Chris Hedges's Blog, page 569

Pushed by Voters, GOP Moderates Rebel on Immigration

HOMESTEAD, Fla.—Cipriano Garza says Rep. Carlos Curbelo is “a decent man, a family man.” He lauds the South Florida Republican for defiantly pushing his party to protect young “Dreamer” immigrants from deportation.

Founder of a nonprofit that helps farm workers, Garza happily hosted Curbelo at a reception honoring high school graduates last week at the massive Homestead-Miami Speedway. But his praise came with a warning about this November’s elections.

“He better do what’s right for the community,” said Garza, 70, himself a former migrant laborer. “If not, he can lose.”

Across the country—from California’s lush Central Valley to suburban Denver to Curbelo’s district of strip malls, farms and the laid-back Florida Keys—moderate Republicans like Curbelo are under hefty pressure to buck their party’s hardline stance on immigration. After years of watching their conservative colleagues in safe districts refuse to budge, the GOP middle is fighting back—mindful that a softer position may be necessary to save their jobs and GOP control of the House.

“Members who have priorities and feel passionate about issues can’t sit back and expect leaders” to address them, Curbelo said. “Because it doesn’t work.”

Curbelo, 38, is seeking a third term from a district that stretches from upscale Miami suburbs to the Everglades and down to eccentric Key West. Seventy percent of his constituents are Hispanic and nearly half are foreign-born. Those are among the highest percentages in the nation, giving many of them a first-hand stake in Congress’ immigration fight.

Curbelo and Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., whose Modesto-area district thrives on agriculture powered by migrant workers, have launched a petition drive that would force House votes on four immigration bills, ranging from liberal to conservative versions. Twenty-three Republicans have signed on, two shy of the number needed to succeed, assuming all Democrats jump aboard.

Another supporter of the rare rebellion by the usually compliant moderates is Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., a former Marine who learned Spanish when his district was redrawn to include Denver’s diverse eastern suburbs. In an interview, Coffman expressed frustration over waiting nearly 18 months for House Speaker Paul Ryan to deliver on assurances that Congress would address the issue.

“He was always telling me, ‘It will happen, it will happen.’ I never saw it happen,” Coffman said. “One cannot argue that those of us who signed onto this discharge petition didn’t give leadership time.”

The centrists favor legislation that would protect from deportation hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children. They back a path to citizenship for these immigrants, who have lived in limbo since President Donald Trump ended the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, called DACA. Federal courts have blocked its termination for now.

Trying to head off the petition, Ryan, R-Wis., and conservatives are negotiating with the centrists in hopes of finding compromise. Roll calls are on track for later this month, but it will be tough to steer legislation through the House that’s both liberal enough to survive in the more moderate Senate and restrictive enough for Trump to sign into law.

At the speedway, a local economic anchor since Hurricane Andrew shattered the city in 1992, Curbelo didn’t mention his battle in Washington to the graduates. “Our country and our community need you,” he told his audience, some of whom Garza said were DACA recipients.

Curbelo’s district backed Democrat Hillary Clinton by a whopping 16 percentage points in the 2016 presidential race over Trump, who has fanned immigrants’ resentment by repeatedly linking them to crime and job losses. That’s left Curbelo facing a competitive re-election, though he’s raised far more campaign cash than his likely Democratic challenger, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.

Of the 23 Republican petition signees, nine represent districts whose Hispanic populations exceed the 18 percent national average. Clinton carried 12 of their districts in 2016, and several are from moderate-leaning suburbs of cities like Philadelphia and Minneapolis and agricultural areas in California and upstate New York that rely on migrant workers.

The centrists’ petition echoes the hardball tactics often employed by the hard-right House Freedom Caucus. Its roughly 30 members often band together with demands top Republicans ignore at peril of losing votes in the narrowly divided House.

GOP leaders and Freedom Caucus members fear that under the votes the petition would force, liberal-leaning legislation backed by most Democrats and a few Republicans would prevail. That would infuriate conservative voters who’ll be needed at the polls to fend off a Democratic wave threatening GOP House control.

Among those envisioning that scenario is Nicholas Mulick, GOP chairman of Florida’s Monroe County, which encompasses the Keys and is the reddest portion of Curbelo’s district. “With the greatest respect for the congressman, I don’t think it’s going to work,” Mulick said.

Others reject that argument, saying moderates’ worries should be heeded because they must be re-elected for Republicans to retain their majority.

“That sounds like somebody who’s never run in a swing district,” former Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., who once led his party’s House campaign arm, said of claims that immigration votes would dampen conservative turnout. “Do they want to be in the majority, hold gavels?”

Democrats and local immigration activists say they wish Curbelo’s effort well but question his motivation. They say he’s reacting to election pressures and simply wants to show voters he’s fighting for them.

“It feels very late, opportunistic, theatrical,” said Thomas Kennedy, deputy political director for the Florida Immigrant Coalition.

Many at the speedway event, sponsored by Garza’s Mexican-American Council, were sympathetic to Curbelo’s battle in Washington, signaling the type of support he’ll need to be re-elected.

Rosa Castillo, 51, of nearby Florida City, said she knows people who don’t get driver’s licenses for fear of having their residency challenged. “He’s doing an awesome job for our DACA people,” said Castillo, a Democrat who said she’ll back Curbelo.

“He’s aware of our issues in our community,” said Pedro Sifuentes, 45, an independent from Homestead.

That sentiment isn’t universally shared. Over breakfast at a nearby Cracker Barrel restaurant, retiree and Trump backer Randy Nichols, 73, said he won’t support Curbelo.

“If they’re illegal, they need to leave. I hate to say that, but even for DACA kids,” said Nichols, who lives in Marathon, one of the Keys.

Mucarsel-Powell, Curbelo’s likely Democratic challenger, said in an interview that she was glad he’d “finally found some strength” to take on fellow Republicans.

The former state Senate candidate, an immigrant from Ecuador, said Curbelo’s challenge to GOP leaders “will obviously bring some positive attention.”

She said she hopes Curbelo and his supporters “aren’t doing it for political reasons.”

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Riccardi reported from Denver.

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Man Sent Back to Prison After Receiving Commutation

Such celebrities and influencers as Kim Kardashian West and Chelsea Clinton are tweeting about the strange case of a Nashville man who, although he committed no new crime, has been returned to prison after being released under a presidential commutation.

Matthew Charles served more than 20 years before being released early under President Obama’s commutations for drug offenders. Now, after Donald Cochran, a U.S. attorney for Tennessee, successfully appealed for a reversal of his release, Charles is back behind bars to complete his original sentence.

According to the website Heavy, Charles, 51, served 21 years of his original 35-year sentence for dealing crack cocaine before being released in 2016. His early release was related to a change in the penalties for dealing the drug. Before this change, convictions related to the possession of one gram of cocaine were the same as those related to the possession of 100 grams. After the change, a federal judge opted to apply the changes to Charles’ sentence, thereby shortening it.

However, Cochran’s office decided to appeal Charles’ release on the grounds that he was a “career offender” who had served a prior stint in state prison. Cochran claimed that this meant that the retroactive change in law could not apply to Charles. A court of appeals agreed with Cochran and accepted the argument that Charles did not qualify for the commutation.

President Trump could overturn the sentence, but that’s doubtful, given that Cochran was appointed by Trump.

“He’s rebuilt his life and now they’re coming to snatch it,” says a man known as Wolfe who met Charles at a halfway house in 2016 and has volunteered with him for community service.

Another friend of Charles, John Hairston, said that the ordeal “underscores how big a need there is for some reform in the justice system. I don’t care what they say.”

Nashville Public Radio continues:

Since his release in 2016, Charles has held a steady job. He volunteers every Saturday, has reconnected with his family, and started a serious relationship. But really, his rehabilitation started years prior. In prison, he took college classes and correspondence courses, he taught a GED program and became a law clerk. With his training, he helped other incarcerated men understand the judicial system long after their public defenders moved on to the next case.

Charles kept the secrets of those who were illiterate so they wouldn’t face ridicule or harassment—he read them letters from the court and drafted filings for them in the library. He organized Bible studies and counseled newcomers. Two decades in federal institutions–from maximum to low security—without a single disciplinary infraction.

Those that know Charles say they can’t understand why the justice system won’t recognize his rehabilitation. But the federal Bureau of Prisons did away with parole and most “good behavior” incentives years ago—even the best behaved must serve out the majority of their term.

Returning Charles to prison has stirred up anger and frustration among supporters who point to his exemplary citizenship.

West tweeted, “[Charles] serves over 21 yrs, is released, finds a job, new relationship, starts a new life, & now is being sent back for another 10 yrs because the original release was an error. This man has completely rehabilitated himself.”

This man is sentenced to 35 yrs for selling drugs. He serves over 21 yrs, is released, finds a job, new relationship, starts a new life, & now is being sent back for another 10 yrs because the original release was an error. This man has completely rehabilitated himself. So sad https://t.co/msLsMSHGxh

— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) May 28, 2018

Charles’ resentencing has even become a bipartisan issue: The Federalist, a conservative news publication, published a piece arguing why Trump should reduce Charles’ sentence:

Since his release Charles has been a fully employed, church-going member of his community who volunteers and is in a serious romantic relationship. Now he’s losing not only his reprieve, but also the new life he has built. Legally, it may very well be that the courts made the right decision in revoking his freedom, but might this be a case where the law is not producing the just goals it was intended to, and might president Trump’s unique power be appropriate in making this situation right?

According to a Facebook post by Charles, he returned to prison May 14. Trump has yet to express an opinion on the case, but he did meet with West to discuss prison reform and a potential pardon in another case, involving the life sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, who was convicted for a first-time drug offense in 1996.

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China’s Trade Plan May Cause Lasting Harm

Possibly the most ambitious and far-reaching development scheme ever launched, China’s trade plan, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), may pose an unacceptable risk to the environment, scientists say.

Launched in 2013, the BRI plans a huge expansion of trade routes linking Asia, Africa and Europe, involving China itself and 64 other countries, and affecting about two thirds of the world’s people and one third of its economy. There will be new ports on the Pacific and Indian Ocean coasts, new roads, and a rail network linking China to north-west Europe.

But an international group of scientists, writing in the journal Nature Sustainability, expresses serious doubts about the possibility of completing the scheme without causing permanent environmental damage.

Economy vs. Environment

The scientists write: “Economic development aspirations under the BRI may clash with environmental sustainability goals, given the expansion and upgrading of transportation infrastructure in environmentally sensitive areas, and the large amounts of raw material needed to support that expansion…

“If not properly addressed, the negative environmental impacts of the BRI are likely to disproportionately affect the world’s poor, hence putting at risk the wellbeing of the very people it aims to help.”

Some of the scientists’ comments are positive. They say, for instance, that the BRI includes “examples of well-planned road developments” with negligible impacts on wildlife and protected areas.

They cite the proposed Serengeti Highway in Tanzania, which would go round the national park, not through it. An alternative route for Nigeria’s planned Cross River Superhighway will cause far less environmental harm than the original scheme, and the Bangladesh Railway is improving the protection of elephants by building five overpasses across the tracks for them at well-used crossing points.

To improve the BRI’s research and monitoring, Beijing has announced its intention to build a Digital Silk Road with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a potential boost to environmental research elsewhere in Asia.

But despite these expected benefits from the BRI, doubts remain. The scientists say a recent report by the World Wildlife Fund found “a clear risk of severe negative environmental impacts from infrastructure developments”.

These include the scheme’s gargantuan appetite for natural resources, including sand and limestone for making the immense quantities of concrete and cement that it will demand. Global sand extraction, the scientists say, has already passed its natural renewal rate, causing severe damage to deltas and coastal ecosystems.

And with China already responsible for one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, the vast pipeline network planned under the BRI, and the infrastructure construction involved, will mean further and faster exploitation of fossil fuel reserves.

Riskiest Scheme Ever

One of the authors of the commentary in Nature Sustainability is Bill Laurance, of James Cook University, Australia. In an interview with Nexus Media he had more to say about his concerns – and he didn’t pull his punches.

Professor Laurance thinks the BRI “environmentally, the riskiest venture ever undertaken”, which “simply blows out of the water anything else that’s been attempted in human history…In biodiversity and environmental terms, it’s the worst thing we’ve seen anywhere  –  and in the past forty years, I and my colleagues have seen some pretty horrific stuff in the Amazon, Africa, Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.”

On climate change, he holds out little hope that the Initiative can offer anything much: “If you also consider everything China is doing or promoting overseas in terms of extractive industries and large-scale infrastructure, they utterly overwhelm any other nation as climate changers.

“In real terms – digging through a great deal of greenwashing – I don’t see anything in the BRI that squares with China’s stated climate goals.”

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Ex-Chemical Industry Lawyer to Head EPA Task Force

WASHINGTON—A lawyer tapped to lead a task force at the Environmental Protection Agency overseeing cleanups at the nation’s most polluted places worked until recently for a top chemical and plastics manufacturer with a troubled legacy of creating some of those toxic sites.

Steven D. Cook has been named as the new chair of the Superfund Task Force, which EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt created last year to revamp how the agency oversees cleanups at the more than 1,300 toxic sites.

Before beginning work in February as deputy assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Land and Emergency Management, Cook served more than 20 years as in-house corporate counsel for LyondellBasell Industries — one of the world’s largest plastics, chemicals and refining companies.

EPA records show that LyondellBasell and its subsidiaries are listed as being potentially responsible for at least three dozen Superfund polluted sites.

An analysis by The Associated Press shows that nearly half the political appointees hired at EPA under President Donald Trump have industry ties. Of more than 60 EPA hires tracked by the AP over the last year, about one-third worked as registered lobbyists or lawyers for chemical manufacturers, fossil fuel producers or other EPA-regulated companies.

Trump promised as a presidential candidate to drain the swamp in Washington. An executive order signed two weeks after his inauguration bars former lobbyists and corporate lawyers from participating in any matter they worked on for private clients within two years of going to work for the government.

Following a request by AP, EPA provided a copy of an April 20 memo Cook signed recusing himself from participating in regulatory matters involving LyondellBasell. However, as stated in the letter, Cook can participate in matters affecting his former employer as long as his actions would also impact at least five similarly situated companies.

“All EPA employees receive ethics briefings when they start and continually work with our ethics office regarding any potential conflicts they may encounter while employed here,” said Lincoln Ferguson, an EPA spokesman. “Steven Cook is no different.”

It was not immediately clear whether Cook would be allowed to participate in decisions involving LyondellBasell, anyway. AP reported in March that White House counsel Don McGahn has issued at least 37 ethics waivers to key administration officials, including three working at EPA, that allow them to help regulate the very industries from which they previously collected paychecks even after signing recusals. It was not clear whether Cook was granted a waiver, and Ferguson did not respond to AP’s inquiries on the subject.

Lyondell Chemical Co., a Houston-based subsidiary of LyondellBasell, agreed to pay $250 million in 2010 to settle environmental claims and provide cleanup funds for 15 properties across the country as part of bankruptcy proceedings.

Another subsidiary of the Dutch chemicals conglomerate, Equistar Chemicals, agreed in 2007 to spend more than $125 million on pollution controls and cleanup costs to address a myriad of air, water and hazardous waste violations at seven petrochemical plants in Texas, Illinois, Iowa and Louisiana. Court filings made as part of the company’s legal settlement with the Justice Department, and EPA listed Cook as the primary contact for Equistar.

LyondellBasell subsidiaries are identified as a responsible party on dozens of Superfund sites. The companies set aside funds for cleanups before emerging from bankruptcy.

“LyondellBasell resolved its Superfund obligations nearly a decade ago,” said Pattie Shieh-Lance, a corporate spokeswoman in Houston. “The company does not currently have any such obligations.”

Cook is taking over as chair of the Superfund Task Force following the resignation of Albert “Kell” Kelly, a longtime friend and business associate of Pruitt’s. AP reported in August that federal banking regulators had banned Kelly, who previously the chairman of Oklahoma-based SpiritBank, from banking for life. Members of Congress had been pressing for details about what led to the banking sanctions against Kelly when he quit his EPA job.

Cook’s appointment to lead the task force was first reported by Bloomberg.

He is currently the top political appointee at EPA’s Land and Emergency Management office, which oversees the agency’s response to chemical spills and oversees management of the Superfund program.

Trump has nominated Peter C. Wright to serve as assistant administrator for Land and Emergency Management, but he has not yet been confirmed to the post by the U.S. Senate. Wright has worked as a corporate lawyer at Dow Chemical Co. since 1999.

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Follow Associated Press investigative reporter Michael Biesecker at http://twitter.com/mbieseck

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Defense Department to Handle Federal Background Checks

WASHINGTON—The Defense Department is poised to take over background investigations for the federal government, using increased automation and high-tech analysis to tighten controls and tackle an enormous backlog of workers waiting for security clearances, according to U.S. officials.

The change aims to fix a system whose weaknesses were exposed by the case of a Navy contractor who gunned down a dozen people at Washington’s Navy Yard in 2013. He was able to maintain a security clearance despite concerns about his mental health and an arrest that investigators never reviewed.

Problems had earlier surfaced with former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who now lives in Russia to avoid charges for disclosing classified material, and Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, who went to prison for leaking classified documents, triggering calls to update the antiquated system to include more frequent criminal and financial checks of workers who have security clearances.

Another problem has been delays: a backlog of about 700,000 people, including high-ranking federal officials waiting as much as a year to get clearances. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, for example, received his permanent clearance just a few weeks ago, more than 16 months after Trump took office. The delay, his lawyer said, was caused by the backlog in the new administration and Kushner’s extensive financial wealth, which required lengthy review.

Pentagon officials said that over the next three years, the Defense Department will take responsibility for all background investigations involving its military and civilian employees and contractors. But according to a U.S. official, the White House is expected to soon give the department authority to conduct security reviews for nearly all other government agencies as well. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the decision before it was publicly announced.

Plans to transfer responsibility from the Office of Personnel Management to the Pentagon for all of the roughly 3.6 million Pentagon employees, directed by defense legislation for fiscal 2017, are already in the works. The new program will involve a system of continuous checks that will automatically pull and analyze workers’ criminal, financial, substance abuse and eventually social media data on a more regular basis, rather than only every five or 10 years as it is done now.

Garry Reid, director for defense intelligence, said the shift of responsibility to the Pentagon will allow OPM officials to begin eating away at the current backlog of about 700,000, of which roughly 500,000 are Defense Department workers. The Pentagon won’t take over any of the backlogged cases because they are already underway in OPM.

While the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is the executive agent for the program, and sets the guidelines for the security requirements based on federal investigative guidelines. OPM and the Pentagon carry out the vetting process, working with the DNI.

Bill Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said at his confirmation hearing last month that by mid-June the national intelligence director would issue guidance to departments and agencies to update 2012 federal investigative standards used to vet for security clearances. He said the government also was working on ways to allow contractors and federal workers to move more seamlessly between the private sector and government without having to get new clearances.

Evanina said changes could result in a 20 percent reduction in the backlog within six months.

In the first year, the Pentagon will take over investigations for those seeking a renewal of their secret clearance, then over the next two years will take on those seeking their initial secret clearance and then move to employees seeking top secret renewals and initial clearances, said Reid, in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

According to Reid, about 20 people are already on board setting up the program and 350 more will be hired in the coming months.

It will cost an additional $40 million for fiscal year 2019. But over time, he said, the department expects to spend “significantly less” than the current $1.3 billion price tag for the program because of the increased automation and other savings.

A key problem contributing to the backlog is that field investigations into workers seeking security clearances can take up to 500 days, as investigators scour records and conduct interviews with neighbors and other acquaintances of the employee.

An analysis of the process, said Reid, found that 50 percent of the investigators’ workloads involves tasks such as driving around the country, finding sources and looking for people to talk to about the employees.

Using more automated and continuous checks, he said, “can find out that same information that’s taking hundreds of days and frankly a billion dollars a year to do, and collect similar information.”

As an example, he said an automated check could reveal information in the national criminal database about an incident that wasn’t otherwise reported or communicated between a local law enforcement agency and the military.

Carrie L. Wibben, the Pentagon’s director of counterintelligence and security, said that as a result, the department is discovering problems years before investigators would have turned them up in regularly scheduled five or 10-year checks.

Workers with secret clearance are re-evaluated every 10 years, and those with top secret clearances are checked every five years.

She also said that through advanced technology, the department will be able to determine specific risk factors for workers based on their histories, and then set up automatic checks and analyses to watch for problems. For example, an employee who had some minor financial problems might get their credit checked more frequently.

Already the department has started the continuous evaluation process for about 1.1 million employees, and since January, 58 workers have had their security clearances revoked.

While social media can provide a massive amount of information about people, it also presents a challenge.

Wibben said the department has done pilot programs to assess the value, but so far she said the Pentagon is not scouring workers’ social media accounts for information.

“The challenge of social media in general is the fidelity of it — you can’t believe everything you read on the internet,” said Reid, adding that researching everyone’s internet postings would be wasteful and erroneous. “So we have the authority, frankly, to do more, but to make it effective is something we’re still really researching.”

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Associated Press writer Deb Riechmann contributed to this report.

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Who Would Lose in a Trade War

WASHINGTON—If a trade war is coming, the cheesemakers of Wisconsin are standing in the line of fire. So are the farmers of the Great Plains and the distillers of Kentucky. And the employees of iconic American brands like Harley-Davidson and Levi Strauss.

The likelihood of a trade conflagration leapt closer to reality this week after the United States imposed tariff on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, Mexico and the European Union. Infuriated, the jilted U.S. allies vowed to retaliate with tariffs of their own. And in a separate dispute, China is poised to penalize $50 billion in U.S. goods — many of them produced by supporters of President Donald Trump in the America’s agricultural heartland.

“They’re going to hit the farmers,” said Bryan Klabunde, a farmer in northwestern Minnesota. “We want things fair for all industries, but we’re going to take the brunt of the punishment if other countries retaliate.'”

President Donald Trump, who entered office promising to rip up trade deals and crack down on unfair trading practices, is clashing with trading partners on all sides. To the north, he’s taking on Canada; to the south, Mexico; to the east, Europe; across the Pacific Ocean to the west, China and Japan.

“The president seems to be creating trade (and other) disputes with everyone — allies and adversaries alike — and it’s difficult to discern any coherent strategy,” said Rod Hunter, a former National Security Council staffer under President George W. Bush. “The impacts of the disputes have been limited so far, but the economic and political costs will go up as retaliation by trading partners begins in earnest.”

Mexico, for instance, plans to retaliate against the steel and aluminum tariffs by targeting U.S. cheese, among other products.

“It’s our second-largest market,” Jeff Schwager, president of Sartori, a cheese company in Plymouth, Wisconsin, said of Mexico. Retaliatory tariffs “will reduce sales — there’s no question.”

The EU is threatening to penalize Kentucky bourbon and the motorcycles of Wisconsin-based Harley-Davidson. The potential tariffs pack a political punch: They’d hurt constituents of House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican.

On Friday, reporters in Louisville, Kentucky, asked McConnell if he thought the Europeans were trying to get his attention.

“Well,” the Senate leader said, “they got my attention. They didn’t need to do that. These are our friends. These are not enemies. Canada and Mexico, Europe — these are our allies, and we need to work this out in a way that’s comforting to everyone.”

Ben Steffen, a dairy farmer who also grows corn, soybeans, and wheat on 1,900 acres southeastern Nebraska near Humboldt, is angry about the U.S. tariffs being imposed on America’s closest trade partners and allies.

“I’m upset because it hits me in my pocketbook from multiple angles,” he said. “I sell beef, I sell corn, I sell soybeans and I sell milk. All of those products are vulnerable because we export significant amounts in those markets.”

The milk market has been depressed for about three years, and farmers have struggled to break even. About 14 percent of U.S. milk production is exported; the largest customer is Mexico.

“This is the worst possible thing to have for our milk market, and it’s the same for every other commodity,” Steffen said. ” These are important relationships.”

An even higher-stakes trade dispute is playing out on the Pacific Rim. The United States and China are poised to impose tariffs on up to $200 billion worth of each other’s goods in a battle over Beijing’s strong-arm efforts to overtake U.S. technological supremacy.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is traveling to Beijing this weekend for talks aimed at preventing an all-out trade war between the world’s two biggest economies. On the Chinese target list are American soybean farmers, who send about 60 percent of their exports to China.

On Friday, Klabunde, who grows corn and soybeans on 3,000 acres near Waubun, Minnesota, spent two nerve-wracking hours with a hired hand, pulling a stuck tractor out of a drainage ditch. They finally got the machine free.

“I think the tariffs and trade war scare me more than a stuck planter,” Klabunde said. “I can lose only so much money on a stuck planter. I can lose a lot more money in a trade war.”

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Karnowski reported from Minneapolis.

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Carrie Antlfinger in Milwaukee; Bruce Schreiner in Louisville, Kentucky; and David Pitt in Des Moines, Iowa. contributed to this report.

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North Korea Summit Is Back on Track, Trump Says

WASHINGTON—The U.S.-North Korea summit is back on, President Donald Trump announced Friday, ending weeks of uncertainty about a historic meeting with Kim Jong Un, to discuss ending the North Korean leader’s nuclear program.

Trump made the announcement, just a week after he had said he was canceling the Singapore summit, following a more than hour-long meeting with a top North Korean official who delivered a letter from the North Korean leader. The official, Kim Yong Chol, posed for photos with Trump outside the Oval Office, and they talked amiably at Kim’s car before he was driven away.

“We’re going to deal,” Trump told reporters after Kim left. He also said it was likely that more than one meeting would be necessary to bring about his goal of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula but “I think you’re going to have a very positive result in the end. We will see what we will see.”

In the latest sign of hostility cooling down but hopes kept in check, Trump said he’s unilaterally put a hold on new sanctions against the North “until the talks break down.”

“I don’t even want to use the term ‘maximum pressure’ anymore,” Trump added, referencing his preferred term for the punishing U.S. economic sanctions against North Korea.

Trump told reporters he hadn’t yet read the letter from Kim and added with a smile, “I may be in for a big surprise, folks.” But minutes earlier he had described the note as “a very interesting letter,” and teased journalists about revealing its contents.

Plans for the high-stakes sit-down in Singapore had been cast into doubt. Trump suddenly withdrew from the meeting last week, only to announce a day later that it could still get back on track. White House officials cast the roller-coaster public statements as reflective of the hard-nosed negotiation by the two nations.

Three teams of officials in the U.S., Singapore, and the Korean demilitarized zone have been meeting this week on preparations for the summit.

After North Korean officials delivered a series of bellicose statements last month, Trump announced he was withdrawing from the summit with a strongly worded letter. He cited “tremendous anger and open hostility” by Pyongyang but also urged Kim Jong Un to call him. By the next day, he was signaling the event could be back on after a conciliatory response from North Korea.

Trump has refused to publicly acknowledge whether he’s spoken directly with Kim Jong Un ahead of the talks.

Kim Yong Chol was greeted at the White House by chief of staff John Kelly and then whisked into the Oval Office. He is the most senior North Korean to visit in 18 years, a symbolic sign of easing tensions after fears of war escalated amid North Korean nuclear and missile tests last year.

Questions remain about what a deal on the North’s nuclear weapons would look like, though Trump said Friday he believed Kim Jong Un would agree to denuclearization. Despite Kim’s apparent eagerness for a summit with Trump, there are lingering doubts about whether he will fully relinquish his nuclear weapons, which he may see as his only guarantee of survival.

U.S. defense and intelligence officials have repeatedly assessed the North to be on the threshold of having the capability to strike anywhere in the continental U.S. with a nuclear-tipped missile — a capacity that Trump and other U.S. officials have said they would not tolerate.

Kim Yong Chol left his hotel in New York City early Friday for the trip to Washington in a convoy of SUVs. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the former CIA chief who has traveled to North Korea and met with Kim Jong Un twice in the past two months, said he believed the country’s leaders are “contemplating a path forward where they can make a strategic shift, one that their country has not been prepared to make before.”

Yet he also said a news conference that difficult work remains including hurdles that may appear to be insurmountable as negotiations progress on the U.S. demand for North Korea’s complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization.

“We will push forward to test the proposition that we can achieve that outcome,” he said.

Despite the upbeat messaging in the United States, Kim Jong Un, in a meeting with Russia’s foreign minister on Thursday, complained about the U.S. trying to spread its influence in the region, a comment that may complicate the summit. “As we move to adjust to the political situation in the face of U.S. hegemonism, I am willing to exchange detailed and in-depth opinions with your leadership and hope to do so moving forward,” Kim told Sergey Lavrov.

North Korea’s flurry of diplomatic activity following an increase in nuclear weapons and missile tests in 2017 suggests that Kim is eager for sanctions relief to build his economy and for the international legitimacy a summit with Trump would provide.

Trump views a summit as a legacy-defining opportunity to make a nuclear deal.

Kim Yong Chol is the most senior North Korean visitor to the United States since Vice Marshal Jo Myong Rok visited Washington in 2000 to meet President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. That was the last time the two sides, which are technically at war, attempted to arrange a leadership summit. It was an effort that ultimately failed as Clinton’s time in office ran out, and relations turned sour again after George W. Bush took office in early 2001 with a tough policy on the North.

Kim Yong Chol, vice chairman of the North Korean ruling party’s central committee, was allowed into the United States despite being on a U.S. sanctions list. He was granted special permission to travel outside the New York area in order to meet with the president.

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Associated Press writers Catherine Lucey in Washington, Christopher Bodeen in Beijing and Matthew Lee in New York contributed.

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Most Americans Feel Racism Is Getting Worse, Poll Shows

Sixty-four percent of Americans believe race relations are a major problem in American life today, according to a new poll from NBC News and Survey Monkey. Forty-five percent believe race relations are getting worse, and 41 percent say Americans don’t talk about the issue enough.

Perhaps the most shocking statistic in the poll might be that 47 percent of respondents said the subject of race relations never comes up in conversation with family and friends.

The poll was released the same day that 8,000 Starbucks stores closed nationwide for the franchise’s highly publicized bias training session, and the same week that Roseanne Barr’s racist Twitter rants did what her years of publicly aired racist comments could not: get her show canceled by ABC.

The poll also made headlines amid others detailing multiple incidents in which black Americans were either arrested or had the police called on them for waiting for friends in a coffee shop, napping in a dorm common room, or even barbecuing. It seems strange that at a time when racism is all over the news, and a company with almost 14,000 stores across the United States decides it needs to address racial bias, Americans are still unwilling to discuss racism among themselves.

While the poll didn’t break down the answers to every question by race and gender, clues as to why this is the case may come from respondents’ answers to other questions, particularly regarding whether blacks specifically are treated unfairly in society and soliciting their estimates of the amount of time they spend interacting with people from multiple races.

Sixty-four percent of respondents may think racism is increasing, but 30 percent of white respondents said it’s not a serious problem. Additionally, even though majorities of all races surveyed said they interact socially with friends and acquaintances of all races, 39 percent of white people said they spend most of their social time with other white people.

The report doesn’t say so (and this is a personal observation), but if whites are spending time primarily with other whites who don’t appear to believe racism is a serious issue, perhaps it follows that they would feel less compelled to engage in discussions about race.

The poll, as Washington Post writer Eugene Scott noted in his analysis, also did not ask why respondents thought race relations are getting worse, or whether they’re hopeful that relations could be improved. That answer, Scott concludes, “could be telling in terms of how Americans view the responsibilities of government, business and even themselves in fixing what they clearly see as a problem.”

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Palestinian Health Ministry Says Woman Killed in Gaza Protest

JERUSALEM — A Palestinian woman was killed by Israeli fire Friday during mass protests in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.

Thousands of Palestinians thronged to the Israeli border in the eastern Gaza Strip, marking the 10th weekly protest aimed at drawing attention to the crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade and demanding the right for Palestinians to return to former homes in what’s now Israel.

The health ministry said Razan Najjar, 21, died of a gunshot wound to the chest, and over 100 people were injured, 40 of them by live fire.

Witnesses said Najjar was a volunteer paramedic who took part in treating wounded protesters during the weekly demonstrations.

The crowds gathered at five tent camps near the border fence separating Israel and the Gaza. Dozens of youths approached the fence, burning tires and hurling rocks at Israeli troops behind the fence.

The Israeli military said in a statement that Palestinian protesters attacked the border fence during Friday’s protests and troops responded with “riot dispersal means.” The army also said that a military vehicle came under fire, and a grenade planted on the fence exploded. No Israeli troops were injured.

Friday’s protest comes days after an intense round of cross-border violence, in which Hamas, the militant group ruling Gaza, and Islamic Jihad fired dozens of mortar shells and rockets into Israel, wounding three soldiers.

Israel responded with dozens of airstrikes targeting militant positions in the Gaza Strip, the largest operation in the Gaza Strip since a 2014 war with Hamas.

Egyptian mediation efforts successfully restored the cease-fire that has largely held since the end of a 50-day war between Israel and Gaza militant groups in 2014.

Friday’s protests were the latest in a series of demonstrations orchestrated weekly by Hamas since late March. Tensions soared on May 14, when the U.S. relocated its embassy to contested Jerusalem. Over 60 Palestinians were killed that day.

Since March 30, Israeli fire has killed more than 115 Palestinians, most of them unarmed protesters, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Organizers of the protests vowed to continue them until the blockade — imposed after Hamas forcibly seized control of the coastal enclave in 2007 after winning legislative elections a year earlier — is lifted. They also called for a high turnout for Tuesday’s protests, which mark the 51st anniversary of the Six Day War, in which Israel captured Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

Demonstrators at Friday’s protests waved Kuwaiti flags to thank the Persian Gulf state for blocking a U.S. bid to condemn Gaza rocket fire at the Security Council earlier this week.

Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas official who joined the protest east of Gaza City, praised the turnout despite Ramadan.

“Those who bet on dwindling participation are proved to be wrong today,” he told reporters.

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Spain’s New Leader Takes Aim at Corruption, Austerity

MADRID — Prime Minister-elect Pedro Sanchez vowed Friday to root out the corruption that helped bring down Spain’s outgoing conservative government and pledged to help people affected by years of public spending cuts under his predecessor, Mariano Rajoy.

Minutes after narrowly winning a no-confidence vote in parliament, the Socialist party leader signaled a change in tone and priorities from Rajoy’s unbending commitment to reducing the national debt during his more than six years as prime minister.

Sanchez, the 46-year-old head of what has been Spain’s main opposition party, has never held a government post.

He said he would address what he called the “social emergencies” of Spaniards after years of government austerity.

“I’m aware of the responsibility and the complex political moment of our country,” Sanchez said in brief comments to reporters after the 180-169 vote in the Congress of Deputies, Spain’s parliament. One lawmaker abstained.

Sanchez will be sworn in Saturday at 11 a.m. (0900 GMT, 5 a.m. EDT) by King Felipe VI at the Zarzuela Palace in Madrid and will appoint his Cabinet over the coming days. His triumph was a dramatic return to the spotlight after being fired as party leader less than two years ago.

Sanchez said he intended to call elections before the end of this parliamentary term in 2020, but he didn’t say when, and he probably will want to make his mark first with some headline policies before going to the polls.

A tough path lies ahead for his minority government, however. It will face a political minefield as it tries to steer legislation through parliament by winning support from rival parties. The Socialists only have 84 seats — just under a quarter of the total.

Sanchez said he would seek to build a consensus to try to weed out corruption.

He also said he wanted to “transform and modernize” Spain, including improving job security, fighting inequality, providing a better life for the elderly and investing in public health care.

The former economics professor and career politician inherits a strong economy in which growth last year reached 3.1 percent. But a question remains over where he might find the money to pay for his Socialist party’s ambitions.

Like the other 18 member countries of the eurozone shared currency bloc, Spain is locked into rules that keep a lid on spending and hold debt at sustainable levels. After the eurozone’s recent financial crisis, any easing of those rules could spook markets.

Spain is the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy and an influential member of the European Union. Sanchez and his party are staunch supporters of the EU and the shared currency.

Madrid’s stock exchange didn’t appear worried by Sanchez’s rise to power, however, and it closed nearly 1.8 percent up from the previous day.

The downfall of Rajoy’s government after nearly eight years in power came just days after his Popular Party’s reputation was badly bruised by a court verdict that identified it as a beneficiary of a large kickbacks-for-contracts scheme. That ruling spelled the end of Rajoy’s rule, and Sanchez was keen to portray himself as a fresh start.

Rajoy shook hands with Sanchez after the result was announced, leaving the chamber while lawmakers with the anti-establishment leftist party Podemos shouted “Yes, we can.”

Sanchez has set himself apart from Rajoy’s confrontational stance with separatists in Catalonia, Spain’s wealthiest region, where the Catalan government is making a noisy new push for independence. Sanchez has promised to open talks with new Catalan President Quim Torra, despite having previously called the fervent secessionist’s comments “xenophobic.”

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Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal.

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