Video: U.S. to Send Cluster Munitions to Ukraine

Published

2 years ago

July 8, 2023

Press Room

Video: U.S. to Send Cluster Munitions to Ukraine

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U.S. to Send Cluster Munitions to Ukraine

President Biden and his advisers had reservations about supplying cluster munitions to Ukraine, but they ultimately decided to provide the weapons to its military forces since they were running out of artillery rounds.

: We have provided Ukraine with a historic amount of unitary artillery rounds and we are ramping up domestic production of these rounds. We’ve already seen substantial increases in production, but this process will continue to take time, and it will be critical to provide Ukraine with a bridge of supplies while our domestic production is ramped up. We will not leave Ukraine defenseless at any point in this conflict period. We recognize that cluster munitions create a risk of civilian harm from unexploded ordnance. This is why we’ve deferred the decision for as long as we could. But there is also a massive risk of civilian harm if Russian troops and tanks roll over Ukrainian positions, and take more Ukrainian territory and subjugate more Ukrainian civilians because Ukraine does not have enough artillery. That is intolerable to us. Ukraine would not be using these munitions in some foreign land. This is their country they’re defending. These are their citizens they’re protecting. And they are motivated to use any weapon system they have in a way that minimizes risks to those citizens.
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Trump administration offers buyouts to remote employees who don’t return to the office

Published

45 minutes ago

January 28, 2025

Press Room

Trump administration offers buyouts to remote employees who don’t return to the office

Comer vows to bring federal employees back to work

Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer delivered scathing remarks at the first hearing of the 119th Congress, criticizing the Biden administration’s handling of telework policies for federal employees.

The Trump administration is offering buyouts for all federal remote employees as part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to get employees back into the office, but they only have until Feb. 6 to opt-in.

During Trump’s first week in office, he issued several directives to the federal workforce, including a requirement that remote employees must return to in-person work.

“After four years of incompetence and failure, President Donald Trump is committed to making our government efficient and productive again,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement on Tuesday. “American taxpayers pay for the salaries of federal government employees and therefore deserve employees working on their behalf who actually show up to work in our wonderful federal buildings, also paid for by taxpayers.

“If they don’t want to work in the office and contribute to making America great again, then they are free to choose a different line of work, and the Trump Administration will provide a very generous payout of eight months,” she added.

HOUSE OVERSIGHT REPORT SAYS TELEWORK IS ‘WASTING BILLIONS’ IN TAXPAYER CASH AHEAD OF 1ST HEARING

President Donald Trump after signing executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, in Washington, D.C. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

On Tuesday, a government-wide email was sent out to ensure all federal workers were on board with the Trump administration’s plan.

The email pointed to four pillars that Trump set forth, to bring accountability back to the federal government, including a return to in-person work, restored accountability for employees who have policy-making authority, restored accountability for senior executives, and a reformed federal hiring process based on merit.

“The government-wide email being sent today is to make sure that all federal workers are on board with the new administration’s plan to have federal employees in office and adhering to higher standards,” a senior administration official said. “We’re five years past COVID and just 6 percent of federal employees work full-time in office. That is unacceptable.”

‘GET BACK TO WORK’: HOUSE OVERSIGHT TO TAKE ON GOVERNMENT TELEWORK IN 1ST HEARING OF NEW CONGRESS

Signage outside the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Samuel Corum/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The email noted that the majority of federal employees who have worked remotely since COVID will be required to return to their physical offices five days a week.

“Going forward, we also expect our physical offices to undergo meaningful consolidation and divestitures, potentially resulting in physical office relocations for a number of federal workers,” the email read.

For those who returned to office, the Trump administration thanked them for their “renewed focus” on serving the American people. But the future of their position could not be guaranteed, according to the email.

SENATE DOGE LEADER ERNST TO TAKE ON GOVERNMENT TELEWORK ABUSE AT FIRST MEETING WITH MUSK, RAMASWAMY

The Pentagon is seen from Air Force One. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

For those who do not want to continue in their role with the federal workforce, the Trump administration thanked them for their services, informing them they will be provided with a “dignified, fair departure from the federal government utilizing a deferred resignation program.”

The program begins on Jan. 28 and will be available until Feb. 6, and should a federal employee choose to resign under the program, they will retain all pay and benefits, regardless of workload, and will be exempt from their in-person work requirements until Sep. 30, 2025.

The buyouts do not apply to military personnel of the armed forces, the U.S. Postal Services, positions related to immigration enforcement and national security, and any other positions specifically excluded by the agency the federal workers are employed by.

“To be clear, as it was with President Trump’s executive order on Day One, implementation of return-to-work policies will be done by each individual agency in accordance with applicable law,” the senior administration official said. “We expect 5 to 10 percent of federal employees to quit, and it could lead to $100 billion annually in savings for federal taxpayers.”

Greg Wehner is a breaking news reporter for Fox News Digital.

Story tips and ideas can be sent to Greg.Wehner@Fox.com and on Twitter @GregWehner.

Politics

Will Mexico accept military flights of deportees? President Sheinbaum deflects on sensitive issue

Published

1 hour ago

January 28, 2025

Press Room

Will Mexico accept military flights of deportees? President Sheinbaum deflects on sensitive issue

MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum hedged Tuesday on whether Mexico would accept U.S. military flights carrying deportees under the Trump administration’s mass-expulsion plans

“Until now, this hasn’t taken place,” Sheinbaum responded at her morning news conference when asked several times whether her nation would consent to Pentagon aircraft returning deported citizens. She declined to elaborate.

The White House has begun using military aircraft to transport deportees, including two Pentagon flights that flew more than 150 people to Guatemala last week.

The use of the military — including the deployment of active-duty troops to the United States’ southwest border — is a cornerstone of Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda. But it bumps up against Mexican sensitivities — heightened by a long history of U.S invasions and incursions — against military encroachment by its northern neighbor.

It is not clear whether Pentagon air assets would be deployed to transport deportees to Mexico. Media reports last week that Mexico refused a U.S. military flight that would have brought deportees have not been publicly confirmed by either country.

The military-transport issue has raised alarms throughout Latin America since a weekend diplomatic crisis in which an enraged President Trump moved to impose tariffs and other penalties on Colombia — a longtime U.S. ally — after President Gustavo Petro denied landing permission for two Pentagon aircraft carrying deportees.

After negotiations, the White House withdrew the threatened sanctions and Colombia said it had received assurances of the “dignified conditions” Petro had demanded. Petro said on social media that he had never refused to accept deportees but would not agree to their being returned handcuffed and on military aircraft.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents knock on the door of a Chicago home on Sunday as part of mass deportations.

(Christopher Dilts / Getty Images)

The Brazilian government also denounced “degrading treatment” of its citizens after some deportees walked off a nonmilitary U.S. plane on Saturday in the northern city of Manaus in handcuffs and leg shackles.

The idea of giant C-17s flying over Mexican airspace and unloading deportees at Mexican airports is a potentially incendiary prospect in a country with a long memory of U.S. invasions; the nation lost much of its territory in the Mexican-American War of 1846-48.

Though Washington has not intervened militarily in Mexico for more than a century, Mexican youth are schooled in Mexico’s “heroic” resistance to past U.S. actions.

Many in Mexico are already unnerved at previous Trump threats to deploy the U.S. military against drug traffickers. His executive order to designate cartels as foreign terrorist organizations is viewed by many as a prelude to direct military intervention.

Already casting a shadow on binational relations are Trump’s threats to impose tariffs of 25% on Mexican imports if the country does not do more to stop U.S.-bound undocumented immigrants and the smuggling of fentanyl. Trump has indicated he would decide by Saturday on the tariffs — which could devastate a fragile economy heavily dependent on cross-border trade.

Sheinbaum is under pressure to bend to Trump’s demands in order to safeguard the economy, but she must also take care not to alienate citizens sensitive to perceived slights against Mexico’s sovereignty.

Protesters in Chicago wave U.S. and Mexican flags.

“President Sheinbaum is in a tight spot,” said Tony Payan, who heads the Center for the U.S. and Mexico at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. “The optics of military planes flying deportees back to Mexico would not be good for her nationalist base. But she may not have a choice other than to accept it.”

Mexican citizens are by far the largest nationality among the estimated more than 11 million immigrants in the United States illegally. In recent years, Washington has removed about 200,000 deportees annually to Mexico, mostly via the southwestern land border — but including some ferried by nonmilitary aircraft to the Mexican interior. The number of deportees returned to Mexico is widely expected to increase under Trump’s directives.

Sheinbaum has already agreed to accept Trump’s reinstatement of the controversial Remain in Mexico policy, which forces asylum-seekers arriving at the border — including Central Americans and other non-Mexicans — to wait in Mexico for adjudication of their cases in U.S. immigration courts. She has said Mexico would seek financial aid from Washington to reimburse the costs of repatriating third-country nationals to their homelands.

Mexico received four deportation flights last week— on nonmilitary aircraft — but has yet to see a significant uptick in returned deportees, officials say.

But Mexican authorities are erecting large-scale new shelters along the country’s northern border with the United States and making other preparations to house and otherwise assist repatriated citizens and third-country nationals sent to Mexico.

Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed.

Politics

Trump Threatens Tariffs Over Immigration, Drugs and Greenland

Published

12 hours ago

January 28, 2025

Press Room

Trump Threatens Tariffs Over Immigration, Drugs and Greenland

In his first week in office, President Trump tried to browbeat governments across the world into ending the flow of drugs into America, accepting planes full of deported migrants, halting wars and ceding territory to the United States.

For all of them, he deployed a common threat: Countries that did not meet his demands would face stiff tariffs on products they send to American consumers.

Mr. Trump has long wielded tariffs as a weapon to resolve trade concerns. But the president is now frequently using them to make gains on issues that have little to do with trade.

It is a strategy rarely seen from other presidents, and never at this frequency. While Mr. Trump threatened governments like Mexico’s with tariffs over immigration issues in his first term, he now appears to be making such threats almost daily, including on Sunday, when he said Colombia would face tariffs after its government turned back planes carrying deported immigrants.

“The willingness rhetorically to throw the kitchen sink and use the whole tool kit is trying to send the message to other countries beyond Colombia that they should comply and find ways to address these border concerns,” said Rachel Ziemba, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

Last week, Mr. Trump threatened to put a 25 percent tariff on products from Canada and Mexico and a 10 percent tariff on Chinese products on Feb. 1 unless those countries did more to stop the flows of drugs and migrants into the United States. Previously, he threatened to punish Denmark with tariffs if its government would not cede Greenland to the United States and to impose levies on Russia if it would not end its war in Ukraine.

On Sunday afternoon, Mr. Trump wrote on social media that he would impose 25 percent tariffs on Colombia and raise them to 50 percent in one week. Within a few hours, the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, said he would hit back with his own tariffs. But by Sunday night, the White House had released a statement saying that Mr. Petro had agreed to all of its terms, and that Mr. Trump would hold the threat of tariffs and sanctions “in reserve.”

That quick resolution may only further embolden Mr. Trump’s use of tariffs to extract concessions that have nothing to do with typical trade relations.

Speaking to House Republicans in Florida on Monday, Mr. Trump referenced his threat that countries like Colombia, Mexico and Canada reduce the flow of migrants into the United States or face tariffs.

“They’re going to take them back fast and if they don’t they’ll pay a very high economic price,” he said.

Ted Murphy, a lawyer at Sidley Austin who handles trade-related issues, said the tariffs would have been a significant blow to industries that rely on imports from Colombia, but that the implications of the threat were much broader.

“Tariffs could be used in response to almost anything,” he said.

Even having a free-trade agreement with the United States is no guarantee of safety: Colombia signed such a deal with the United States in 2011, while Mr. Trump himself signed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement in 2020.

Mr. Trump is also not limiting himself to the trade-related laws he relied on to impose tariffs in his first term, Mr. Murphy said. For Colombia and for other nations, Mr. Trump has appeared willing to deploy a legal statute — the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, or IEEPA — that gives presidents broad powers to impose trade and sanctions measures if they declare a national emergency.

Mr. Murphy said the bar for Mr. Trump to declare a national emergency appeared to be “not very high.”

Governments in Mexico, Canada, Europe, China and elsewhere have prepared lists of retaliatory tariffs they can apply to American products if Mr. Trump decides to follow through with his own levies. But foreign officials seem well aware of the economic damage that cross-border tariffs would cause, and have tried to defuse the tensions to avoid a damaging trade war.

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, said Monday that Europe needed to unite as the Trump administration threatens to usher in an era of policy changes, including tariffs.

“As the United States shifts to a more transactional approach, Europe needs to close ranks,” Ms. Kallas said, speaking in a news conference after a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels.

“Europe is an economic heavyweight and geopolitical partner,” she added.

Presidential use of trade-related measures for matters unrelated to trade isn’t without precedent. Douglas A. Irwin, an economic historian at Dartmouth College, pointed out that President Richard Nixon conditioned the return of Okinawa to Japan on its agreeing to limit the amount of textiles it sent into the United States. President Gerald Ford signed the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which linked granting the Soviet Union “most favored nation” trading status — and lower tariff rates — to it allowing Jews to emigrate.

Still, Mr. Irwin called Mr. Trump’s approach “unusual.”

“Trump is very overt and transactional in his approach,” he said.

In recent decades, presidents have been less willing to wield tariffs or other measures that would restrict trade, in part out of deference to the World Trade Organization. W.T.O. members, including the United States, have agreed to certain rules around when and how they impose tariffs on other countries within the organization.

The W.T.O. carves out exceptions for its members to act on issues of national security, and governments have used that exception more liberally in recent years when imposing tariffs or limiting certain kinds of trade.

Eswar Prasad, a trade policy professor at Cornell University, said that many administrations, including Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s, had used national security considerations “as a veil to implement tariffs and other protectionist measures without running afoul of W.T.O. rules.”

Although no U.S. president has wielded the threat of tariffs as Mr. Trump has, they have pressured other countries with other types of economic measures, like sanctions or embargoes. And in recent decades, U.S. presidents have been more willing to use trade as a carrot, rather than a stick, holding out the prospect of free trade deals and other preferential trade treatment for governments that support the country politically.

If Mr. Trump indeed goes through with his tariffs, it remains to be seen if U.S. courts ultimately decide to curtail them.

Peter Harrell, who served as White House senior director for international economics in the Biden administration, noted on social media that IEEPA had never before been used to impose the types of tariffs that Mr. Trump threatened on Colombia, Canada and Mexico. (Mr. Nixon did use a precursor statute, the Trading With the Enemy Act of 1917, to briefly impose a 10 percent universal tariff in 1971 to address the trade balance, unemployment and inflation.)

Mr. Harrell suggested that such an expansive interpretation of the law could face legal challenges. He said that he was “skeptical” that courts would allow Mr. Trump to use the legal statute to impose a broad global tariff, but more targeted tariffs, like those on Colombia, would be “a much closer and more interesting test case.”

Jeanna Smialek contributed reporting from London.