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While his boss approaches an infamous exit, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been busily and noisily scorching the earth behind them.

But Mr. Pompeo has not been idle. Over the past week, he unleashed a series of actions whose only real purpose appears to be to make life as difficult as possible for his successor at the State Department. He put Cuba back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, he plans to designate the Houthi rebels in Yemen as a foreign terrorist organization, he eased restrictions on contacts between American diplomats and Taiwan officials and he claimed that Iran is a “home base” for Al Qaeda

Some of the actions Mr. Pompeo took over the past week might be defensible, were they taken in the context of a coherent foreign policy. But coming days before a change in administration, their sole identifiable purpose is to maliciously plant obstacles — some commentators have called them time bombs or booby traps — before the incoming administration and President-elect Joe Biden’s choice for Mr. Pompeo’s successor at State, Antony Blinken, are in place.

“Pompeo is stuck,” said one senior administration official who was not authorized to speak. “He’s a prisoner of championing a policy that’s based on what the president would love to see happen, but not based on reality and the facts on the ground.”

The Trump administration has already announced limited sanctions against Chinese and Russian firms helping the Kim regime bust sanctions, but some officials want to see Trump pivot toward a tougher public stance to respond to Kim’s misbehavior. The Trump team cannot even agree on how grave the situation is.

That confusion leaves Pompeo with the difficult task of reversing the downward trend in the diplomacy without having anything new to offer. His last trip to Pyongyang ended in failure, when Kim refused to meet him and the North Koreans blasted him as soon as he left

Trump does deserve credit for North Korean talks, Chuck Todd says

Meet the Press Moderator joins Sunday TODAY’s Chuck Todd and says President Donald Trump deserves credit for helping create conditions to start talks of denuclearization with North Korea, but says some questions still loom. {"1222279235816":{"mpxId":"1222279235816","canonical_url":"https://www.today.com/video/oregon-trucker-recounts-walking-36-miles-after-losing-his-way-1222279235816","canonicalUrl":"https://www.today.com/video/oregon-trucker-recounts-walking-36-miles-after-losing-his-way-1222279235816","legacy_url":"https://www.today.com/video/oregon-trucker-recounts-walking-36-miles-after-losing-his-way-1222279235816","playerUrl":"https://www.today.com/offsite/oregon-trucker-recounts-walking-36-miles-after-losing-his-way-1222279235816","ampPlayerUrl":"https://player.today.com/offsite/oregon-trucker-recounts-walking-36-miles-after-losing-his-way-1222279235816","relatedLink":"","sentiment":"Neutral","shortUrl":"https://www.today.com/video/oregon-trucker-recounts-walking-36-miles-after-losing-his-way-1222279235816","description":"Jacob Cartwright, a truck driver in Oregon, accidentally plugged the wrong address into his GPS and wound up lost more than 100 miles out of his way. 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By withdrawing US troops from Syria, President Donald Trump is playing a kind of Russian roulette, entrusting dangerous players with key US national security objectives.

His move also means that a lot of our previously held core priorities, such as fighting ISIS and defending Israel, are now in the hands of some very suspect leaders.

Counterterrorism is a key focus for any president, and Trump has consistently (and inaccurately) championed his own administration's success fighting ISIS. With the support of the Syrian Democratic Forces and our other partners in Syrian counterterrorism, the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS has made major gains in destroying the terrorist group's territorial footholds in Syria.

Pompeo’s crusade against China is even more senseless. He has dedicated himself to affixing blame to Beijing for the epidemic, seemingly in an attempt to counter growing Chinese efforts to aid other nations — initiatives that the Trump administration has failed to match. “The Chinese Communist Party poses a substantial threat to our health and way of life, as the Wuhan virus clearly has demonstrated,” Pompeo proclaimed after the G-7 meeting, denouncing China for “claiming that they are now the white hat.”

The head of Italy’s Institute of International Affairs told The Post that “it is going to change for good the perception of who is leading in the world, and it’s not the United States.”

The C.I.A. is expanding its covert operations in Afghanistan, sending small teams of highly experienced officers and contractors alongside Afghan forces to hunt and kill Taliban militants across the country, according to two senior American officials, the latest sign of the agency’s increasingly integral role in President Trump’s counterterrorism strategy.

The assignment marks a shift for the C.I.A. in the country, where it had primarily been focused on defeating Al Qaeda and helping the Afghan intelligence service.

The C.I.A. has traditionally been resistant to an open-ended campaign against the Taliban, the primary militant group in Afghanistan, believing it was a waste of the agency’s time and money and would put officers at greater risk as they embark more frequently on missions.

stemming from U.S. support for Saudi Arabia and the Emirates as they have waged a disastrous war in Yemen, using American equipment in attacks that have killed thousands of civilians

The federal agencies were required by law to prepare for a transition before the 2020 election, but the flurry of activity that would normally be taking place during a presidential transition sits on hold thanks to President Donald Trump's refusal to accept the election results.

Agency officials in the Trump administration put in charge of the transition are in the awkward place of effectively twiddling their thumbs until the General Services Administration, an agency led by a Trump appointee, signs off on the election results

Cabinet leaders, meanwhile, have suggested there will be a second Trump term,

(CNN)Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said Tuesday "there should be no doubt" that Russia sees the 2018 US elections as a target. Coats and the other top national security officials told the Senate Intelligence Committee that they still view Moscow as a threat to the 2018 elections, a stance that appears at odds with President Donald Trump's repeated dismissals of Russian election meddling.

Warner questioned Coats and the other officials testifying — CIA Director Mike Pompeo, FBI Director Chris Wray, NSA Director Adm. Michael Rogers, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley and National Geospatial Intelligence Agency Director Robert Cardillo — about how the government was addressing the threat to both the US election systems and through social media. He asked all six of the US officials testifying to reaffirm the intelligence community's findings last year that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, and that the Kremlin will continue to intervene in future elections. All said yes.

He also raised the prospect that the US could respond to election meddling with offensive cybercapabilities. "We do have some capability offensively to raise the cost for those who would dare challenge the United States' elections," Pompeo said.

Trump walks back sanctions against Russia, contradicting Nikki Haley

President Trump is walking back plans to impose new economic sanctions against Russia announced Sunday by U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. The planned sanctions were an attempt to punish Russia for its support of Syrian President Bashar Assad after a chemical weapons attack earlier this month. {"1222314563954":{"mpxId":"1222314563954","canonical_url":"https://www.today.com/video/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","canonicalUrl":"https://www.today.com/video/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","legacy_url":"https://www.today.com/video/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","playerUrl":"https://www.today.com/offsite/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","ampPlayerUrl":"https://player.today.com/offsite/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","relatedLink":"","sentiment":"Positive","shortUrl":"https://www.today.com/video/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","description":"Daughter of former New York Gov. 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five years after her escape from the Cleveland home of Ariel Castro, who held her and two others captive for over a decade, Michelle Knight (now known as Lily Rose Lee) joins Megyn Kelly TODAY to talk about her ordeal and her new memoir, “Life After Darkness.” She talks about her recent marriage and her prospects for having a child.","title":"Cleveland kidnapping survivor Michelle Knight talks about new life, marriage","thumbnail":"https://media2.s-nbcnews.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Video/201804/tdy_mk_news_michelle_knight_180430.today-vid-rail.jpg","socialTitle":"Cleveland kidnapping survivor Michelle Knight talks about new life, marriage","seoHeadline":"Cleveland kidnapping survivor Michelle Knight talks about new life, 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Amid the historic developments formally ending the Korean War, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has promised to close down a nuclear test site in May. NBC’s Keir Simmons reports for TODAY from London. {"1222314563954":{"mpxId":"1222314563954","canonical_url":"https://www.today.com/video/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","canonicalUrl":"https://www.today.com/video/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","legacy_url":"https://www.today.com/video/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","playerUrl":"https://www.today.com/offsite/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","ampPlayerUrl":"https://player.today.com/offsite/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","relatedLink":"","sentiment":"Positive","shortUrl":"https://www.today.com/video/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","description":"Daughter of former New York Gov. 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When you consider the plain meaning of the law, and the actions Haspel engaged in, it is impossible to conclude anything but that Haspel committed war crimes of the gravest kind and then helped destroy the evidence of them. There is no defense under the law in which a war criminal can claim that he or she was merely following orders.

There are equally no extenuating circumstances that can ever justify torture, according to the U.N. Convention signed by Ronald Reagan no less, in 1984: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”

Nor is it possible for any human being to read what was done to these prisoners without concluding that this was torture. If an American were captured by ISIS, was waterboarded 83 times, hung from the ceiling by his wrists, locked into a tiny box for days, and turned into a shell of a human being, would any American deny that he was tortured? The question answers itself.

“Any way you cut it, this is going to be bad,” a senior medical adviser at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Dr. Carter Mecher, wrote on the night of Jan. 28, in an email to a group of public health experts scattered around the government and universities. “The projected size of the outbreak already seems hard to believe.”

A week after the first coronavirus case had been identified in the United States, and six long weeks before President Trump finally took aggressive action to confront the danger the nation was facing — a pandemic that is now forecast to take tens of thousands of American lives — Dr. Mecher was urging the upper ranks of the nation’s public health bureaucracy to wake up and prepare for the possibility of far more drastic action.

Throughout January, as Mr. Trump repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus and focused on other issues, an array of figures inside his government — from top White House advisers to experts deep in the cabinet departments and intelligence agencies — identified the threat, sounded alarms and made clear the need for aggressive action.

China has since banned BBC World News from airing in the country and denied the abuse, telling CNN that "it is strictly forbidden to insult and abuse trainees in any way."

But the women's accounts add to a record that includes reports of forced abortions and sterilizations, high-tech surveillance, and Uyghur children being separated from their parents.

Either the United States and the world will finally go beyond tepid criticism and respond with real action, or we can forget about values, universal rights, and international law.

For decades, Senator Lindsey Graham traveled the world with his friend John McCain, visiting war zones and meeting with foreign allies and adversaries, before returning home to promote the Republican gospel of an internationalist, hawkish foreign policy.

“I miss John McCain a lot but probably no more than today,” Mr. Graham said. “If John were with us, I’d be speaking second.”

Mr. McCain, the onetime prisoner of war in Vietnam, in many ways embodied a distinctive Republican worldview: a commitment to internationalism — and confrontation when necessary — that stemmed from the Cold War and endured through the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush before evolving after the Sept. 11 attacks to account for the threat of global terrorism.

The presidency of Donald Trump has left such a wretched stench in Europe that it's hard to see how, even in four years, Joe Biden could possibly get America's most important alliance back on track.

This week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo canceled a final trip to meet with European and NATO leaders.

Throughout Trump's term, Europeans have been walking a tightrope, trying to balance outright condemnation of the President's most destructive behavior with not alienating the leader of the Western world.

President Trump has rolled back environmental regulations, pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord, brushed aside dire predictions about the effects of climate change, and turned the term “global warming” into a punch line rather than a prognosis.

Mr. Trump and his political appointees are launching a new assault.

In the next few months, the White House will complete the rollback of the most significant federal effort to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, initiated during the Obama administration. It will expand its efforts to impose Mr. Trump’s hard-line views on other nations, building on his retreat from the Paris accord and his recent refusal to sign a communiqué to protect the rapidly melting Arctic region unless it was stripped of any references to climate change.

But as Mr. Pompeo and other Trump administration officials know full well, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the generals who guard his power in Tehran will never shape their foreign policy to the United States’ liking. What Mr. Pompeo implied was less a change in Iran’s behavior than a change in its leadership.

“We support the Iranian people and their courageous struggle for freedom,” Mr. Trump said at a rally Tuesday night in Milwaukee, referring to recent antigovernment protests in the country.His approach is a contrast to the one pursued for years by the United States during the Obama administration, which, along with Europe, tested the possibility that Iran could be coaxed, not pressured, into a new era.

Conservatives called Mr. Obama’s vision doomed from the start, and have argued that the relief from economic sanctions Iran won in exchange for limits on its nuclear program only funded more Iranian aggression in the Middle East and beyond. Nor did Iranian politics show much sign of moderating, despite conciliatory talk from Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani and its American-educated foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. Now the Trump administration is testing an alternate approach, having abandoned the nuclear deal and adopted its “maximum pressure” posture.

The move would complicate any effort by the incoming Biden administration to resume President Barack Obama’s thaw in relations with Havana.

A finding that a country has “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism,” in the State Department’s official description of a state sponsor of terrorism, automatically triggers U.S. sanctions against its government. If added to the list, Cuba would join just three other nations: Iran, North Korea and Syria.

The State Department removed Cuba from its list of terrorism sponsors in 2015, after President Barack Obama announced the normalization of relations between Washington and Havana for the first time since the country’s 1959 communist revolution, which he called a relic of the Cold War. In return for pledges of political and social reform, Mr. Obama dropped economic sanctions, relaxed restrictions on travel and trade, and reopened an embassy in Havana for the first time in decades. In 2016, he became the first American president to visit the island since Calvin Coolidge.