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United States Ramps Up Airstrikes Against Al Qaeda in Yemen

In the last two days, armed Reaper drones and attack planes conducted more than 30 strikes against Qaeda militants, equipment and safe houses across south-central Yemen, Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said on Friday.

It was the most intense series of strikes ever against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or A.Q.A.P. In all of 2016, the United States conducted a total of 38 strikes in Yemen.

The Qaeda branch has tried at least three times to blow up American airliners, without success. The group has specialized in developing nonmetallic bombs that can be inserted into body cavities to avoid detection.

On Friday, a Defense Department official said the computers, cellphones and other materials seized during the SEAL team raid on Jan. 29 had, so far, yielded names, phone numbers and other contact information of suspected terrorists, and had enabled analysts to identify terrorist nodes in Yemen.

This week’s attacks come at a time when the White House is considering giving the Pentagon more independent authority to conduct counterterrorism raids as part of an effort to accelerate the fight against the Islamic State and other militant organizations.

Such a step would allow military commanders to move more swiftly against terrorism suspects, streamlining a decision-making process that often dragged during the Obama administration, frustrating Pentagon officials.

Prior to departing for Florida, where he is spending the weekend, Trump convened on Friday a group of senior aides in the Oval Office, including chief of staff Reince Priebus, senior adviser Jared Kushner, daughter Ivanka Trump, chief strategist Steve Bannon, communications director Mike Dubke, and press secretary Sean Spicer.

The meeting was ostensibly to talk about next week’s packed schedule, which is expected to include the release of a new immigration travel ban and possibly an Obamacare replacement bill.

But at one point during Friday's meeting, Trump’s focus turned to Sessions, ...At one point, Trump addressed White House counsel Don McGahn, who was also in the room, directly, and said he was unhappy about the turn of events, the sources said....

“There were fireworks,” said one person briefed on the events.

Priebus, Kushner, and Bannon all weighed in with their thoughts. “There was a robust discussion,” said a second person familiar what occurred.

The global terrorist threat requires a serious response. But since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, sober analysis has too often fallen victim to political expediency, and fear has become divorced from facts, with profound — and largely unexamined — impact on our domestic politics.

More than any of his rivals, Mr. Trump successfully exploited America’s obsession with terrorism. As a candidate with no national security credentials, he relentlessly trumpeted the threat — for example calling, just before primaries began, for “a total and complete shut down of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.” General election exit polls showed 18 percent of voters considered terrorism to be the most important issue; nearly 60 percent of them supported Mr. Trump.

In the years after 2001, an average of fewer than nine Americans per year have been killed in terror attacks on American soil, compared, for example, with an average of about 12,000 a year who are shot to death in non-terror related incidents.

The Trump administration is expected to begin rolling back stringent federal regulations on vehicle pollution that contributes to global warming, according to people familiar with the matter, essentially marking a U-turn to efforts to force the American auto industry to produce more electric cars.

The announcement — which is expected as soon as Tuesday and will be made jointly by the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Scott Pruitt, and the transportation secretary, Elaine L. Chao — will immediately start to undo one of former President Barack Obama’s most significant environmental legacies.

During the same week, and possibly on the same day, Mr. Trump is expected to direct Mr. Pruitt to begin the more lengthy and legally complex process of dismantling the Clean Power Plan, Mr. Obama’s rules to cut planet-warming pollution from coal-fired power plants.

But now, more than seven months into Duterte’s tenure, with the death toll climbing night by night, the country’s Catholic hierarchy is finding its voice. In a pastoral letter published in February, church leaders denounced Duterte’s campaign as a “reign of terror” against the poor.

There is a lot to despise about the modern GOP

Donald Trump’s adult sons, who are overseeing a nationwide expansion of the family business during their father’s presidency, are envisioning ways that their experiences from the campaign trail can help them establish a footing in dozens of new markets.

The biggest problem for Trump’s border wall isn’t money. It’s getting the land.

In 2008, the George W. Bush administration, which had started building about 670 miles of border fencing on mostly federally owned land in Arizona, California and New Mexico under the Secure Fence Act of 2006, tried to seize an acre or so in Cameron County, Tex., that belonged to Eloisa Tamez. Things did not go quickly.

Tamez fought the government in federal court. During seven years of litigation and negotiation, she became famous for resisting the border fence. The government eventually paid her $56,000 for a quarter-acre the fence sits on and gave her a code to open a gate so she can access her land to its south.

Imagine this playing out over and over again along the 1,300 miles of borderlands that President Trump wants to wall up. “We will soon begin the construction of a great wall along our southern border,” Trump promised Tuesday night in an address to Congress. “It will be started ahead of schedule, and, when finished, it will be a very effective weapon against drugs and crime.”

A polarized and distrustful electorate may stymie the national government, but locally most communities are either overwhelmingly Republican or Democratic. In 2016, 8 out of 10 U.S. counties gave either Trump or Hillary Clinton a landslide victory. In these increasingly homogenous communities, nobody need bother about compromise and the trust it requires. From anti-abortion measures to laws governing factory farming, the policy action is taking place where majorities can do what they want without dealing with “those people” who live the next state over or a few miles down the road. At last count, 1 in 4 Americans supports the idea of their state seceding from the union.

Consider social equality and tolerance, where some of today’s greatest fears are concentrated. It is true that Trump has said many egregious things, like associating Mexican immigrants with criminal behavior, and has tried (though so far failed) to implement a ban on immigration from some Muslim countries. But people should not lose sight of the massive progress in the past half-century, led by the left. This includes the destruction of formal and many normative barriers to racial equality, the rise of the black middle class, the advancement of women in higher education and the professions, the dominance of anti-sexist views in public opinion, and the acceptance of gays, including the institution of same-sex marriage. We still have far to go in the attainment of full social equality, but it is also true that we have gone far.