Page 46 - 072817

Groton Daily Independent
Friday, July 28, 2017 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 028 ~ 46 of 54
members have stoked the U.S. debate on immigration.
Trump praised Sessions when Sessions announced his mission to eradicate the gang in April. But the
attorney general has since fallen out of favor with his onetime political ally.
In day after day of publicly humiliating Sessions, Trump said he rued his decision to choose Sessions
for his Cabinet. Trump’s intensifying criticism has fueled speculation that the attorney general may step down even if the president stops short of ring him. But Sessions is showing no outward signs that he is planning to quit, and on Wednesday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said that Trump “wants him to lead the department.”
“Look, you can be disappointed in someone and still want them to continue to do their job,” she said.
MS-13 is an international criminal enterprise with tens of thousands of members in several Central Ameri- can countries and many U.S. states. The gang originated in immigrant communities in Los Angeles in the 1980s then entrenched itself in Central America when its leaders were deported.
MS-13 is known for hacking and stabbing victims with machetes, drug dealing, prostitution and other rackets. Its recruits are middle- and high-school students predominantly in immigrant communities and those who try to leave risk violent retribution, law enforcement of cials have said.
Its members have been accused in a spate of bloodshed that included the massacre of four young men in a Long Island, New York, park and the killing of a suspected gang rival inside a deli. The violence has drawn attention from members of Congress and Trump, who has boasted about efforts to arrest and deport MS-13 members across the United States.
Law enforcement of cials believe some of the recent violence has been directed by members of the gang imprisoned in El Salvador.
Of cials in El Salvador, as well as Guatemala and Honduras, have expressed concern about increased deportations of the gangsters back to their countries. Transnational gangs such as MS-13 already are blamed for staggering violence in those so-called Northern Triangle countries.
Both Trump and Sessions have blamed Obama-era border policies for allowing the gang’s ranks to our- ish in the U.S., though the Obama administration took unprecedented steps to target the gang’s nances. Federal prosecutors have gone after MS-13 before but say they’ve recently seen a resurgence.
Thursday’s trip was planned before Trump’s broadsides against his attorney general, and it remains to be seen whether his work in El Salvador will help mend their fractured relationship. Their shared view, rare among the American political class, that illegal immigration was the nation’s most vexing problem was what united Sessions and Trump.
Fox News spends bucks to poke fun at The New York Times By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Fox News Channel gave The New York Times more than $100,000 to poke fun at the newspaper.
Fox ran a full-page advertisement in the Times on Thursday, blurbing a recent review in the newspaper that called the “Fox & Friends” morning show “the most powerful TV show in America.”
Television critic James Poniewozik’s review wasn’t exactly complimentary, as it traced the show’s close relationship with the nation’s tweeter-in-chief, President Donald Trump.
In addition to the Times, Fox News ran the same full-page ad in the Washington Post and New York Post. The network wouldn’t say how much it spent. The Times’ ad rates say a full-page ad with color generally runs around $130,000.
“They’ve decided to move upmarket and support our journalism with their money,” said Mark Thompson, the Times’ CEO, president and director. “So we’re very pleased to have them.”
Trump, and by extension many Fox News viewers, generally don’t look kindly at the Times. The three hosts of “Fox & Friends” held up newspapers with the ad clearly visible at the top of their show on Thursday. “For The New York Times to say that, it must have been tough,” said Brian Kilmeade, one of the show’s
hosts.