WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. — Tossing his “boring” prepared remarks into the air, President Donald Trump on Thursday unleashed a fierce denunciation of the nation’s immigration policies, calling for tougher border security while repeating his unsubstantiated claim that “millions” of people voted illegally in California.
Trump was in West Virginia to showcase the benefits of Republican tax cuts, but he took a big and meandering detour to talk about his tough immigration and trade plans. He linked immigration with the rise of violent gangs like MS-13 and suggested anew that there had been widespread fraud in the 2016 election.
“In many places, like California, the same person votes many times. You probably heard about that,” Trump said. “They always like to say, ‘Oh, that’s a conspiracy theory.’ Not a conspiracy theory, folks. Millions and millions of people. And it’s very hard because the state guards their records. They don’t want us” to see them.
While there have been isolated cases of voter fraud in the U.S., past studies have found it to be exceptionally rare.
Trump initially claimed last year that widespread voting fraud had occurred in what appeared to be a means of explaining away his popular-vote defeat. Earlier this year the White House disbanded a controversial voter fraud commission amid infighting and lawsuits as state officials refused to cooperate.
PHOENIX — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he wants to send 2,000 and 4,000 National Guard members to the U.S.-Mexico border to help federal officials fight illegal immigration and drug trafficking.
Trump’s comments to reporters on Air Force One were his first estimate on guard levels he believes are needed for border protection. It would be a lower number of troops than the 6,400 National Guard members that former President George Bush sent to the border between 2006 and 2008.
Trump said his administration is looking into the cost of sending the troops to the border and added “we’ll probably keep them or a large portion of them until the wall is built.”
Earlier Thursday, Ronald Vitiello, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s acting deputy commissioner, cautioned against a rushed deployment. “We are going to do it as quickly as we can do it safely,” Vitiello told Fox News Channel.
NEW YORK — Facebook’s acknowledgement that most of its 2.2 billion members have probably had their personal data scraped by “malicious actors” is the latest example of the network’s failure to protect its users’ data.
Not to mention its seeming inability to even identify the problem until the company was already embroiled in scandal.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg told reporters Wednesday that Facebook is shutting down a feature that let people search for Facebook users by phone number or email address. Although that was useful for people who wanted to find others on Facebook, it turns out that unscrupulous types also figured out years ago that they could use it identify individuals and collect data off their profiles.
The scrapers were at it long enough, Zuckerberg said, that “at some point during the last several years, someone has probably accessed your public information in this way.”
The only way to be safe would have been for users to deliberately turn off that search feature several years ago. Facebook had it turned on by default.
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — Prosecutors and the defense wrapped up jury selection in the Bill Cosby sexual assault case Thursday, setting the stage for the first big celebrity trial of the #MeToo era.
All six alternates — half of them black — were picked without incident after an earlier showdown over the jury’s racial makeup. Alternate jurors listen to the evidence and testimony, but do not participate in jury deliberations unless called upon to replace jurors on the main panel.
Cosby’s lawyers had accused prosecutors of discrimination for removing a black woman from consideration on the main jury of 12 that will decide the 80-year-old comedian’s fate.
The district attorney’s office rejected the allegation, noting that prosecutors had no objection to seating two other black people on the jury. The other 10 jurors are white. There are seven men and five women.
Opening statements are scheduled for Monday in a trial that’s expected to last a month.
SAN FRANCISCO — Authorities on Thursday promised a deeper investigation of the YouTube shooter’s past and her anger with the online video website, which police have identified as the motive for her attack on the company’s headquarters south of San Francisco.
Nasim Aghdam, an Iranian native who was in her late 30s, walked through a parking garage into a courtyard at YouTube’s campus on Tuesday and opened fire with a handgun, police said. She wounded three people before killing herself.
Caldwell said she had legally bought the 9mm handgun from in San Diego in January, and it was registered in her name. He declined to say where she purchased the weapon. During the shooting, she swapped out a magazine and shot from the second magazine when she killed herself.
Police have previously said Aghdam went to a gun range before arriving at YouTube. Caldwell declined to identify the range, but said employees of the range reached out to police after the shooting to report that Aghdam had practiced there. Officers spent nearly two hours Wednesday at the Jackson Arms Shooting Range in South San Francisco, a few miles from the YouTube headquarters.
From Associated Press