President Trump is expected to ask Congress as early as Friday for $5.95 billion in initial emergency aid to deal with the catastrophic damage caused by Hurricane Harvey, with $5.5 billion going to the depleted FEMA-administered Disaster Relief Fund and another $450 million to the Small Business Administration's Disaster Loan Program. "No final decisions about the funding amount have been made, and conversations remained fluid Thursday evening," The Washington Post reports, though Axios says White House budget director Mick Mulvaney is trying to drum up support in Congress.
Harvey is presumed to be one of the most costly natural disasters in U.S. history. As of Thursday morning, more than 311,000 Texans had applied for federal disaster relief, and at least $530 million has been approved, according to Vice President Mike Pence. The White House says some 100,000 houses were destroyed by Harvey. The Trump administration and Congress have not decided whether to push for the funding separately or attach it to must-pass legislation like raising the debt ceiling. Peter Weber
British Prime Minister Theresa May on Sunday pushed back on calls for a second referendum on Brexit, the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union.
May particularly condemned remarks from former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who said this week a new vote should be considered if "none of the other options work." May accused Blair of "seek[ing] to undermine our negotiations by advocating for a second referendum," arguing "Parliament has a democratic duty to deliver what the British people voted for."
May's proposed Brexit deal with the EU has stalled, lacking support to pass a House of Commons vote. Bonnie Kristian
The North Korean government on Sunday issued a typically dramatic statement condemning the United States' sanction regime and suggesting denuclearization plans are in jeopardy.
Pyongyang accused the U.S. State Department of being "bent on bringing [North Korea]-U.S. relations back to the status of last year which was marked by exchanges of fire," warning that additional U.S. sanctions would be America's "greatest miscalculation" and would "block the path to denuclearization on the Korean peninsula forever."
This comes as Pyongyang observes the seventh anniversary of the death of former leader Kim Jong Il and the rise to power of his son, current leader Kim Jong Un. Bonnie Kristian
Negotiators representing nearly 200 nations in Katowice, Poland, on Saturday agreed to universal greenhouse gas emissions limits intended to mitigate global climate change.
"It is not easy to find agreement on a deal so specific and technical," said Polish economist Michal Kurtyka, who is leading the United Nations negotiations. "Through this package you have made a thousand little steps forward together," he told the assembled delegates. "You can feel proud."
U.S. negotiators sought to label coal a possible source of clean energy but also pushed for transparency and rules which apply equally to all participant nations. "Overall, the U.S. role here has been somewhat schizophrenic — pushing coal and dissing science on the one hand, but also working hard in the room for strong transparency rules," Elliot Diringer of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions told The Associated Press. "[T]he U.S. pushed harder than nearly anyone else for transparency rules that put all countries under the same system, and it's largely succeeded." Bonnie Kristian
