October 10th, 2019
Office of the Spokesperson
MODERATOR: I’m going to turn it over to Senior State Department Official Number One, , to give some highlights.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: Hey, thank you very much, , and hello, everybody. Let me start with a tweet that just came out from the President this afternoon: “We have one of three choices: Send in thousands of troops and win militarily, hit Turkey very hard financially and with sanctions; or mediate a deal between Turkey and the Kurds.” That is a concise summary of where are with this very, very dramatic, very, very dangerous situation today.
What I would like to do is talk back to Sunday, when the very immediate phase of this whole problem began with the call between President Trump and President Erdogan, because this has been basically President Trump’s position ever since then. Essentially, in that call and in all of our actions since then, everything has revolved that we have been doing around four decisions the President took. He took these decisions after President Erdogan told him that the compromise solution we had worked out with Turkey for the situation in northeast Syria was not sufficient for Turkey’s security interests.
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MODERATOR: I’m going to turn it over to Senior State Department Official Number One, , to give some highlights.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: Hey, thank you very much, , and hello, everybody. Let me start with a tweet that just came out from the President this afternoon: “We have one of three choices: Send in thousands of troops and win militarily, hit Turkey very hard financially and with sanctions; or mediate a deal between Turkey and the Kurds.” That is a concise summary of where are with this very, very dramatic, very, very dangerous situation today.
What I would like to do is talk back to Sunday, when the very immediate phase of this whole problem began with the call between President Trump and President Erdogan, because this has been basically President Trump’s position ever since then. Essentially, in that call and in all of our actions since then, everything has revolved that we have been doing around four decisions the President took. He took these decisions after President Erdogan told him that the compromise solution we had worked out with Turkey for the situation in northeast Syria was not sufficient for Turkey’s security interests.
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October 10th, 2019
The Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) provided the agency’s case completion numbers topped 275,000 cases for fiscal year 2019 (FY19), the second highest number of case completions in EOIR’s history. This number marks an increase of roughly 80,000 case completions from fiscal year 2018 (FY18), the same year that EOIR established case completion goals for immigration judges in response to years of declining or stagnant productivity. The FY19 numbers are nearly double the number of completed cases from just three years ago.
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October 09th, 2019
Michael R. Pompeo, Secretary of State
Washington, D.C.
QUESTION: Secretary Mike Pompeo, thank you for joining us, Secretary of State. Boy, you are a busy man lately. Every few days or so I see President Trump is having lunch with Secretary Pompeo.
I think this week the big news – aside from the Ukraine stuff, I’d like to start with Syria and the decision to pull out of Syria. It created a lot of waves, I guess, on both sides of the aisle. I saw a couple Republicans even having a bit of a problem with it.
Can you tell us what went into the decision to pull out of Syria?
SECRETARY POMPEO: Sure. And first of all, thanks for having me on. It’s great to be with you again, Eric.
The President has been incredibly focused since he came into office on getting the Middle East right. He campaigned on ending these endless wars. And in Syria, we’ve had a team there that was designed to take down the caliphate, right?
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Washington, D.C.
QUESTION: Secretary Mike Pompeo, thank you for joining us, Secretary of State. Boy, you are a busy man lately. Every few days or so I see President Trump is having lunch with Secretary Pompeo.
I think this week the big news – aside from the Ukraine stuff, I’d like to start with Syria and the decision to pull out of Syria. It created a lot of waves, I guess, on both sides of the aisle. I saw a couple Republicans even having a bit of a problem with it.
Can you tell us what went into the decision to pull out of Syria?
SECRETARY POMPEO: Sure. And first of all, thanks for having me on. It’s great to be with you again, Eric.
The President has been incredibly focused since he came into office on getting the Middle East right. He campaigned on ending these endless wars. And in Syria, we’ve had a team there that was designed to take down the caliphate, right?
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October 09th, 2019
An employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was arrested today on charges related to his alleged disclosure of classified national defense information (NDI) to two journalists in 2018 and 2019.
Henry Kyle Frese, 30, of Alexandria, is a DIA employee and holds a Top Secret//Sensitive Compartmented Information U.S. government security clearance. According to court documents, between mid-April and early May 2018, Frese allegedly accessed classified intelligence reports, some of which were unrelated to his job duties, and provided TOP SECRET information regarding a foreign country’s weapons systems to a journalist (Journalist 1). According to court documents, Frese and Journalist 1 had the same residential address from August 2017 through August 2018 and, based on reviews of Frese’s and Journalist 1’s public social media pages, it appears that they were involved in a romantic relationship for some or all of that period of time. The unauthorized disclosure of TOP SECRET information could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave harm to the national security of the United States.
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Henry Kyle Frese, 30, of Alexandria, is a DIA employee and holds a Top Secret//Sensitive Compartmented Information U.S. government security clearance. According to court documents, between mid-April and early May 2018, Frese allegedly accessed classified intelligence reports, some of which were unrelated to his job duties, and provided TOP SECRET information regarding a foreign country’s weapons systems to a journalist (Journalist 1). According to court documents, Frese and Journalist 1 had the same residential address from August 2017 through August 2018 and, based on reviews of Frese’s and Journalist 1’s public social media pages, it appears that they were involved in a romantic relationship for some or all of that period of time. The unauthorized disclosure of TOP SECRET information could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave harm to the national security of the United States.
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October 08th, 2019
The Federal Trade Commission will begin sending refund checks totaling more than $31 million as part of a previously announced settlement with LifeLock, Inc., related to allegations that the identity theft protection provider violated a 2010 Commission data security order.
The refunds stem from a 2015 settlement LifeLock reached with the Commission, which alleged that from 2012 to 2014 LifeLock violated an FTC order that required the company to secure consumers’ personal information and prohibited it from deceptive advertising. The FTC alleged, among other things, that LifeLock failed to establish and maintain a comprehensive information security program to protect users’ sensitive personal information, falsely advertised that it protected consumers’ sensitive data with the same high-level safeguards used by financial institutions, and falsely claimed it provided 24/7/365 alerts “as soon as” it received any indication a consumer’s identity was being used.
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The refunds stem from a 2015 settlement LifeLock reached with the Commission, which alleged that from 2012 to 2014 LifeLock violated an FTC order that required the company to secure consumers’ personal information and prohibited it from deceptive advertising. The FTC alleged, among other things, that LifeLock failed to establish and maintain a comprehensive information security program to protect users’ sensitive personal information, falsely advertised that it protected consumers’ sensitive data with the same high-level safeguards used by financial institutions, and falsely claimed it provided 24/7/365 alerts “as soon as” it received any indication a consumer’s identity was being used.
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October 07th, 2019
I, Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service, VADM Jerome Adams, am emphasizing the importance of protecting our children from a lifetime of nicotine addiction and associated health risks by immediately addressing the epidemic of youth e-cigarette use. The recent surge in e-cigarette use among youth, which has been fueled by new types of e-cigarettes that have recently entered the market, is a cause for great concern. We must take action now to protect the health of our nation’s young people. KNOW THE RISKS. TAKE ACTION. PROTECT OUR KIDS
The E-cigarette Epidemic Among Youth
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The E-cigarette Epidemic Among Youth
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