Friday, May 5, 2017
“Hey, I’m president! I’m president!
Can you believe it?”
— Donald Trump, President of the United States
AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais
President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump ap-
plaud as they attend a dinner with Australian Prime
Minister Malcolm Turnbull aboard the USS Intrepid, a
decommissioned aircraft carrier docked in the Hudson
River in New York.
Trump returns
to NYC fresh off
health vote win
NEW YORK (AP) —
Donald Trump turned his first
trip home as president into
a victory lap on Thursday,
returning to the city that has
largely opposed him while
celebrating House passage of
legislation undoing much his
predecessor’s health law.
Trump only received 18
percent of the vote in New
York in November’s presiden-
tial election. Multiple modest
protests were held across the
city during his visit, some
visible from the presidential
motorcade as it roared past
Wall Street and Manhattan’s
famed skyscrapers.
His visit was shorter than
first expected so that he could
commemorate the House vote
with a Rose Garden event,
the White House eager for
the appearance of a victory
after an uneven first 100
days in office. Slated to be in
Manhattan only a few hours,
Trump was not expected
to visit his home at Trump
Tower and pushed back
his first-time meeting with
Australian Prime Minister
Malcolm Turnbull by several
hours.
“We have a fantastic rela-
tionship, but I love Australia,”
said Trump after a brief
meeting with Turnbull. He
then downplayed the conten-
tious call he had with Turn-
bull in January, dismissing
the reports of tension as “fake
news.”
The leaders were slated
to speak aboard the USS
Intrepid, a decommissioned
aircraft carrier, to commem-
orate the 75th anniversary
of a World War II battle that
reinforced the ties between
the U.S. and Australia. Both
countries’ warships and
fighter planes engaged the
Japanese from May 4-8,
1942, forcing the Japanese
navy to retreat for the first
time in the war.
His triumphant appear-
ance aboard the World War
II carrier was scheduled just
hours after jubilant Repub-
licans bused in from Capitol
Hill to the White House for
the victory lap, an unusually
early celebration for the
passage of a bill through just
one house of Congress. The
legislation, which was met
with sharp Democratic oppo-
sition, squeaked through the
House and faces an uncertain
fate in the Senate.
Trump said he was “so
confident” that the measure
would pass the Senate and
vowed that premiums and
deductibles would come
down.
“People are suffering so
badly with the ravages of
Obamacare,” Trump said.
At one point the president
turned to the representatives
behind him and, suggesting
the victory was especially
impressive for a novice poli-
tician, exclaimed: “Hey, I’m
president! I’m president! Can
you believe it?!”
House leaders came
through with the votes to
give Trump a major political
win more than a month after
Republicans’ first attempt to
pass a health care bill went
down in a humiliating defeat.
Known as the American
Healthcare Act, the bill has
yet to receive a price tag from
the nonpartisan Congressional
Budget Office and is opposed
by a number of physician and
East Oregonian
Page 9A
NATION
Hear the rustle of grass? Not so much now in parks
WASHINGTON (AP)
— The call of the wild is
getting harder to hear.
Peaceful,
natural
sounds—
bird
songs,
rushing rivers and rustling
grass — are sometimes
being drowned out by noise
from people in many of
America’s protected parks
and wilderness areas, a new
study finds.
Scientists
measured
sound levels at 492 places
— from city parks to remote
federal wilderness. They
calculated that in nearly
two-thirds of the Lower
48’s parks, the noise can at
times be twice the natural
background level because
of airplanes, cars, logging,
mining and oil and gas
drilling.
That increase can harm
wildlife, making it harder for
them to find food or mates,
and make it harder for
people to hear those natural
sounds, the researchers said.
National Park Service via AP
A National Park Service
staffer sets up an acoustic
recording station in the
temperate
old-growth
Hoh rainforest of Olympic
National Park, Wash.
Colorado State University
biologist George Wittemyer
said people hear only half
the sounds that they would
in natural silence.
“They’re being drowned
out,” said Wittemyer, a
co-author of the research.
In about 1 in five public
lands, there’s a tenfold
increase in noise pollution,
according to the study in
Thursday’s journal Science .
“It’s something that’s
sort of happening slowly,”
Wittemyer said.
Except for city parks,
though, the researchers are
not talking about sound
levels that people would
consider unusually loud.
Even the tenfold increases
they write about are often
the equivalent of changing
from the quiet of a rural area
to a still pretty silent library.
But that difference masks
a lot of sounds that are
crucial, especially to birds
seeking mates and animals
trying to hunt or avoid being
hunted, Wittemyer said. And
it does make a difference for
peace of mind for people, he
said.
“Being able to hear the
birds, the waterfalls, the
animals running through the
grasslands ... the wind going
through the grass,” Witte-
myer said. “Those are really
valuable and important
sounds for humans to hear
and help in their rejuvenation
and their self-reflection.”
For study lead author
Rachel Buxton, a Colo-
rado State conservation
biology researcher, it can
be personal. She points to a
Thanksgiving weekend hike
last year with her husband in
the La Garita Wilderness in
southern Colorado.
“We went to escape
the crowds. We went to be
totally isolated and have a
real wilderness experience,”
Buxton recalled. “As we’re
hiking, aircraft goes over-
head. You’re walking along
and you can hear the jet
coming for ages.”
But there are still some
places where you can get
away from it all, including
Great Sand Dunes National
Park in Colorado.
Protesters line
up for a chance
to boo
NEW YORK (AP) —
A few hundred protesters
lined up Thursday along
Manhattan’s West Side
Highway to jeer Donald
Trump’s motorcade as
he made his first trip
home to New York since
becoming president of
the United States.
Trump sped by just
before 7 p.m. on his
way to attend a dinner
with Australian Prime
Minister Malcolm
Turnbull aboard the USS
Intrepid, a decommis-
sioned aircraft carrier that
is now a museum.
The crowd booed and
chanted “New York hates
you!” over drums and
tambourines.
Some Trump
supporters were also on
hand to cheer him on.
health care groups, including
the
American
Medical
Association, amid concerns
it could strip millions of
Americans of their coverage,
including those with pre-ex-
isting medical conditions.
Trump and Turnbull were
expected to discuss North
Korea’s missile testing and
security and economic issues,
as well as Turnbull’s deal with
Obama for the United States
to resettle up to 1,250 mostly
Muslim refugees from Africa,
the Mideast and Asia who are
housed in immigration camps
on the Pacific island nations
of Nauru and Papua New
Guinea.
The agreement was a
source of friction when
Trump and Turnbull spoke by
telephone shortly after Trump
took office Jan. 20. The
conversation made headlines,
and Trump later tweeted
about the “dumb deal.” But
Vice President Mike Pence
assured Turnbull during a
visit to Australia last month
that the Trump administration
will honor the deal, but “that
doesn’t mean we admire the
agreement.”
Manhattan is where
Trump made a name by
transforming himself from
real-estate developer into a
celebrity businessman and
now president. During the
campaign, Trump would fly
thousands of miles back to
New York to sleep in his own
bed, leaving the impression
that he would make frequent
trips home after he became
president. But he hasn’t set
foot in the city since leaving
on Jan. 19 for Washington
to be inaugurated into office
the following day. But now
deeply unpopular in his
hometown, Trump said in an
interview last week that he so
far has avoided returning to
the city because the trips are
expensive for the government
and would inconvenience
New Yorkers.
Trump’s wife, Melania,
and son Barron live at Trump
Tower most of the time while
the 11-year-old finishes the
school year.
The president was not
expected to spend the night
there, instead slated to sleep
at his golf club an hour away
in Bedminister, New Jersey.
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