Trump orders vote today on health care bill
Obamacare to stay in place if measure fails
WASHINGTON — Abandoning negotiations, President Donald Trump demanded a make-orbreak vote on health care legislation in the House, threatening to leave “Obamacare” in place and move on to other issues if Friday’s vote fails.
The risky move, viewed as part gamble and part threat, was presented to GOP lawmakers behind closed doors Thursday night after a long and intense day that saw a planned vote on the health care bill scrapped as the legislation remained short of votes amid cascading negotiations among conservative lawmakers, moderates and others.
At the end of it the president had had enough and was ready to vote and move on, whatever the result, Mr. Trump’s budget director Mick Mulvaney told lawmakers.
“‘Negotiations are over, we’d like to vote tomorrow and let’s get this done for the American people.’ That was it,” Rep. Duncan Hunter of California said as he left the meeting, summarizing Mr. Mulvaney’s message to lawmakers.
“For seven-and-a-half years we have been promising the American people that we will repeal and replace this broken law because it’s collapsing and it’s failing families, and tomorrow we’re proceeding,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said, then walked off without answering as reporters demanded to know whether the bill had the votes to pass.
Both conservative and moderate lawmakers had claimed the bill lacked votes after a long day of talks. But the White House appeared ready to gamble that the prospect of failing to repeal former President Barack Obama’s health law, after seven years of promising to do exactly that, would force lawmakers into the “yes” column.
Four Republican congressmen from Pennsylvania are now saying they’re opposed to House GOP health care legislation.
Allentown-area Rep. Charlie Dent said Wednesday night that
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is making it tougher for millions of visitors to enter the United States by demanding new security checks before giving visas to tourists, business travelers and relatives of American residents.
Diplomatic cables sent last week from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to all American embassies instructed consular officials to broadly increase scrutiny. It was the first evidence of the “extreme vetting” President Donald Trump promised during the presidential campaign.
The new rules generally do not apply to 38 countries — including most of Europe and longstanding allies like Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea — whose citizens can be speedily admitted into the U.S. under the visa waiver program. No countries from the Middle East or Africa are part of the program. In 2016, the U.S. issued more than 10 million visas to foreign visitors.
Even stricter security checks for people from six predominantly Muslim nations remain on hold because federal courts have temporarily blocked Mr. Trump’s travel ban.
But Mr. Trump and his national security team are not waiting to toughen the rules to decide who can enter the country. Embassy officials must now scrutinize a broader pool of visa applicants to determine if they pose security risks to the U.S., according to four cables sent between March 10 and March 17.
That extra scrutiny will include asking applicants detailed questions about their background and making mandatory checks of social media history if a person has ever been in territory controlled by the Islamic State group.
Mr. Trump has spoken of his concern about the threat of “radical Islamic terrorism” from immigrants. But it is unclear who, exactly, will be targeted for the extra scrutiny since Mr. Tillerson’s cables leave that decision up to security officers at each embassy.
Still, taken together, consular officials and immigration advocates said the administration’s moves will increase the likelihood of denial for those seeking to come to America, and will further slow down a bureaucratic approval process that can already take months or even years for those flagged for extra investigation.
There are legitimate reasons someone might be targeted, such as evidence of a connection to terrorism or crime. But advocates said they worry about people being profiled for extra scrutiny because of their name or nationality.
“This will certainly slow down the screening process and impose a substantial burden on these applicants,” said Greg Chen, the director of advocacy for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “It will make it much harder and create substantial delays.”
The cables from Mr. Tillerson, which were reported by Reuters, make clear that the Trump administration wants a more intense focus on the potential for a serious threat when making decisions about who should receive a visa.
“Consular officers should not hesitate to refuse any case presenting security concerns,” Mr. Tillerson wrote in the cables, titled “Implementing Immediate Heightened Screening and Vetting of Visa Applications.”
“All visa decisions are national security decisions,” the secretary of state added.