced a cooler reaction from townspeople, who last year donated food and clothing but have grown tired of the groups. Migrants say once-friendly Mexicans now refuse to give even water, leaving them no choice but to drink from puddles at times.
"People don't want them to enter the towns," said Gerardo Lara Espinosa, a bus dispatcher in Tonala, who said the caravans are seen as overwhelming small towns and hurting businesses.
Mexican officials said last month they would try to contain migrants in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico's narrowest stretch and the easiest to control. Pijijiapan is not far from the isthmus' narrowest point, in neighboring Oaxaca state.
About 300 migrants hopped a train Monday to Ixtepec, in Oaxaca. On Tuesday, others were walking along the road to Tonala, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Pijijiapan.
Jorge Herrera, a farm worker from El Progreso, Honduras, said he and his 7-year-old son fled through the woods after the raid. The boy is sunburned and has cuts and mosquito bites. Herrera thinks López Obrador is doing Trump's dirty work.
"He must be bought. He must be paid for them to do this to us," Herrera said.
'Mother of all caravans' heads north: 10K migrants due in Mexico City any day
by Anna Giaritelli
| April 23, 2019 05:14 PM
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/mother-of-all-caravans-heads-north-10k-migrants-due-in-mexico-city-any-day?rid=9416026
A massive caravan of approximately 10,000 migrants traveling through Mexico in hopes of reaching the United States is expected to arrive in Mexico City this week, according to local media reports on the group's movements.
The group has been described by Mexico's Interior Secretary Olga Sanchez Cordero as "caravana madre," which has been widely referred to as the "mother of all caravans" in American media.
Around 90 people embarked from El Salvador the last week of March then crossed into Guatemala and then into Mexico. By March 29, Sanchez said the group was expected to exceed 20,000 members. Although the caravan is roughly half that size currently, it has been reported as one of the most diverse groups because in addition to Central Americans, it is made up of people from Cuba, Haiti, and Africa.
The Human Rights Commission said it is working with the federal government in advance of the caravan's arrival to ensure migrants have food, shelter, and any access to other services they may require. Beds, covers, bathrooms, and other items have been brought in for the group, according to Diario de Mexico.
The migrants are expected to be housed in the Magdalena, a sports stadium that was used in the 1968 Olympics.
Cordero said in late March the group would be blocked by federal forces when they arrived at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, which is 250 miles southeast of Mexico City and 100 miles northeast of the Mexico-Guatemala border.
Mexican officials said they have deported thousands of people this month, but 10,000 have made it past federal officers and intend on traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Caravans making their way from Central America to the U.S. began grabbing national media attention last spring when a group of a few thousand people prompted executive action from President Trump. Trump responded by deploying the National Guard to the four southern border states to free up Border Patrol agents from administrative and non-law enforcement jobs.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration announced all asylum-seekers who apply at a port of entry must remain in Mexico while their cases are decided. That process can take two to five years.
Trump rejects Mexican efforts in face of fresh migrant caravan
[Reuters]
Reuters•April 24, 2019
https://news.yahoo.com/trump-rejects-mexican-efforts-face-123227499.html
WASHINGTON, April 24 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday called on Mexico to do more to block a new caravan of migrants and asylum-seekers traveling through the country toward the United States, reiterating his threat to close the border or send more troops.
"A very big Caravan of over 20,000 people started up through Mexico," Trump wrote on Twitter. "It has been reduced in size by Mexico but is still coming. Mexico must apprehend the remainder or we will be forced to close that section of the Border & call up the Military."
Trump said Mexico was not doing enough to apprehend and return migrants and, without offering evidence, said Mexican soldiers recently had "pulled guns" U.S. troops.
He said the incident probably was "a diversionary tactic for drug smugglers" and armed troops were being sent to the border.
Mexican officials could not be immediately reached for comment on Trump's statement.
Trump has made cracking down on immigration a priority that fueled his 2016 presidential campaign and election victory. More than 100,000 people were apprehended or presented themselves to U.S. authorities in March, according to the White House, which said it was the highest number in a decade.
In response to what Trump has described as a crisis, his administration has sent thousands of active-duty and National Guard troops to the border and moved border agents to handle an influx of migrants. Last month, Trump threatened to close the U.S.-Mexico border if the Mexican government did not immediately stem illegal migration.
When Congress declined to designate money to build a border wall, Trump declared a national emergency earlier this year over the issue in a bid to redirect funding for the project, thrusting the immigration issue to the forefront of the 2020 presidential race.
The head of Mexico's National Migration Institute, Tonatiuh Guillen, on Tuesday pointed to an increase in deportations from the country, saying Mexico had returned 15,000 migrants in the past 30 days.
He did not specify where the people were deported to, but the majority of people traveling through Mexico to the United States are from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, where migrants say they are fleeing corruption, gang violence and entrenched poverty. (Reporting by Makini Brice Editing by Susan Heavey and Bill Trott)
Trump: Mexico ‘better not’ detain and disarm US troops again
by Diana Stancy Correll
| April 24, 2019 08:38 AM
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/trump-mexico-better-not-detain-and-disarm-us-troops-again
President Trump cautioned Mexico “better not” detain and disarm U.S. troops again, comments that come as the Pentagon is investigating such an incident between U.S. and Mexican troops on Texas soil.
“Mexico’s Soldiers recently pulled guns on our National Guard Soldiers, probably as a diversionary tactic for drug smugglers on the Border,” Trump tweeted Wednesday. “Better not happen again! We are now sending ARMED SOLDIERS to the Border. Mexico is not doing nearly enough in apprehending & returning!”
On April 13, Mexican troops confronted two Army soldiers in an unmarked Customs and Border Protection vehicle near Clint, Texas. The Mexican soldiers, who were armed with FX-05 Xiuhcoatl rifles, then detained, disarmed, and questioned the U.S. soldiers. A Beretta M9 service pistol was temporarily confiscated from one U.S. soldier, leaving the Americans unarmed.
American troops sent to the U.S.-Mexico border are required to undergo training to prepare for hazardous situation they may encounter, but there is no official protocol for handling encounters with a foreign military,
senior defense official from Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, said.
The official claimed the incident was unprecedented, and said the Pentagon is looking closer at the stand-off to "help us modify any instructions that we're giving the troops.”
"This is the first incident that we're aware of that the two militaries came together," the official told the Washington Examiner.
DOJ charges two people with economic espionage to benefit China
By John Bowden - 04/24/19 08:58 AM EDT
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/440364-doj-charges-two-people-with-economic-espionage-to-benefit-china?__twitter_impression=true
A New York man who formerly worked as an engineer for General Electric and a Chinese businessman have been charged by the Justice Department with economic espionage and theft of trade secrets.
The Justice Department says the two men were involved in a plot to steal intellectual property from GE and transfer it to China for use in companies in that country.
In a press release issued on Tuesday, Justice said hat Xiaoqing Zheng, 56, of New York had been charged with conspiring to steal GE's trade secrets related to steam and gas turbines, while knowing that those stolen secrets would be used to benefit the Chinese government.
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Zhaoxi Zhang, 47, of Liaoning Province, China, was also charged Tuesday, according to the press release.
The two face 14 charges in total related to Zheng's efforts to steal transfer stolen data files related to "design models, engineering drawings, configuration files, and material specifications" from a GE plant in Schenectady, and to provide them to Zhang.
“The indictment alleges a textbook example of the Chinese government’s strategy to rob American companies of their intellectual property and to replicate their products in Chinese factories, enabling Chinese companies to replace the American company first in the Chinese market and later worldwide,” said Assistant Attorney General John Demers.
“We will not stand idly by while the world’s second-largest economy engages in state-sponsored theft," Demers continued.
"As part of the Attorney General’s China Initiative, we will partner with the private sector to hold responsible those who violate our laws, and we urge China’s leaders to join responsible nations and to act with honesty and integrity when competing in the global marketplace," he added.
Zheng has pleaded not guilty according to the South China Morning Post.
Another Grand Canyon visitor dies in fall from edge
Associated Press Associated Press 10 hours ago
https://www.yahoo.com/news/another-grand-canyon-visitor-dies-fall-edge-010427061.html
GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, Ariz. (AP) — Another visitor to Grand Canyon National Park has died after falling over the edge of the South Rim, authorities said Tuesday.
A 70-year-old woman fell about 200 feet (61 meters) over the rim, the second over-the-edge death this month within the confines of the park, according to Grand Canyon officials.
The woman had been walking about 200 to 300 feet (61 to 91 meters) off a trail along the South Rim about a mile (1.6 kilometers) east of Mather Point. Park rangers got a call just after 1 p.m. that she needed help west of a popular overlook called Pipe Creek Vista.
"She fell before we could undertake a rescue," said Grand Canyon spokesman John Quinley, adding that the circumstances of the call for help were unclear.
Quinley said the woman fell between Mather Point and the starting point for the South Kaibab Trail, two well-known and highly visited places at the park's more popular South Rim.
The park's helicopter and rescue team recovered the body.
The woman's name was being withheld until her family can be notified. Park officials didn't immediately release the woman's hometown.
The National Park Service and the Coconino County Medical Examiner will investigate the death. Still being investigated are three other deaths since March 26, two of which occurred outside the park.
On April 3, a 67-year-old California man fatally fell 400 feet (122 meters) from the edge of the South Rim in Grand Canyon Village, near the Yavapai Geology Museum.
A tourist from Macau, China, fell to his death on March 28. The man was trying to take a photo at Grand Canyon West's Eagle Point — close to the Skywalk located on the Hualapai Reservation outside the park — when he stumbled and fell.
The body of a Japanese tourist was found March 26 in a wooded area south of Grand Canyon Village, away from the rim.
Only one person — an Illinois man — fell to his death in the park in 2018 after he climbed over the railing at Mather Point and fell some 500 feet (152 meters).
Park officials said about 12 people die each year within the park. The deaths can be attributed to everything from accidental falls to heat, as well as drownings during rafting trips on the Colorado River.
Grand Canyon National Park, established 100 years ago, is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the U.S., drawing nearly 6.4 million visitors last year.
Grand Canyon West, on the Hualapai reservation, gets about 1 million visitors annually.