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Groton Daily Independent
Monday, July 31, 2017 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 031 ~ 36 of 42
the baby they had together in a refugee camp, after eeing attacks on their Rohingya religious minority in Myanmar.
In her home in another Detroit suburb, Sharon Martin, 64, has bought a crib for the young refugee family from Myanmar. But the children’s books she bought, Martin said, are really for her. “If they come, I can nally read to a child again,” Martin says.
Refugee workers say the family faces forced return to Myanmar if their U.S. arrangements fall through.
In San Francisco, meanwhile, web designer Julie Rajagopal and husband Mike Gougherty, a senior plan- ner for a regional ferry system, are two of the lucky ones.
The 16-year-old boy they are fostering also ed a lifetime of forced military service in Eritrea, at 13. When he landed in March, a slight youth coming off the plane in an ill-made tracksuit, he was among the last refugee foster children to make it into the U.S.
Rajagopal, 35, often had stayed up through the night calling government workers and charity of cials in the faraway African hub of Cairo to speed her new foster son’s paperwork.
On a clear day this summer, the teen strolled with the couple at a park overlooking San Francisco. In the city’s hip Mission District, he blended seamlessly in a red sweater and shoes he carefully matched himself, and jeans he insisted on lovingly ironing with each wear.
Meanwhile, in Brighton, the Rooneys and their 10- and 12-year-old sons stack new socks and T-shirts in the bedroom they’ve set aside for the boy they nicknamed “Five,” meaning the eagerly awaited fth member of their family.
Tianna Rooney recently got out the poster board, thinking to work on the welcome sign. After a con- cerned look from her husband, she put it away.
“We want to think positive thoughts” that their foster son will come safely, Todd Rooney said. “But without endangering ourselves. Without setting ourselves up for a heartache.”
Clinton lost, but Republicans still want to investigate her By MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrat Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to President Donald Trump, but some Republicans in Congress are intensifying their calls to investigate her and other Obama administra- tion of cials.
As investigations into Russian meddling and possible links to Trump’s campaign have escalated on both sides of the Capitol, some Republicans argue that the investigations should have a greater focus on Democrats.
Democrats who have pushed the election probes “have started a war of investigative attrition,” said GOP Rep. Steve King of Iowa, a member of the House Judiciary Committee.
Several of cials from former President Barack Obama’s administration and Clinton’s campaign have ap- peared before or been interviewed by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees as part of the Russia investigation, along with Trump campaign of cials. The GOP-led committees are investigating whether Trump’s campaign had any links to Russian interference in last year’s election.
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., has continued a sepa- rate investigation into whether Obama administration of cials inappropriately made requests to “unmask” identities of Trump campaign of cials in intelligence reports.
The House Judiciary Committee, which has declined to investigate the Russian meddling, approved a resolution this past week to request documents related to the FBI’s now-closed investigation of Clinton’s emails. In addition, Republican on that committee wrote the Justice Department on Thursday and asked for a second special counsel, in addition to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, to investigate “unaddressed matters, some connected to the 2016 election and others, including many actions taken by Obama ad- ministration.”
“The American public has a right to know the facts — all of them — surrounding the election and its aftermath,” the lawmakers wrote.