Trump predicts auto workers will be ‘very happy’ on NAFTA
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump predicted Wednesday that U.S. automakers and auto workers would be “very happy” with the outcome of talks over the North American Free Trade Agreement, which have stalled amid a dispute over rules for car production.
Trump told reporters on the South Lawn that “you’ll be seeing very soon what I’m talking about,” noting that both Mexico and Canada have been “very difficult to deal with” during the negotiations.
“I am not happy with their requests. But I will tell you in the end we win, we will win and will win big,” Trump said before departing for New York. He said America’s neighbors have been “very spoiled because nobody’s done this but I will tell you that what they ask for is not fair. Our auto workers are going to be extremely happy.”
The U.S. remains far apart on the talks over rewriting the trade pact with Canada and Mexico. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said that efforts to renegotiate the trade agreement could spill into next year.
Mexico has so far resisted U.S. attempts to get higher regional content rules in the auto industry and move production to higher-wage U.S. and Canadian factories. The U.S. has also sought to change NAFTA’s dispute-resolution system, and include a sunset clause that would allow countries to exit after five years.
US employee in China reported strange sounds, pressure
BEIJING — A U.S. government employee in southern China reported abnormal sensations of sound and pressure, the State Department said Wednesday, recalling similar experiences among American diplomats in Cuba who later fell ill.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described it as a “serious medical incident.” In an emailed notice to American citizens in China, the department said it wasn’t currently known what caused the symptoms in the city of Guangzhou, where an American consulate is located.
“A U.S. government employee in China recently reported subtle and vague, but abnormal, sensations of sound and pressure,” the notice said. “The U.S. government is taking these reports seriously and has informed its official staff in China of this event.”
The department said it wasn’t aware of any similar situations in China, either within the diplomatic community or among others. It didn’t further identify the person with the symptoms or say when they had been detected.
China’s National Health Commission did not immediately respond to faxed questions about the report.
Judge: President can’t block critics on Twitter
NEW YORK — A federal judge ruled Wednesday that President Donald Trump is violating the First Amendment when he blocks critics on Twitter because of their political views.
U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan stopped short in her written decision of ordering Trump or a subordinate to stop the practice of blocking critics from viewing his Twitter account, saying it was enough to point out that it was unconstitutional.
“A declaratory judgment should be sufficient, as no government official — including the President — is above the law, and all government officials are presumed to follow the law as has been declared,” Buchwald wrote.
The judge did not issue an order against Trump, and the plaintiffs did not ask for one. But in cases like this, plaintiffs can, in theory, go back and ask for such an order, and if it is not obeyed, the violator can be held in contempt.
Buchwald said she rejected the assertion that an injunction can never be lodged against the president but “nonetheless conclude that it is unnecessary to enter that legal thicket at this time.”
Mexican Mafia busted for running crime in LA County jails
LOS ANGELES — Leaders of the notorious Mexican Mafia “gang of gangs” were charged Wednesday with running a government-like operation to control drug trafficking from inside Los Angeles County jails that included ordering violence against those who didn’t obey.
The U.S. attorney’s office charged 83 people in sweeping racketeering conspiracies that alleged they ran drugs and carried out violent assaults and murders.
“These cases have delivered a major blow to the Mexican Mafia and leaders of many of the street gangs under the control of the organization,” U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna said. “By taking out the gang members who control the jails, and by disrupting their communications network, we undermined the Mexican Mafia’s ability to coordinate street gang activity.”
Prosecutors said the gang — an organization of imprisoned Latino street gang leaders who control operations inside and outside California prisons and jails — was able to control smuggling, drug sales and extortion inside the nation’s largest jail system.
Indictments detailed how the gang had begun in Los Angeles in 1950s at a juvenile jail and had grown to an international criminal organization that had a methodical system to communicate from behind bars, control gang territory and collect “taxes” for drug sales through extortion.
Stylist: Man with Vegas gunman’s name talked concert attack
LAS VEGAS — A hairstylist said a client with the same last name as the Las Vegas shooter spoke in the months before the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history about a concert venue being susceptible to attack, according to documents released by police Wednesday.
Las Vegas police released about 2,100 pages of police reports, witness statements and dispatch records after losing court battles to keep them secret. Witness names were blacked out, so their accounts could not be verified, and police and FBI officials said they would not comment on the newly released information.
The documents did not immediately yield answers to the key unanswered question more than seven months after the Oct. 1 attack that is still under investigation: a motive.
They recount tales of horror and heroism, chaos and confusion. They detail how officers responded to the massacre, initially believing the Las Vegas Strip faced large-scale attack by multiple shooters and struggling to direct panicked people to safety and help save victims who were bleeding, begging for help and getting trampled.
Authorities have not determined what led Stephen Paddock to open fire from his high-rise hotel room onto an outdoor concert below, killing 58 people and injuring hundreds more. Police and the FBI said they believe he acted alone and the attack had no link to international terrorism.