Trump says he misses life before office
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump sounded wistful as he reflected on his first 100 days on the job in an interview with Reuters on Thursday.
“I love my previous life. I had so many things going. This is more work than in my previous life,” Trump said. “I thought it would be easier. I thought it was more of a … I’m a details-oriented person. I think you’d say that, but I do miss my old life. I like to work, so that’s not a problem, but this is actually more work.”
The president made the comments in an interview with Reuters, one of several he did to mark his first 100 days in office. In the interview, the president also lamented his loss of privacy, describing life in the White House as being in “your own little cocoon.”
It wasn’t the first time that Trump acknowledged the job is trickier than he anticipated.
In November, NBC News reported that Trump had told former House Speaker Newt Gingrich that “this is really a bigger job than I thought.”
While his Supreme Court nominee won approval, some positions where he pledged fast action during the 2016 campaign, such as immigration, building a border wall with Mexico, dealing with China and repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, have been softened, blocked or delayed.
“Nobody knew health care could be so complicated,” Trump said in February. At another point, he revealed that it took a conversation with the president of China to realize that the situation on the Korean peninsula was “not so easy.”
NSA will halt some Internet collections
WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency said Friday it will no longer collect Americans’ emails and texts to and from people overseas that mention foreigners targeted for surveillance under its warrantless wiretapping program, according to officials familiar with the matter.
National security officials have argued that such surveillance is lawful and helped identify people who might have links to terrorism, espionage or otherwise are targeted for intelligence-gathering. The fact that the sender of such a message would know an email address or phone number associated with a surveillance target is grounds for suspicion, these officials argued.
The decision ends a form of wiretapping that privacy advocates argued overstepped the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches because the government was intercepting communications on the basis of what people said, rather than who sent or received them.
Under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, U.S. intelligence agencies can conduct surveillance on only specific foreign targets outside the United States. However, the NSA review of Section 702 activities showed several “inadvertent compliance lapses.”
Florida mosquitoes free of Zika so far
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida agriculture officials say no mosquitoes in the state have tested positive for the Zika virus so far this year.
A statement from the state’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services says nearly 90,000 individual mosquitoes have been tested for the virus linked to severe birth defects. None of the mosquitoes from more than 6,500 samples have tested positive for the presence of Zika so far.
Commissioner of Agriculture Adam Putnam has said that as summer begins, it’s important that Florida communities have the resources they need for Zika response efforts.
A Zika outbreak in Miami’s Wynwood arts district last year was the first on the U.S. mainland. It lingered for more than a month but was limited to a small geographic area, much like previous outbreaks of mosquito-borne viruses in Florida.
Abortion opponent named to U.S. post
NEW YORK — The White House announced that President Donald Trump is appointing the former president of a leading anti-abortion organization to a senior position at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Charmaine Yoest, who actively supported Trump in his campaign, will serve as the department’s assistant secretary of public affairs. From 2008 until February 2016, she was president of Americans United for Life, which campaigned at the federal and state level for restrictions on abortion.
The appointment was assailed by groups supporting abortion rights and praised by anti-abortion groups.
“While President Trump claims to empower women, he is appointing government officials who believe just the opposite,” said Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood.
Anti-abortion leader Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, praised Yoest as “one of the pro-life movement’s most articulate and powerful communicators.”