By JULIE PACE, AP Washington Bureau Chief
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump will herald a robust economy and push for bipartisan congressional action on immigration in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, as he seeks to rally a deeply divided nation and boost his own sagging standing with Americans.
The speech marks the ceremonial kickoff of Trump’s second year in office and is traditionally a president’s biggest platform to speak to the nation. However, Trump has redefined presidential communications with his high-octane, filter-free Twitter account and there’s no guarantee that the carefully crafted speech will resonate beyond his next tweet.
Trump was quiet Tuesday on Twitter, and the White House sought to focus attention on his big speech to Congress and millions of Americans watching at home. The White House said Trump has spent months giving aides “tidbits” about lines he wanted to use in the speech, and was assisted in its crafting by national security adviser H.R. McMaster and economy adviser Gary Cohn.
While stocks have been falling this week, the economy has been strong and White House officials are hopeful the president can use the prime-time address to take credit. Though the trajectory of lower unemployment and higher growth began under his predecessor, Trump argues that the tax overhaul he signed into law late last year has boosted business confidence and will lead companies to reinvest in the United States.
Considering the strength of the economy, Trump will step before lawmakers Tuesday night in a remarkably weak position. His approval rating has hovered in the 30s for much of his presidency and at the close of 2017, just 3 in 10 Americans said the United States was heading in the right direction, according to a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. In the same survey, 67 percent of Americans said the country was more divided because of Trump.
It’s unlikely Trump will be able to rely on a robust legislative agenda to reverse those numbers in 2018. Congress has struggled with the basic function of funding the government, prompting a brief government shutdown earlier this month that was resolved only with a short-term fix that pushed the spending deadline to Feb. 8.
Against the backdrop of the spending fight, Republicans and Democrats are also wrestling with the future of some 700,000 young immigrants living in the United States illegally. Trump has vowed to protect the so-called Dreamers from deportation, but is also calling for changes to legal immigration that are controversial with both parties.
“We’re going to get something done, we hope bipartisan,” Trump told reporters Monday, before giving his speech a practice run-through in the White House map room. “The Republicans really don’t have the votes to get it done in any other way. So it has to be bipartisan.”
Though Democrats are eager to reach a resolution for the young immigrants, the party is hardly in the mood to compromise with Trump ahead of the midterm elections. Lawmakers see Trump’s unpopularity as a key to their success in November, and are eager to mobilize Democratic voters itching to deliver the president and his party a defeat at the ballot box.
Trump also is expected to use the speech to talk about the fate of the controversial U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a senior administration official who was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the speech and spoke on condition of anonymity. Trump, who vowed during his campaign to load Guantanamo up with “bad dudes,” has long been expected to rescind President Barack Obama’s 2009 order to close the prison and issue his own stating his administration’s policy to keep it open.
Seeking to set the tone for their election-year strategy, party leaders have tapped Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy, the grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, to deliver a post-speech rebuttal aimed at casting Democrats, not Trump, as champions of the middle class.
Democrats are also looking to make their mark in other ways. A handful of lawmakers are planning to boycott the president’s remarks. And several Democratic women plan to wear black to protest sexual harassment, an issue that has tarnished several lawmakers in both parties. Trump himself has been accused of assault or harassment by more than a dozen women, accusations he has denied. The Wall Street Journal reported this month that the president’s lawyer arranged a payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, to prevent her from talking about her alleged encounter with the future president.
First lady Melania Trump, who has largely stayed out of the spotlight following those allegations, will attend Tuesday’s address, according to the White House. She’ll be joined in the audience by several guests whose stories amplify the president’s agenda, including an Ohio welder who the White House says will benefit from the new tax law and the parents of two Long Island teenagers who were believed to have been killed by MS-13 gang members.
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AP Writer Deb Riechmann contributed to this report.
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Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

By JOHN ROGERS and MICHAEL BALSAMO, Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Mark Salling, one of the stars of the Fox musical comedy “Glee,” has died of a possible suicide at age 35 a few weeks before he was scheduled to be sentenced in Los Angeles on child pornography charges.
Salling’s lawyer, Michael J. Proctor, tells The Associated Press the actor died Tuesday. He did not reveal the cause of death.
A law enforcement official not authorized to speak publicly says Salling was found hanging at a home in the Tujunga neighborhood of Los Angeles. The official says the actor’s death is being investigated as a suicide.
Salling pleaded guilty in December to possession of thousands of images of child pornography. He was scheduled to be sentenced March 7.
He played bad-boy Noah “Puck” Puckerman on the long-running show, which concluded in 2015.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A juror in Pennsylvania was briefly jailed after a prosecutor reportedly overheard him telling other jurors that he had lied in an attempt to get out jury duty.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that 39-year-old Daniel Puhala was held Monday in an Allegheny County courthouse cell for direct criminal contempt.
The judge released Puhala late in the day after criticizing him for “playing the system.”
Deputy District Attorney Jennifer DiGiovanni says she heard Puhala tell other jurors he was surprised to be picked because he had said “everything right” and had lied about being a victim of a crime in the past.
An attorney appointed to defend Puhala says he was joking with the other jurors and didn’t actually lie.

 

 

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — A judge on Tuesday turned down a legal move that sought to force O.J. Simpson to turn over profits from autographs to satisfy a $70 million-plus civil judgment for the 1994 killings of the former football star’s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Gerald Rosenberg denied the request on grounds that Goldman’s father, Fred, cannot identify who is paying Simpson.
The ruling was made quickly after the request was made by Goldman family attorney David Cook.
Simpson was acquitted of two counts of murder in the 1994 slayings, but a civil court jury found him liable for wrongful death and ordered him to pay $33.5 million, which has more than doubled over two decades.
Fred Goldman has hounded Simpson for years and Cook contends the former football star has never willingly paid a cent of the court order.
“Mr. Simpson has sought to subvert this wrongful death judgment by his abject refusal to pay, much less accept personal responsibility,” Cook said in court papers.
Simpson sold autographs shortly after his release from a Nevada prison in October to pay legal bills and has no interest in signing memorabilia, one of his lawyers, Malcolm LaVergne, said in court papers objecting to any order relinquishing his right to publicity.
Goldman and Cook have “attempted to drag Mr. Simpson into court every time they hear a rumor, see something on television, or read in an internet news posting, a mere vague allegation involving Mr. Simpson’s commercial exploitation of himself,” attorney Ronald Slates wrote in court papers on behalf of Simpson.
While most of the court award has been unpaid, Fred Goldman has been able to seize some of the Pro Football Hall of Famer’s assets, including video game royalties and the rights to the book “If I Did It,” a ghostwritten account in which Simpson tells how he might have killed his ex-wife and Ron Goldman.
Goldman was also able to acquire memorabilia Simpson claimed he was trying to take back when he led five men, two with guns, into a Las Vegas casino hotel in September 2007 to confront two sports collectibles dealers.
Simpson, 70, served nine years in Nevada state prison for armed robbery and assault with a weapon in an ill-fated bid to retrieve memorabilia.

The man who was found shot in a vehicle in Pittsburgh’s Larimer neighborhood Monday night has been identified.

The Allegheny County medical examiner’s office said Tyqueon Goins, 20, of Pittsburgh, was discovered by officers with multiple gunshot wounds on Meadow Street between Tripod Way and Finley Street.

He was pronounced dead at 9:21 p.m.

Initial reports indicate the incident may be gang-related. After receiving ShotSpotter alerts, Zone 5 police officers responded to the area about 8:15 p.m.

Police continue to investigate and No arrests have been made. .

Anyone with information is asked to call homicide detectives at 412-323-7800.

A law firm hired by the Humane Society of the United States is conducting an internal investigation. They’ve identified three complaints of sexual harassment by chief executive Wayne Pacelle and found that senior female leaders said their warnings about his conduct went unheeded.

The investigation also found the nonprofit agency, one of the country’s biggest animal charities, had offered settlements to three other workers who said they were demoted or dismissed after reporting Pacelle’s alleged behavior, according to the Humane Society memo.

Fiat Chrysler executives lavished more than $1.5 million in gifts and prohibited payments to UAW leaders in what federal prosecutors say was an effort to give the automaker a better position at the bargaining table.

A $30,000 party for one UAW official that included $7,000 worth of cigars and $3,000 in specially labeled bottles of wine were a couple of the payoffs.

In nearly every instance, the money came through the UAW-Chrysler National Training Center using money provided by FCA. It’s been alleged by Federal prosecutors that the gifts violated the federal Labor Management Relations Act and were intended to “obtain benefits, concessions and advantages for FCA in the negotiation, implementation and administration of the collective bargaining agreements between FCA and the UAW.”

Won’t you be my neighbor?

TriStar Pictures has the distribution rights to the film “You Are My Friend”, according to Variety, which is based on the real-life friendship between Fred Rogers and journalist Tom Junod. In the book, Junod is a journalist who is assigned to write a profile piece on Mr. Rogers.

Tom Hanks will play Mr. Rogers in the motion picture version of his story .

A New Castle man is facing a long list of charges after he allegedly sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl he met on a dating app. 44-year-old Douglas Gilghrist allegedly traveled to Montgomery County last summer after meeting the teen on the app. State police say he sexually assaulted and had indecent contact with the victim on a number of occasions. Gilghrist was arrested last week at his workplace. He’s now being held in the Lawrence County jail.

BEAVER COUNTY IS GOING TO COURT TODAY TO APPEAL THE PROPERTY REASSSESSMENT DECISION. BEAVER COUNTY RADIO’S GREG BENEDETTI HAS DETAILS. Click on ‘play’ to hear Greg’s report…