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National Security Tag

President Donald Trump announced Wednesday morning that he picked Robert C. O'Brien as his new national security adviser. He currently serves as the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs. The move comes a few days after Trump dismissed John Bolton as his national security adviser. Trump said the two of them had too many disagreements on foreign policy.

The House Committee on Armed Services revealed an outline of its defense budget proposal on Monday. The contents of the plan set up a possible stalemate with the Senate and President Donald Trump. The proposal trims $17 billion from the $750 billion Trump requested for defense. The Senate defense bill sits right at $750 billion. I have a feeling the portion that does not allow any Pentagon funding towards a border wall will cause the most problems with Trump.

The private organization We Build the Wall began construction on a border wall in El Paso over the weekend. The group has raised over $20 million on GoFundMe. Former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach told Fox & Friends the group aimed to build the wall near Mount Cristo Rey to fill a "ridiculously large gap" in that section. He claimed that "drug and human smugglers have been taking advantage of it."

Late Thursday afternoon Trump gave a speech and then answered questions from the press about policy regarding the caravan of illegal immigrants headed towards the U.S. I listened to it at the time, and here's the text of his remarks. After hearing the speech, I wasn't surprised by the spin given by this CNN headline about it: "Trump says he will restrict asylum, claims troops will shoot at rock throwers." Oh did he, now?

The Daily Caller's Luke Rosiak continues to do a great job with the story about Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz's former IT aide Irwan Awan and his family. The publication received a memo dated February 3, 2017, from Congress's top cop Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving to the Committee on House Administration (CHA). Irving and Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Phil Kiko wrote that the House Democratic Caucus's server disappeared after it became evidence in the cybersecurity probe against Awan. The two men "concluded that the employees [Democratic systems administrator Imran Awan and his family] are an ongoing and serious risk to the House of Representatives, possibly threatening the integrity of our information systems and thereby members’ capacity to serve constituents.”

President Donald Trump campaigned "to protect the U.S. from what he has said are unfair trade practices." It looks like he has tried to keep that promise since he announced during a meeting with steel executives that the U.S. will impose 25% tariffs on steel imports and 10% on aluminum. We do not know yet if it will affect all countries or just ones like China, who has sent a lot of cheap metals to the states.

The attacks on American officials at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba, keeps getting stranger and stranger. The latest information revealed that doctors have found brain abnormalities in the victims. From The Associated Press:
It's the most specific finding to date about physical damage, showing that whatever it was that harmed the Americans, it led to perceptible changes in their brains. The finding is also one of several factors fueling growing skepticism that some kind of sonic weapon was involved.

On Wednesday, North Korea conducted a missile test for the first time since September. It was later revealed that this test included an intercontinental ballistic missile (IBM) called a Hwasong-15 that could reach the U.S. mainland. From The Wall Street Journal:
Hours after the launch, dictator Kim Jong Un declared that Pyongyang had “finally realized the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force,” according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency. North Korea said the missile was fired from a mobile launch system, and that Mr. Kim personally oversaw the test.

At the 2012 Democratic National Convention, the big moment was Joe Biden triumphantly declaring “Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive." It turns out that in order to make that narrative stick, Obama had to downplay the actual strength of al-Qaeda.

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has made a trip to South Korea and the DMZ where he made it known that North Korea has accelerated itself as nuclear threat. From Fox News:
“North Korea has accelerated the threat that it poses to its neighbors and the world through its illegal and unnecessary missile and nuclear weapons programs,” Mattis said.

The Islamic State (ISIS) has held Raqqa, Syria, for four years and made it the the group's de facto capital. That appears to have ended as US-backed Syrian forces have declared they retook the city from the terrorists. From CNN:
"Major military operations in Raqqa are finished but they are now clearing the city of sleeper cells -- if they exist -- and mines," Talal Salo, spokesman for the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, told CNN. The SDF is a coalition of Arab and Kurdish fighters.

The Associated Press has released the mysterious sound that some American diplomats heard while in Cuba before coming down with horrible health problems. The sound is high pitched, almost like nails on a chalkboard. Experts told the AP that the noise cannot harm you if you listen to it on your computer "for short durations at normal levels." Those affected were hit by the sound "at extreme volumes."