Defense Secretary Mark Esper will outline his plan Wednesday morning to take thousands of U.S. troops out of Germany by shifting some of the forces to Italy and Belgium, U.S. officials said.
Details of the Pentagon plan to implement President Trump’s decision to remove 9,500 troops that are permanently stationed in Germany were to be announced at a briefing at the Pentagon.
A U.S. official said that the U.S. European Command has drawn up a sweeping plan for Pentagon consideration that would move its headquarters from Germany to Belgium and send F-16 fighters to the Aviano air base in Italy.
The Army’s Stryker brigade in Germany would be turned into a rotational unit.
The U.S. Africa Command’s headquarters in Germany would be shifted to Naples, Italy, or possibly to bases in Spain, under the plans provided to the Pentagon.
The U.S. would retain its major air base at Ramstein, Germany, and its Landstuhl military hospital. But a headquarters for U.S. Special Operations Forces in Europe would also be moved to Belgium, under the plans.
Moving the forces and building new facilities for them would cost billions of dollars. Some U.S. troops would return to the U.S., though it hasn’t yet been decided where all of them will go.
Mr. Trump’s decision to cut troops in Germany was conveyed to the Pentagon in early June and caught U.S. allies and much of the American military by surprise. It has drawn sharp criticism from lawmakers and military experts who have warned that it may undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s ability to deter Russian aggression.
The Pentagon is planning to brief an array of former Defense officials and think tank experts after Mr. Esper’s announcement to try to persuade them to support the plan.
In addition to cutting the permanent U.S. presence of 34,500 service members by 9,500 troops, Mr. Trump also capped at 25,000 the number of American troops in Germany at any one time.
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HONG KONG—The U.S. ordered the abrupt closure of the Chinese Consulate in Houston, accusing China of extensive interference in domestic affairs and intellectual-property theft, an escalation of bilateral tensions that Beijing called outrageous and unprecedented.
The State Department, in a statement on the closure, accused China of conducting “massive illegal spying and influence operations throughout the United States against U.S. government officials and American citizens,” and said such activities have increased in recent years.
The closure order, first made public by Beijing, coincided with Washington’s unveiling on Tuesday of indictments against two hackers in China. They have been accused of targeting American firms involved in coronavirus research and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars in sensitive information from companies around the world while working on behalf of Beijing’s main civilian intelligence agency.
In Houston, firefighters and police officers had responded Tuesday evening to calls related to the Chinese Consulate, where smoke was seen rising from an outdoor courtyard area, local police said. Footage aired by local television stations purportedly showed people burning documents on the consulate’s premises.
Washington’s demand opened a new front in President Trump’s efforts to pressure China in a duel between the world’s two-largest economies over trade, technological and military competition, geopolitical influence and the coronavirus pandemic.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, citing the hacking indictments and U.S. jobs he said were stolen by Beijing’s policies, said China had been given clear expectations and that Washington would take actions that protect the American people when those expectations aren’t met.
“President Trump has said, ‘Enough, we’re not going to allow this to continue to happen,’” Mr. Pompeo told reporters at a briefing in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The Trump administration has already imposed visa restrictions, sanctions and other curbs on Chinese officials and entities over recent weeks, and has considered an entry ban against members of China’s Communist Party and their families—a move that could affect hundreds of millions of Chinese.
Beijing has countered each time with heated criticism and retaliatory measures, and did so again following the closure order against its consulate.
“This is a political provocation unilaterally launched by the U.S.,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Wednesday. “China urges the U.S. to immediately rescind its erroneous decision, otherwise China will undertake legitimate and necessary responses.”
President Trump plans to announce Wednesday that his administration has completed its update to the National Environmental Policy Act, including changes that will mandate deadlines for completing environmental reviews.
The new rules would require full environmental impact statements to be completed within two years. Less comprehensive environmental assessments would have to be concluded within one year. It is widely anticipated to hew to a proposal the administration made in January.
The measures, which are expected to be published in the Federal Register on Thursday and go into effect in 60 days, are supported by business groups and trade unions who say the environmental review process has been distorted to become a tool to endlessly delay needed highways, pipelines and other infrastructure projects.
The changes are opposed by environmentalists who say the reviews serve as a bulwark against climate change and help protect poor and minority communities that typically lack the resources to defend their interests from development that could harm their neighborhoods.
Mr. Trump is scheduled to make his announcement at a late-afternoon visit to United Parcel Service Inc.’s Hapeville Airport Hub in Atlanta. That shipping facility and others are expected to benefit from a planned commercial vehicle lane project on Interstate 75, which is the type of project that the administration says will benefit from the revisions to NEPA.
Environmental reviews now take longer than four years on average—seven for highways, according to the administration. It has previously estimated a national backlog of infrastructure projects at nearly $1 trillion.
NEPA, enacted in 1970, gave environmentalists and conservationists a voice in planning, allowing them to sue if they believed developers weren’t properly following the law. Planners had to issue environmental-impact statements for their most significant projects detailing how they would alter surroundings and alternatives that could mitigate damage.
Democrats and environmental groups say the changes could limit legal rights for people who file comments late in the environmental review process. They are also concerned climate change may get less scrutiny. January’s proposal said most stringent reviews wouldn’t have to address effects “remote in time, geographically remote, or the result of a lengthy causal chain.”
“This is the height of stupidity, the equivalent of sticking your head in the sand like an ostrich—and then hoping the water doesn’t rise,” said Samantha Gross, a fellow specializing in climate and energy at the Brookings Institution.
Business lobbyists who support the changes say a much larger overhaul is still necessary to break the gridlock.
“NEPA is just a small component of that,” said Ben Norris, senior counsel at the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s largest trade group. “The foot shouldn’t come off the gas. There’s a lot more to do here.”
Pipelines are likely to benefit, experts said, from one of the new policy’s biggest changes as outlined in the proposal, excluding more projects from the most stringent reviews. It would apply to anything that gets no or little federal funding. Energy companies are also a fan of a move to allow reviewers to consider pre-existing data and studies, so all reviews aren’t starting totally from scratch.
Pipeline projects have come under special attack from environmentalists, who see their permitting process as a weak point in slowing oil-and-gas development and the industry’s greenhouse-gas emissions that cause climate change. NEPA has often been central to their fight, including in a wave of recent setbacks for pipeline developers.
A federal judge earlier this month ordered the Dakota Access pipeline—already operational for three years—to shut down because it was improperly granted a key environmental permit without producing the review NEPA required.
Duke Energy Corp. and Dominion Energy Inc. canceled the Atlantic Coast Pipeline project amid years of permit delays and opposition to new fossil-fuel projects. They made that decision despite winning a Supreme Court decision about a permit to cross the Appalachian Trail.
The companies cited uncertainty over infrastructure permitting. During the six-year wait, Virginia also passed a law that would require all Dominion’s gas-fired power plants to capture their emissions or close by 2045.
Industry lobbyists and allies said the Atlantic Coast project’s failure shows how complex the permitting problem is. And for some it sparked frustration that the administration hadn’t taken more dramatic steps earlier to update federal permitting and took 3½ years to accomplish just a preliminary overhaul.
“As a practical matter, I don’t think it means much of anything,” Mike McKenna, an industry lobbyist who led the transition team for Mr. Trump on energy, said of the Trump proposal. “It’s been totally overtaken by events.”
Industry officials did credit Mr. Trump for completing a NEPA overhaul, something other presidents of both parties have talked about but failed to do for decades. And they noted that benefits likely would extend beyond fossil fuel to emissions-free electricity from wind and hydropower, too. Trade groups from those industries have been supportive of the plan.
“If we want to be able to build the big things we need to build and build them quickly in order to address the climate challenge, we have to address this broken permitting process,” said Marty Durbin who leads the energy arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
“This isn’t about saying how do we get a green light for every project that’s proposed,“ Mr. Durbin said. “This is just about how do we get a yes or no?”
I dont think anyone should but I am trying to post any articles that I find that are legitimizing their organization.
I wouldn't be too concerned about it. the "national popular vote" is something that each state would have to determine themselves if they want to be part of it, and there is absolutely no way ever that any battleground would give up that power. it would mean destroy in 1 move everything that business enjoy during election years in their own state.
"The jobless rate fell to 11.1% in June as the U.S. regained 4.8 million jobs, but a recent coronavirus spike could hamper the labor market’s recovery
Job growth in June followed May’s payroll gain of 2.7 million and showed Americans are slowly getting back to work. But the U.S. labor market is operating with millions fewer jobs than in February, the month before the coronavirus pandemic struck the U.S. economy."
"The jobless rate, down from 13.3% in May, is still well elevated at historically high levels compared to before the coronavirus drove the U.S. into a deep recession. Until March, the unemployment rate was hovering around a 50-year low of 3.5%.
The number of new applications for jobless benefits fell by 55,000 to 1.43 million last week, the Labor Department said in a separate report Thursday. Unemployment claims have come down from a peak of nearly 7 million in late March but have stabilized near a historically high 1.5 million, an indication companies continue to cut jobs."
This is pretty amazing, USA is rising up in the job market way wayyyyy faster than anywhere on earth
Congratulation, our little daughter is now 14 months old and all i can say is get ready to wake up at 7h am everyday because that is what your life will be from now on!!
I think it shows good data about how even if there is more cases detected, the number of death and hospitalization is really what matters.
Scientists are studying why the coronavirus hasn’t had more of a resurgence in Europe after countries lifted their lockdowns while some U.S. states battle explosive outbreaks. But the epidemiologists in the media already know why: GOP Governors and President Trump ignored public-health guidelines and reopened too fast and too soon.
“With Trump leading the way, record surge in new infections exposes failures in U.S. response,” the Washington Post wrote Sunday. Liberals are juxtaposing the U.S. with Europe, which ostensibly has the virus under control. The Trump Administration has sometimes been too sanguine, but much of this is partisan opportunism in an election year.
Even with the latest outbreaks, the U.S. has recorded fewer deaths per 100,000 people (38) than the United Kingdom (66), Spain (61), Italy (57) and France (44). Death rates are a lagging indicator, but Arizona (21), Florida (15) and Texas (8) are still well below Europe. New York, which has opened up last and slowly, has a death rate per 100,000 of 161.
The Southern U.S. states lifted their lockdowns gradually and at around the same time as most European countries. France reopened shops and schools on May 11 followed by restaurants, bars and cafes on June 2. Germany began reopening shops on April 20 and bars and restaurants on May 15. Italy let shops, bars and restaurants reopen on May 18. Europe started their lockdowns earlier so perhaps they did more to crush the virus curve before reopening, but southern U.S. states also had relatively few infections when they reopened.
Some say the U.S. states didn’t wait long enough between the stages of reopening. But Texas Gov. Greg Abbott let restaurants and malls reopen at 25% capacity on May 1, and bars to do so on May 22. On June 11 he lifted the bar capacity limit to 50%. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis let restaurants and stores reopen May 4 at 25% capacity, which he raised to 50% on May 15. On June 5 he let bars open at 50% capacity but excluded Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties where there have been more cases.
Arizona gave restaurants and stores the green light on May 11 provided they follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention social-distancing and hygiene protocols. Yet hospitalizations and infections didn’t start surging in these states until a few weeks ago.
Google’s mobility tracker shows that traffic to restaurants and retail businesses has increased more in Europe than U.S. hot spots. As of last week, retail traffic was down 6% in Germany, 11% in Italy, 12% in France from a January baseline. Retail traffic remained more depressed in Arizona (-20%), Florida (-20%) Texas (-15%) and Harris County around Houston (-14%).
Mobility data also show Americans in hot spots are hunkering down at home more than Europeans, perhaps because of hotter weather. Large home gatherings could be contributing to spread but are hard for governments to limit. GOP Governors have been chastised for letting young people crowd bars, but European countries are struggling to corral their youth too.
Earlier this month police broke up an illegal rave in Berlin with more than 3,000 young people. More than a 1,000 were caught at an illegal beach party near Lisbon last weekend. Thousands of Liverpool soccer fans partied in the streets this weekend after their club won the British Premier League.
It’s too early to draw conclusions about long-term success or failure. Europe began reopening its internal borders two weeks ago, and infections may tick up once people travel more. Germany has had a spike in cases in the last week, albeit fewer than in the American South; many are tied to meatpacking plants as in the U.S. Midwest. It’s also possible that places where the virus spread widely in the spring have developed a degree of immunity that may mitigate against a resurgence.
States are prudently pausing reopenings and boosting hospital capacity, but flare-ups are inevitable until there’s a vaccine or herd immunity. In any case the critics of reopening don’t offer much of an alternative beyond social-distancing, wearing masks and more testing. All three are important, and nearly all Governors agree even if they don't mandate masks. Masks are mandatory in New York but in our experience aren’t enforced. A return to strict lockdowns isn’t sustainable economically or politically, as even Democratic Governors admit.
No one has done everything right in this pandemic, and the America-is-a-failure reporting is as excessive as Donald Trump’s occasional claim that the pandemic will soon be over.
We really need to make subwins communities for things like football, books and video games.
I would really like each of those subwins to exists[. We need to keep on winning!
The American Hospital Association lost its legal bid to stop the Trump administration from requiring hospitals to disclose secret rates they negotiate with insurance companies, a victory for one of President Trump’s central health-policy initiatives.
The ruling Tuesday from Judge Carl Nichols with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia was a summary judgment, meaning the case didn’t go to trial although it can be appealed. He was appointed by Mr. Trump.
The hospital trade group had argued that the rule compelling the hospitals to publish their negotiated rates with insurers violates the First Amendment and goes beyond the statutory intent of the Affordable Care Act.
President Trump welcomed the decision, tweeting Tuesday evening: “BIG VICTORY for patients – Federal court UPHOLDS hospital price transparency. Patients deserve to know the price of care BEFORE they enter the hospital. Because of my action, they will. This may very well be bigger than healthcare itself. Congratulations America! ‘’
AHA’s senior vice president, Melinda Hatton, said the group plans to appeal.
“The proposal does nothing to help patients understand their out-of-pocket costs,” she said. “It also imposes significant burdens on hospitals at a time when resources are stretched thin and need to be devoted to patient care.”
She said hospitals and health systems have supported efforts to provide patients with information about the costs of their medical care, but this rule isn’t the right way to achieve the goal.
”This was a disingenuous self-serving lawsuit designed to keep patients in the dark,” tweeted Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma. CMS promulgated the rule.
“Especially when patients are seeking needed care during a public health emergency, it is more important than ever that they have ready access to the actual prices of health-care services,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said.
The rule could upend the $1 trillion hospital industry because it unveils rates long guarded as trade secrets.
Tom Nickels, executive vice president of the AHA, called it a radical approach when the Trump administration first proposed it in July 2019.
It requires hospitals to publicize the rates they negotiate with individual insurers for all services, including drugs, supplies, facility fees and care by doctors who work for the facility. It is scheduled to take effect in January 2021, with hospitals facing fines of up to $300 a day if they don’t disclose negotiated rates.
The price-disclosure requirements would cover the more than 6,000 hospitals that accept Medicare, the program for people age 65 and older.
The initiative represents the Trump administration’s growing effort to shift away from rolling back the Affordable Care Act and put its own stamp on health care instead. Central to that strategy is the notion that more price transparency will inject greater competition into the market and lower costs.
“The new rule seeks to disrupt the pricing games we’ve inherited from a prior health-care era which increases sticker prices as it increases secret discounts,” said Marty Makary, health-policy professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of the book “The Price We Pay.” Dr. Makary worked with the White House on the price-disclosure proposal.
The administration estimated the rule would cost hospitals more than $23 million annually in 2016 dollars. Annual costs range from $38.7 million to $39.4 million in 2019 dollars, according to the rule.
Hospital groups say they would have to prepare lots of information to comply, which would be costly. Complying would require spreadsheets with hundreds of thousands of columns, the hospitals said in the lawsuit. They say such files could crash most standard computer systems.
I think the idea is to make those monuments federal landmarks, and thus make the mayors liable for negligence if they do fail to protect federal landmarks.
Yay, this is my first sticky post.
"Arroyo told host Laura Ingraham that the president did not elaborate on how the order would be crafted. The EWTN anchor posited that Trump could designate the statues as National Historic Landmarks or enter them in a "national trust" to legally protect them."
To counter China and Russia, two great-power competitors, U.S. forces must be deployed abroad in a more forward and expeditionary manner than they have been in recent years. This is the main reason the U.S. will reduce its permanently stationed force in Germany from 34,500 troops to 25,000.
President Trump confirmed the plans on June 15, but details remain under development and no formal public announcement has been made. The secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are working diligently to provide the president with options to carry out this plan.
The Cold War practice of garrisoning large numbers of troops with their families on massive bases in places like Germany is now, in part, obsolete. Modern warfare is increasingly expeditionary and requires platforms with extended range, flexibility and endurance. While air bases and logistics hubs remain important, the Cold War-style garrisoning of troops makes less military and fiscal sense than it did in the 1970s.
Several thousand troops currently assigned to Germany may be reassigned to other countries in Europe. Thousands may expect to redeploy to the Indo-Pacific, where the U.S. maintains a military presence in Guam, Hawaii, Alaska and Japan, as well as deployments in locations like Australia. In that theater, Americans and allies face the most significant geopolitical challenge since the end of the Cold War. And the remainder will return to bases in the U.S.
After these redeployments, America will still maintain 25,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in Germany. The U.S. relationship with Germany will remain strong, as will American commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It is time, however, for all European nations to contribute their fair share in defending their homelands. Germany has the world’s fourth-largest economy yet spends only 1.4% of gross domestic product on its own defense—despite NATO member countries’ longstanding commitment to a 2% target. American taxpayers contribute 3.4% of GDP toward defense.
Since Mr. Trump took office, NATO allies have increased defense spending substantially, by $130 billion through 2020. Burden-sharing has reinvigorated the NATO alliance, bolstering its mission of defending Europe and North America from external threats while also playing a constructive role in hot spots such as Iraq and Afghanistan.
Berlin still has time to step up and show leadership. The Russian-German Nord Stream 2 pipeline isn’t complete; a German decision to stop the project would strengthen Europe’s energy security. Berlin hasn’t yet selected its 5G telecommunications provider. A trusted European company, such as Nokia or Ericsson, would be safer for this role than China’s Huawei. And Germany can accelerate its plan to harden its defenses, which would more than offset U.S. troop redeployment.
Under Mr. Trump’s leadership, America continues to lead the free world. The U.S. military’s global posture demonstrates this commitment and provides the maximum security for the American people.
I love this video, its one of the better ones, I really want to actually link it to my facebook, but god damn am I gonna tore apart a bunch of families within the bigger families by talking politics.
How can we tell if the link is legit ?? Is there anyway to verify it ??
I puked in my mouth a little when I saw Susan Rice, Yates and Kerry coming back
This is absolutely ridiculous, I was not too much on board with T_D moving elsewhere, but this is just ridiculous.
This reminds me soo much of 2013 when both sides couldnt come to an agreement and the usas credit was downgraded.