The KKK, Trumpism and other related news

Nov. 10, 2016, 4:34 p.m.

The Ku Klux Klan says it will hold a Trump victory parade in North Carolina

Jaweed Kaleem

Ku Klux Klan members give the Nazi salute during a demonstration at the state house building on July 18, 2015, in Columbia, S.C. (John Moore / Getty Images)

One of the largest Ku Klux Klan groups in the country has announced a parade to celebrate President-elect Donald Trump's win.
The Loyal White Knights of Pelham, N.C., says on its website that its parade will take place on Dec. 3.
"TRUMP = TRUMP'S RACE UNITED MY PEOPLE," says the website's front page.
No time or location for the event is listed, and a phone call to the number on its website was not returned.
The group has between 150 and 200 members and is "perhaps the most active Klan group in the United States today," according to the Anti-Defamation League. Last year, it was part of a South Carolina protest against the Confederate flag's removal from the state Capitol.
Several Klan groups endorsed Trump. Well-known former Klan leader David Duke, who on Tuesday lost a Senate bid in Louisiana, was also a vocal supporter.
The Trump campaign was criticized this year for initially refusing to denounce support from the Klan. Later, the campaign described the Klan's efforts as "repulsive."

Nov. 10, 2016, 9:21 p.m.

Portland anti-Trump protest now considered a riot, police say

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Nov. 10, 2016, 6:52 p.m.

President-elect Trump addresses protests for first time, accuses media of inciting them

Kurtis Lee

(Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press)

As protesters upset by his victorious campaign fanned out in cities nationwide on Thursday, President-elect Donald Trump addressed the demonstrations for the first time.
In a tweet, he called the protests "unfair" and accused the media of emboldening the unrest.

Nationwide, from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, people took to the streets Wednesday and Thursday nights to protest Trump, whose charged rhetoric during the campaign targeted, among others, Mexican immigrants, Muslims and women.
Earlier on Thursday, Trump visited with President Obama inside the Oval Office for a meeting that both men described as positive.
In a separate tweet, Trump lauded Obama, saying the two had great "chemistry" in their first meeting and that his wife, Melania, really liked first lady Michelle Obama.

Four years ago, Trump also used Twitter to encourage protests against Obama's re-election.

Nov. 10, 2016, 6:20 p.m.

Nov. 10, 2016, 2:35 p.m.

An immigration hard-liner is joining Donald Trump's transition team

Kurtis Lee

One of the architects of several of the nation's most controversial immigration laws is set to join President-elect Donald Trump's immigration policy transition team.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said Thursday that he planned to help Trump reverse President Obama's immigration policies.
"There's going to be a lot to do there in part because Mr. Trump and Mr. Obama are diametric opposites when it comes to immigration policy, so there will be a lot of changes," Kobach told a Kansas television station.
Noting Trump's central campaign pledge to build a southern border wall and emboldened by Republicans' retaining control of Congress, Kobach said, "There's no question the wall is going to get built. The only question is how quickly will it get done and who pays for it."
Trump, who met with Obama at the White House on Thursday, also has vowed to overturn many of the president's executive actions on immigration, such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals that temporarily shields from deportation people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

(David Zabulowski / Associated Press)

In 2010, Kobach helped to craft Arizona's SB-1070, which contained four major elements aimed at reducing the number of immigrants in the state illegally through attrition. It compelled police to ask for papers and allowed officers to make arrests without warrants if they believed the suspect committed an offense that made them eligible for deportation.
Critics assailed SB-1070 as racial profiling, and the Supreme Court struck down much of the law in 2012, although it upheld the part allowing police to check immigration statuses. In September, Arizona ended its practice of requiring police officers to demand the papers of people suspected of being in the country illegally as part of a settlement with immigrant rights groups.
Kobach also has had a hand in other controversial immigration laws. He helped write an Alabama measure in 2011 that mandates that police who suspect someone is in the country illegally can work to determine that person's legal status. Critics have called it tougher than the Arizona law.
Kobach also helped local officials in Hazelton, Pa., draft a 2006 ordinance that banned landlords from renting to people in the country illegally. The ordinance, which never was implemented, faced strong pushback and several legal challenges by the American Civil Liberties Union. Last year, the rural town was ordered to pay nearly $2 million in legal and court fees to the ACLU.
California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said it was deeply troubling that Kobach was joining Trump's transition team.
"His participation is a threat to diverse communities throughout our nation. Kobach's pattern of supporting racist, anti-immigrant policies ... are not only divisive, but have repeatedly been found unconstitutional," he said. "Mr. Trump's selection of Kobach is in direct conflict with his stated desire to bring America together."

Nov. 10, 2016, 2:33 p.m.

Panorama: President-elect Donald Trump and President Obama meet in the White House

President-elect Donald Trump and President Obama meet at the White House on Thursday. (Jim Watson / AFP/Getty Images)

Nov. 10, 2016, 1:41 p.m.

Donald Trump's Muslim ban was removed from his website, but it's back

Noah Bierman

(Zach Gibson / Getty Images)

Donald Trump's pledge to deny entry to the country for all Muslims temporarily disappeared from his campaign website after lingering there since December, following the attacks in San Bernardino.
The removal prompted new questions about one of Trump's most controversial promises.
But it was restored Thursday afternoon after what Trump's staff characterized as a technical glitch.
“The website was temporarily redirecting all specific press release pages to the homepage. It is currently being addressed and will be fixed shortly,” the campaign told the Washington Post.
Trump's promise helped him win the GOP primary, while drawing criticism from people who said it ran counter to American values of religious tolerance. In recent months, Trump has suggested that he would revise it to instead target people from countries linked to terrorism, rather than use religion as a criteria. But he had not, until recent days, removed the initial statement from his website.
Thursday, as he was strolling the Capitol with congressional leaders, he walked away from reporters who asked whether the plan to ban Muslims remained on his agenda.

Nov. 10, 2016, 1:39 p.m.

Trump welcomed to Capitol Hill where Speaker Ryan says Republicans are ready to 'make America great again'

Lisa Mascaro

President-elect Donald Trump with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President-Elect Mike Pence, right, at the Capitol on Thursday. (Molly Riley / Associated Press)

President-elect Donald Trump visited with GOP leaders on Capitol Hill on Thursday in talks seemingly more welcoming than past ones that ended up as sparring matches between the then-candidate and Republicans.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) showed Trump and his wife, Melania, the view from the balcony overlooking the national Mall, noting the area below where the president will be sworn into office on inauguration day.
Ryan also pointed in the distance to the clock tower of the businessman's new Trump-branded hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Afterward, Ryan, picking up Trump's campaign slogan, said they talked about how to "make America great again.”
"We are now talking about how we are going to hit the ground running to get this country turned around," Ryan said.
Trump told reporters later he was focused on immigration, healthcare and jobs — "big league jobs" — after his meetings on the Hill.
"We are going to absolutely [do] spectacular things for the American people and I look forward to starting — quite frankly we can't get started fast enough," Trump said.
Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence had lunch with Ryan at the Capitol Hill Club, the Republican Party's headquarters, before heading to talks under the dome.
Trump and his team met with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who expressed his interest in getting started on the work ahead.
Trump paused in the Senate hallway to take a few questions from reporters staking out the session.
"We have a lot to do," Trump said, cutting the session short when asked if he would have Congress pass a law banning Muslims from entry into the United States.
"Thank you, everybody," Trump said.
The meetings were photo ops of Republican unity after the divisive election season when Ryan and other top leaders criticized Trump's inflammatory rhetoric, including his race-based comments.
At an earlier trip to Capitol Hill, Trump sparred with Republican senators who questioned his policies and positions.
But a detente has begun as Trump begins his transition to the White House and congressional Republicans hope to capitalize on one-party governance to enact policies opposed by Democrats.
Trump has promised on his first day in office to tackle many issues by administration actions, and Republicans appear relieved to outsource legislating on some of the president-elect's most controversial proposals to the White House — bypassing the need for tough votes.

Nov. 10, 2016, 12:12 p.m.

Before they were all smiles in the Oval Office, Obama and Trump had mostly insults for each other

Kurtis Lee

(Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press)

A disaster. Unfit to lead. The founder of a terrorist group.
As President Obama and President-elect Donald Trump sat in the Oval Office on Thursday, lauding each other and vowing to work together, they brushed aside such polarizing rhetoric, which both frequently employed on the campaign trail.
Here are some of the highlights — or lowlights — of the insults they hurled at each other:
"The Republican nominee is unfit to serve as president. ... He's woefully unprepared to do this job." 
— Obama in the East Room of the White House in August after Trump publicly battled with a Muslim Gold Star father, Khizr Khan, whose son, Humayun, an Army captain, was killed by a car bomb in Iraq in 2004.
"President Obama has been the most ignorant president in our history." 
— Trump in July, an assertion he would repeat on the campaign trail to raucous crowds.
"If somebody can’t handle a Twitter account, they can’t handle the nuclear codes."
— Obama, in what was a critical component of his closing argument for Hillary Clinton. At a rally in Florida over the weekend, the president hammered home the notion that Trump is temperamentally unfit to be president.
"He’s the founder of ISIS."
— Trump on Obama in August. He blamed Obama and Clinton for emboldening the Islamic State through failed policies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"If you start whining before the game’s even over ... then you don’t have what it takes to be in this job." 
— Obama in the Rose Garden last month as Trump began saying the election would be rigged.
"He has been a disaster." 
— One of Trump's frequent insults of Obama. Still, when talking to the press Thursday in the Oval Office, Trump said he had "great" respect for the outgoing president.

Nov. 10, 2016, 10:32 a.m.

Giuliani suggests that Trump could build a border wall without getting approval from Congress

Lisa Mascaro

The GOP Senate leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell, has said there's much that President-elect Donald Trump can do without Congress.
Turns out Trump's promise to build a wall along the border with Mexico may be one such act.
Trump advisor Rudolph W. Giuliani said Thursday that the Trump administration could begin building the wall with executive action, rearranging money already approved by Congress for other aspects of immigration enforcement.
"He can do it by executive order by just reprogramming money," Giuliani told CNN.
Congress, he said, has already approved a wall "to certain portions of the border that hasn't even been built yet.  So you could take a year building that out with what has been approved.”
President Obama's use of executive power, including immigration actions that temporarily shield law-abiding immigrants from deportation, roiled Congress as an overreach. Some Republicans sued to stop him.
Now, however, Trump's use of executive authority to accomplish his goals may come as a welcome relief for Republicans. Outsourcing the work to the White House would relieve Congress of taking tough votes on controversial issues that lawmakers might rather avoid.

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