President Donald Trump briskly overruled congressional Republicans and his own treasury secretary to cut a deal with Democrats to keep the government operating and raise America’s debt…
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump briskly overruled congressional Republicans and his own treasury secretary to cut a deal with Democrats to keep the government operating and raise America’s debt limit. The immediate goal was ensuring money for hurricane relief, but in the process the president brazenly rolled his own party’s leaders.
In deal-making mode, Trump sided Wednesday with the Democratic leaders — «Chuck and Nancy, » as he amiably referred later to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — as they pushed for the three-month deal. The deal had the effect of brushing aside the urgings of GOP leaders and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for a much longer extension to the debt limit. Republicans want that longer allowance to avoid having to take another vote on the politically toxic issue before the 2018 congressional elections.
The White House session painted a vivid portrait of discord at the highest ranks of the Republican Party. After an angry August that Trump spent lobbing attacks at fellow Republicans, specifically targeting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for the failure of health care legislation, the president wasted little time once Congress came back this week in demonstrating his disdain for the GOP House and Senate leaders charged with shepherding his agenda into law.
At first, in Wednesday’s Oval Office meeting, the Republicans lobbied for an 18-month debt ceiling extension, then 12 months and then six, but Trump waved them off. As Mnuchin continued to press an economic argument in favor of a longer term, Trump tired of it and cut him off mid-sentence.
At another point, the meeting totally lost focus when Ivanka Trump entered to raise an unrelated issue on child care tax credits. Details of the meeting were disclosed by several people briefed on the proceedings who spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly.
One photo taken through the window of the Oval Office showed an animated Schumer pointing his finger in Trump’s face as the president smiles with his hands on his fellow New Yorker’s arms.
After the meeting, Trump boarded a plane to North Dakota with Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp in an effort to garner bipartisan support for tax legislation that Republican leaders on Capitol Hill are crafting on a purely partisan basis. That continued the day of bizarre disconnects between the president and the leaders of his party.
Trump called Heitkamp to the stage at his Dakota event and praised her as a «good woman.» She will be running for re-election against a Republican in November 2018.
Heitkamp later issued a statement saying she needs to know more about Trump’s tax plan before offering her support. «I know the devil is in the details of any reform plan as tax codes are complex, and we need to know what those details are, » she said.
Aboard Air Force One, Trump told reporters, «We had a very good meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.» He didn’t mention Republicans McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, who also had been present. «We agreed to a three-month extension on debt ceiling, which they consider to be sacred, very important.»
«I think the deal will be very good, » Trump added.
Barely an hour earlier, Ryan had slammed the Democrats’ demand for a three-month extension as «ridiculous and disgraceful.» He issued no public statement on the final deal.
McConnell, in his own reserved fashion, did not sugar-coat what happened when he addressed reporters a short time later.
«In the meeting down at the White House, as I indicated, the president agreed with Sen. Schumer and Congresswoman Pelosi to do a three-month CR and a debt ceiling into December, and that’s what I will be offering based on the president’s decision, » McConnell said. «CR» refers to a continuing resolution, which will extend existing government funding levels into mid-December, when the prospect of an enormous new round of deal-making now looms.
Asked whether he was surprised to see the president side with Democrats against his own party leadership, McConnell responded: «Look, the president can speak for himself, but his feeling was we needed to come together, not create a picture of divisiveness at a time of genuine national crisis, and that was the rationale.»
In fact, Trump achieved the opposite.
«The Pelosi-Schumer-Trump deal is bad, » Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said over Twitter.
«Hopefully we’ll realize that negotiating with Democrats doesn’t normally produce outstanding results, » said Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus.
Late Wednesday, with criticism pouring in from Republicans, Mnuchin himself made a rare appearance in the Air Force One press cabin, as the president traveled back to Washington from North Dakota, to defend the deal.
«Our No. 1 priority was getting money for Harvey. Let me very clear: That’s the president’s number one agenda and we accomplished that, » Mnuchin insisted.
Mnuchin also claimed several times that the president actually could have had a one-year package but didn’t want to lose the opportunity to raise military spending in new budget bills before then. Aides to Schumer and Pelosi responded with incredulous disbelief to this claim.
The outcome was especially striking, coming just a day after Trump announced he would be dismantling immigration protections for younger immigrants, a program known as DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. He gave Congress six months to come up with a solution. That announcement had infuriated Democrats, and was not cheered by many Republicans either, since among other things it gives them a politically explosive issue to resolve ahead of the midterm elections.
Taken together, Trump’s moves appeared to show little regard for the imperatives of his party leaders. And after the GOP’s failure to pass long-promised legislation to repeal and replace «Obamacare, » the events renewed questions about whether the party can summon the focus and unity to advance tax legislation, the next big item they want to tackle. However, White House officials argued that putting other issues off until December cleared the decks for tax talks.
The deal struck Wednesday at the White House promises to speed the $7.9 billion Hurricane Harvey aid bill, which passed the House overwhelmingly Wednesday, to Trump’s desk before disaster accounts run out later this week. The debt ceiling and government funding extensions will be attached.
The move also buys almost three months, until Dec. 15, for Washington to try to solve myriad other issues, including more funding for the military, immigration and health care, and a longer-term increase in the government’s borrowing authority to avoid a first-ever default. Adding the stopgap funding bill to the Harvey aid package would also immediately free about $7 billion in additional disaster funds.
Schumer was as pleased in the aftermath as McConnell was dour.
«Today was a good day in a generally partisan town, » he said. «The bottom line is, the president listened to the arguments. We think we made a very reasonable and strong argument. And, to his credit, he went with the better argument.»
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Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor and Catherine Lucey contributed.
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Syria said Israeli air strikes hit a military facility in the country’s west on Thursday, killing two people at a site where the regime has been accused of developing chemical weapons.
Syria said Israeli air strikes hit a military facility in the country’s west on Thursday, killing two people at a site where the regime has been accused of developing chemical weapons.
The site near the Syrian town of Masyaf, between the central city of Hama and a port used by the Russian navy, includes a training camp and a branch of the Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) .
The United States has accused the SSRC of helping to develop the sarin gas used in an attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhun in April that killed dozens.
President Bashar al-Assad’s government has blasted such accusations as «fabrications, » and Syria’s army on Thursday did not mention the SSRC in its statement on the Israeli strikes.
«Israeli warplanes at 2: 42am today fired a number of missiles from Lebanese air space, targeting one of our military positions near Masyaf, which led to material damage and the deaths of two members of the site, » the statement said.
«Syria’s army warns of the serious repercussions of such acts of aggression on the security and stability of the region, » it added.
Since Syria’s conflict erupted in 2011, Israel has conducted several air strikes on the war-ravaged country against government forces and allied fighters from Lebanese movement Hezbollah.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said Hezbollah fighters and Iranian military personnel were known to use the site at Masyaf.
«There are Iranian experts using the research centre there. Hezbollah also uses the facility, » said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.
«The research centre was definitely damaged in the strikes. There is huge fire emanating from a weapons warehouse where missiles were being stored, » he added.
Israel officials declined to comment on the raids on Thursday.
Former military intelligence head Amos Yadlin said the site targeted on Thursday «produces the chemical weapons and barrel bombs that have killed thousands of Syrian civilians.»
He stopped short of saying Israel had carried out the raids, but said that if it did, they would show «Israel intends to enforce its redlines despite the fact that the great powers are ignoring them.»
On Wednesday, United Nations war crimes investigators announced they had an «extensive body of information» indicating Syrian warplanes were behind the deadly April 4 attack on Khan Sheikhun.
A fact-finding mission by the UN’s chemical watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) , concluded earlier this year that sarin gas was used in the attack but did not assign blame.
The attack left at least 87 people dead and prompted the United States to launch a cruise missile strike on a Syrian military airport where it said the attack had originated.
Weeks later, the US sanctioned 271 Syrian chemists and other officials affiliated with the SSRC, which it said was behind the Syrian government’s efforts to develop chemical weapons.
Syria’s government claims it no longer possesses chemical weapons after a 2013 agreement under which it pledged to surrender its chemical arsenal.
But in 2016, a UN-led investigative body said the Syrian government was behind at leat three chemical attacks in northern Syria in the previous two years.

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New fires are burning in a Myanmar village that had been abandoned by Rohingya Muslims, and where pages from the Quran were seen ripped and left on the ground.
The Latest on violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state and the flood of ethnic Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh (all times local) :
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1: 50 p.m.
New fires are burning in a Myanmar village that had been abandoned by Rohingya Muslims, and where pages from the Quran were seen ripped and left on the ground. That intensifies doubts about government claims that members of the persecuted minority have been destroying their own homes.
Journalists on a government-controlled trip saw the fires Thursday in Gawdu Zara village in northern Rakhine state, from which some 146,000 Rohingya have fled since ethnic violence erupted about two weeks ago.
An ethnic Rakhine villager who emerged from the smoke said police and Rakhine Buddhists had set the fires. The villager ran off before he could be asked anything else.
No police were seen at the village beyond those who were accompanying the journalists. But about 10 Rakhine men with machetes were seen there.
Reporters saw no Rohingya in that village or others that they were allowed to see Thursday.
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12: 30 p.m.
Pakistan is urging the world to put pressure on Myanmar, where renewed violence has forced out tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims.
Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif says the Rohingyas’ plight is «a challenge to the conscience» of the world and that Pakistan was committed to providing humanitarian aid to them.
The ministry issued a statement containing his opening remarks at a conference of Pakistani diplomats on Thursday.
Political parties and clerics have organized rallies across Pakistan to express their solidarity with Rohingyas and to condemn Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi for the reported massacres of Rohingyas. Her government has counted 400 deaths and says most were terrorists.
The violence began with insurgent attacks on police Aug. 25 and government forces retaliated with what they called «clearance operations.» Some 146,000 Rohingya have fled since then.
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