Buzz Feds

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The arrival of the new year in California brought with it broad legalization of marijuana, a much-anticipated change that comes two decades after the state was the first to allow pot for medical use.

The nation's most populous state joins a growing list of other states, and the nation's capital, where so-called recreational marijuana is permitted even though the federal government continues to classify pot as a controlled substance, like heroin and LSD.

Pot is now legal in California for adults 21 and older, and individuals can grow up to six plants and possess as much as an ounce of the drug.

But finding a retail outlet to buy non-medical pot in California won't be easy, at least initially. Only about 90 businesses received state licenses to open on New Year's Day. They are concentrated in San Diego, Santa Cruz, the San Francisco Bay Area and the Palm Springs area.

Los Angeles and San Francisco are among the many cities where recreational pot will not be available right away because local regulations were not approved in time to start issuing city licenses needed to get state permits. Meanwhile, Fresno, Bakersfield and Riverside are among the communities that have adopted laws forbidding recreational marijuana sales.

For those who worked for this day, the shift offered joyful relief.

"We're thrilled," said Khalil Moutawakkil, founder of KindPeoples, which grows and sells weed in Santa Cruz. "We can talk about the good, the bad and the ugly of the specific regulations, but at the end of the day it's a giant step forward, and we'll have to work out the kinks as we go."

The state banned "loco-weed" in 1913, according to a history by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, the pot advocacy group known as NORML. The first attempt to undo that by voter initiative in 1972 failed, but three years later felony possession of less than an ounce was downgraded to a misdemeanor.

In 1996, over the objections of law enforcement, President Clinton's drug czar and three former presidents, California voters approved marijuana for medicinal purposes. Twenty years later, voters approved legal recreational use and gave the state a year to write regulations for a legal market that would open in 2018.

California joins a growing list of states to legalize recreational weed
Today, 29 states have adopted medical marijuana laws. In 2012, Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize recreational marijuana. Since then, five more states have passed recreational marijuana laws, including Massachusetts, where retail sales are scheduled to begin in July.

Even with other states as models, the next year is expected to be a bumpy one in California as more shops open and more stringent regulations take effect on the strains known as Sweet Skunk, Trainwreck and Russian Assassin.

The California Police Chiefs Association, which opposed the 2016 ballot measure, remains concerned about stoned drivers, the risk to young people and the cost of policing the new rules in addition to an existing black market.

"There's going to be a public-health cost and a public-safety cost enforcing these new laws and regulations," said Jonathan Feldman, a legislative advocate for the chiefs. "It remains to be seen if this can balance itself out."

At first, pot shops will be able to sell marijuana harvested without full regulatory controls. But eventually, the state will require extensive testing for potency, pesticides and other contaminants. A program to track all pot from seed to sale will be phased in, along with other protections such as childproof containers.

Jamie Garzot, founder of the 530 Cannabis shop in Northern California's Shasta Lake, said she's concerned that when the current crop dries up, there will be a shortage of marijuana that meets state regulations. Her outlet happens to be close to some of California's most productive marijuana-growing areas, but most of the surrounding counties will not allow cultivation that could supply her.

"Playing in the gray market is not an option," Garzot said. "California produces more cannabis than any state in the nation, but going forward, if it's not from a state-licensed source, I can't put it on my shelf. If I choose to do so, I run the risk of losing my license."

In 2016, the state produced an estimated 13.5 million pounds of pot, and 80 percent was illegally shipped out of state, according to a report prepared for the state by ERA Economics, an environmental and agricultural consulting firm. Of the remaining 20 percent, only a quarter was sold legally for medicinal purposes.

That robust black market is expected to continue to thrive, particularly as taxes and fees raise the cost of retail pot by as much as 70 percent.

More than twenty people have died after another bloody night of protests in Iran added nine people to the death toll.

State TV in Iran reported the nine additional fatalities on Tuesday morning, according to the Associated Press. They include an 11-year-old boy and a member of Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

Separately, an Iranian government official said that security services in the country have detained at least 450 people since protests began last week.

According to the state broadcast, a focus of violence was a police station in Qahdarijan in Isfahan province, which protesters allegedly tried to raid to steal guns.

The demonstrations, the largest to strike Iran since a disputed presidential election in 2009, have seen six days of unrest across the country and a death toll of at least 20.

The state TV report said an 11-year-old boy and a 20-year-old man were killed in the town of Khomeinishahr, while a member of Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard was killed in the town of Najafabad. It says all three were shot by hunting rifles, which are common in the Iranian countryside.

The towns are all in Iran's central Isfahan province, some 215 miles south of Tehran, the capital.

Monday night saw 100 new arrests, according to Ali Asghar Naserbakht, deputy governor of Tehran province.

He was quoted by the semi-official ILNA news agency, which in turn was cited by Reuters.

The 100 arrests followed 150 on Sunday and 200 on Saturday, giving a total of 450 over the weekend.

The protests began Thursday in Mashhad over Iran's weak economy and a jump in food prices and have expanded to several cities, with some protesters chanting against the government and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Hundreds of people have been arrested.

It wasn't clear whether the Revolutionary Guard member was the same fatality report late Monday night by Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency. Mehr had said an assailant using a hunting rifle killed a policeman and wounded three others in Najafabad.

Monday marked the first night to see a fatality among Iran's security forces.

President Hassan Rouhani has acknowledged the public's anger over the Islamic Republic's flagging economy, though he and others warned that the government wouldn't hesitate to crack down on those it considers lawbreakers.

That was echoed Monday by judiciary chief Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani, who urged authorities to confront rioters, state TV reported.

"I demand all prosecutors across the country to get involved and the approach should be strong," he said.

NOW WATCH: Everything we know about Trump's unhealthy diet

President Donald Trump told The New York Times in an interview published Thursday that the investigation into potential collusion between his campaign team and Moscow had strengthened his base and prompted some "great congressmen" to begin "pointing out what a witch hunt the whole thing is."

Trump told The Times that he did not intend to fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel leading the investigation.

But while Trump said he expected Mueller would treat him "fairly," his remark about how the investigation had galvanized his supporters is perhaps a better indicator of why Trump may have taken firing Mueller off the table, for now, as it suggests he is aware of, and confident in, his allies' ongoing campaign to undermine and discredit the special counsel.

"Virtually every Democrat has said there is no collusion," Trump told the newspaper.

He continued:

"There is no collusion. And even these committees that have been set up. If you look at what's going on — and in fact, what it's done is, it's really angered the base and made the base stronger. My base is stronger than it's ever been. Great congressmen, in particular, some of the congressmen have been unbelievable in pointing out what a witch hunt the whole thing is. So, I think it's been proven that there is no collusion."

The most recent attacks on the FBI by Trump and his supporters began after news surfaced that the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General discovered text messages exchanged by two FBI employees, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, during the campaign that expressed disdain for Trump and other political leaders.

Strzok, a veteran counterintelligence agent, was among those overseeing the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server last year. He and Page and were also members of Mueller's team, but Strzok was removed in late July after the texts were discovered, and Page left for unrelated reasons.

A senior Justice Department official and his wife, meanwhile, have come under fire for their reported ties to Fusion GPS — the opposition-research firm that funded the collection of memos known as "the dossier" outlining alleged Trump-Russia collusion. The official, Bruce Ohr, was recently reassigned.

There is no evidence so far that these revelations have affected the public's perception of Mueller or the Russia investigation. A CNN poll released earlier this week found that more Americans approved of how Mueller was handling the investigation than disapproved.

But the incidents have fueled GOP lawmakers' calls either for FBI Director Chris Wray to clean house or for Mueller to resign.

Republican Rep. Francis Rooney on Tuesday said he wanted to see the upper ranks of the FBI purged of politically motivated agents whom he believes were working for "the deep state."

Another Florida congressman, Rep. Matt Gaetz, has accused Mueller and his team of staging a "coup d'etat" against Trump. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio has called the FBI "corrupt" and claimed recently that the bureau was "putting together a plan" last year "to keep Donald Trump from becoming the next president of the United States."

Jordan said earlier this month that he'd been in touch with the White House about Mueller. Gaetz, the first lawmaker to openly demand Mueller's firing, discussed the special counsel's investigation with Trump aboard Air Force One earlier this month ahead of a rally in Florida.

Rep. Ron DeSantis, a House Judiciary Committee member who put forward a provision in August that would have severely limited the scope and funding of Mueller's investigation, was also on the flight with Gaetz and Trump.

GOP Rep. Andy Biggs recently slammed what he called Mueller's "unlimited reach" and "unvetted hires," accusing the special counsel of making "blatantly partisan hires that place the direction of his probe under a cloud of suspicion" and calling on him to "step aside."

Republican Sen. Rand Paul tweeted last week that it was "time to investigate high ranking Obama government officials who might have colluded to prevent the election of @realDonaldTrump! This could be WORSE than Watergate!"

Japan and South Korea recently agreed to build future-oriented relations and work together to protect both nations from North Korean threats. This comes on the heels of the 2015 resolution related to the Japanese use of South Korean comfort women between 1910 and 1945 when the Korean Peninsula was under Japanese colonial rule. Japan has sought to make amends for having Korean comfort women in brothels meet the needs of Japanese soldiers. The two countries are working together to heal the rifts caused by that chapter in their histories. In South Korea the comfort women testimonies brings back painful memories.

Moon Jae-In, South Korean new president, met with Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, in Hamburg, Germany recently during the Group of 20 summit to discuss ways the two countries can work together to protect their citizens from North Korean aggression. While President Moon Jae-In knows most South Koreans aren’t happy with the 2015 comfort women settlement agreement signed by his predecessor, both South Korea and Japan are looking for the best way to move forward together and address the dangerous threat North Korea poses.

The two governments see a dual-track approach as the best way to heal the wounds exposed by the comfort women stories while dealing with the North Korea menace.

Newly elected President Moon Jae-In, a former human rights lawyer, had pledged during his presidential campaign that he would renegotiate the Korean comfort women agreement.

A recent polls showed that’s what 70% of South Koreans want. However, since taking office President Moon has said he wouldn’t let this one issue derail bilateral relations between his country and Japan.

South Korea, Japan and the U.S. are closely coordinating their activities to counter the nuclear and missile threat posed by North Korea. South Korea also faces economic retaliation from China over the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system the U.S. has deployed there. China’s seeming unwillingness to hit North Korea with tough sanctions has prevented South Koreans from seeing the Chinese as being a reliable strategic partner.

In a meeting in Washington D.C. in late June, it was acknowledged the comfort women agreement’s implementation is vital for South Korea and Japan to work together. Experts say President Moon is working to find a solution that satisfies both his nation’s emotional and security needs by using the dual-track approach to resolving the issues related to the South Korean comfort women and protecting his people from North Korean aggression.

North Korea recently tested an ICBM experts say could reach Alaska. It’s a major step forward for their missile program compared to 10 years ago. Earlier this year, experts estimated North Korea had enough fissile material to produce between 10 and 20 nuclear warheads and the technology to build a ‘miniaturized’ warhead which could strike South Korea, Japan and U.S. military bases in Guam if mounted on short- and medium-range missiles. This makes resolving the comfort women issue and dealing with the North Korean threat more urgent.

In an attempt to calm South Korean public sentiment about the comfort women agreement, the foreign ministry of South Korea is creating a task force to look at the process that led to the agreement in which Japan gave ¥1 billion to the surviving women and a sincere apology for their suffering to “finally and irreversibly” settle the issue and in exchange North Korea agreed to remove a statue facing the Japanese embassy in Seoul, South Korea symbolizing the comfort women.

Despite their differences, on June 3, South Korea and Japan agreed to keep the General Security of Military Information Agreement they signed last November.

Money creates a sense of security: it shows us a way to accomplish our dreams, and therefore most of us end up spending half of a lifetime chasing money to pay bills, make a living and meet our needs. Money not only helps us to accomplish our dreams - it’s also an instrument of destruction and is often associated with greed, lies and criminality. Money is the champion of good and bad, and, to many, it still remains a mystery. It’s a fact that regular currencies today are not backed up by anything but our own beliefs and central banks, globally, are holding our future in their hands with a tight grip. The financial crisis in 2008 almost brought down the world’s financial system. Central bankers and other regulators bear responsibility for mishandling the crisis. Many people and companies went bankrupt overnight, but, at the same time, great opportunities were also born. Out of the crisis of 2008, Cryptocurrency was born out of years of frustration and distrust with their banking and monetary system. As the Group CEO of Monspace Multinational Corp, Dato Sri Jessy Lai points out: “Digital currencies differed from electronic money on the whole by departing from a centrally issued and administered model, and in most cases by creating value based on utility, scarcity, security etc. rather than a fixed conversion rate against Fiat currency – as is the case for e-money”.

What is Cryptocurrency?

Bitcoin blockchain was written in 2008 and, despite criticism by financial regulators institutions governments and media, it increased in value tremendously. Between 2009 and 2013, the value of a single coin went from 0.1 US dollars to over 1,100 US dollars. People who had invested in Bitcoin became multimillionaires over a very short period of time, and it’s probably one of the most-discussed economic successes in financial history. One of those multimillionaires was a young Norwegian man who invested 26 US dollars only to forget all about it; a couple of years later, his modest investment of 26 US dollars had turned into over 850,000 US dollars. It was an expensive lesson for anyone who was introduced to Bitcoin at an early stage but turned it down.

What if new technology allows everyone in the world to be their own bank, free from taxes and fees? Cryptocurrency is built on math, technological computer software with a shared code that connects a global network through the Internet. But how do we know Cryptocurrency can be trusted? Traditionally, we are programmed to rely on trusted third parties like banks, credit card companies and remitted services as they keep track of the money being transferred from one to another, and we are heavily charged for this service. We are in the habit of paying lots of money for something that could be free of charge; and most people have blind trust in banks.

But what if there are ways to cut out these middlemen charging us huge amounts of money that are cheaper safer and faster? Today, you can easily copy and download music and movies online, and Cryptocurrency is digital, just like music and movies on the Internet. Now, can you trust that your digital money will not be downloaded as easily as your favorite songs? How can a digital currency retain its value and not be copied online? The interesting thing is that Cryptocurrency is not a file on the computer; it is an entry in the publicly-distributed database called blockchain. Let’s compare it to today’s banks: they keep ledgers of each transaction with a plus and a minus in databases. With Cryptocurrency, bank accounts are replaced by an e-wallet where you alone can control it; the ledger of a Cryptocurrency is the blockchain. The blockchain keeps a record of every coin and every transaction ever made. And it always balances, since the amount of coins is unchangeable and no coin will ever leave the system.

The future of payments

When one coin is sent somewhere, what is really being sent is the control of the database with a code that is a unique key for that specific transaction. As transactions are made, the ledger, the blockchain, is constantly synchronized across the globe. Each user on the entire network has an identical copy and since the blockchain is public, it cannot be controlled by any single person. There is no point of failure to hack the blockchain; hackers would have to target thousands of computers across multiple geographic locations all at the same time. Hacking may not be impossible, but it is made much more difficult and Cryptocurrency is more secure than the present banking system. The whole system has the potential to replace banks and bankers worldwide. Many people are happy with the system we have today simply because they don’t understand it or because they cannot grasp the amount of money we pay our current financial system in fees on a yearly basis. Cryptocurrency is the total opposite of the banking system today as it is completely transparent and no one can change either the amount of coins or the mathematical rules dictating the creation after the mining has started.

Bitcoin was a tremendous breakthrough and put Cryptocurrency on the map, but the pioneer soon showed that there was plenty of room for improvement. “We already know that people are using less physical cash and that this trend is only going to continue. The fact is that cashless card and smartphone payments are on the rise, especially throughout Europe. The level of investment being made to meet customers and their higher expectation level means we know what will happen” (souce). New cryptocurrencies were developed and awareness of the new economic system grew rapidly, opening doors for a much safer, more powerful and user-friendly Cryptocurrency.

The demand of Cryptocurrency today is very high, mainly because of the simplicity of the concept, but also because people are discovering all the benefits and the security one coin of Cryptocurrency can give them. Since the value of Cryptocurrency is based on supply and demand, it’s easy to understand that with a growing network, the value is increasing. This new way to remit payments is spreading around the globe, gaining ground of hundreds of thousands of miners, traders, and users rapidly adapting to this new market. The current monetary system we know today is going through tremendous changes globally and we are moving into a new era.

What kind of year was 2017?

Most of President Donald Trump’s supporters, a new HuffPost/YouGov survey finds, think it was pretty great: Just over three-quarters say that it was a good or excellent year for the nation as a whole. Fewer than a tenth of the voters who backed Hillary Clinton last year, and just a quarter of everyone else, agree.

Politics wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the questions. But it was clearly on Americans’ minds, tying heavily into their overall view of the year (or at least the way they answered survey questions about it).

In comparison, gaps between other demographic groups including gender, race, income, age and education were far smaller. Even party lines are less predictive: The difference between Republicans and Democrats on the question is 46 points.

It’s perhaps unsurprising that politics has a strong correlation with Americans’ views of the nation. But there are also smaller, but substantial differences in perceptions of personal well-being this year.

Trump voters are 27 points likelier than Clinton voters to say that they personally had a good or excellent year. This once again easily outpaces the gaps between most other demographic groups. Income, however, comes close, with those in the highest-earning group 23 points likelier than those in the lowest-earning group to give their year a positive review.

Although Clinton voters are increasingly optimistic about the 2018 elections, that enthusiasm isn’t enough to lift their spirits about the nation’s prospects for next year.

Just 15 percent of Clinton voters expect 2018 to be better for the United States than 2017, while 62 percent of Trump voters think that it will be. (Non-voters and third party voters are also on the unenthusiastic side, with fewer than a quarter expecting next year to be an improvement.) More than half of Trump voters, but barely over a third of the rest of the nation, expect their own lives to improve next year.

Overall, 39 percent of Americans expect 2018 to be better ― nearly identical to the 40 percent in 2016 who expected this year to be an improvement over last.
 The poll is far from the only one to find that politics eclipses basically anything else in limning Americans’ views of the country. HuffPost/YouGov’s 2016 survey ― which found broadly similar results overall ― also found a stark divide, as did a more recent mid-year check-in. It’s also not the only poll to find that last year’s election fundamentally changed both sides’ assessments about their own lives. Trump voters, who said resoundingly in 2016 that things had gotten worse for “people like them” in the past 50 years, grew substantially more optimistic by the following spring, while Clinton voters’ assessments plunged.

Use the widget below to further explore the results of the HuffPost/YouGov survey, using the menu at the top to select survey questions and the buttons at the bottom to filter the data by subgroups:

The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted Dec. 12-14 among U.S. adults, using a sample selected from YouGov’s opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population.

HuffPost has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls. You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov’s nationally representative opinion polling. More details on the polls’ methodology are available here.

Most surveys report a margin of error that represents some, but not all, potential survey errors. YouGov’s reports include a model-based margin of error, which rests on a specific set of statistical assumptions about the selected sample rather than the standard methodology for random probability sampling. If these assumptions are wrong, the model-based margin of error may also be inaccurate. Click here for a more detailed explanation of the model-based margin of error.

CAIRO, Dec 29 (Reuters) - A gunman fired at worshippers and Egyptian police stationed outside a Coptic Orthodox church near Cairo on Friday and killed at least nine people before he was wounded and arrested, the interior ministry and church officials said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. Islamist militants have claimed several attacks on Egypt’s large Christian minority in recent years, including two bombings on Palm Sunday in April and a blast at Cairo’s largest Coptic cathedral in December 2016 that killed 28 people.

Earlier reports by security sources and state media said at least two attackers were involved, and that one was shot dead and another fled the scene. The interior ministry did not explain the reason for the different accounts.

The Coptic Church said the gunman first shot at a Christian-owned shop 4 km (3 miles) away, killing two people, before proceeding to the Mar Mina church in the southern Cairo suburb of Helwan. The Interior Ministry said he opened fire at the entrance to the site and tried to throw an explosive device.

Eleven people were killed in all, including a policeman at the church, according to Interior Ministry and Coptic Church accounts. The Church said a young woman had died later from her wounds, bringing the civilian death toll at the church to eight.

The Health Ministry said earlier that five people had been wounded, including two women who were in serious condition.

It said investigators had identified the gunman and that he had carried out several attacks since last year.

Security forces went on high alert for Christmas and New Year celebrations. Egypt is also grappling with a deadly Islamic State insurgency in the North Sinai region.

A Coptic Church statement said a joint funeral for six of those killed would be held on Friday evening at the Virgin Mary church in Helwan.

The ministry said security forces had “immediately dealt with the (attacker) and arrested him after he was wounded.” It added, “Legal measures have been taken,” without elaborating.

Cairo’s state prosecutor said that an investigation has been launched into the incident.

“The shooting began at 10:30 a.m. and carried on for more than 15 minutes ... there was more than one attacker,” Mohammed Hussein Abdelhadi, who lives close to the church, told Reuters.

A witness who did not want to give his name said the policeman was killed while he was closing the church gate to stop the gunman getting in.

The church was being guarded by police in the run-up to Orthodox Christmas celebrations next week.

Police have stepped up security measures around churches ahead of Coptic Christmas celebrations on Jan. 7, deploying officers outside Christian places of worship and setting up metal detectors at some of the bigger churches.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi offered his condolences to the families and ordered security forces to increase safety measures at sensitive sites, his office said in a statement.

Virginia’s Board of Elections delayed Wednesday morning’s name-drawing that would have determined the winner of a crucial seat in the state House of Delegates, after Democrat Shelly Simonds launched a last-minute effort Tuesday to prevent the race from being settled by luck.

Simonds’ campaign filed a motion asking judges in Newport News Circuit Court to reconsider last week’s decision to count a contested ballot for her opponent, Republican incumbent David Yancey.

The move is the latest twist in the dramatic race for the state’s 94th District. If Simonds were to win the seat, Republicans would lose majority control of the House of Delegates after 17 years.

Initially, Yancey appeared to have beaten Simonds by 10 votes in the Nov. 7 election. But a recount completed on Dec. 19 determined Simonds had defeated Yancey by just one vote. A day later, the three-judge panel ruled that a contested ballot, which had been marked for Yancey but had been uncounted, should have been counted for the Republican ― bringing the score to a tie.

On Wednesday, a member of the state Board of Elections was scheduled to pick one of two film canisters out of a bowl.
According to Virginia law, House races that result in a tie need to be decided “by lot.” On Wednesday, a member of the state Board of Elections was scheduled to pick one of two film canisters out of a bowl. Written on a piece of paper inside that canister would be a name ― the name of the winner.

The Simonds campaign filed its motion electronically, according to CNN. The circuit court was closed Tuesday, meaning it would not consider the motion until at least Wednesday.

In response, the Board of Elections announced late Tuesday that it would postpone the name-drawing.

“Drawing names is an action of last resort,” board Chairman James Alcorn said in a statement to reporters. “Any substantive concerns regarding the election or recount should be resolved before a random drawing is conducted.”

Simonds’ campaign is arguing that it was too late in the process to bring up the single ballot in question, CNN reports. “My opponent made an end run around the clear rules of the recount,” Simonds said during a conference call with reporters, according to the network.

It is unclear when the circuit court judges will reconvene to decide whether to consider Simonds’ motion. The Washington Post and the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported Wednesday that some of the judges were out of town for the holidays, so they might not address the matter until next week, or may convene remotely.

This story has been updated to reflect the Board of Elections delaying Wednesday’s name-drawing and the Circuit Court judges not addressing the motion on Wednesday.

Steve Bannon’s eyes lit up. Several months before he left his job as a senior White House adviser last August, Bannon was talking to President Trump about the brewing political storm over the Justice Department investigation into his campaign’s alleged ties to the Kremlin. Suddenly, Trump had an inspiration. He looked straight at Bannon, jabbed at him with his finger and uttered the phrase that would become the slogan of the White House pushback against the Russia probe: “Witch hunt!”

Brilliant, thought Bannon, as he later related the exchange to colleagues.

Ever since, it is a phrase Trump has returned to time and again — and repackaged with typical Trumpian hyperbole. “This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!” Trump tweeted last May after ex-FBI director Robert Mueller was appointed as Justice Department special counsel to oversee the probe.

But now, as Trump prepares to end his first year in office, the witch hunt narrative may have outlived its usefulness. Mueller’s investigation has expanded and gained serious traction: The president’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and Manafort’s chief deputy, Rick Gates, have been indicted. His former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has pleaded guilty and is now a cooperating witness. So too is a former foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, who has admitted lying to the FBI about repeated contacts with alleged Russian cutouts who had offered the Trump campaign “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.”

As described by sources familiar with various aspects of the investigation, the Mueller probe is fast approaching a critical crossroads. The president’s lawyers, Ty Cobb and John Dowd, are pressing Mueller to wind down the investigation and exonerate their client, which they have assured the president will happen by early next year.

But the sources familiar with the probe say that such a rapid conclusion is — as one put it — “fanciful.” Mueller and his team, they say, are pursuing new leads, interrogating new witnesses and collecting a mountain of new evidence, including subpoenaed bank records and thousands of emails from the campaign and the Trump transition.
In just the last few weeks, his prosecutors have begun questioning Republican National Committee staffers about the party digital operation that worked with the Trump campaign to target voters in key swing states. They are seeking to determine if the joint effort was related to the activities of Russian trolls and bots aimed at influencing the American electorate, according to two of the sources.

In what is potentially another ominous sign for the White House, the lawyer for Jared Kushner, the president’s son in law and senior adviser who was in charge of the campaign’s digital operation, recently began searching for a crisis public relations firm to handle press inquiries — a step frequently taken by people who believe they may be facing criminal charges. (Kushner has denied all wrongdoing, and his lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has said he is cooperating with the Mueller investigation.)

Even if the new lines of inquiry don’t result in additional indictments — something unknowable at this point — the new material all but guarantees the Mueller investigation will stretch on for months, if not years, likely provoking Trump to revisit his decision not to fire the special counsel.

And if the president does take that step, many lawmakers and legal veterans say, it will cause a political explosion unlike any the capital has seen in decades. “It will be cataclysmic,” said Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor who lived through the so-called Saturday night massacre when President Richard Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox. “It will create a constitutional crisis.”

In the meantime, the president’s allies are mounting a ferocious attack on Mueller’s team — pointing to tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats by the special counsel’s prosecutors, and to text messages disparaging Trump by FBI agent Peter Strzok, whom Mueller has since moved off the investigation. They are also gunning for top FBI officials, especially deputy director Andrew McCabe, who they believe began a counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign’s links to the Russians last year based in part on the controversial dossier prepared by a former British spy and funded as “opposition research” by the Clinton campaign.

“Everything points to the fact that there was an orchestrated plan to try to prevent Donald Trump from being the next president of the United States,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, in a recent television interview in which he vowed to subpoena senior FBI agents about the origins of the probe.

But for Democrats, the attacks on Mueller and the FBI are a distraction tactic meant to obscure how much has already been uncovered about the Trump team’s contacts with the Russians. Back in January, when the issue first starting getting political traction, the president and his top aides denied that he and his campaign had any connections to Moscow. “I have nothing to do with Russia,” Trump tweeted at the time.

Since then, Mueller’s team and congressional investigators have detailed numerous contacts, meetings and email exchanges between Trump’s campaign and Russian-connected operatives and officials that were unknown to the public when voters went to the polls in November 2016. Jeff Sessions, the Trump campaign’s chief national security adviser, met with the Russian ambassador at a hotel reception and later in his Senate office. Papadopoulos met with a Russia-connected professor and a woman introduced as “Putin’s niece” in an effort to set up a summit between Trump and the Russian president. And most famously, Donald Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort all met in Trump Tower with a delegation of Russians who they believed had derogatory information on Hillary Clinton — including “official documents” — that came straight from the highest levels of the Kremlin.

“Just from what’s been made public, it’s pretty clear the Trump campaign and family were willing and eager to work with the Russians,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., a member of the House Intelligence Committee. “They showed almost no restraint in engaging with the Russians to see what they had to offer on their opponent. It was a ‘whatever it takes’ mentality.”

Whether all this adds up to “collusion” — the sensational charge of active collaboration between the Trump campaign and Moscow that was first laid out in the controversial dossier commissioned by the Clinton campaign — is far from clear. But for Swalwell and quite a few others, it is already clear that the Russian probe has been far more than a witch hunt.

Brad Katsuyma and his cofounders story about building their new stock exchange, IEX, was immortalized in the Michael Lewis book Flash Boys. The exchange, which received regulatory approval to operate a year ago, now trades between $5-7 billion a day in a way that undermines the high-frequency trading that gives some investors a leg-up. IEX is hoping to get into the listing business next.

Katsuyama addressed a crowd of interested financial pros at the Forbes Under 30 Summit, handing out a few nuggets of insight about the investing business and what it means to disrupt a system.

On disruption:

IEX’s whole mission statement is about using its technology and insight to level the playing field for regular investors. That’s why mutual funds, pension funds, and other investors, who gave the firm a lot of support in its bid to become an exchange. Lined up against them are high-frequency traders and the traditional stock exchanges. Which made perfect sense to Katsuyama.
“When you try to level the playing field, people with an advantage will line up against you,” he said.

But getting pushback from traditional players doesn't bother him. In fact, it’s getting that kind of criticism and antagonism that lets him know he’s on the right track.

“When you’re trying to disrupt a system, the system will do everything it can to reject you. If you take that personally, you won’t keep pushing,” he said.

Regular investors' expectations versus Wall Street:

One thing that Katsuyama is passionate about is the fact that the types of trading practices that are standard on Wall Street would shock most people you asked.

"Things that Wall Street thinks is normal, normal people can’t believe," he says.

But it matters, he says, because most people are traders.

"If you have a 401k or a retirement account, you’re trading if you know it or not," he said. "Whether people know they’re being affected, they’re being affected in some way. When an advantage is being bought, it’s being bought at the advantage of people who aren’t trading by the microsecond."

On regulation:

Despite the fact that Katsuyama aims to level the playing field for investors, he's actually pretty enthusiastic for deregulating investment markets - if that deregulation is done well.

"A lot of regulation in place right now hurts the little person," he noted. "The most sophisticated people understand regulations better than anyone else.

"Regulations are where a lot of money is made," Katsuyama continued. "Wall Street has lots of scandals. The response to scandal is regulation. But then people lobby for loopholes so they can exploit them, and then go on to exploit them to such a degree that it becomes the next scandal. But as regulation goes on top of regulation, the only people left inside are the people perpetrating scandals - because only they know how to navigate the regulations!"

That said, Katsuyama warns that it's important that the right regulations are removed, not ones that benefit everyday investors. Which is one reason why IEX does its own lobbying.

"You need to ask, is this good for the individual investor?" he said. "... As regulatory changes happen, want to make sure they benefit the most people."

A previously little-known batch of billionaires and tycoons from around the world suddenly find themselves in an unprecedented position: How do you cash in on a partnership with the president of the United States of America? From the avaricious dealmakers to the abandoned deals, meet the world's 36 mini-Trumps.

The night before Donald J. Trump becomes the 45th president of the United States, his recently opened Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., serves as the capital's de facto inner sanctum. Barricades ring the place; if you don't have a room or a reservation, good luck getting in.

As with any club worth its gilt, secret, concentric rings of exclusivity sit in plain sight, and one starts near the lobby bar, which is lined with bottles of Dom Pérignon and draped with a giant American flag. There, Hary Tanoesoedibjo, Trump's billionaire Indonesian business partner, sits on a plush sofa, texting with Trump's billionaire Dubai partner, Hussain Sajwani. Eventually they meet, and Tanoesoedibjo later posts an Instagram picture of himself, Sajwani and their wives mugging for the camera in the lobby of the Trump International Hotel.

Upstairs, Phil Ruffin, Trump's billionaire partner in Las Vegas, has taken up residence in $18,000-a-night accommodations. The presidential suite, Ruffin says, was reserved for the president-elect. When he later complained about the price to Trump, the president demurred. Ruffin might need that money: His wife, Oleksandra, a former Miss Ukraine, has hit it off with Sajwani's wife over their mutual love of expensive jewelry.
All told, at least 14 from this community of partners, from Turkey to India to the Philippines, attended the inauguration festivities.

"People often talk about partners as not necessarily friends, almost as if they're mutually exclusive. 'If you're a partner, you're not a friend, and if you're a friend, you're not a partner,' " says Eric Trump, the president's son and co-chief of the Trump Organization, who now sits, with brother Don Jr., at the nexus of this global network. "I think that's a bad way of thinking."

All these friends, old and new, mixed with an awesome amount of power and money, do not produce a good recipe for eight hours' sleep. Joo Kim Tiah, a Malaysian heir who would shortly unveil the world's newest Trump tower, in Vancouver, eventually complains: "Do you guys know what time it is?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Tiah, we can't turn the music down," the hotel staffer responds. "This is once in a lifetime."

Indeed it is. Never has an American president taken office with such immense and complicated assets. Nor has one brought along a busload of rich partners who, by dint of previous deals and brand association, stand to reap profits in real time, as the president serves.
Donald Trump's network comprises a group of businessmen who are not the type of people to ignore the fact that they are now tied to the most famous, controversial person in the world. Jamel Toppin
Donald Trump

To better understand this global network, Forbes looked into each of these 36 partners, traveling to five countries to interview more than a dozen of them. In the process we made the following discoveries:

--A potential business partner in Russia says he exchanged messages with the Trump family as recently as January.

--Ruffin and the Trump Organization are considering a Trump casino in Las Vegas, perhaps bolstered by a federally backed high-speed rail connection to Los Angeles--a matter that Ruffin says he's discussed with the president himself.

--Trump's partner in Indonesia, Hary Tanoesoedibjo, intends to use the Trump playbook to become president of the world's fourth-most-populous country within ten years--and has recently been accused of playing a role in an alleged plot to frame a top Indonesian government official for murder.

--Trump's attitude toward Muslims spurred, in part, a family feud among his partners in Turkey.

But perhaps the most interesting tidbit comes in the aggregate. Trump's network extends to at least 19 countries. And these guys (yes, they're all men) share a set of consistent traits, even as property developers go. This group is uniformly rich--seven are members of the Forbes Billionaires list; many more claim centimillionaire status. They reflect their partner--a mélange of bombastic marketing, over-the-top style and political connections.
And all of them are trying to figure out, to various degrees, how to cash in on the 45th president.

President Trump said Hussain Sajwani of Dubai offered him a $2 billion deal just before he entered the White House. The president declined.Philip Cheung
Trump said Hussain Sajwani of Dubai offered him a $2 billion deal just before he entered the White House. The president declined.

ERIC TRUMP MOTIONS to a small TV in the corner of his office in Trump Tower. "If I turn on the TV--let's just see--I will bet you that [my father] will be on the screen in some way, shape or form." He picks up the remote and clicks the power button. An anchor, fresh off a commercial break, stares straight into the camera: "A hearing in federal court today could allow hundreds of people who were deported under President Trump's original--"

Eric smiles as he turns off the set. "I see him up there all day, every day. And I realize how big of a magnitude the decisions he makes and the things he has on his plate."

His father's presence in the business extends beyond his office television. In January, Trump stood in Trump Tower and announced that he was handing over control of his business to his sons as part of an effort to separate it from his presidency--though by putting his assets in a trust, he's really just parking his holdings rather than divesting from them. And because he knows exactly what assets are in the trust, it's anything but blind.

A month later, Eric seems to acknowledge this dilemma. One minute, he promises to never talk about the business with his father while he serves in the White House. Less than two minutes later, he says he will update his father on the company's financials "probably quarterly."

Click to view full coverage of Trump's Global Web of Partners Forbes Staff
Click to view full coverage of Trump's Global Web of Partners

He also claims that the business is following through on its plan to hand over profits at its hotels from foreign dignitaries to the U.S. Treasury, even though the Trump business partner in Las Vegas says there is no such thing happening at their hotel. The pledge was intended to resolve concerns that the president would violate the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, a barely litigated section of America's founding document that prohibits federal officials from receiving "any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state." A group of legal scholars and bipartisan ethics experts have begun the lengthy process of suing Trump. "He has all of the conflicts of interest that he had before," says Richard Painter, the former chief ethics lawyer for George W. Bush, who is one of the lawyers facing off against him in the suit.

Some of Trump's foreign partners are already finding themselves politically popular in their home countries. The Philippines' strongman president, Rodrigo Duterte, appointed Trump partner Jose Antonio to serve as a special envoy to the United States just before Trump's November victory. In India, billionaire Mangal Lodha is developing a 75-story Trump building while serving as a regional vice president of a major political party. Indonesia's Tanoesoedibjo is building up a following as he mulls a presidential run.

"We have incredible relationships with the people we do projects with," Eric Trump says. "You want somebody who trusts you. You want to be able to trust them."

Joo Kim Tiah, the son of a financial tycoon in Malaysia, unveiled a new Trump tower in Vancouver in February.Jamel Toppin
Joo Kim Tiah, the son of a financial tycoon in Malaysia, unveiled a new Trump tower in Vancouver in February.

FOR ALL THE CLUMSINESS around how detached the president is from his business, from a management perspective, little has changed for the foreign partners. Although 85% of Donald Trump's $3.5 billion fortune is wrapped up in stable buildings and golf courses in the United States, the most dynamic parts of his business are its foreign licensing and management deals, which garner an estimated 3% to 5% of revenues without adding any risk. And Eric and Donald Jr. have for years served as deal scouts, logging hundreds of thousands of miles to find and close foreign partnerships. "He gives his sons a lot of autonomy to make the company's decisions," says Paulo Figueiredo Filho, who partnered with the Trumps in Brazil. "They were already conducting 90% of the business, even before the presidency."

The Trump fils took an informal approach to vetting potential partners, relying, like their dad, as much on gut as numbers and analyses. "We're a little bit of an insular company in that the vast majority of this stuff, we just do ourselves," Eric says. "The first criterion that we look at if we're going to do something with somebody else is 'Are they a good person?' ... That's the way it has to work. If you're looking at documents, if you're looking at contracts, something is deeply wrong."
Read More: Full Coverage of FORBES' Billionaires 2017

The brand attracts a certain type of partner--flashy and ambitious. In the Philippines, Jose and Robbie Antonio also designed a beachclub with Paris Hilton. Dubai's Hussain Sajwani has forged a $3.7 billion fortune selling real estate and tossing in extravagant add-ons, including BMWs and Lamborghinis. In Russia, Emin Agalarov works alongside his billionaire father, Aras, on real estate projects, while also moonlighting as a pop star (Trump once made a cameo in one of his music videos).

Robbie Antonio (pictured) and his father Jose are about to open a new Trump tower in Manila. Jason Quibilan
Robbie Antonio (pictured) and his father Jose are about to open a new Trump tower in the Philippines.

These are not the types of businessmen to ignore the fact that they are now tied to the most famous, controversial person in the world. Trump's own organization has shown how to exploit the moment. During the weekend of the inauguration, guests swarmed the Trump hotel in Washington, D.C., paying upwards of $70,000 for a four-night stay. At Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, initiation fees reportedly jumped from $100,000 to $200,000 in January. The property is now worth an estimated $175 million, roughly 15% more than it was six months ago, as its historical significance increases seemingly by the week.

"From a business standpoint, is the presidency beneficial?" Eric Trump says. "You have to look at it both ways. If you're talking about existing assets, they're doing amazing. If you're talking about as a whole, we've made sacrifices in order to allow him--and he's made sacrifices in order to allow him--to take the biggest office in the world."
Read More: Billionaires’ Secrets To Building Wealth

Ditto for his partners. The crew swanning around the inauguration was clearly thrilled, both with the proximity to power and with the opportunities that might afford. Agalarov says he would probably be working on a Trump Tower in Russia if the U.S. real estate mogul hadn't launched his campaign. A different partner in the nation of Georgia says the Trump Organization asked to cancel its deal in order to comply with the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. (It is unclear why the Trump Organization might think its Georgia deal would have caused constitutional issues but not Trump's other active foreign partnerships. A Trump Organization lawyer wouldn't comment.) And just before he entered the White House, Trump said Hussain Sajwani offered him $2 billion for a new deal that the president turned down.

Phil Ruffin owns the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas in a 50-50 joint venture with the president.Tim Pannell for Forbes
Phil Ruffin owns the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas in a 50-50 joint venture with the president.

In Istanbul, though, the Dogan family tried to terminate its agreement with Trump. In Toronto, partners reportedly tried to remove the Trump name from one of their buildings.

President Donald Trump fielded calls from children tracking Santa's whereabouts with the "NORAD Tracks Santa" program on Sunday.

Trump told one child "I always loved building blocks," and another that "your grandma's gonna be good, OK, she's gonna be good."

The NORAD tradition has continued for more than six decades.

President Donald Trump gave an assist to the North American Aerospace Defense Command on Sunday, fielding calls from children eager to know about the whereabouts of Santa Claus.

The agency's annual "NORAD Tracks Santa" program allows children to call on Christmas Eve and inquire about the legendary Christmas character.

Some of the children were patched through to President Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

A pool reporter captured some of Trump's conversations with the children, who did not know they were going to speak to the president.

"What would you like more than anything?" Trump asked a caller named Casper from Virginia. "Building blocks, that’s what I’ve always liked too. I always loved building blocks … Well I predict Santa will bring you building blocks, so many you won’t be able to use them all."
In another call, Trump praised a young caller for his Christmas wish.

"So you want your grandma to get out of the hospital? That’s what your wish is? That’s great," Trump said. "That’s better than asking for some toy or something, that’s much better, right?"

"So your grandma’s gonna be good, OK, she’s gonna be good."

First lady Melania Trump took calls as well, assuring one child that Santa was en route to their home.

"As soon as you go to sleep, Santa will be there," she said.

As a part of the NORAD Tracks Santa program, 1,500 volunteers man a command center in Colorado Springs and field more than 100,000 phone calls and emails from children all over the world. The tradition has continued for more than six decades.

Former first lady Michelle Obama participated in the program each year from 2009 to 2016.

AL UDEID AIR BASE, Qatar — Secretive drones and surveillance jets are boring down on an estimated 3,000 remaining Islamic State fighters, who are hiding in Syria along a short stretch of the Euphrates River and surrounding deserts, as the American military campaign against the extremist group enters its final phase.

But the focus on a 15-square-mile enclave near the Iraqi border is complicated by skies congested with Russian, Syrian and Iranian aircraft as rival forces converge on that last main pocket of Islamic State militants in Syria.

“It drives up the complexity of the problem,” Lt. Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian, the air commander for Syria and Iraq, said of the increasingly risky airspace and near collisions, in an interview at his headquarters at this sprawling air base outside Doha, the capital of this tiny Persian Gulf nation.

With names like Joint Stars and Rivet Joint, the American spy planes are trying to track the last Islamic State fighters and top leaders, eavesdrop on their furtive conversations, and steer attack jets and ground forces to kill or capture them.

The three-year American campaign has largely achieved its goal of reclaiming territory in Syria and Iraq, and the Islamic State’s religious state, or caliphate, appears all but gone. Still, senior military commanders and counterterrorism specialists caution that the organization remains a dangerously resilient force in Iraq and Syria, and a potent global movement through its call to arms to followers on social media.

“As they lose the caliphate’s physical terrain, they’ll adapt guerrilla tactics,” Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the head of United States Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, said in an interview during a regional security conference in Bahrain. “ISIS has been beat up pretty bad. But this is a different kind of organization so we don’t know what they might try to add. They’ve been very adaptive.”
Echoing earlier comments by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, General Votel said American forces will remain in eastern Syria, alongside their Syrian Kurdish and Arab allies, as long as needed to defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or Daesh. “What we don’t want to do is leave a mess,” General Votel said, something “worse than what we found.”

Here at Al Udeid, home to some 10,000 American and other allied troops, commanders are running the air wars not only in Iraq and Syria, but also the campaign in Afghanistan that is expected to increase sharply in the coming months under President Trump’s more aggressive strategy for combating the Taliban, ISIS and other extremist groups there.

For now, though, the bulk of the 300 combat aircraft under General Harrigian’s command are concentrating on the Islamic State. “Job One still is to get to the military defeat of ISIS,” General Harrigian said. “We need to make sure we stay focused on that.”

At the peak of its power three years ago, the Islamic State controlled a swath of territory in Syria and Iraq as big as Kentucky. Now that area has dwindled to half the size of Manhattan, and is shrinking fast.

The hunt for the final Islamic State fighters and operatives draws on an aerial armada of combat aircraft based in Jordan, Turkey and several Persian Gulf countries, as well as the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, newly arrived in the Persian Gulf.

Warplanes are working with Syrian Kurdish and Arab militia on the ground to track down ISIS fighters, some of whom have disappeared in Sunni enclaves along the Euphrates River near the Iraq-Syria border. Others have made a dash across deserts west — through Syrian army lines — and south into Iraq’s Anbar Province to avoid capture, or worse.

The United States has doubled the bounty, to $25 million, for information leading to the death or capture of the elusive leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Russia and the United States back separate ground offensives against the Islamic State in eastern Syria, both of which are advancing in the oil-rich Deir al-Zour Province bordering Iraq.

The assaults are converging on Islamic State holdouts from opposite sides of the Euphrates, which bisects the province. Syrian Army troops backed by Russian air power and Iranian militia are advancing along the western side of the river; Syrian Arab and Kurdish fighters, supported by American warplanes and Special Operations advisers, are pushing along the eastern river banks.

American Reaper drones armed with intelligence collected from U-2 and other spy planes are hunting ISIS fighters, alongside Air Force and Navy fighter-bombers. A-10 attack planes, armed with laser-guided rockets and a 30-millimeter cannon, have provided effective air cover for advancing Syrian Kurdish and Arab militias.

Other American warplanes have dropped 500-pound and 250-pound bombs, often timed to detonate split seconds after impact to minimize civilian casualties, air planners said.

“We’re piling up a lot of airplanes in a very small piece of sky,” said Col. Jeff Hogan, deputy commander of the air operations center at Al Udeid. He said the concentration of unarmed reconnaissance planes, armed fighters and attack planes — all warily eyeing Russian and Syrian jets nearby — were converging over Abu Kamal and Al Qaim, towns just across from each other on the Syrian and Iraqi borders.
At the height of the air campaign in Raqqa, Syria, over the summer, American and allied warplanes dropped nearly 200 bombs and missiles each day on Islamic State targets. Now, the warplanes are stalking their prey more selectively, dropping one-tenth of that over a weekend — and sometimes less, said military officials at Al Udeid.

“We’re focused very hard on not letting ISIS escape,” said Colonel Hogan, 44, from Olympia, Wash. “We’ve got to annihilate them.”

Sometimes the bombs find high-ranking targets. Abu Faysal, a senior Islamic State leader, and his deputy, Abu Qudamah al-Iraqi, were killed in a Dec. 1 airstrike in the Middle Euphrates River region, the Central Command said in a statement.

Others have slipped away, across the border into Turkey or in a mad dash through Syrian army lines and desert to areas south of Damascus, the Syrian capital, Col. Ryan Dillon, a military spokesman in Baghdad, said last week.

“As the caliphate is squeezed, these remaining fighters would bleed off into surrounding countryside and Sunni strongholds,” said Nicholas J. Rasmussen, who last week stepped down as head of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Mr. Rasmussen warned that even with its leaders on the run, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or Daesh, remains a deadly worldwide force still capable of directing, enabling and inspiring terrorist attacks.
“We continue to see key individuals with a focus on external operations trying to advance plotting and planning both locally and abroad,” Mr. Rasmussen, who served as the country’s top counterterrorism official for three years, said in an interview. “Now, more often what we worry about are threats that emerge from individuals acting on their own, not waiting for guidance.”

That would include the suspects who carried out the recent terrorist attacks in Lower Manhattan and the New York City subway. Even as the Islamic State loses ground in Iraq and Syria, its affiliates in Libya, West Africa, the Philippines, and Sinai, remain persistent threats and have even attracted some new fighters, despite suffering setbacks in recent months.

“ISIS became a brand,” Brett McGurk, the special American envoy for the global coalition to defeat the extremist group, said last week in Washington. “This is going to go on for some time.”

WASHINGTON — After a halting start, the Republican-controlled 115th Congress — sometimes in collaboration with President Trump, often despite him — has enacted surprisingly far-reaching conservative achievements in its first year, among them a long-promised rewrite of the tax code, oil drilling in the Arctic and a series of lifetime appointments to the judiciary.

For the new year, Republican leaders in the House have their sights on decades-old programs for the poor that they say are too easily exploited by those who do not need them. Mr. Trump is expected to move forward with a long-promised program to rebuild roads, bridges and other infrastructure.

And Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, is speaking gamely of bipartisanship, especially on legislation to protect young undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, whose Obama-era protection from deportation will run out in March.

On Jan. 20, the latest stopgap spending measure expires, giving lawmakers from both parties another chance to force resolutions on outstanding immigration and health care measures, along with efforts to raise caps on military and domestic spending. And an $81 billion package of relief for hurricane and wildfire victims that passed the House last week awaits Senate action.
“I don’t think most of our Democratic colleagues want to do nothing, and there are areas, I think, where we can get bipartisan agreement,” Mr. McConnell told reporters on Friday.

But all of those plans will play out in an election year that is shaping up as a referendum on Mr. Trump, whose historically low approval ratings could deflate any Republican overtures to Democrats not anxious to boost the president.

“Hope springs eternal, but they’d have to be a real reversal from the way they’ve operated now,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader.

Mr. McConnell declared 2017 a year of “extraordinary accomplishment,” a boast that only weeks ago seemed impossible. But a year marred by public spats between the president and Republican leaders in Congress was capped off with a rewrite of the tax code that cut corporate tax rates, favored business owners and reduced income tax rates, at least temporarily, for most families. The same law opened Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration, a goal sought by Republicans for decades.

It also eliminated tax penalties in the Affordable Care Act intended to force most Americans to have health care. Ending the so-called individual mandate was Republicans’ most direct blow to President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement after a year of misses and ineffectual attacks.
At least for now, the tax bill remains highly unpopular, according to opinion polls. Nevertheless, Mr. Trump trumpeted those achievements on Sunday.

Those achievements came after the quiet confirmation of 12 federal appeals court judges — the most in a single year since the appeals courts were established in 1891. The confirmations will remake the federal judiciary, stocking it with young and very conservative judges who will serve for decades to come. And those came along with the confirmation of Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

“With the new administration coming in, it has been more chaotic and more politicized than I would like to think,” Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said. “But we do have more accomplishments than I think we’re generally given credit for.”