Tag Archives: Trump Administration

U.S. appeals to higher court over ruling against Trump’s revised travel ban

Demonstrators rally against the Trump administration's new ban against travelers from six Muslim-majority nations, outside of the White House. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

By Mica Rosenberg

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. government took the legal battle over President Donald Trump’s travel ban to a higher court on Friday, saying it would appeal against a federal judge’s decision that struck down parts of the ban on the day it was set to go into effect.

The Department of Justice said in a court filing it would appeal against a ruling by U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia.

On Thursday, Chuang issued an emergency halt to the portion of Trump’s March 6 executive order temporarily banning the entry of travelers from six Muslim-majority countries. He left in place the section of the order that barred the entry of refugees to the United States for four months.

Another federal judge in Hawaii struck down both sections of the ban in a broader court ruling that prevented Trump’s order from moving forward.

In Washington state, where the ban is also being challenged, U.S. District Court Judge James Robart put a stay on proceedings for as long as the Hawaii court’s nationwide temporary restraining order remained in place, to “conserve resources” and avoid inconsistent and duplicate rulings.

The decisions came in response to lawsuits brought by states’ attorneys general in Hawaii and refugee resettlement agencies in Maryland who were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigration Law Center.

Detractors argue the ban discriminated against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom. Trump says the measure is necessary for national security to protect the country from terrorist attacks.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told a media briefing the government would “vigorously defend this executive order” and appeal against the “flawed rulings.”

The Department of Justice filed a motion late on Friday night seeking clarification of Hawaii’s ruling before appealing to the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

The 9th Circuit court last month upheld a decision by Judge Robart that halted an original, more sweeping travel ban signed by the President on Jan. 27 in response to a lawsuit filed by Washington state.

The new executive order was reissued with the intention of overcoming the legal concerns.

Trump has vowed to take the fight all the way to U.S. Supreme Court.

The 4th Circuit is known as a more conservative court compared to the 9th Circuit, said Buzz Frahn, an attorney at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett who has been tracking the litigation nationwide.

“The government is probably thinking that the 4th Circuit … would lend a friendlier ear to its arguments,” he said.

Judges have said they were willing to look behind the text of the order, which does not mention Islam, to probe the motivation for enacting the ban, Frahn said. Trump promised during the election campaign to ban Muslims from entering the United States.

The U.S. Supreme Court is currently split 4-4 between liberals and conservatives, with Trump’s pick for the high court – appeals court judge Neil Gorsuch – still awaiting confirmation.

Hans von Spakovsky, from the Washington D.C.-based Heritage Foundation, said the Department of Justice might want to time their appeals to reach the Supreme Court after Gorsuch is confirmed. He said the court would be likely to hear the case.

“They will take it because of its national importance,” Spakovsky said.

(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York; Additional reporting by Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Editing by Sue Horton, Mary Milliken and Paul Tait)

California judge seeks to prevent immigration arrests inside state courts

FILE PHOTO: Sacramento appeals court justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye gestures during a news conference after being unanimously confirmed to become the state's next chief justice in San Francisco, California August 25, 2010. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith/File Photo

By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The chief justice of California’s Supreme Court on Thursday asked the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to prevent immigration agents from arresting undocumented immigrants inside the state’s courthouses.

Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye said she was gravely troubled by recent reports that federal agents were “stalking undocumented immigrants in our courthouses to make arrests,” in a letter addressed to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly.

“Courthouses should not be used as bait in the necessary enforcement of our country’s immigration law,” Cantil-Sakauye wrote.

Trump has vowed to increase deportations and has widened the net of illegal immigrants prioritized for detention and removal.

“We will review the letter and have no further comment at this time,” Peter Carr, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, said in an email.

Immigrant rights groups say federal agents have entered courthouses with increased frequency this year, including in California, Massachusetts, Maryland and Texas, said National Immigration Law Center staff attorney Melissa Keaney.

“It’s definitely an issue we’re seeing a tremendous increase in under the new administration,” Keaney said by phone on Thursday.

Reuters could not independently confirm whether there has been an uptick in arrests at courthouses.

Cantil-Sakauye stopped short of questioning the legal right of federal agents to enter courthouses to locate and detain unauthorized immigrants.

Her letter said the presence of immigration agents in California courthouses could undermine “public trust and confidence in our state court system,” which serves “millions of the most vulnerable Californians.”

It could also discourage even legal immigrants from seeking justice, said Cathal Conneely, a spokesman for the Judicial Council of California, a branch of state courts.

Green-card holders, those who are permanent U.S. residents but not citizens, already leery of the justice system because of experiences in their countries of origin could be further dissuaded from entering courthouses, he said.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Patrick Enright and Leslie Adler)

Trump vows to appeal against travel ban ruling to Supreme Court

U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks at the American Center for Mobility for American Manufactured Vehicles in Ypsilanti Township, Michigan, U.S. March 15, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

By Dan Levine and Mica Rosenberg

HONOLULU/NEW YORK (Reuters) – A defiant Donald Trump has pledged to appeal against a federal judge’s order placing an immediate halt on his revised travel ban, describing the ruling as judicial overreach that made the United States look weak.

In granting the temporary restraining order in response to a lawsuit by the state of Hawaii, U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson found on Wednesday that “a reasonable, objective observer … would conclude that the executive order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion.”

Early on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang issued a nationwide preliminary injunction in a similar case in Maryland brought by refugee resettlement agencies represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigration Law Center.

Chuang ruled that the agencies were likely to succeed in proving that the travel ban portion of the executive order was intended to be a ban on Muslims and, as a result, violates the U.S. Constitution’s religious freedom protection.

“To avoid sowing seeds of division in our nation, upholding this fundamental constitutional principle at the core of our nation’s identity plainly serves a significant public interest,” Chuang wrote in his ruling.

The actions were the latest legal blow to the administration’s efforts to temporarily ban refugees as well as travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries. The president has said the ban is needed for national security.

However, the orders, while a victory for the plaintiffs, are only a first step and the government could ultimately win its underlying case. Watson and Chuang were appointed to the bench by former Democratic President Barack Obama.

Trump, speaking after the Hawaii ruling at a rally in Nashville, called his revised executive order a “watered-down version” of his first.

The president said he would take the case “as far as it needs to go,” including to the Supreme Court, in order to get a ruling that the ban is legal.

The likely next stop if the administration decides to contest the Hawaii judge’s ruling would be the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Three judges on the Ninth Circuit upheld a restraining order on the first travel ban issued by a Washington state judge.

At that point, the government’s legal options were to ask for a hearing by a larger panel of judges or petition the Supreme Court to hear the case. Instead, the administration withdrew the ban, promising to retool it in ways that would address the legal issues.

If the Ninth Circuit were to uphold the Hawaii court’s ruling, an appeal to the Supreme Court would be complicated by its current makeup of four conservative and four liberal judges, with no ninth justice since the death of Antonin Scalia more than a year ago.

The travel ban has deeply divided the country on liberal and conservative lines, and it is unlikely that a ninth Supreme Court justice would be seated in time to hear an appeal in this case.

Trump signed the new ban on March 6 in a bid to overcome legal problems with his January executive order, which caused chaos at airports and sparked mass protests before a Washington judge stopped its enforcement in February.

Watson’s order is only temporary until the broader arguments in the case can be heard. He set an expedited hearing schedule to determine if his ruling should be extended.

Trump’s first travel order was more sweeping than the second revised order. Like the current one, it barred citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from entering the United States for 90 days, but it also included Iraq, which was subsequently taken off the list.

The revised ban also excluded legal permanent residents and existing visa holders and provided waivers for various categories of immigrants with ties to the United States.

Hawaii and other opponents of the ban claimed that the motivation behind it was Trump’s campaign promise of “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

In Washington state, a group of plaintiffs applying for immigrant visas asked U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle – who suspended the first ban – to stop the new order. Robart was appointed to the bench by Republican former President George W. Bush.

Judge Robart said he would issue a written ruling, but did not specify a time line.

(Reporting by Dan Levine in Honolulu, Mica Rosenberg in New York and Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Toby Chopra)

In week of Middle East talks, Trump envoy avoids disruption

Jason Greenblatt (L), U.S. President Donald Trump's Middle East envoy meets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem March 13, 2017. Courtesy Matty Stern/U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv/Handout via REUTERS

By Luke Baker

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy has spent the week shuttling between Jerusalem, Ramallah and the Jordanian capital Amman on his first official visit to the region, pursuing quiet diplomacy and avoiding controversy.

A real estate lawyer who has worked for Trump for 20 years, Jason Greenblatt has met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayhu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Jordan’s King Abdullah and other senior officials during a busy round of talks that U.S. diplomats have described as a “listening tour”.

Rather than some of the bold pronouncements Trump himself has made on the region – last month he said he didn’t mind if there was a one-state or two-state solution to the conflict — Greenblatt, 49, has been circumspect, issuing a few tweets but not speaking to the media.

“President Abbas and I discussed how to make progress toward peace, building capacity of Palestinian security forces and stopping incitement,” he wrote on Twitter, preceded by a picture of him shaking hands warmly with the Palestinian leader.

The readout from the Palestinians and King Abdullah after their meetings was positive, if largely sticking to standard diplomatic pronouncements about the importance of peace negotiations and their ability to transform the region.

Social media commentators were quick to point out that Greenblatt, an Orthodox Jew, had shown a notable degree of religious flexibility during his visit that may reflect a desire to be open and diplomatic: he has not worn his kippa, a skull cap worn by religious Jewish men, all week.

In official pictures, Greenblatt, a father of six who studied at a Talmudic high school and Yeshiva University, is usually seen wearing a black kippa, the type favor by devout men. Before landing in Israel, he posted a picture of his prayer shawl and other religious accoutrements.

“ULTIMATE DEAL”?

One of the criticisms Palestinians have made of Trump is that he is too pro-Israel, especially with his promise during the campaign to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and his soft-pedalling on Israeli settlement-building.

The settlements are built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem – seized by Israel in a 1967 war and occupied for nearly 50 years – where Palestinians want to establish their state and capital.

Since taking office, Trump has modified his positions to an extent, rowing back on any quick embassy move and calling on Netanyahu during their White House meeting last month to “hold back on settlements for a little bit”.

The main point of discussion during five hours of talks between Greenblatt and Netanyahu on Tuesday was settlements, an Israeli official said, with the two sides seeking to come to an accommodation over how much Israel can build and where.

Netanyahu and Greenblatt will meet for more talks later on Thursday, before the U.S. envoy returns to Washington.

“Our intention is to reach an agreed policy for building in settlements which is agreeable to us, not only to the Americans,” Netanyahu said ahead of the meeting.

“Of course, this will help Israel after a period of many years during which we were not involved in such processes.”

The Obama administration said Israel’s settlement building was jeopardizing peace efforts, and Abbas has said they must stop before negotiations can resume.

U.S. officials indicated that Greenblatt, who is officially Trump’s special representative for international negotiations, would report back directly to the president on his trip, rather than to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

They said it was the first of numerous visits he is expected to make to the region as the Trump administration pursues its goal of reviving negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and striking what Trump calls “the ultimate deal”.

(Additional reporting by Ori Lewis in Jerusalem and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Writing by Luke Baker; Editing by Dominic Evans)

White House supports renewal of spy law without reforms: official

A surveillance camera is pictured atop the border fence separating the United States and Mexico in El Paso, U.S. January 17, 2017. REUTERS/Tomas Bravo

By Steve Holland and Dustin Volz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration supports renewing without reforms a key surveillance law governing how the U.S. government collects electronic communications that is due to expire at the end of the year, a White House official said on Wednesday.

“We support the clean reauthorization and the administration believes it’s necessary to protect the security of the nation,” the official said on customary condition of anonymity.

The law, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), has been criticized by privacy and civil liberties advocates as allowing broad, intrusive spying. It gained renewed attention following the 2013 disclosures by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Portions of the law, including a provision known as Section 702, will expire on Dec. 31, 2017, unless Congress reauthorizes them.

Section 702 enables two internet surveillance programs called Prism and Upstream, classified details of which were revealed by Snowden’s leaks.

Prism gathers messaging data from Alphabet Inc’s Google , Facebook Inc , Microsoft Corp, Apple Inc and other major tech companies that is sent to and from a foreign target under surveillance. Upstream allows the NSA to copy Web traffic flowing along the internet backbone located inside the United States and search that data for certain terms associated with a target.

Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have said reforms to Section 702 are needed, in part to ensure the privacy protections on Americans are not violated. The U.S. House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee met Wednesday to discuss possible changes to the law.

Though FISA is intended to govern spy programs intended for foreigners, an unknown amount of communications belonging to Americans are also collected due to a range of technical and practical reasons.

Such collection has been defended by U.S. intelligence agencies as “incidental,” but privacy groups have said it allows for backdoor seizures of data without proper judicial oversight.

(Reporting by Steve Holland and Dustin Volz, writing by Dustin Volz; Editing by Andrea Ricci and Andrew Hay)

New Trump travel order expected in coming days, Pence says

DAY 19 / FEBRUARY 7: Vice President Mike Pence was called in to break a Senate vote tie that threatened to defeat the confirmation of billionaire Betsy DeVos as education secretary.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump plans to finalize a new order limiting travel to the United States in the coming days, his vice president said on Wednesday, after federal courts blocked the administration’s earlier travel ban.

A White House source had previously said the new order was likely to be announced on Wednesday.

More than two dozen lawsuits were filed in U.S. courts against the Jan. 27 travel ban, which temporarily barred entry to the United States for people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, as well as halting the U.S. refugee program.

The ban was suspended by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ruling in a case brought by Washington state. The Trump administration then said it would produce a new order.

“They’re putting out the finishing touches on that executive order. It should be out in the next few days,” Vice President Mike Pence told CBS program “This Morning.”

The original order triggered chaos at airports as people, including legal residents known as green card holders, were temporarily blocked from entering the country and federal agencies tried to interpret the new guidelines.

The administration has said it is likely the new directive will exclude legal permanent residents, making it harder for opponents to challenge the ban. [L2N1GD20P]

Pence did not elaborate on the revised directive.

The Associated Press, citing unidentified U.S. officials, reported late on Tuesday that the new order will remove Iraq from the list of countries whose citizens face a temporary travel ban.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Frances Kerry)

U.S. seeks end to U.N. rights council’s ‘obsession’ with Israel

Israeli policemen remove a pro-settlement activist during an operation by Israeli forces to evict residents from several homes in the Israeli settlement of Ofra, in the occupied West Bank, February 28, 2017. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is reviewing its participation in the U.N. Human Rights Council, seeking reform of its agenda and an end to its “obsession with Israel”, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday.

Washington has long argued that the Geneva forum unfairly focuses on Israel’s alleged violations of human rights, including war crimes against Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The United States “remains deeply troubled by the Council’s consistent unfair and unbalanced focus on one democratic country, Israel”, Erin Barclay, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, told the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Barclay said that no other nation had a whole agenda item devoted to it and that “this obsession with Israel” threatened the council’s credibility.

Barclay questioned whether focusing on Israel was a sensible priority, adding that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government was bombing hospitals while North Korea and Iran deny millions of their people of freedoms of religion, peaceful assembly and expression.

“In order for this Council to have any credibility, let alone success, it must move away from its unbalanced and unproductive positions,” Barclay said.

“As we consider our future engagements, my government will be considering the Council’s actions with an eye toward reform to more fully achieve the Council’s mission to protect and promote human rights.”

The United States is currently an elected member of the 47-state Geneva forum where its three-year term ends in 2019.

There was no immediate reaction from the U.N. human rights office, but on Tuesday Council spokesman Rolando Gomez told a briefing: “The US been a very active and constructive partner in the Council for many years, spearheading a number of important initiatives, such as DPRK (North Korea), Iran, Syria, LGBT rights … and many issues that are certainly on the agenda today.”

He said that any country that wished to revoke its membership of the council would have to go through the General Assembly in New York.

(Additional reporting by Tom Miles; editing by Richard Lough)

First planned North Korea-U.S. contact in Trump administration canceled: WSJ

The White House is seen from the South Lawn in Washington October 17, 2008. REUTERS/Larry Downing

SEOUL (Reuters) – Plans for the first contact between North Korea and the United States after President Donald Trump took office were canceled after the U.S. State Department denied a visa for the top envoy from Pyongyang, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

The talks, between senior North Korean foreign ministry envoy Choe Son Hui and former U.S. officials, were scheduled to take place on March 1 and 2 in New York but were called off after Choe was denied a visa, the Journal said.

It was not clear what led the State Department to deny the visa but North Korea’s test-firing of a ballistic missile on Feb. 12 and the murder of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s half brother in Malaysia may have played a role, the report said.

South Korean and U.S. officials have said they believe North Korean agents assassinated Kim Jong Nam, the estranged half brother of Kim Jong Un, on Feb. 13.

A U.S. State Department official denied so-called track two discussions had been scheduled.

“The U.S government had no plans to engage in track 2 talks in New York,” the official said, declining comment on individual visa cases.

A South Korean foreign ministry official declined to comment on the report of the canceled meeting in New York, saying the reported plan did not involve the U.S. or South Korean government.

The meeting in New York would have been the first time a senior North Korean envoy would visit the United States since 2011 and the first contact between U.S. and North Korean representatives since Trump took office.

Choe, director general for North American affairs at the North’s foreign ministry, has previously met former U.s. officials and academics, the last time in November in Geneva for informal discussions.

Trump said in a Reuters interview on Thursday that he was concerned about North Korea’s ballistic missile tests and “it’s a very dangerous situation”. Trump did not ruling out meeting Kim at some point in the future under certain circumstances but suggested it might be too late.

(Reporting by Jack Kim and Tony Munroe in SEOUL; Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in WASHINGTON; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

Trump’s transgender move puts spotlight on Supreme Court case

FILE PHOTO - A bathroom sign welcomes both genders at the Cacao Cinnamon coffee shop in Durham, North Carolina, United States on May 3, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake/File Photo

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration’s move on Wednesday to rescind guidance allowing transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choice has raised the stakes for an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case that could deliver a landmark decision on the issue.

The eight justices are due to hear oral arguments on March 28 on whether the Gloucester County School Board in Virginia can block Gavin Grimm, a female-born transgender high school student, from using the boys’ bathroom. A ruling is due by the end of June.

A key question in the case is whether a federal law, known as Title IX, which bars sex discrimination in education, covers transgender students. The Education Department under Democratic President Barack Obama said in guidance to public schools last May that it does, but the Republican Trump administration withdrew that finding on Wednesday.

The high court on Thursday asked the lawyers involved to file letters by March 1 giving their views on how the Trump action should affect consideration of the case.

Lawyers for Grimm say that the definition of sex discrimination in Title IX is broad and includes gender identity. The school board maintains that the law was enacted purely to address “physiological distinctions between men and women.”

If the Supreme Court rules that Title IX protects transgender students, the decision would become the law of the land, binding the Trump administration and the states.

“This is an incredibly urgent issue for Gavin and these other kids across the country,” said Joshua Block, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) who represents Grimm.

The Trump administration’s announcement “only underscores the need for the Supreme Court to bring some clarity here,” he added.

The administration on Wednesday did not offer its own interpretation of Title IX, with the Justice Department telling the court only that it plans to “consider further and more completely the legal issues involved.”

The administration is not directly involved in the case.

Lawyers for both Grimm and the Gloucester County School Board have urged the court to decide whether Title IX applies to transgender students rather than taking a narrower approach by sending the case back to a lower court.

In a court filing on Thursday, the ACLU said that, regardless of the administration’s position, the court “can – and should – resolve the underlying question of whether the Board’s policy violates Title IX.”

The school board’s lawyers made similar comments in their most recent court filing, saying that the meaning of the federal law is “plain and may be resolved as a matter of straightforward interpretation.”

But the court could take a more cautious approach and send the case back to the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That court’s April 2016 ruling in favor of Grimm relied on the Obama administration’s interpretation of the law.

Kyle Duncan, a lawyer representing the school board, said the court must at a minimum throw out the appeals court decision because “the entire basis for that opinion” was the no-longer extant Obama administration interpretation.

JUSTICE KENNEDY: PIVOTAL VOTE?

With the eight-justice court likely to be closely divided, Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, conservative appeals court judge Neil Gorsuch, could end up casting the deciding vote if he is confirmed by the U.S. Senate in time. Otherwise, the court, which is divided equally between liberals and conservatives, could split 4-4, which would set no nationwide legal precedent.

Clues as to how the high court could rule can be gleaned from its decision last August to temporarily block the appeals court decision in Grimm’s case from going into effect. That emergency request from the school board did not require the justices to decide the merits of the case.

The vote in favor of the school board was 5-3, with Justice Stephen Breyer, a liberal, joining the four conservative justices. Breyer made clear in a statement at the time that his vote would not dictate how he would approach the case if the court took the issue up.

That decision indicated that the court is likely to be closely divided at oral argument. Grimm’s hopes may rest in Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative who voted against Grimm last summer but has sometimes sided with liberals in major cases, including several on gay rights.

But even lawyers closely following the case are not sure which way Kennedy could go.

“If I could predict that, I would be down in the casino,” said Gary McCaleb, a lawyer with conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which backs the school board.

For graphic on transgender rights and “bathroom bills”, click: http://tmsnrt.rs/2l529J9

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; editing by Noeleen Walder and Jonathan Oatis)

U.S. infrastructure legislation back on Congress’ radar

Senate Majority Leader

By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s pledge to bring massive investments in U.S. infrastructure projects showed new signs of life on Friday after lying dormant for weeks, as leading Republican lawmakers said proposals from the administration could be in the offing.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, told reporters he expects to receive “some kind of recommendation on an infrastructure bill, a subject that we frequently handle on a bipartisan basis,” but gave no details or timing.

He has previously voiced concern over adding to budget deficits with a new injection of federal funds for road, bridge and other construction projects like the ones President Barack Obama secured from Congress in 2009, especially after a major highway funding law was enacted about a year ago.

Some Republicans and Democrats in Congress are increasingly criticizing Trump’s administration for being slow to get behind his legislative initiatives during the first month of his presidency.

Trump’s plans to create an infrastructure council led by two New York billionaire friends, developers Richard LeFrak and Steven Roth, have yet to be launched, a spokesman for LeFrak said.

During his presidential campaign, Trump said he would push for a $1 trillion infrastructure program to rebuild roads, bridges, airports and other public works projects. He said he wanted action during the first 100 days of his administration, which now seems unlikely.

The Republican president has talked about creating a tax credit to encourage private sector investment in many of these projects. But Democrats say that would fail to spur enough rebuilding and put taxpayers on the hook for a tax credit to wealthy developers, who they said would build toll roads that taxpayers would then have to pay to use.

Democrats want a more direct federal role in sparking a construction boom.

In an interview on Tuesday, Republican Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said he had “no doubt that it (infrastructure investment) is a priority for the administration.”

Diaz-Balart chairs a House subcommittee that would control the flow of Washington money that might be needed to fund some of the public works projects.

Several lawmakers and aides speculated the initiative could be attached to tax reform legislation that Republicans want to advance this year, but no decisions have been made.

Writing an infrastructure bill involves seven or eight committees, there are complicated tax and spending questions at stake, and lawmakers are divided.

There are also questions over what would qualify as an infrastructure project, with rural areas, for example, clamoring for more broadband internet service.

Senator John Thune, a member of the Republican leadership who chairs the commerce and transportation panel which has a say on any bill, said he had little information on the content or status of legislation.

Asked about McConnell’s comments, Thune said, “Maybe he knows more about it since he’s married to the secretary of transportation,” Elaine Chao.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan; additional reporting by Herb Lash in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and James Dalgleish)