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WASHINGTON ― The secretary of homeland security defended on Sunday reports that President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser Jared Kushner discussed establishing a secret backchannel between Trump’s transition team and Russian officials, claiming that it was “normal” and “acceptable.”
“Any way that you can communicate with people, particularly organizations that are maybe not particularly friendly to us, is a good thing,” Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly told ABC’s Martha Raddatz. “It’s not a bad thing to have multiple communication lines to any government.”
The report, published by The Washington Post late Friday, originated during a previously reported meeting between Kushner and Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak in December, before Trump became president. Also present at the meeting was former national security adviser Mike Flynn, who was fired earlier this year for lying to administration officials about discussing sanctions with Russia.
Like Trump and his top aides, Kelly dismissed the mounting scandals facing the administration by insisting that the real problem is the leaking of information, which is “darn close to treason,” the retired general said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Trump himself reportedly leaked classified information to Russian officials during an Oval Office meeting earlier this month.
The reports about Kushner come as he is being investigated as part of the FBI’s probe into ties between Trump’s team and Russia. In addition to the meeting with Kislyak, Kushner also met with the head of a Russian state-owned bank.
Kelly on Sunday defended Kushner as “a great guy,” saying that there was no “big issue here.”
“I know Jared. He’s a great guy, decent guy,” he said on “Meet the Press.” “His number one interest, really, is the nation. So you know there’s a lot of different ways to communicate, backchannel, publicly with other countries. I don’t see any big issue here relative to Jared.”
Earlier this month, Trump abruptly fired FBI director James Comey, who had been leading the Russia probe. Before firing him, he had reportedly told Comey to stop his investigation of Flynn’s ties to Russia, according to Comey’s notes documenting a meeting with Trump.
The day after firing Comey, Trump met with Kislyak and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in an Oval Office meeting that was only accessible to Russian state media and closed to American reporters. In addition to leaking classified information, Trump reportedly bragged to them about firing “real nut job” Comey and claimed that the sudden move lessened the “great pressure” on his administration.
Amid the mounting scandals, Trump on Saturday returned from his first foreign trip as president. Administration officials refused to comment on Kushner while on the trip, trying to deflect attention by characterizing the president’s meetings abroad as “going unbelievably well.”
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May 28 (Reuters) – The United States might ban laptops from aircraft cabins of all flights into and out of the country, John Kelly, Secretary of Homeland Security, said on Sunday.
In an interview on Fox News Sunday Kelly said the U.S. plans to “raise the bar” on airline security, including tightening screening of carry-on items.
“That’s the thing that they are obsessed with, the terrorists, the idea of knocking down an airplane in flight, particularly if it’s a U.S. carrier, particularly if it’s full of U.S. people.”
In March the government imposed restrictions on large electronic devices in aircraft cabins on flights from 10 airports, including the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Turkey.
Kelly said the move would be part of a broader effort to tighten airline security to combat what he called “a real sophisticated threat.” He said no decision has been made as to the timing of any ban.
“We are still following the intelligence,” he said, “and are in the process of defining this, but we’re going to raise the bar generally speaking for aviation much higher than it is now.”
Among the enhanced measures will likely be tighter screening of carry-on items to allow Transport Security Administration (TSA) agents to discern problematic items in tightly stuffed bags.
The reason, Kelly said, is that in order to avoid paying a fees for checking bags, people are stuffing them to the point where it is difficult to see through the clutter.
“The more stuff is in there, the less the TSA professionals that are looking at what’s in those bags through the monitors can tell what’s in them.”
The TSA has begun testing certain new procedures at a limited number of airports, requiring people to remove additional items from carry-on bags for separate screenings.
Asked whether the government would expand such measures nationwide, Kelly said: “We might, and likely will.”
On Friday Kelly told Fox News that if most people knew the extent of the security threat to the United States some people would “never leave the house.”
(Reporting by Toni Clarke and Doina Chiacu in Washington; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)
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Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who in 2006 helped Democrats capture their first House majority in 12 years, on Sunday cast doubt on the party’s chances of reclaiming the chamber again next year.
“It took us a long time to get this low. It ain’t going to happen in 2018,” the former White House chief of staff during President Barack Obama’s first term said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“Take a chill pill, man. This is ― you got to be in this for the long haul,” he said.
Along with Republican Donald Trump’s surprise victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton last November, Democrats suffered significant losses across the political board during Obama’s eight years in office.
Republicans took back the House in 2010 ― just two years after Obama’s first election ― and have held it easily since then. The GOP, after also losing a Senate majority in 2006, won it back in 2014 and held it last November. Between 2008 and 2016, meanwhile, Democrats lost close to 1,000 seats in state legislatures.
“You’re not going to solve” the party’s decline in 2018, said Emanuel, who is up for re-election in 2019. “The Republicans didn’t do what they did with just one election cycle. You have to have a long horizon, obviously, and work towards that, electing people at the local level, state houses, into Congress.”
Turning around “years of eroding Democratic support” in local races won’t happen “entirely in just one cycle,” Emanuel warned.
“Do I think we’re going to have a good year in 2018? Yes,” Emanuel said. “Do I think everything’s going to be solved in a single cycle? That’s not how we got here, and it’s not going to be how we get out.”
Emanuel was a House member from Illinois and head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee when the party seized the chamber’s majority for the first time since 1994. Discontent with then President George W. Bush’s administration and the war in Iraq played a large role in the Democratic showing, but Emanuel’s candidate recruitment efforts also received credit.
Democrats have been hoping to show signs of a comeback in various elections this year. but so far the party has yet to score a signature win.
On Thursday, Republican Greg Gianforte ― despite being charged with misdemeanor assault of a reporter on the eve of the election ― defeated Democrat Rob Quist in a special election for the Montana’s sole House seat. Earlier this month in Omaha, Nebraska, Democrat Heath Mello failed to unseat Republican Mayor Jean Stothert. In April, progressive Democrat James Thompson ran well in special election for an open House seat in heavily Republican Kansas, but still lost.
The Republicans didn’t do what they did with just one election cycle.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel
In April, Democrat Jon Ossoff fell less than two percentage points shy of an outright win in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District. The seat was vacated by Republican Tom Price to become Health and Human Services Department secretary under Trump and was and that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich occupied for years.
The high-profile race, flooded with money by both parties, is scheduled for a runoff election on June 20. An Ossoff win over Republican Karen Handel would re-energize Democrat and potentially boost the party’s prospects in 2018.
Progressives, many aligned with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), blame Democratic Party stalwarts for neglecting down-ballot races outside coastal liberal strongholds.
“It seems clear that Gianforte’s massive edge in early funding allowed him to attack Quist’s character viciously before there were sufficient funds for Quist to respond to the vitriol,” Jeff Hauser, a veteran progressive strategist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research’s Revolving Door Project, told HuffPost ahead of the Montana election.
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By Duncan Niederlitz
This post was done in partnership with The Sweethome, a buyer’s guide to the best homewares. When readers choose to buy The Sweethome’s independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its wor…
Every year for the past 1,394 years, 1.6 billion Muslims around the world welcome the start of Ramadan, the holiest month in Muslim calendar. Those believers who can fast aim to cleanse the body and tame the ego by refraining from eating or drinking from dawn to dusk for 30 days.
It’s vital to do this annual “religious detox,” as some call it. But many people, including even the most pious Muslims, don’t realize that Ramadan is also a time to cleanse the soul, so-to-speak, by contemplation.
Arriving only days after the horrific terrorist attack during Ariana Grande concert in Manchester Arena on May 22, this year’s Ramadan delivers Muslims a deep heartache to contemplate: the alleged perpetrator who took 22 young and innocent lives, many of them children, is thought to be a Muslim man.
Ann Coulters of the West believe that Islam is a backwards and barbaric religion that is inherently linked with terrorism. This sort of hateful rhetoric is extremely hurtful for Muslim communities, not to mention counter productive.
Most of these right-wing provocateurs and their supporters in America don’t know or care that there are millions of Muslims who would neither endorse violence nor believe that any cause justifies killing anyone in the name of religion.
I am a naturalized Muslim British citizen and have a teenage daughter who was a fan of Ariana Grande. Although Manchester is far from London where our family used to live ― and is now headed by a Muslim mayor ― I can easily associate with the shock of non-Muslims who lost their beloved child, mother, father, relative, boyfriend, or girlfriend in these attacks. My country of origin, Turkey, has greatly suffered from terrorist bombings and shootings in recent years, as well.
I also can relate to the Muslims in Manchester, who make up 15 percent of the city’s 2.5 million people, and others anywhere around the world, who are afraid to be the first ones to take the step towards an honest discussion with angry non-Muslims.
Food is even more sacred when shared by family and friends. This Ramadan, we must try to reach out to our non-Muslim neighbors and invite them to iftar ― breaking of the fast. We must assure them that we are united with them in grief every time an atrocity like this happens.
Islam puts great emphasis on conscience and sincerity. We must explain in simple terms to those who suspect every Muslim is a potential terrorist that a true Muslim is one in whom abides, in the depths of his or her heart, the very concept of conscience, respect for law, and care for human life and the harmony and stability of the society.
We must also remind ourselves that we share part of the blame if we remain silent and don’t protest when Islam is hijacked by radicals in the name of faith in our society. Only then, those innocent girls who tragically perished in Manchester, or Muslim girls in bombings in Syria for that matter, will not have died in vain.
May you have a blessed and reflective Ramadan and may you experience, and promote peace in your own soul, in your community and across the world.
Ramadan Mubarak!
This piece was first published in Auburn Voices, a media platform for the multifaith movement for social justice. — Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
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We celebrate this week the 100th anniversary of the birth of John F. Kennedy, a remarkable US President whose leadership appealed to the better angels of the American people, helping all to set high aspirations for the country as well as for themselves. In his inaugural address, Kennedy reminded us of the importance of generous service in challenging times “ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country”. Kennedy understood how in an increasingly interdependent world, this responsibility of service extended to service to the world. In a speech in the campaign trail at the University of Michigan, in October of 1960, he had asked 10,000 students “How many of you, who are going to be doctors, are willing to spend your days in Ghana? Technicians or engineers, how many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and spend your lives traveling around the world?” A thousand students responded with a petition to serve abroad. Two weeks later, in another campaign speech at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, he proposed the creation of “a peace corps of talented men and women” over 25,000 wrote him letters responding to this call. These were the origins of the Peace Corps which he created early in his presidency, to foster greater understanding between Americans and people of other nations.
Kennedy understood that the preparation of the people ready to engage in such service, to the nation and to the world, depended on Universities, and that Universities had to educate youth for such leadership not just in the work of the faculty in the classrooms, but also in how faculty themselves engaged in finding solution to matters of public interest. In April of 1963, as Boston College celebrated its centennial, President Kennedy addressed a convocation speaking about the role of the University. His audience included not just students and graduates, but the Presidents of Boston College, Georgetown and Harvard University. In his speech President Kennedy talked about the university’s role in connecting people across their ignorance, and he referred to the critical role of the university in helping solve some of the most important challenges of the times. President Kennedy reminded the audience that Boston College had been founded in the darkest days of the civil war, at a time when the nation was involved in a struggle to determine whether the nation could be half slave and half free, or free, and went on to say that the world was then, a hundred years later, faced with the question of whether it would half slave and half free or whether it would be all one or the other. He intended ‘to impress upon you as urgently as I can, the growing and insistent importance of universities in our national lives…’ to address the important issues of the times. Kennedy underscored four ways in which universities could serve the national interest: 1) ‘The whole world has come to our steps, and the universities must be its students’ and that universities must help accelerate global progress, 2) the explosion of knowledge in all fields, especially science, called for special attention to understanding and cultivation of people as social beings, 3) ‘As the world presses in, and knowledge presses out, the role of the interpreter grows’ underscoring the role of the university in helping educate people to know through one another, to respect truth, and 4) quoting Woodrow Wilson, President Kennedy underscored the importance of universities dedicating themselves to the nation’s service, to the new needs of the age, and ‘the school must be of the nation’.
Last Thursday, upon receiving an honorary doctorate from Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg addressed the graduating class highlighting also the important role of graduates and of universities in focusing on the urgent challenges of our times. He invited all graduates to engage in helping write a new social contract that would help all people find purpose, not just in the United States but in the world. He outlined three grand challenge that would help all people in the world find purpose: 1) taking on big meaningful projects together, such as stopping climate change, generating employment, curing all diseases, modernizing democracy and personalizing education so all can learn 2) redefining equality so that all have the freedom to pursue purpose, supporting risk taking and innovation, and 3) building community across the world, in defining community, Zuckerberg invited all to see themselves as global citizens: “Every generation expands the circle of people we consider “one of us”. For us, it now encompasses the entire world. We understand the great arc of human history bends towards people coming together in ever greater numbers — from tribes to cities to nations — to achieve things we couldn’t on our own. We get that our greatest opportunities are now global — we can be the generation that ends poverty, that ends disease. We get that our greatest challenges need global responses too — no country can fight climate change alone or prevent pandemics. Progress now requires coming together not just as cities or nations, but also as a global community.”
In his address to the graduates, Zuckerberg was of course not speaking just to the graduates, but also to those who teach them, to those who lead and support the institution. He was reminding us of our obligation to align our work and the work of the institution to be of service to the world, to address the bigger challenges of our times.
John F. Kennedy in 1963, and Mark Zuckerberg last week, in speaking about the social role of the University where underscoring enduring themes which are of the essence to the modern university. The modern university is, along with public education and democracy, a creation of a global liberal project to advance the values of freedom and equality. A project of humanity that replaced the order of the Middle Ages with an order build on the audacious idea that all people are equal, and that they have the right to self-rule. An order that places great trust in science and human reason as instruments that would help us improve our lives, govern ourselves, and improve the world. It is no accident that five years after the American Revolution, when the dust had not yet settled in how the new nation was to succeed in governing itself, John Adams and some of the other founding fathers, established the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an institution chartered to bring together the best scientists and public figures of the times to address issues of public importance and to educate ordinary people in understanding them. The first members invited to join the academy were Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.
While there Universities at the time, their role was not to educate people to improve the world, but to transmit religious dogma, to maintain a static status quo. It would take three decades after the American Academy of Arts and Sciences was etablished for the first modern university, the University of Berlin, to be chartered, with a mandate aligned with the advancement of the liberal values of the enlightenment. Berlin was designed to cultivate the development of critical reasoning, to advance truth through research on matters of public importance, and to educate the larger public. In time, these ideals of the university Wilhelm von Humboldt chartered in Berlin would be embraced by all modern universities in the world.
We live dangerous times where the values of freedom and equality, the institutions of democracy, and the sister institutions of public education and universities, are challenged by a populist ideology. An ideology that mistrusts expertise and institutions, and ideology that does not accept that there is a difference between facts and beliefs. An ideology that has no respect for science or scientific expertise. This ideology places the world at risk, it places democracy at risk, and it endangers the prospects for liberty and equality. In these times, the message of John Kennedy about the social responsibility of the University in 1963, and the message of Mark Zuckerberg last week, that we must press on with renewed urgency focusing on the most critical challenges humanity faces, that we must educate our students to take them on, and that we must make it a priority to educate and serve the larger public, are prescient and urgently important.
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Police in southwestern Mississippi have a suspect in custody after eight people, including a Lincoln County sheriff’s deputy, were killed in three separate homes late Saturday night, the Associated Press reports.
The suspect, identified by the local Clarion-Ledger as 35-year-old Cory Godbolt, was filmed sitting along a road in handcuffs by a reporter Sunday morning.
Godbolt told the reporter that he was “trying to have a conversation with [his] wife” about taking his children home when a third party called police.
“My intentions was to have God to kill me. I ran out of bullets,” the local newspaper reported Godbolt as saying.
Godbolt also reportedly took a 16-year-old boy as a hostage. The boy has been safely released. None of the victims, including the deputy of the rural county, have been identified.
Mississippi Bureau of Investigation spokesman Warren Strain told The AP that charges have not yet been filed and that it would be “premature” to discuss a motive.
Sunday morning, Gov. Phil Bryant (R) said in a statement:
“I ask all Mississippians to join Deborah and me in praying for those lost in Lincoln County. Every day, the men and women who wear the badge make some measure of sacrifice to protect and serve their communities. Too often, we lose one of our finest. I thank the law enforcement agencies involved for their hard work. May the peace of the Almighty wash over those hurting after this senseless tragedy.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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Should gay men use language ― like “faggot” ― that’s historically been utilize in a derogatory way to describe them and other men who have sex with men?
Here at HuffPost Queer Voices, we think it’s important that marginalized communities are able to reclaim language that has been used against them. However, not everyone feels this way ― and we respect that perspective too.
In this new video from comedians Michael Henry, Tom Lenk and Jimmy Fowlie, the trio discuss their feelings about gay men using the word “faggot” through a refreshingly comedic lens.
“I’m a comedian and I think language is important and the context it’s used in is very key,” Henry told HuffPost in an email. “Anytime a straight person says it, male or female, I do cringe a little. Louie C.K. has a stand up bit on YouTube about the word faggot and even though I do comedy also, I felt uncomfortable watching his set… It’s a very triggering word. But since I posted [the video] a lot of people also told me they like using it and feel a sense of ownership over the word.”
Check out the video above. What are your thoughts about gay men using the word “faggot”? Let us know in the comments below.
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Jamie Raines is back with a new video, though, perhaps not one he thought he’d ever find himself making.
The YouTube star, who frequently vlogs about his life as a transgender man, recently released “Positive Things About Being Transgender,” a seven minute clip that he says would have been inconceivable to him just two or three years ago.
“Earlier on in my transition everything just seemed really hard, really far away and just difficult,” Raines tell his viewers. “It was hard to find or even looking for any positives in a situation that just seemed so negative. But, the further along in my transition I’ve gotten — particularly since having top surgery — the more positives I can see.”
Raines admits that “there are hard things and I’m really not trying to brush over them or ignore them” but he decided he “really wanted to make a video that concentrated on the good things.”
Check out the video above to find out what he’s grateful for and why, then head here for more from Raines.
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