Pelosi stages 8-hour speech to push for vote for ‘Dreamers’

WASHINGTON — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi staged a record-breaking, eight-hour speech Wednesday in hopes of pressuring Republicans to allow a vote on protecting “Dreamer” immigrants — and to demonstrate to increasingly angry progressives and Democratic activists that she has done all she could.

Wearing four-inch heels and forgoing any breaks, Pelosi, 77, spent much of the rare talkathon reading personal letters from the young immigrants whose temporary protection from deportation is set to expire next month. The California Democrat quoted from the Bible and Pope Francis, as Democrats took turns sitting behind her in support. The Office of the House Historian said it was the longest continuous speech in the chamber on record.

“You see, these people are being deported,” Pelosi said around hour six. “We can do something today to at least make whole the children.”

Her remarks seemed partly aimed at the liberal wing of Pelosi’s own party, who seethed as Senate Democrats cut a budget deal with Republicans that could quickly steal the momentum behind the effort to resolve the Dreamers’ plight.

The wide-ranging budget accord says nothing about renewing the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, called DACA, which temporarily shields Dreamers — hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the country as children and living here illegally — from deportation. President Donald Trump has moved to annul DACA.

‘They want to erase us.’ Hunger used to target Rohingya

NAYAPARA REFUGEE CAMP, Bangladesh — Abdul Goni says the Myanmar government was starving his family one stage at a time.

First, soldiers stopped the Rohingya Muslim from walking three hours to the forest for the firewood he sold to feed his family. Then Buddhist neighbors and seven soldiers took his only cow, which he rented out to fertilize rice fields. Next, he says, they killed his uncle and strung him up on a wire for trying to stop the theft of his buffalos.

By the time Goni saw bodies floating down the local river, of fellow Rohingya killed for illegal fishing, he knew his family would die if they didn’t leave. On bad days, they carved the flesh out of banana plant stalks for food. On the worst days, his children ate nothing.

“I felt so sorry that I couldn’t give them enough food,” the 25-year-old says, tears running down his face, in a refugee camp in Bangladesh, just across the border from Myanmar. “Everything just got worse and worse. … Day by day, the pressure was increasing all around us. They used to tell us, ‘This isn’t your land. … We’ll starve you out.’”

First, massacres, rapes and the wholesale destruction of villages by the Myanmar military in western Rakhine state forced nearly 700,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh, in reprisal for Rohingya militant attacks on Aug. 25. Now, the food supply appears to be another weapon that’s being used against the dwindling numbers of Rohingya in Myanmar.

From wire sources

White House aide resigns after allegations of spousal abuse

WASHINGTON — One of President Donald Trump’s top White House aides resigned Wednesday following allegations of domestic abuse leveled against him by his two ex-wives.

Staff secretary Rob Porter said in a written statement that allegations that became public this week are “outrageous” and “simply false.” Porter said photos published of his former spouses — in which one appears to have a black eye — were “given to the media nearly 15 years ago and the reality behind them is nowhere close to what is being described.”

Porter added in a written statement. “I have been transparent and truthful about these vile claims, but I will not further engage publicly with a coordinated smear campaign.” Porter said he will leave the White House after a transition period.

Porter’s former wives recounted physical, verbal and emotional abuse they say he subjected them to during their marriages.

Porter’s first wife, Colbie Holderness, told the DailyMail.com that Porter choked and punched her during the five years they were husband and wife.

FBI: No evidence of attack in Border Patrol agent’s death

DALLAS — FBI officials said Wednesday that the investigation into the November death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent has yielded no evidence that there was a “scuffle, altercation or attack” more than two months after President Donald Trump and others used the suggestion of an attack to promote the building of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Investigators have conducted more than 650 interviews and involved 37 field offices in their probe, but have not found definitive evidence of an attack, the FBI said in a statement. The investigation will continue and the reward of up to $50,000 for information that closes the case will remain.

“To date none of the more than 650 interviews completed, locations searched, or evidence collected and analyzed have produced evidence that would support the existence of a scuffle, altercation, or attack on November 18, 2017,” said the release from the El Paso office of Emmerson Buie, a special agent in charge.

Rogelio Martinez died from injuries he sustained while he and his partner were responding to reports of unknown activity the night of Nov. 18 near Van Horn, a Texas town near the Mexico border about 110 miles (175 kilometers) southeast of El Paso.

Martinez’s partner radioed for help before both agents were airlifted to the hospital, where 36-year-old Martinez died a few hours later. The partner— who suffered from head injuries— was released from the hospital after several days, but told investigators he could not remember the incident.

Trump flirts with flashy military parade long eschewed by US

WASHINGTON — For generations, as America’s authoritarian rivals strutted their tanks, troops and jets through main thoroughfares in dramatic displays of strength, the United States watched from afar, but did not emulate.

Widely accepted as the world’s mightiest, the U.S. military has no tradition of putting itself on parade like in Russia, North Korea or China. But President Donald Trump does not often stand on tradition. So Trump’s directive to the Pentagon to draft options for a massive march reverberated across Washington on Wednesday like the thud of a discharged cannon, as lawmakers and military leaders mused about the cost, the risk and the purpose.

“People will wonder, ‘Well, what are they afraid of now? What are they trying to prove?’” Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents the District of Columbia in Congress, said in an interview. “We don’t have to show off to make a point.”

It was a critique voiced by both Democrats and Republicans the day after The Washington Post revealed Trump wants an elaborate parade this year to rival the Bastille Day celebration in Paris that made a distinct impression on him in July. Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin called it a “fantastic waste of money,” while Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told CNN that the parade risked being “kind of cheesy and a sign of weakness” if it’s just about showing off military muscle.

The president did not seem deterred, although his aides rushed to downplay the notion that it was anything beyond an idea Trump had floated “in a brainstorming session” to help Americans express gratitude and pride for the military. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said there had been no final decision. And Trump’s legislative director said it was too early to even guess about potential costs, though it’s assumed it would cost millions.