President Donald Trump hit the road Friday to deliver a pep talk to American workers in South Carolina, resurrecting the jobs-building promises that powered his election victory and pledging anew to “unleash the power of the American spirit.”
But back in Washington, this week’s divisive tone continued:
• The White House distanced itself from a Department of Homeland Security draft proposal to use the National Guard to round up unauthorized immigrants. Administration officials said the proposal, which called for mobilizing up to 100,000 troops in 11 states, was rejected, and would not be part of plans to carry out Trump’s aggressive immigration policy.
• Concluding weeks of bitter debates, Scott Pruitt was confirmed to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, giving Trump an eager partner to fulfill his pledge to increase the use of fossil fuels — much to the chagrin of the nation’s environmental groups and alternative-energy boosters.
• Trump’s national security team remained incomplete, but retired Gen. Keith Kellogg, whose family has deep roots in Long Beach, traveled to South Carolina with the White House team aboard Air Force One. Trump tweeted Kellogg, serving as the acting national security adviser, is “very much in play” for the permanent role, along with three others.
• Trump also tweeted: “The FAKENEWS media … is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” Trump’s social-media outburst came a day after he forcefully defended his administration and jousted with the press during a marathon White House news conference.
But the president, clearly enjoying his return to the kind of cheering crowds that fueled his months-long campaign, took a more upbeat tack in South Carolina.
“We love our workers and we are going to protect our workers,” Trump declared at a Boeing plant where the company showed off its new 787-10 Dreamliner aircraft. “We are going to fight for jobs. We are going to fight for our families,” he said in a reprise of the “America First” message from his campaign.
The new president toured a 787-10 still under construction and, before leaving, sat in the pilot’s seat of a completed airplane painted in contrasting shades of blue that formed the backdrop for his remarks. Some 5,000 employees and others inside a hangar greeted him with chants of “USA, USA.”
The president, who owns an airplane but now travels exclusively on government aircraft, praised the Boeing jetliner as “an amazing piece of art.”
“As your president I’m going to do everything I can to unleash the power of the American spirit and to put our great people back to work,” he said. “This is our mantra: Buy American and hire American.”
Trump, returning to the confident theme of his march to the White House, said: “America is going to start winning again, winning like never before.”
Trump is expected to stick to the theme today when he holds a big rally in central Florida.
Immigration debate
The president’s vow to toughen enforcement of immigration laws returned to the spotlight Friday, a day after the president promised to sign an executive order next week that would include a new travel ban that would stand up to the kind of legal challenges that blocked his first try.
Municipalities including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis and Skokie, Illinois, urged a federal judge on Friday to continue blocking aspects of Trump’s travel ban.
New York City’s chief lawyer, Zachary Carter, filed papers in federal court on behalf of nearly three dozen cities. The arguments were submitted days before a judge will decide whether to extend an order that was issued the day after Trump signed the Jan. 27 executive order. Trump’s plans included a 90-day ban on travel to the U.S. by citizens of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia or Yemen and a 120-day suspension of the U.S. refugee program.
Carter and senior counsel Susan Greenberg said in the filing that the ban against people from seven predominantly Muslim countries damages the economies and cultures of the cities and harms efforts to keep cities safe, including against terrorists.
The White House has said Trump’s order is necessary to protect against terrorism and the New York case should be dismissed because the two people on whose behalf it was brought have been allowed into the U.S.
Meanwhile, a Homeland Security official said a draft proposal to use the National Guard to round up undocumented people released by the Associated Press was never seriously considered and was not presented to DHS Secretary John Kelly.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer said there was “no effort at all to utilize the National Guard to round up unauthorized immigrants.”
The pushback from administration officials did little to quell outrage over the draft plan. Three Republican governors spoke out against the proposal and numerous Democratic lawmakers denounced it as an overly aggressive approach to immigration enforcement.
Which way, EPA?
Hours after his 52-46 victory in the Senate, former Oklahoma Attorney General Pruitt was sworn as EPA chief by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
In six years, Pruitt filed 14 lawsuits against the department he now helms, challenging such rules as limits on carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants and efforts to clean up polluted wastewater under the Clean Water Act.
Pruitt’s supporters cheered his confirmation, hailing the 48-year-old Republican lawyer as the ideal pick to roll back environmental regulations they say are a drag on the nation’s economy.
“EPA has made life hard for families all across America,” said Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “The agency has issued punishing regulations that caused many hardworking Americans to lose their jobs. Mr. Pruitt will bring much needed change.”
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was the lone Republican vote against Pruitt. Two Democrats from states with economies heavily dependent on fossil fuels crossed party lines to support Trump’s pick, Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota.
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