'Shame on Him': Evangelicals Call Out Trump on Syria

Evangelicals oppose Trump over Syria

 who stood by the president during the
 storm over the “Access Hollywood” tape and
 who called the idea of impeachment “absurd.” 

One called President Donald Trump’s decision “an egregious act of betrayal.” Another said the policy could be “the biggest mistake of his presidency.” A third said Trump “is in danger of losing the mandate of heaven.”

Conservative Christians have ardently stood by Trump at most every turn, from allegations of sexual misconduct to his policy of separating migrant families at the border and the Russia investigation.

But this week, some of Trump’s top evangelical supporters broke rank to raise alarms over his move to withdraw troops from Syria, which prompted Turkish forces to launch a ground and air assault against a Kurdish-led militia that has been a crucial ally in the U.S. fight against the Islamic State militant group.

As Turkish warplanes began to bomb Syrian towns on Wednesday, prominent evangelist Franklin Graham called for Trump to reconsider his decision, and worried that the Kurds — and the Christian minorities in the region they have defended — could be annihilated.

“We have many friends in the Kurdish areas,” said Graham, whose humanitarian organization, Samaritan’s Purse, has done relief work in the region. “We know people on the ground.”

The concern resonated for many conservative evangelicals who have supported Trump, and called into question his much-touted commitment to religious freedom, a top value for his base. The opposition has arrived at an inopportune time for the president: The administration is weathering a heated battle with Congress, and according to a Fox News poll, more than half of voters now support the president’s impeachment.

Tony Perkins, who leads the Family Research Council, is calling on the administration to actively demonstrate its support for persecuted religious minorities in the aftermath of the withdrawal. “This is inconsistent with what the president has done,” he said.

Erick Erickson, a well-known conservative evangelical blogger, wrote on Twitter that Trump had committed “an egregious act of betrayal” to the Kurds. “Shame on him,” he said.

Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, said he was “appalled” by the president’s decision, and added that “the president of the United States is in great danger of losing the mandate of heaven if he permits this to happen.” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who rarely breaks with the president, said it could be “the biggest mistake of his presidency.”

Current disappointment is unlikely to translate into substantial or lasting opposition. And not all evangelical supporters have taken issue with Trump’s decision. Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Dallas and a prominent supporter of Trump, said he “happily” deferred to the commander-in-chief, and he praised Trump for carrying through on a campaign promise to end U.S. involvement in Middle Eastern conflicts.

“Some evangelicals may disagree with the president’s decision,” Jeffress said, “but I guarantee you there is not one evangelical supporter of the president who would switch their vote and support Elizabeth Warren or Joe Biden over a Syria decision.”

Franklin Graham stopped short of condemning Trump’s policy outright. The evangelist said he communicated with the president or vice president — he would not specify which leader — about the troop withdrawal within the last 48 hours, and said he ultimately deferred to their determinations. He declined to give specifics of his conversation.

“There are so many other issues at stake here,” he said, listing things such as Turkey’s membership in NATO and U.S. military bases in the country. “It is a very hard decision.”

Perkins pointed to the administration’s other efforts for religious freedom, and said that “one incident doesn’t make an administration.”

Religious freedom, like anti-abortion policy and conservative judges, has often been a point of pride for many of Trump’s supporters.

At the United Nations last month, Trump earned praise from supporters for highlighting religious freedom instead of prioritizing a major climate summit. As Trump’s call with the president of Ukraine roiled Washington last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, an evangelical who often weaves together Christianity and foreign policy, spoke on religious freedom in Rome.

This summer, around the time of the Mueller hearings on Capitol Hill, the State Department convened a celebrated gathering to advance global religious freedom.

Conservative Christians can point to the administration’s priority of defending religious freedom, but action and policy are more revealing than words, said Meighan Stone, an evangelical Christian and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“If this administration can’t be good allies to the Kurds in this battle, where is this policy that is supposed to be protecting persecuted religious minorities around the world?” she asked. “It is nonexistent.”

When asked about human rights abuses of non-Christian communities, or in regions that are not as tied to biblical history — for example, how China has targeted Uighurs and other largely Muslim minorities in the autonomous region of Xinjiang — Graham demurred.

“I am not familiar with these people,” Graham said of the Uighurs, noting that he had not visited the region. “I’d certainly condemn China for, it’s not just the Uighurs, they’ve been destroying churches.”

Churches across Christian traditions — Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant — often share spiritual and personal ties to congregations in the Middle East, praying for their pastors or families by name, or inviting them to speak when they visit the United States.

Many church leaders galvanized support in 2014 when Islamic State fighters targeted, killed and raped fleeing religious minorities, including Christians and Yazidis.

Now, that fear is remerging and motivating evangelical alarm, explained Jeremy Courtney, who leads a relief effort called Preemptive Love that works in northeastern Syria and in the Al Hol tent camp, which has been described as a growing hotbed of Islamic State fighters and their families.

“Another way to view it is Christian self-interest, that if ISIS reconstitutes, then there will be another ISIS genocide against Christians, and maybe Arabs get killed, maybe Yazidis will get killed, but the subtle undercurrent is that maybe Christians will get killed,” said Courtney, who was raised as an evangelical in Texas and has lived north of Baghdad for almost 13 years.

“That is a legitimate concern, it is just disturbing to me,” he said. “Christians speaking out on this should be concerned about the Muslims who will lose their lives because of this policy as well.”

The troop withdrawal in Syria is likely to be a topic of conversation this weekend at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, where Trump is scheduled to speak to hundreds of conservative leaders. At the event, evangelical pastor Andrew Brunson, whom Turkey accused of spying and detained for two years, will receive an award marking the one-year anniversary of his release.

For many conservative Christians, Brunson has become a symbol of the Trump administration’s commitment to protecting persecuted Christians in unfriendly regions. This week, Trump said on Twitter that America’s relationship with Turkey “has been very good.”

In a phone call Thursday evening, Brunson said the decision to withdraw troops from Syria and the ensuing Turkish attack have left him “distressed.” He spoke of the refugees he met working in the Syrian-Turkish border region, including friends who had converted to Christianity and who were currently in Kobani, a Syrian town now under Turkish assault.

“I don’t think Turkey is a friend of the West anymore,” Brunson said. “This is a point of great concern to me, obviously.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2019 The New York Times Company

Water Finds Its Level as Fox News Hires Dictator-Loving, Deep State-Loathing John Solomon

Casey Michel
The Daily Beast•October 13, 2019

Over the weekend, Fox News announced that it had made a new hire: John Solomon, the self-proclaimed journalist at the heart of the unfolding scandal involving Ukraine, Rudy Giuliani, and the impending impeachment of Donald Trump. It’s not hard to see why Fox executives may have wanted to bring him aboard. Solomon’s work has underpinned the entire cascade of lies the White House and Trump in particular have pushed over the past few weeks.

Solomon’s writings—including those most recently at The Hill, where he worked until last month—are drenched in innuendo and mischaracterizations, all in service of attacking Trump’s political opponents. Solomon is already a regular Fox News fixture. He appeared on Fox News’s The Story show last week to claim that he was being victimized by “McCarthy-like” attacks. As Mother Jones noted on Solomon’s hiring—which coincided with Giuliani claiming that the man deserves a Pulitzer—Solomon’s “alliance with pro-Trump forces” is now “official.”

Leaked Memo: Colleagues Unload on John Solomon, the Journo Who Kicked Off Trump’s Ukraine Conspiracy

For many, Solomon remains far from a household name: a relatively obscure journalist who worked until recently at a relatively obscure outlet pushing relatively obscure stories about relatively obscure countries. But for those who’ve followed his work (which includes a long-ago stint at Newsweek and The Daily Beast), his role in the entire unfolding national nightmare—and the fact that he provided a willing platform to lies and half-truths coming out of Ukraine—wasn’t a surprise.

This is a man, after all, about whom the Columbia Journalism Review wrote not one, not two, but three separate takedowns. (One headline: “John Solomon Gives Us Less Than Meets the Eye — Again”). The most recent topped out at nearly 5,000 words, highlighting Solomon’s “history of bending the truth to his storyline,” as well as his “hyping [of] petty stories” and his outsized habit of “massaging facts to conjure phantom scandals.”
Complaints from colleagues tailed Solomon wherever he went; as one former co-worker said about Solomon’s work, “Facts be damned.” Small wonder that, as The Daily Beast reported last week, staffers at The Hill were “enraged” by his presence at the publication.

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty

But there was one kind of friend on whom Solomon could always count, and who could always count on Solomon’s support in return: post-Soviet officials, oligarchs, and lobbyists looking to launder their image and spin their narrative.

We’ve seen this most clearly over the past few months, as Solomon’s coverage of Ukraine has gained a national audience—and completely fallen apart under the most basic scrutiny. To take one example, Solomon’s writing lent credence to the notion that the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, had given a Ukrainian prosecutor a “do-not-prosecute” list. One problem: there’s no evidence the list ever existed, and the prosecutor himself eventually walked back the claim entirely.

But the damage was already done: The White House this year canned the ambassador, who’s since been personally targeted by Trump as some kind of henchman in former Vice President Joe Biden’s machinations. (For good measure, Solomon this weekend described Ukraine’s successful 2014 revolution to oust corrupt strongman Viktor Yanukovych as a “coup.”)

But Ukraine was far from the only post-Soviet state where crooked actors and dirty money looked for, and found, help from Solomon.

A couple years ago, while I was a graduate student at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, focusing on post-Soviet affairs, I patched together a Master’s thesis on how post-Soviet kleptocrats whitewash their reputations for American audiences. And there, in the middle of a lobbyist-led campaign to clean up the image of Azerbaijan—one of the most heinous, most kleptocratic governments in the world—sat none other than John Solomon.

In 2015, Solomon was an editor at The Washington Times. His tenure there just so happened to coincide with the paper becoming one of the go-to outlets for Azerbaijan’s lobbyists to lie about the brutal Azeri regime’s supposed graces—including pieces that failed to disclose that the authors were on the Azeri dole, like one column by former GOP Congressman Dan Burton, written while he was lobbying for Azerbaijan.

Solomon took some responsibility in that case when contacted by The Washington Post, claiming the lack of disclosure was just an oversight. And when I spoke with Solomon in the context of my research, telling him that one of the pieces—which claimed that “few places in the world… are as welcoming to Americans as Azerbaijan”—still didn’t note it was written by a pro-Azeri lobbyist, he told me that he’d add the disclaimer in. But four years later, the article remains unchanged—and anyone reading it would think the author was simply interested in the pleasures and pastimes of Azerbaijan, and not that he was a paid-off hack.
In the years since, I—like many familiar with his work—have looked askance at anything that Solomon has published, never taking it at face value. And rightfully so, as we’ve recently seen out of Ukraine. Solomon is still massaging facts, and he’s still conjuring phantom scandals. And now he’s been hired by Fox News for his efforts.

And federal filings may provide a hint of who Solomon might help whitewash next. According to documents filed with the Department of Justice’s Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) database, Solomon’s 2015 push to include a raft of pro-Azeri material in The Washington Times just so happened to coincide with his meetings with Azeri lobbyists. (The subject of those 2015 meetings: “Azerbaijan public relations.”) Fast-forward to 2019, and as FARA further outlines, Solomon was also in contact with Lanny Davis—a man who, until recently, was working on behalf of Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash.

Accused by American authorities of massive bribery and described by the DOJ as an alleged “upper-echelon [associate] of Russian organized crime,” Firtash is currently fighting extradition from Austria to the United States. For help, Firtash recently hired conspiratorial pro-Trump lawyers Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova – both of whom have joined Rudy Giuliani in working to dig up Ukrainian dirt on Biden. (Firtash also just so happens to publicly loathe Biden.)

There are no FARA filings yet listed on any communications between Toensing, diGenova, and Solomon. But we already know that Solomon was emailing at least some of his stories before publication at The Hill to Toensing and diGenova—as well as to Lev Parnas, the now-arrested bagman and associate of Giuliani, who also happens to be working for Firtash.
So if you see Solomon, whom Politico recently described as an “all[y]” of the two lawyers, beginning to spin Firtash as some kind of wronged businessman—someone unfairly targeted by the Obama administration, perhaps—don’t be surprised. After all, something like that would fit squarely within Solomon’s track record as a kleptocrat’s favorite spin-man, no matter the cost—and no matter the consequences.

  U.S. ‘Withdraws’ Forces to Let Turks Advance on 
                           America's Allies

The Daily Beast•October 13, 2019
Khalil Ashawi/Reuters

In the latest surge of anti-war rhetoric from the Trump administration, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the U.S. is launching a “deliberate withdrawal” of American forces from northern Syria, but refused to say how long it will take.

“We want to conduct it safely and quickly as possible,” Esper told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday morning, adding, “I’m not prepared to put a timeline on it, but that’s our general game plan.”

Two knowledgeable U.S. officials told The Daily Beast that the troops are just withdrawing further away from the advance of Turkish forces massacring the Syrian Kurds whom America relied upon to destroy the so-called Islamic State’s caliphate.

There are currently 1,000 U.S. troops in Syria. A knowledgeable U.S. official said hundreds of those troops, without further specificity, will leave Syria for elsewhere in the Mideast. Following a pullout from two northern Syrian observation posts last week, the U.S. will now retreat further away from the area Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has invaded.

Esper said that President Donald Trump gave the withdrawal order because Turkish forces are pushing further south into Syria and Kurdish forces are trying to cut a deal with Syria and Russia to counter-attack.

“We have American forces likely caught between two opposing advancing armies and it’s a very untenable situation,” he said.

But as Esper made clear, the order affects only the north and there will still be American forces in the rest of Syria even as Trump—who separately has ordered about 14,000 U.S. troops to the Persian Gulf region over the past six months—rails against the disastrous, bloody and interminable U.S. misadventure in the Middle East over the past generation.

A U.S. official told CNN that U.S. policy “has failed” and that the campaign in Syria to defeat ISIS is “over for now,” giving the terrorist group “a second lease on life with nearly 100,000 [people] who will re-join their jihad.”

The mixed messaging by the Trump administration is making it difficult for even his most ardent supporters to help unravel his foreign policy on Syria as it spins out of control. 

Just days after Trump announced the withdrawal of American troops from northern Syria where they have been providing weapons and cover to allied Kurdish fighters on the border between Turkey and Syria, Turkey began a military incursion that has sent the region into a level of chaos it has not seen in recent years.

James Mattis On Trump's Syria Withdrawal: 'Re-Instilling Trust Is Going To Be Very Difficult'

Former Defense Secretary James Mattis, who served under President Donald Trump for two years, suggested he opposes Trump’s widely condemned decision to abandon U.S-allied Kurdish forces in northern Syria.

Mattis, who resigned in January after Trump announced he planned to abruptly withdraw U.S. forces from Syria, has been reluctant to forcefully speak out against the president, saying military officials shouldn’t be political.

But asked about Trump and his apparent decision to greenlight Turkey’s military assault on the Kurds, Mattis said his resignation says it all.

“I have my private, my personal concerns,” Mattis said during a taped interview with NBC’s “Meet The Press” that aired Sunday. “I keep those private. ... The defense of the country is non-partisan so we have to stay out of those sorts of discussions.”

He then pointed to his resignation letter, in which he urged Trump to maintain strong allies and show them respect, to understand his current stance.

“Only in Washington, D.C., could a public resignation over a matter of policy, a matter of principle, with a page-and-a-half letter explaining why be considered careful,” Mattis told host Chuck Todd.

“It talks about our security being tied inextricably to our alliances,” he said of his resignation letter, which prompted panic from Democrats and some Republicans when it was made public. “I don’t know what more I could say about how I think we ought to treat allies and how I think we should treat those who are adversaries.” 

TODAY: Former Defense Secretary James Mattis says to know how he feels about the current situation in Syria, read his resignation letter.

"It's a page and a half long. It talks about our security being tied inextricably to our alliances. I don't know what more I can say." #MTP pic.twitter.com/VfUgZR2pMx

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) October 13, 2019

Trump shocked Republicans and Democrats last week when the White House announced U.S. forces in northern Syria would allow Turkish forces to invade the area, essentially abandoning the Kurds. 

Over 130,000 people have been displaced since Thursday and hundreds of fighters from the self-described Islamic State, also known as ISIS, have escaped as Turkish-led forces targeted Syrian border towns held by Kurdish militia. Turkish-backed Arab fighters have also killed several Kurdish captives as well as Hervin Khalaf, the head of a Kurdish political party.

Foreign policy experts, including Brett McGurk, a former U.S. envoy to the global anti-ISIS coalition who resigned last year in protest of Trump, have warned that Trump’s decision not to defend the Kurds is highly immoral and threatens national security.

Mattis, during his interview with NBC, warned that ISIS will “absolutely” reemerge if the U.S. doesn’t keep the pressure on in Syria.

“ISIS is not defeated,” he said. “We may want a war over. We may even declare it over. ... But the enemy gets a vote, as we say in the military. In this case, if we don’t keep the pressure on, then ISIS will resurge.”

He said it’s going to be “very difficult” for the U.S. to save face after Trump’s decision to withdraw.

“You turn issues like this around based on trust,” Mattis said. “And re-instilling trust is going to be very difficult for the Americans at this point.”

He added: “America’s always safer when it builds the trust and a sense of reliability among our allies.”


This article originally appeared on HuffPost.

Trump says he is ‘island of one’ on Syria position as domestic and international criticism mounts

As the situation in northern Syria becomes more chaotic, US defence secretary admits he does not know whether Turkey would attack US troops

Donald Trump has described himself as “an island of one” over his sudden decision to remove US forces from northeastern Syria, as his defence secretary said 1,000 troops would be evacuated to avoid getting caught up in the Turkish invasion.

The president continued to defend the move that effectively green-lit the immediate Turkish assault on America’s Kurdish allies, who fought on the front line against Isis.

Amid bipartisan and international criticism that he has endangered stability in the Middle East, Mr Trump argued the US cannot fight “endless wars”.

Mark Esper, the US defence secretary, said most of the 1,000 US troops still in Syria were being moved as the Turkish military extended the scope of its incursion.

He told CBS’s Face the Nation: “In the last 24 hours we learned that they likely intend to expand their attack further south than originally planned, and to the west.”

The danger of US forces becoming embroiled in the conflict was illustrated on Friday when an American observation post came under shelling from Turkish artillery. No US troops were injured.

Asked whether he thought Turkey, a NATO ally, would deliberately attack American troops in Syria, Mr Esper said, “I don’t know whether they would or wouldn’t.”

A US military official told the Associated Press that the situation across northeastern Syria was “deteriorating rapidly” and that American troops had now become cut off from the Kurdish allies they had been fighting alongside.

Amid reports of 130,000 civilians forced to flee their homes, dozens killed and nearly 800 detainees having escaped from a camp holding Isis relatives, Mr Trump attempted to defend his "very smart" move on Sunday.

"Very smart not to be involved in the intense fighting along the Turkish Border, for a change. Those that mistakenly got us into the Middle East Wars are still pushing to fight," he tweeted. 

“We have to bring our great heroes, our great soldiers, we have to bring them home. It’s time. It’s time,” Mr Trump said in a lengthy, wide-ranging address to conservative activists at the Values Voter Summit on Saturday.

He portrayed the Middle East as a hopeless cause, despite years of American military involvement and financial investment.

“It’s less safe now. It’s less secure, less stable and they fight,” he said. “That’s what they do. They fight.”

The UN estimated on Sunday that at least 130,000 people had been displaced by the five-day-old Turkish invasion, with the official Kurdish death toll at 76.

Boris Johnson has, in a phone call with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, urged Turkey to halt the offensive. 

And two of Turkey’s NATO allies, Germany and France, have said they are halting weapons exports to Turkey, while the Arab League denounced the operation.

Donald Trump defends decision to pull US forces out of Syria

Mr Trump announced that he had directed $50m in emergency aid for Syria to support Christians and other religious minorities.

Turkey regards the Kurds as terrorists, and Mr Trump suggested that he was aware of a likely invasion in the event of US withdrawal.

He defended his decision to reporters, saying Turkey had “been wanting to do this for many years ... they’ve been fighting each other for centuries”.

His former defence secretary Jim Mattis has also issued a strong warning that Mr Trump's move could lead to the resurgence of Isis.

"We may want a war over, we may even declare it over," General Mattis said, in an interview with NBC, aired on Sunday. 

 "You can pull your troops out as President Obama learned the hard way out of Iraq, but the 'enemy gets the vote', we say in the military.

"And in this case, if we don't keep the pressure on, then Isis will resurge. It's absolutely a given that they will come back."

Isis declared on Saturday that it has already started regrouping and is planning a fresh campaign in Syria, claiming responsibility for two deadly car bombs on Friday.

Mr Trump has previously talked tough on Isis, using their existence to justify enacting a travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries.

But when asked about the prospect of escaped Isis prisoners shortly after his decision, Mr Trump played down the threat, telling reporters: “Well they’re going to be escaping to Europe. That’s where they want to go. They want to go back to their homes.”

On Sunday, an estimated 785 women and children affiliated with Isis escaped from a camp 50km north of Raqqa.

Kurdish authorities said “mercenaries” had attacked the Ain Issa camp where “Daesh elements” then attacked a severely diminished force of camp guards and opened the gates, amid Turkish shelling in the region.

As reports emerged of the escape, Turkish and Syrian rebel forces captured the neighbouring town of Suluk.

Mr Trump tweeted on Saturday night: “The same people that got us into the Middle East quicksand, $8tn and many thousands of lives (and millions of lives when you count the other side), are now fighting to keep us there.

“Don’t listen to people that haven’t got a clue. They have proven to be inept.”

The Independent/Additional reporting by AP

Female Kurdish politician ‘executed’ by pro-Turkish militants as civilian death toll rises to 38 in Syria offensive

Syrian Democratic Forces say politician was ambushed and shot dead in attack

Turkish-backed groups have killed nine civilians, including a female politician, in northeastern Syria, according to a human rights monitor.

Hevrin Khalaf, the Future Syria Party’s secretary-general, and her driver were ambushed and shot dead on Saturday, according to Kurdish forces.

“The nine civilians were executed at different moments south of the town of Tal Abyad,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In a statement, the political arm of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said Khalaf was “taken out of her car during a Turkish-backed attack and executed by Turkish-backed mercenary factions”.

“This is clear evidence that the Turkish state is continuing its criminal policy towards unarmed civilians,” the SDF said.

Turkey and its allied fighters began an offensive on Wednesday to push back the Kurdish Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG) from its border.

The YPG is the primary component of the SDF who have been instrumental in fighting Isis in Syria.

The Turkish government has described the YPG as a “terrorist” group with links to Kurdish rebels in Turkey.

“With utmost grievance and sadness, the Syria Future Party mourns the martyrdom of engineer Havrin Khalaf, the General Secretary of Syria Future Party, while she was performing her patriotic and political duties,” the Future Party said in a statement on Khalaf’s death.

Two videos of the killings were circulated on social media by Kurdish activists.

Although the Syrian Observatory confirmed the authenticity of the videos, other news agencies, such as AFP, could not independently verify them.

A US State Department spokesperson told Reuters on Sunday that the United States had seen reports of the killings and it was looking into the incidents.

"We find these reports to be extremely troubling, reflecting the overall destabilisation of northeast Syria since the commencement of hostilities on Tuesday," the spokesperson said.

The Syrian Observatory added that the deaths brought the number of civilians killed on the Syrian side to at least 38 since the start of the offensive.

Eighty-one Kurdish fighters have also been killed in the clashes, the human rights group said.

The Turkish-backed Syrian National Army said on Saturday that it had ordered commanders to “continuously supervise combatants on the frontlines to prevent any abuse”,

The group, who oppose the SDF, added that perpetrators of possible abuses “would face the most severe sanctions and be brought to justice for military disobedience."

Islamic State Rears Its Head, Adding to Chaos as Turkey Battles Kurds

The New York Times•October 12, 2019

CEYLANPINAR, Turkey — The Turkish invasion of Kurdish-held territory in northern Syria raised new fears of a resurgence of the Islamic State on Friday, as five militants escaped from a Kurdish-run prison and the extremist group claimed responsibility for a bomb that exploded in the regional capital.

As Turkish troops launched a third night of airstrikes and ground incursions, Kurdish fighters said they had thwarted a second attempt to break out of a detention camp for families of Islamic State members.

The moves compounded a mounting sense of turmoil in northeast Syria, where tens of thousands of residents were reported fleeing south. The Turkish government said its troops had advanced 5 miles inside part of the country. Several major roads had been blocked and a major hospital abandoned.

Since Wednesday, Turkish forces have pummeled Kurdish-held territory with airstrikes and sent in ground troops, trying to seize land controlled by a Kurdish-led militia, the Syrian Democratic Forces. That militia fought alongside U.S. troops in the recent war against the Islamic State.

The campaign began after President Donald Trump suddenly ordered U.S. troops to withdraw from the area, giving implicit approval to Turkey’s long-anticipated attack on the Kurdish-led militia.

Trump’s decision was widely criticized, including by his Republican allies in the United States, who said it was a betrayal of an ally — the Kurds — that could cause a re-emergence of the Islamic State.

The White House — concerned that Congress would pursue bipartisan sanctions legislation against Turkey — said Trump would sign an executive order giving the Treasury Department new powers to punish officials in Turkey if its military targeted ethnic and religious minorities.

“We hope we don’t have to use them,” said Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary. “But we can shut down the Turkish economy if we need to.”

Since pulling out, U.S. officials have expressed growing concern at the direction the Turkish incursion has taken, with officials warning Friday that the United States would respond forcefully if Islamic State fighters were allowed to escape from prisons in the area.

On Friday afternoon, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey vowed to continue the campaign.

“The West and the U.S., together they say, ‘You are killing the Kurds’,” said Erdogan in a speech. “Kurds are our brothers. This struggle of ours is not against Kurds. It is against terror groups.’’

The Turkish government has framed the campaign as a counterterrorist operation because the Kurdish-led militia has close ties with a banned Turkey-based guerrilla movement that has waged a decades long struggle against the Turkish state.

Erdogan has promised that the fight against the Islamic State will continue and that his forces and their allies will continue to guard any captured militants in Kurdish-held prisons.

But the operation has already proved highly disruptive to efforts to keep the Islamic State at bay. Although U.S. and Kurdish forces have defeated Islamic State militants in northeastern Syria, the group has sleeper cells in the region that could use the turmoil to retake the land they controlled in the early years of the Syrian civil war.

And the Kurdish militia has diverted soldiers to fight the invasion and abandoned joint operations with U.S. troops as it prioritizes the defense of its land.

On Friday, a car bomb exploded on a residential street in Qamishli, the de facto capital of the Kurdish-held region — a rare act of Islamic State terrorism in a city that was relatively free of trouble before the Turkish assault began.

The Turkish bombardment has also endangered the security of several Kurdish-run prisons for Islamic State militants, with at least three in the vicinity of continuing Turkish airstrikes. It is widely feared that in the chaos, Islamic State fighters will escape captivity, as the five did Friday.

Kurdish authorities said shells had reached two Kurdish-controlled displacement camps, prompting officials to move some of their 20,000 inhabitants farther south.

One of the camps, in Ain Issa, has hundreds of relatives of Islamic State fighters, heightening fears over the effect that the Turkish invasion will have on the fight against the militant group.

Kurdish forces also released video of a third camp, which they said showed an effort to escape by members of Islamic State families.

A second video, seen by The New York Times, appeared to show prisoners trying to escape a Kurdish-controlled jail after it was hit by an airstrike.

While the Turkish airstrikes have hit targets along most of the 300-mile-long Kurdish-held territory, the ground battle has focused on two small but strategically located Syrian border towns, Tel Abyad and Ras al-Ain.

Turkish troops and their Syrian Arab allies have captured a cluster of villages around the two towns, which lie in the center of the Kurdish region. The troops have in one place established a front line 5 miles from the Turkish border, the Turkish vice president, Fuat Oktay, said Friday evening, according to Turkish media.

Their presence has prompted 100,000 residents to flee south, according to U.N. estimates, and forced the evacuation of a major hospital in Tel Abyad that was run by Doctors Without Borders, an international medical charity.

A second hospital, in Ras al-Ain, was also evacuated, according to a separate report by the Rojava Information Center, an information service run by activists in the region.

Turkish mortar shells also landed close to U.S. troops near the city of Kobani on Friday, prompting a complaint from the U.S. military, the Turkish Defense Ministry confirmed. No one was killed. Turkish officials said the Americans had not been targeted, though the Pentagon said Turkey had known that U.S. forces were in the area.

At least 54 Kurdish fighters have been killed since Wednesday, along with 42 from the Turkish-backed force, according to tolls compiled by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a conflict monitor based in Britain.

Turkish towns north of the border have also been affected, as Kurdish fighters have returned fire.

Since fighting began Wednesday, at least 17 civilians, including four children, have been killed in Turkish border towns. At least four Turkish soldiers have died in the fighting, according to Turkish officials.

An entire Turkish border town — Ceylanpinar — was evacuated, after two girls were killed in a rocket strike Thursday and two people were seriously wounded Friday.

Ceylanpinar was largely deserted Friday afternoon, with shops shuttered and only stray dogs and a few men slipping out to chat or buy cigarettes.

“Our city is a ghost town,” complained Musa Sahman, 70, who sells a local raw meat delicacy but had no customers. “Our government is fighting for Syria, but we don’t have any business.”

But the damage has been far worse on the Kurdish side, where 60 civilians have died since Wednesday, according to the Kurdish Red Crescent.

The U.S. decision to ally with Kurdish militias set the stage for Turkey’s invasion this week.

By capturing land previously held by the Islamic State, Kurdish fighters were then able to create an autonomous statelet that spans roughly a quarter of all Syrian territory and is effectively independent of the central Syrian government in Damascus.

But this dynamic has been chastening for Syria’s northern neighbor, Turkey, which views the central figures in the autonomous Kurdish region as hostile actors with strong connections to a violent Kurdish nationalist group inside Turkey itself.

Turkey’s military campaign has come hand in hand with a crackdown on criticism inside Turkey.

The state-run media authority warned that it would “silence” any outlet deemed to have published material damaging to the offensive. Two editors at separate independent news websites were briefly detained, their outlets reported.

“We will never tolerate broadcasts that will negatively affect our beloved nation and glorious soldiers’ morale and motivation, that serves the aim of terror, and might mislead our citizens with faulty, wrong and biased information,” the media authority said in a statement.

The Turkish incursion has prompted a mixed reaction from the 3.6 million Syrian refugees sheltering in Turkey.

Some fear they will end up being deported to the areas recaptured by Turkish forces in northern Syria, despite having no ancestral links there. Others from the areas of northern Syria currently under attack said they welcomed the campaign.

In Turkey, on a hilltop overlooking the Syrian border and the town of Tel Abyad, a lone Syrian man, Mehmet Huseyn, 45, crouched in the shade of a rusting water tank, scanning the horizon for signs of movement.

His brother and family were in his home village, 6 miles beyond the ridgeline, while he had been working as a farm laborer in Turkey for four years to support his family of seven, he said.

“Our village is there,” he said. “I am looking in case they leave and we can return home.”

But it pained him to see more war visited on his home. “Our insides are burning,” he said. “We love our land and we love our country.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2019 The New York Times Company

British regulator reviews JPMorgan metals trading amid U.S. probe: sources

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s financial services regulator is examining allegations of precious metals market manipulation by JPMorgan Chase & Co traders following criminal charges by U.S. authorities, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is one of the various authorities that JPMorgan has previously said were investigating its metals trading, according to one of the people, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter. The watchdog has requested documents and other information from JPMorgan, the source said.

The exact scope of the FCA scrutiny or whether it will result in any charges was unclear.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has charged five current and former JPMorgan metals traders, who worked in New York, London and Singapore, with alleged price manipulation between 2007 and 2016. Two of them have been charged in parallel by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The joint investigation is ongoing, a DOJ official has said.

One of the traders was charged in 2018, and four this year. Two have pleaded guilty to manipulating prices. The lawyers for the three most recently charged, in September, said their clients would contest the allegations against them.

JPMorgan said in an Aug. 6 regulatory filing that it was “responding to and cooperating” with various investigations relating to trading practices in the metals markets.

The FCA, DOJ and CFTC all declined to comment.

The second person familiar with the matter is London-based metals trader Andrew Maguire, who has long complained about alleged metals market manipulation on both sides of the Atlantic.

He told Reuters he met FCA officials in August, along with British lawmaker Jeremy Lefroy, to discuss possible metals market manipulation in London. He said he was told by the officials that they were looking into JPMorgan’s metal trading, and that they had contacted the DOJ and CFTC to learn more.

Lefroy confirmed that the meeting with the FCA took place and said he and Maguire were assured that the FCA was following the U.S. investigation closely for any possible implications in Britain and would follow up on these if found.

New York and London are hubs for precious metals dealing, and large international banks are among the biggest traders, managing orders for themselves and clients.

U.S. prosecutors have said that the five charged JPMorgan traders had influenced metals prices by placing bids with the intent to cancel them before execution – a technique known as spoofing. By creating an illusion of demand, spoofers can move prices to benefit their market positions.

There has been a surge in spoofing-related prosecutions in recent years involving banks and dealers. These include Bank of America Corp’s Merrill Lynch commodities unit, which was fined $25 million by U.S. authorities in July, and Morgan Stanley, which was fined $1.5 million in the United States last month.

The DOJ has taken an aggressive stance, most recently charging three of the five men in the JPMorgan case with a racketeering conspiracy, a technique more commonly associated with organized crime prosecutions. All contest the charges.

The U.S. charges against JPMorgan staff center on manipulation of U.S. exchanges. Trading can be conducted on these exchanges from locations outside the United States, including London, where some of the men charged by U.S. investigators have been based.

The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA), which sets trade standards for metals trading but is not a regulator, said it “takes very seriously all allegations of misconduct or criminal conduct which may prejudice or damage the integrity and efficient operation of the precious metals markets”.

JPMorgan, like most other large international banks that trade gold, is an LBMA member.

California bans private prisons and immigration detention centers

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California moved to end the use of private, for-profit lockups in America’s largest state prison system as well as in federal immigration detention centers in the state under a measure signed into law on Friday by Governor Gavin Newsom.

FILE PHOTO: California governor Gavin Newsom stands next to an American flag as he waits to speak at a news conference in San Diego, California, U.S. October 9, 2019. REUTERS/ Mike Blake/File Photo
The new law bars the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation from entering into or renewing a contract with a private company to run a state prison after Jan. 1, 2020, unless needed to meet court-ordered inmate housing limits. It will ban California from incarcerating anyone in privately run facilities altogether from 2028.

The measure, which passed the California legislature last month, does not apply to privately owned prisons operated and staffed by the state corrections agency.

Newsom said in a statement that he had vowed to abolish private prisons in the state when he took office in January “because they contribute to over-incarceration, including those that incarcerate California inmates and those that detain immigrants and asylum seekers.”

“These for-profit prisons do not reflect our values,” Newsom said.

Supporters of the bill have argued that private prisons are driven to maximize shareholder profits, lack proper oversight or incentives to rehabilitate inmates and have contributed to a culture of mass incarceration by making it cheaper to lock up people.

A total of seven low-security facilities collectively housing more than 5,000 people are at stake, all of them operated either by Florida-headquartered GEO Group, or Tennessee-based CoreCivic.

Defending their business model, the companies said they provided vital extra space when detentions in California’s prisons swelled to more than double the system’s capacity, sparking lawsuits that led to court-ordered cuts to inmate populations.

“For 10 years, we provided safe, secure housing and life-changing re-entry programming for inmates that had faced extreme overcrowding,” CoreCivic spokeswoman Amanda Gilchrist said.

Separately, GEO Group cited its record as “an innovator in the field of rehabilitative services” and said the bill worked against the state’s goal of lowering inmate recidivism.

DETENTION CENTERS TO CLOSE
The last three remaining privately run prisons in California’s corrections system, housing a total of 1,400 inmates, are set to close in four years under the new law when their contracts with the state expire.

Perhaps more significantly, the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency stands to lose four privately run detention facilities holding roughly 4,000 people in California, unless the ban is challenged in court.

In a statement, GEO Group called California’s newly enacted prohibition on privately run ICE detention centers a violation of the U.S. constitutional doctrine granting the federal government supremacy over the states, suggesting a legal challenge might be in the offing.

ICE had said separately before the legislation was signed that its detainees would merely be transferred to facilities outside California, forcing friends and family of the detainees to travel greater distances to visit their loved ones.

Several states, including New York, Illinois and Nevada, have adopted similar bans on private prisons, and nearly half of all states have no such facilities, said Kara Gotsch, director of strategic initiatives for the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice reform group.

California’s share of inmates in private facilities is a small fraction of its total prison population of nearly 126,000.

By comparison, Texas, which became the first state to outsource incarceration to private companies in 1985, had far more inmates than any other state in for-profit facilities in 2017 at nearly 13,000, or 7.8 percent of its total, said Gotsch.

Judge blocks Trump immigration rule, calls it 'repugnant to American Dream'


NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge in New York on Friday temporarily blocked a Trump administration rule that would deny residency to aspiring immigrants deemed likely to require government assistance, calling it “repugnant to the American Dream.”

The rule, finalized in August, vastly expanded who could be considered a possible “public charge,” applying to anyone who might in the future need temporary government help such as food stamps, Medicaid or housing aid. Previously it applied to immigrants who would be primarily dependent on the government.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) rule, if ultimately allowed to take effect, could be the most drastic of the Trump administration’s hardline anti-immigration policies, experts have said.

Pushed by Trump’s leading aide on immigration, Stephen Miller, the rule was due to go into effect on Tuesday.

But Judge George Daniels of the Southern District of New York blocked the rule nationwide, finding that the government failed to provide “any reasonable explanation” for why the definition of public charge needed to be changed.

It will now be on hold while the underlying legal challenges proceed.

The suit was brought by the state of New York, one of nine legal challenges to the public charge rule. Other U.S. judges issued similar injunctions elsewhere on Friday, including the Eastern District of Washington and the Northern District of California.

In California, U.S. Judge Phyllis Hamilton found “the plaintiffs are likely to prevail on the merits, for numerous reasons.”

In New York, Judge Daniels called the rule a “policy of exclusion in search of a justification.”

“It is repugnant to the American Dream of the opportunity for prosperity and success through hard work and upward mobility,” Daniels wrote.

The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Trump administration, with Miller in a leading role, has enacted a series of measures attempting to curtail immigration, only to be blocked by court injunctions until the underlying lawsuits can be heard.

Trump lost another ruling on Friday when a U.S. judge in Texas blocked emergency funding for construction of a southern border wall.

Judge David Briones of the Western District of Texas granted an injunction against border wall funding beyond that appropriated by Congress. The County of El Paso, Texas, and the Border Network for Human Rights had sued to stop Trump when he announced he would divert military and drug interdiction funds toward construction of the wall.

The judge’s order was not final as he asked the parties to submit further filings to be considered over the next 15 days.

Miller, speaking before the border wall ruling, criticized the courts, calling their rulings “dangerous.”

“The situation in the federal judiciary with respect to these nationwide injunctions, which have proliferated to an unprecedented degree, is intolerable. And it impedes democracy from functioning,” Miller said.

The public charge rule laid out factors immigration officers should weigh, including household income and English proficiency. Immigrant advocates said this would disproportionately affect people from Latin American, African and Asian countries.

The judge called the inclusion of English proficiency as a predictor of self-sufficiency “simply offensive.”

“Judge Daniels understands that to Donald Trump and Stephen Miller, the cruelty of their ‘public charge’ rule is the point,” said Heidi Hess, co-director of CREDO Action, a network of progressive activists.

Most visa holders and unauthorized immigrants are ineligible for public benefits, but immigrant advocates, medical professionals and state officials have argued the rule could deter them from seeking benefits even for children who are U.S. citizens.

An estimated 15% to 35% of California families eligible for social welfare will withdraw from programs out of fear of the immigration consequences, according to the California Immigrant Policy Center, an immigrant-rights organization.

On Thursday, the State Department revealed its own rule on ineligibility for visa applicants, to bring its standards in line with the DHS rule. It was unclear whether the State Department’s rule will take effect.

Reporting by Kristina Cooke in Los Angles and Daniel Trotta and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, David Gregorio and Sandra Maler