Politics
U.S. Says North Korea Is Testing a New Intercontinental Missile
WASHINGTON — The White Home stated on Thursday that North Korea had begun testing a brand new intercontinental ballistic missile in current days, and that American forces had been placing their missile protection items in Asia in a state of “enhanced readiness” for what they anticipate might be one other launch meant to reveal the vary of the brand new missile.
In a briefing on Thursday, a senior American official informed reporters that in a departure from the previous, North Korea had tried to cover the character of the checks, each of which have taken place in the course of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They recognized the missile as the identical one which the North had rolled by means of Pyongyang in October 2020. However till lately, it had not been examined.
It’s not clear whether or not the checks had been timed by Kim Jong-un, the North Korean chief, to return at a time of most distraction in Washington and concern of a broader battle in Europe. Regardless of the purpose, the emergence of a brand new intercontinental missile, finally meant to indicate that North Korea might attain American cities, provides to the checklist of simultaneous nationwide safety challenges dealing with President Biden. No less than two of them contain nuclear weapons within the fingers of unpredictable dictators.
The White Home stated the North had “tried to cover these escalatory steps,” suggesting it was not able to unveil a working model of the missile. The US, the senior administration official stated, shared the intelligence with allies after which revealed the brand new missile checks — and warned of the potential of a a lot bigger take a look at, thinly disguised as an area launch — in an effort to lift consciousness and start a rallying name for brand new sanctions towards Mr. Kim’s authorities.
It’s a comparable technique to the one used beginning in November to disclose intelligence about Russia’s buildup alongside Ukraine’s border.
However these revelations, whereas unifying NATO, finally didn’t short-circuit the invasion. On Thursday, a number of senior American officers stated they believed Mr. Kim would additionally go forward, in an effort to reveal that the brand new missile might strike the US or its allies — and to grab consideration.
The 2 checks carried out over the previous 12 days had been notable for a number of causes.
They marked the tip of a moratorium on intercontinental ballistic missile checks that has been in place since 2018, after a sequence of launches throughout the Pacific with an older model of the North’s intercontinental missiles led President Donald J. Trump to threaten the nation with “fireplace and fury just like the world has by no means seen.” Mr. Trump then circled and carried out three face-to-face conferences with Mr. Kim, and the 2 leaders exchanged admiring letters.
Mr. Trump claimed after his first assembly with Mr. Kim in Singapore that he had made nice progress, and that the North would quickly begin decreasing its armaments. However the diplomatic effort quickly fell aside, and the North didn’t surrender not a single weapon on account of his summit diplomacy. It continued to amass nuclear gas for its arsenal and labored on a maneuverable warhead that’s meant to defeat American missile defenses in California and Alaska.
Some specialists imagine that very same warhead was a part of the checks carried out on Feb. 26 and March 4. However American officers wouldn’t reply questions on whether or not they had decided it was a maneuverable, hypersonic warhead, meant to evade conventional American missile defenses.
Stories emanating out of South Korea, together with photos launched by the North Koreans, recommend it was most certainly a crude model of a maneuverable car.
“This isn’t like what the Chinese language are testing,” stated Thomas Karako, who directs the missile protection venture on the Middle for Strategic and Worldwide Research, and lately printed a report on the best way to counter such weapons. “It’s on the decrease finish of the know-how scale.”
However he famous that American efforts to subject missile defenses for such weapons have been slowed in current months, partly due to budgetary considerations.
On the time of its public debut in October 2020 — at a North Korean navy parade, as famous on Thursday by the senior administration official — the weapon made a splash amongst missile specialists.
The Significance of North Korea’s Missile Assessments
Vann H. Van Diepen, a former weapons analyst within the Workplace of the Director of Nationwide Intelligence, and Michael Elleman, a missile knowledgeable on the Worldwide Institute for Strategic Research, stated that October in an evaluation that the weapon was a cellular missile that gave the impression to be as much as 85 toes lengthy. A photograph confirmed the missile’s transporter bearing 11 huge black tires on either side.
The 2 specialists judged the missile’s engines to be liquid-fueled and stated that if its first stage held 4 engines, the missile might, “in precept,” ship as much as almost 4 tons of payload “to any level within the continental United States.” Its lifting energy, they added, would thus be “a lot better” than that of the Hwasong-15 — beforehand North Korea’s most succesful ICBM, examined in November 2017.
In an interview, Mr. Van Diepen stated he was stunned at Washington’s characterization of the missile as a brand new ICBM as a result of it went to peak heights of simply 385 and 350 miles throughout its testing this 12 months. In an article, he had characterised it as a medium-range missile.
In distinction, the Hwasong-15, on its one and solely take a look at flight, flew to a peak of two,780 miles, in keeping with the North Koreans.
Mr. Van Diepen stated that if Washington’s ICBM evaluation was right for the brand new missile, it had soared far wanting its capabilities, maybe as a part of a cautious strategy to engine testing. “Possibly it was not totally fueled or they reduce off the engines,” he stated.
Nonetheless, if extra flight-testing proves it to be the identical missile that made its public debut in 2020 in the course of the navy parade, Mr. Van Diepen stated, it could symbolize a fearsome new addition to North Korea’s increasing arsenal. As an example, its huge lifting energy in principle would let it loft a number of nuclear warheads directly, vastly rising its harmful energy.
“It’s one other potential menace to the homeland,” he stated. “However they’ve bought a technique to go” to good its tons of of methods and show its capability to ship a warhead that speeds simply by means of area after which experiences the jolt of a fiery atmospheric re-entry towards a goal on the bottom.
Up to now, Mr. Van Diepen stated, “they haven’t but examined any ICBM to full vary, so by definition they haven’t confirmed that their warheads might survive re-entry.”
Just minutes after Speaker Mike Johnson could exhale, having put down a short-lived conservative revolt and won re-election to his post on Friday, hard-right lawmakers sent him a letter.
It was not congratulatory.
They had only voted for him, they wrote, “because of our steadfast support of President Trump and to ensure the timely certification of his electors.”
“We did this despite our sincere reservations regarding the speaker’s track record over the past 15 months,” lawmakers in the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus continued, appending a list of three major complaints about Mr. Johnson and seven policy dictates they demanded he adopt.
Welcome to the 119th Congress.
“I just expect intramural wrestling matches to be kind of the norm,” Representative Mark Amodei, Republican of Nevada, said as he walked off the House floor after Mr. Johnson’s whipsaw election to the speakership.
Ever since he ascended to the top job in the House after many of those same conservatives ousted his predecessor, Mr. Johnson has had one of the hardest jobs in Washington. Now, with total Republican control of government and President-elect Donald J. Trump’s enormous domestic agenda at stake, he is facing his toughest test yet.
Mr. Johnson will be responsible for pushing through Mr. Trump’s economic plans, including one or more huge bills that lawmakers say they want to simultaneously increase the nation’s borrowing limit, extend the tax cuts Mr. Trump signed into law in 2017, cut federal spending, and put in place a wide-ranging immigration crackdown.
At the same time, he will be dealing with a mercurial president who has already displayed his penchant for squashing congressional negotiations and inserting new demands at the 11th hour. And he will do so while trying to corral an unruly group of lawmakers who, despite their reverence for Mr. Trump, have already shown their willingness to buck him on key votes, and who care little about the political fallout of stirring up drama within the party.
Within weeks, Mr. Johnson’s majority will shrink smaller still. He is losing two reliable Republican votes, Representatives Elise Stefanik of New York and Michael Waltz of Florida, who are leaving the House to work in the Trump administration, meaning he will only be able to afford a single defection on fraught votes.
On top of all of it are towering expectations about what Mr. Trump can accomplish with a Republican trifecta.
“I never said any of the other things that we’re going to do are going to be easy; they’re actually going to be very hard,” Representative Carlos Gimenez, Republican of Florida, said. “But we have to do it for the American people. The American people expect us to get things accomplished, and I think that’s going be the driving force. Every once in a while, we’re going to take a hard vote.”
Mr. Johnson’s allies like to say never to bet against him, a refrain they reprised after the speaker, a Louisiana Republican, was re-elected after a single, if tortured, ballot on Friday.
But it was clear that the spat on the House floor over Mr. Johnson’s ascension to the speakership was only the opening salvo in a fight brewing over the tax, budget and immigration legislation Republicans were preparing to pass.
Chief among the demands that the House Freedom Caucus issued on Friday was that the bill “not increase federal borrowing” — a move Mr. Trump has called upon House Republicans to approve — “before real spending cuts are agreed to and in place.”
They also complained that Mr. Johnson had failed to promise to ensure that “any reconciliation package reduces spending and the deficit in real terms with respect to the dynamic score of tax and spending policies under recent growth trends.”
Such demands will almost certainly set up a bitter fight among House Republicans over how to structure what is supposed to be Mr. Trump’s landmark legislation. Extending the tax cuts Mr. Trump signed into law in 2017 is estimated to cost roughly $4 trillion alone. Offsetting those cuts — as well as any immigration measures that Republicans are also clamoring to include — would tee up deep spending cuts that could run into a buzz saw from more moderate Republicans, who are sure to have their say.
Already some mainstream conservatives who just won tough re-election battles in swing districts, preserving the House Republican majority, have vented frustration with their hard-line colleagues.
“It angers the 95 percent of us that 5 percent are doing this thing to Mike Johnson — and to the whole conference; who are they?” Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska said. “We’re the 95 percent, and these guys act like they’re some House of Lords or something of the conference. And we don’t like that.”
“We have had our fill of these guys,” he added. “Most of us don’t want to work with them, we don’t want to work on their legislation, because it’s all about them.”
That may suit them just fine, but it will only make Mr. Johnson’s job of cobbling together a Republican majority for Mr. Trump’s priorities more difficult.
Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina, one of the two Republicans who initially opposed Mr. Johnson for speaker on Friday on the House floor, only to change his vote, told reporters that he felt his message about the tax and budget bill — that it could not end up costing taxpayers money — had been received.
“I think Mike Johnson knows now, that’s not going to be a reality,” Mr. Norman said, adding that he respected how the speaker had handled his concerns.
“He said, ‘Look, if I don’t perform the way I say I’m going to perform, and push the things that you’re saying, put me out,’” Mr. Norman continued. “He said, ‘I never thought I would have this job anyway.’”
Karoun Demirjian and Maya C. Miller contributed reporting.
Politics
'Let's see what happens': Trump picks for deputy Mideast envoy, Estonia ambassador, State Dept. spokesperson
President-elect Donald Trump announced via Truth Social Friday night his picks for Deputy Special Presidential Envoy, U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Estonia, and spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State.
Trump’s former State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus will serve as Deputy Special Presidential Envoy for Middle East Peace, Roman Pipko will serve as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Estonia, and Tammy Bruce will serve as spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State.
Morgan Ortagus – Deputy Special Presidential Envoy for Middle East Peace
In a post Friday afternoon, Trump announced Ortagus will work under Steven Witkoff, a New York real estate tycoon selected for Middle East envoy in November.
“Morgan fought me for three years, but hopefully has learned her lesson,” Trump wrote in the post. “These things usually don’t work out, but she has strong Republican support, and I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing it for them. Let’s see what happens.”
Morgan Ortagus was selected Friday afternoon to serve as deputy Mideast envoy. (Fox News)
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He added she will “hopefully” be an asset to Witkoff.
“We seek to bring calm and prosperity to a very troubled region,” Trump wrote. “I expect great results, and soon!”
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President-elect Donald Trump picked former State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus to serve as deputy Mideast envoy Friday afternoon. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Ortagus, an active U.S. Navy Reserve intelligence officer, served as spokesperson at the Department of State from 2019 to 2021, where she was a member of Trump’s Abraham Accords team.
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Previously, she worked at the Department of the Treasury as a financial intelligence analyst and served as Deputy U.S. Treasury Attaché to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from 2010 to 2011.
Morgan Ortagus, a former State Department spokesperson, was selected Friday afternoon to serve as deputy Mideast envoy.
She is also the founder of Polaris National Security and the host of “The Morgan Ortagus Show” on Sirius XM.
Roman Pipko – U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Estonia
Pipko, who was born and raised in Estonia, represented U.S. interests in the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the Russian American Enterprise Fund.
“Roman has represented American companies, negotiating projects in Mongolia, Africa, Russia, Western Europe, and his native Estonia, in cooperation with U.S. Government Agencies, and has worked with Foreign Governments on the enforcement of U.S. sanctions,” Trump wrote. “As a legal immigrant, he has lived the promise of America, and I trust that he will advance American interests in his new role.”
Pipko is a graduate of Columbia University and Yale Law School.
Tammy Bruce was selected as the next spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State. (John Lamparski/Getty Images)
Bruce will be joining Marco Rubio, nominee for United States Secretary of State, as State Department spokesperson.
Bruce, a political analyst, received her bachelor’s degree in political science at the University of Southern California.
“After being a liberal activist in the 1990s, [she] saw the lies and fraud of the Radical Left, and quickly became one of the strongest Conservative voices on Radio and Television,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “As one of the longest serving News Contributors, Tammy has brought TRUTH to the American People for over two decades. I know she will. bring that same strength of conviction and fearless spirit to her new position as State Department Spokesperson.
WASHINGTON — Friday was the first day of work for California’s nine new House members, and their first order of business involved typical congressional chaos, as Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) narrowly won reelection to his role after almost losing the first round of voting.
The nine new representatives — all Democrats, including three who flipped Republican seats — cast their votes for Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). But Johnson, who has presided over the chamber since fall 2023, eked out a win.
For the record:
4:31 p.m. Jan. 3, 2025An earlier version of this report said former Rep. Michelle Steel flipped a congressional seat in 2020 held by Rep. Katie Porter. She defeated Rep. Harley Rouda.
As a Democratic stronghold on the West Coast, California is home to a bevy of Democratic leaders in Congress. Reps. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands) and Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) hold the positions of House Democratic Caucus chair and vice chair, respectively.
The state lost many of its heavyweights in recent years, however — notably Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who stepped down as House speaker to pass the torch of leadership to Jeffries. Although she no longer holds a position of leadership, Pelosi remains a powerful figure among her congressional colleagues. Still recovering from a hip surgery, Pelosi smiled from the House floor Friday as she hugged Jeffries after casting her vote for him as speaker.
Kevin McCarthy, the Bakersfield Republican who served as House speaker before a historic ouster, left Congress in 2023. Longtime Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein died in 2023. And after Vice President Kamala Harris lost the presidential election, California will no longer have a leader in the White House.
Still, as the most populous state in the nation, California enjoys the most representation in the House with 52 delegates — down one after the 2020 census showed a population decline. Nine Californians officially took their oath of office Friday afternoon to join the 119th Congress.
Here are California’s newest representatives:
Rep. Derek Tran (D-Garden Grove): Tran won a razor-thin election against incumbent Rep. Michelle Steel, a Republican who held the 45th Congressional District seat in Orange County for two terms. Steel herself flipped the seat in 2020 from Democratic Rep. Harley Rouda.
Rep. David Min (D-Irvine): When Democratic Rep. Katie Porter decided to run for U.S. Senate, Min, then a state senator, ran and won the seat, keeping it under Democratic control.
Rep. Gil Cisneros (D-Covina): Cisneros is a familiar name around California politics, having served in a different congressional district previously. He easily glided to victory in his safely Democratic San Gabriel Valley district, succeeding retiring Rep. Grace Napolitano.
Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale): Friedman, a former Assembly member, is now representing central Los Angeles County, taking over the seat long held by Adam B. Schiff, who handily won California’s open Senate seat.
Rep. Luz Rivas (D-North Hollywood): Rivas, a former California Assembly member and nonprofit leader, easily won the Democratic 29th Congressional District, representing the San Fernando Valley.
Rep. George Whitesides (D-Agua Dulce): Whitesides defeated GOP Rep. Mike Garcia, flipping the northeastern Los Angeles County seat from red to blue.
Rep. Adam Gray (D-Merced): The race in the Central Valley’s 13th Congressional District was the last election in the country to be called, as Gray flipped the seat from Republican Rep. John Duarte. Gray, a former state lawmaker, pitched himself as a centrist Democrat to win over the Central Valley’s largely agricultural population.
Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-San José): Liccardo, a former mayor of San José, is representing the Bay Area in Congress.
Rep. Lateefah Simon (D-Oakland): Simon is taking over the seat vacated by Rep. Barbara Lee, the longtime Democratic representative who lost the primary race for U.S. Senate.
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