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Republicans were trying to tamp down a conservative rebellion Wednesday and keep a stopgap spending bill on track ahead of a major vote Thursday, hoping to prove their party could govern and in the process trap Democrats in a shutdown showdown.

The bill includes government funding through mid-February, extends the popular Childrens Health Insurance Program and delays a series of unpopular Obamacare taxes, though it doesnt include any action on immigration something Democrats had demanded.

Top Democrats and Republicans did manage Wednesday to restart negotiations over a solution for illegal immigrant Dreamers by holding their first meeting in a week. In what passes as progress on Capitol Hill, they agreed to meet again Thursday to talk about how to continue meeting moving forward toward a bill that meets President Trumps four goals.

What we are trying to do is just get a schedule of meetings, said Sen. Thom Tillis, North Carolina Republican. That was the goal [to] get in a room.

Given the time crunch, its unlikely any immigration deal could be added to the spending bill, which Republican leaders have scheduled for a vote on the House floor Thursday.

Republicans had hoped for easy passage in the House, where their numbers control the process, and send the bill to the Senate, where Democrats would have to decide whether to either accept the deal or filibuster, sending the government into a partial shutdown.

Republican leaders saw a chance to flip the script that for more than two decades has given them the blame for shutdown showdowns.

But conservatives were undermining those plans, threatening to defeat the spending bill unless it catered to their own demands for more military money and a promise to vote on a strict immigration crackdown bill in the future.

Rep. Mark Meadows, North Carolina Republican and leader of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, said enough of his members were ready to vote against the stopgap bill to prevent it from passing without Democratic votes.

I think that the Freedom Caucus has always been willing to take the hard votes when they believe that theyre speaking for millions of Americans who feel like Washington, D.C., has forgotten them, Mr. Meadows said.

But White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly said in a Fox News interview Wednesday evening that it looked like leaders would be able to avert a shutdown.

It would seem that they have the votes to continue funding the military, take care of the child health care issue and prep some other things, he said. So as I understand it, they have the votes and theyre fairly confident.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Wednesday morning that Republican leaders hadnt taken the temperature of their members, but he was hoping both parties would support the stopgap bill.

To block funding for our military with a Friday deadline over unrelated issues just makes no sense to me. Its wrong, Mr. Ryan said.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Mr. Trump doesnt like short-term spending bills but thinks this one is necessary.

The president certainly doesnt want a shutdown. And if one happens, I think you only have one place to look, and thats to the Democrats, who are holding our military and our national security hostage by trying to push through other policies that have nothing to do with the budget, she said.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said its Republicans who would suffer.

Theyre in charge, Mr. Schumer said. Donald Trump has repeatedly said on tape, over and over again, what the country needs is a good shutdown.

Although Republicans could pass the bill without Democratic support in the House, they would need Democrats to vote with them to overcome a filibuster in the Senate. The chamber has just 51 Republicans, and one of them, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, indicated he would vote against the bill.

Mr. Graham and Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, had been negotiating an immigration plan that they wanted to be part of the spending deal. But Mr. Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, made clear that they wouldnt allow the Graham-Durbin deal to reach the floor since the White House opposed it.

Mr. Trump repeated that opposition in an interview Wednesday with Reuters.

Its the opposite of what I campaigned for, said Mr. Trump, calling the proposal horrible and very, very weak.

The plan included a generous pathway to citizenship to perhaps millions of illegal immigrants but delivered Mr. Trump less than 10 percent of his border wall and no substantive changes to the overall level of chain migration.

Mr. Graham and Mr. Durbin released details of the plan Wednesday evening and said they have a total of seven Republicans supporting them.

Mr. Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, was still going through the motions to back his bill but appeared to be acknowledging it was moribund as he rejoined negotiations with his counterparts: Sen. John Cornyn of Texas and Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, both Republicans, and Rep. Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, a Democrat.

Were all highly motivated by the fact that come March the 5th, this program will no longer be available, and all of the work permits that currently exist for the 690,000 DACA recipients will go away, said Mr. Cornyn. And so were all committed to getting to yes, and were going to keep working hard until we get there.

Democrats had argued for a self-imposed deadline of this Friday rather than March 5.

Mr. McConnell seemed to put pressure back on the White House to broker a final immigration deal.

Im looking for something that President Trump supports, and he has not indicated what measure he is willing to sign, Mr. McConnell told reporters, saying the Senate can move to a bill as soon as we figure out what he is for.

House Democrats meeting with Mr. Kelly earlier in the day said they were disappointed that the White House wasnt talking specifics.

There either is a proposal or there isnt a proposal, said Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, Illinois Democrat.

Mr. Gutierrez also said Mr. Kelly called Mr. Trumps campaign vision for a border wall paid for by Mexico not fully informed.

Kelly took credit for educating the president on the wall and that a concrete barrier from sea to shining sea was no longer the conception of border security barriers supported today by the White House, Mr. Gutierrez said.

Stephen Dinan contributed to this report.

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Republicans aim to avert rebellion, shutdown

SportsPulse: USA TODAY Sports' Rachel Axon breaks down how North Korea may participate in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. USA TODAY Sports

Adam Rippon is believed to be the first openly gay U.S. Winter Olympian.(Photo: Matthew Stockman, Getty Images)

Adam Rippon, the 2016 U.S. mens figure skating champion who is believed to be the first openly gay U.S. Winter Olympian, criticized the White Houses selection of Vice President Mike Pence to lead the 2018 U.S. Olympic delegation to South Korea in a phone interview with USA TODAY Sports Tuesday night.

You mean Mike Pence, the same Mike Pence that funded gay conversion therapy? Rippon said. Im not buying it.

Rippon, 28, who was selected to his first Olympic team earlier this month after finishing fourth at the U.S. national championships, said that he would prefer not to meet Pence during the traditional meet-and-greet between the official delegation and U.S. athletes in the hours leading to the opening ceremony. Its possible Rippon would have to miss that event anyway to be part of the team figure skating competition.

More: Coming out changes the game for Olympian Gus Kenworthy

More: North and South Korea agree to form first unified Olympic team

If it were before my event, I would absolutely not go out of my way to meet somebody who I felt has gone out of their way to not only show that they arent a friend of a gay person but that they think that theyre sick, Rippon said. I wouldnt go out of my way to meet somebody like that.

I dont think he has a real concept of reality, Rippon said of Pence. To stand by some of the things that Donald Trump has said and for Mike Pence to say hes a devout Christian man is completely contradictory.If hes okay with whats being said about people and Americans and foreigners and about different countries that are being called shitholes,'I think he should really go to church."

The widespread belief that Pence supports gay conversion therapy comes from a statement he made in 2000 on his congressional campaign website: Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior. While he didnt explicitly mention gay conversion therapy, leaders in the LGBT community have said they believe thats what Pence meant in light of his long-standing opposition to gay rights. In November 2016, the New York Times reported that Pence's spokesman at the time, Marc Lotter, denied thatPence supports the practice.

After publication of this story Wednesday,Pence's press secretary Alyssa Farah emaileda statement to USA TODAY Sports:The vice president is proud to lead the U.S. delegation to the Olympics and support Americas incredible athletes. This accusation is totally false and has no basis in fact. Despite these misinformed claims, the vice president will be enthusiastically supporting all the U.S. athletes competing next month in Pyeongchang.

Rippon did say in his Tuesday night interviewthat if given a chance to meet Pence after competing (unlikely considering the relatively short length of any delegations visit to the Games), he would consider it.

If I had the chance to meet him afterwards, after Im finished competing, there might be a possibility to have an open conversation, Rippon said. He seems more mild-mannered than Donald Trump. But I dont think the current administration represents the values that I was taught growing up. Mike Pence doesnt stand for anything that I really believe in.Four years ago, President Barack Obama asked several openly-gay athletes to serve on the U.S. delegations to the opening and closing ceremonies in Sochi, including tennis legend Billie Jean King, Olympic figure skating gold medalist Brian Boitano and two-time Olympic hockey medalist Caitlin Cahow.

I think the move that President Obama made was very poignant and it was right in the midst of the huge controversy of gay propaganda being illegal in Russia, Rippon said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putins anti-gay efforts.

Rippon, who said he was bullied and teased as a boy growing up in Scranton, Pa., came out publicly as being gay in October 2015. He often talks about how he hopes his story can help others, especially young people who might be struggling with their sexuality.

Always outspoken, Rippon said recently he will not go to the White House for a post-Olympic celebration hosted by President Trump."I said no," he reiterated Tuesday. Legendary skier Lindsey Vonn has said she will not attend as well.

But Rippon also said he will not protest for gay rights or against the Trump administration in any way during the Olympics themselves.

No, Im a U.S. athlete representing my country. I will continue to share my story, but I will participate in no form of protest. Im representing myself and my country on the world stage. I have a lot of respect for this opportunity. What makes America great is that were all so different. Its 2018 and being an openly gay man and an athlete, that is part of the face of America now.

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Gay Olympian Adam Rippon doesn't want to meet Mike Pence at Games

The pastor at the church the vice-president attended in Maryland on Sunday said using the word shithole was dehumanizing and ugly

A Maryland pastor denounced Donald Trumps alleged vulgar description of African nations from the pulpit on Sunday while Mike Pence, the vice-president, was sitting in the pews of his church.

Maurice Watson, pastor of Metropolitan Baptist church in Largo, said remarks in which Trump reportedly used the word shithole to describe Haiti, El Salvador and African nations were dehumanizing and ugly.

WUSA-TV reported that Pence became red-faced at times during the sermon. In an email to the Associated Press on Monday, Pences office denied that.

Trump has denied using the word during an immigration discussion with congressional leaders in the Oval Office. On Sunday night he claimed to be the least racist person.

A Democratic senator who was in the room described Trumps choice of words. Two Republicans who also attended the meeting contested that version of events.

Dick Durbin of Illinois told reporters on Monday: I know what happened. I stand behind every word that I said.

Trump tweeted: Senator Dicky Durbin totally misrepresented what was said at the DACA meeting. Deals cant get made when there is no trust! Durbin blew DACA and is hurting our Military.

In his sermon on Sunday, Watson said whoever made such a statement was wrong and should be held accountable, and said he had felt led by God to speak up. Many of his congregants come from African nations, he said.

Worshippers stood and applauded.

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Pastor denounces Donald Trump, with Mike Pence in the ...

By Andre Damon 18 January 2018

Behind the backs of the US and world populations, social media companies have built up a massive censorship apparatus staffed by an army of content reviewers capable of seamlessly monitoring, tracking, and blocking millions of pieces of content.

The character of this apparatus was detailed in testimony Wednesday from representatives of Facebook, Twitter, and Googles YouTube before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, chaired by South Dakota Republican John Thune.

The hearing was called to review what technology companies are doing to shut down the communications of oppositional political organizations. It represented a significant escalation of the campaign, supported by both Democrats and Republicans, to establish unprecedented levels of censorship and control over the Internet.

Armed with increasingly powerful artificial intelligence systems, these technology companies are free to remove and block the communications of their users at the behest of the government, in a seamless alliance between Silicon Valley and the major US spy agencies.

Monika Bickert, head of Global Policy Management at Facebook, told lawmakers that the social media giant now employs a security team of 10,000 people, 7,500 of whom assess potentially violating content, and that, by the end of 2018 we will more than double the security team.

This group includes a dedicated counterterrorism team of former intelligence and law-enforcement officials and prosecutors who worked in the area of counterterrorism. In other words, there is a revolving door between the technology giants and the state intelligence and police forces, with one increasingly indistinguishable from the other.

Bickert pointed to the growing use of artificial intelligence to flag content, saying Facebook does not wait for these bad actors to upload content to Facebook before placing it into our detection systems, bragging that much of the propaganda removed from Facebook is content that we identify ourselves before anybody else has a chance to view it.

She added that Facebook has partnered with over a dozen other companies to maintain a blacklist of content, based on unique digital fingerprints. This means that if a piece of content, whether a video, image, or written statement, is flagged by any one of these companies, it will be banned from all social media. This database now includes some 50,000 pieces of content and is constantly growing, officials said.

In other words, the technology giants have created an all-pervasive system of censorship in which machines, trained to collaborate with the CIA, FBI, and other US intelligence agencies, are able to flag and block content even before it is posted.

Juniper Downs, global head of Public Policy and Government Relations at YouTube, likewise boasted that Google uses a mix of technology and humans to remove content, adding that YouTube relies on a trusted flagger program to provide actionable flags based on the flaggers experience with issues like hate speech and terrorism, words that imply that these trusted flaggers are connected to US intelligence agencies.

Machine learning is now helping our human reviewers remove nearly five times as many videos as they were before, Downs said, adding that Googles censorship machine is virtually automated. She said that this year there will be 10,000 people across Google working to address content that might violate our policies.

Downs declared that since June YouTube has removed 160,000 videos and terminated 30,000 channels for violent extremism. The company has reviewed over two million videos in its collaboration with law enforcement, government, and NGOs.

Downs stated that Google is actively engaged in promoting what she called counter-speech, that is, the promotion of propaganda narratives. She also pointed to Googles Jigsaw program as deploying targeted ads and YouTube videos to disrupt online radicalization, and redirecting users to content that Google approves of.

The hearing also featured the testimony of Clint Watts, a former FBI official, former US Army officer, fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and a leading promoter of social media censorship.

Watts presented the hearing with an unhinged justification for what these massive powers might be used for, in a hypothetical scenario he dubbed Anwar Awlaki meets PizzaGate.

The greatest concern moving forward, he said, might likely be a foreign intelligence service, posing as Americans on social media, infiltrating one or both political extremes in the US and then recruiting unwitting Americans to undertake violence against a target of the foreign powers choosing.

In this formulation, social opposition, what he calls the political extremes, including left-wing politics, is the product of foreign intervention and therefore treasonous. It is also defined as terrorist in content and therefore criminal.

Watts expressed extreme fear over the widespread growth of opposition to the policies of US imperialism. He arrogantly decried, Lesser-educated populations around the world predominately arriving in cyberspace via mobile phones will be particularly vulnerable to social media manipulation.

The content of Thursdays testimony points the far-advanced preparations for the establishment of police state forms of rule.

The effort to control speech online is driven by a ruling elite that is immensely fearful of social opposition. Amid growing social inequality and the ever-mounting threat of world war, broad sections of the population, and in particular the working class, are increasingly disillusioned with the capitalist system. Having no social reform to offer, the ruling elites see censorship as the only means to prop up their rule.

Given the explosive content of the statements made at Thursdays hearing, it is extraordinary that they received no significant coverage in either the print or broadcast media.

The hearing took place just one day after the World Socialist Web Site carried its live webinar, Organizing Resistance to Internet Censorship, featuring WSWS chairperson David North and journalist Chris Hedges.

Google is blocking the World Socialist Web Site from search results.

To fight this blacklisting:

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Facebook and Google outline unprecedented mass censorship at ...

A group of UMass Boston students, professors, and alumni as well as outside advocates are raising concerns about the Confucius Institute that operates on its campus, accusing it of promoting censorship abroad and undermining human rights.

The Chinese government oversees the center, one of more than 90 on campuses across the United States and abroad and one of two in the state.

Confucius Institutes use their foothold in prominent academic institutions to influence and steer academic discourse, the group said in a recent letter to interim chancellor Barry Mills, asking for a meeting to discuss their concerns.

The organizer of the objectors said she hopes to persuade the university to shut down the campus institute.

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The protest is part of a wave of opposition to these centers, which are advertised as tools for cultural exchange and Chinese languages education.

At the University of Massachusetts Boston, the protesters say they are concerned simply that an entity controlled by the communist Chinese government operates within the university. And, they say, they are worried that it recently helped to open similar centers in two local public high schools.

For several years, advocates for academic freedom have expressed alarm about Confucius centers. In 2009, they criticized North Carolina State University after it canceled a talk by the Dalai Lama, reportedly to avoid offending China, which funded a Confucius Institute at that school.

The letter to UMass said the Confucius centers shape public opinion on controversial issues such as Tibetan independence, Chinas relationship with Taiwan, and the Tiananmen Square massacre.

As a result of their presence on campus, whether through direct intervention, or pre-emptive self-censorship, important political and human rights issues are being silenced, the writers said.

A spokesman for the University of Massachusetts said in a statement that the center has contributed to the campus by providing Chinese languages and cultural appreciation programs.

We think the institute has filled the role envisioned when it was established in 2006, with the goal of advancing the mutual understanding of language and culture, said the statement from Bob Connolly.

The UMass center director, Baifeng Sun, declined to speak with the Globe. Gao Qing, executive director of the Confucius Institute US Center in Washington, D.C., which oversees institutes in the United States, said in an e-mail that the center is dedicated to promoting mutual understanding.

A great number of students, community members, and language teachers have been empowered by and benefited from our educational efforts, he wrote.

Unlike cultural institutes run by other foreign governments, such as the stand-alone LAlliance Franaise and Goethe-Institut, the Confucius Institutes are located on American campuses.

The center at UMass Boston offers non-credit Chinese languages and culture classes as well as grants for UMass students to study in China. The center also provides professional development programs for Chinese-language teachers in the region, sponsors a Chinese speech contest for high school students, and works to foster scholarly and business collaborations between China and the United States, according to a UMass spokesman. There is also an institute at Tufts University.

The UMass center operated with a budget of about half a million dollars last year, according to information from the university, including $100,000 from UMass and almost all of the remainder from the Chinese government, including the salary of five employees.

In 2013, UMass extended its original six-year agreement with the institute for another five years, according to a copy of the contract provided by the university.

Amid growing concerns about censorship and propaganda, the University of Chicago and Pennsylvania State University ended their partnerships with the Confucius Institute in 2014.

The center at Chicago closed after more than 100 professors signed a petition calling for the school to cut the center because it lacked control over hiring and training of teachers, according to the Wall Street Journal. When the school cut ties with the center, however, it did not cite academic freedom, instead saying that published remarks about the university by the leader of the Chinese governmental organization that oversees the institutes were incompatible with a continued equal partnership.

The school board of Toronto canceled a potential deal with a center the same year, and another Canadian university shut down its center after one of its teachers complained she was forced to hide her religious beliefs.

The UMass letter was signed by 17 people, including the president of the Boston Language Institute, the director of the Lam Rim Buddhist Center, and the chair of the international board of directors of Students for a Free Tibet, along with people affiliated with the university.

It was organized by Lhadon Tethong, the director of the Tibetan Action Institute, an advocacy organization.

This is the beginning of a campaign to get that Confucius Institute closed, Tethong said.

She said the group is horrified that the center has worked to open so-called Confucius Classrooms in two public schools, Brockton High School and Cambridge Rindge and Latin.

This is just one part of a very scary plan by the Chinese government, Tethong said.

In 2014, the American Association of University Professors published a study that found the centers function as an arm of the Chinese state and are allowed to ignore academic freedom.

The study recommended that Confucius Institutes be closed unless college administrators can ensure total control over academic matters.

Hank Reichman, who chairs a committee on academic freedom and tenure for the association, said the group hoped the study would prompt faculty on individual campuses to ask questions of their administrations.

Whats unusual about the Confucius Institute is this tendency where they provide the faculty, where they seem to have a say-so in curriculum, he said. Thats what is potentially really bothersome.

Michael Hartt, a music professor at UMass Boston, said he signed the letter because he is concerned about Chinese human rights issues that he worked on with Amnesty International.

Its really out of character with the kind of openness and free expression of ideas that one expects of an urban college like UMass Boston, he said.

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Chinese institute at UMass Boston accused of promoting ...