31/24
REGION/3A
HERMISTON
CHAMBER
OPENS NEW
OFFICE
Trump
touts big
‘nuclear
button’
BUCKS
WIN SIXTH
STRAIGHT
SPORTS/1B
NATION/2A
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 3, 2018
142nd Year, No. 55
One dollar
WINNER OF THE 2017 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
Immigration
plans may
include
citizenship
Will discuss potential
DACA deal this week
By ELLIOT SPAGAT
Associated Press
“When I fi rst started, paper maps (18 inches by two feet) came out of a fax machine.
We posted them on the wall and stood back.”
SAN DIEGO — The U.S. Homeland
Security secretary said Tuesday the White
House would consider immigration legis-
lation that includes a pathway to citizen-
ship for hundreds of thousands of young
people, but she emphasized it wasn’t an
endorsement.
Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Presi-
dent Donald Trump would consider any
legislation Congress passes and noted
that some lawmakers want to include a
pathway to citizenship for about 800,000
people who have been temporarily
shielded from deportation.
Asked whether the president would
support citizenship, she said, “I think
he’s open to hearing about the different
possibilities and what it means but, to my
knowledge, there certainly hasn’t been
any decision from the White House.”
In September, Trump said he wouldn’t
consider citizenship for DACA recipients
— an Obama-era program that Trump
said last year he was ending.
He gave Congress until March to
deliver a legislative fi x.
The secretary said she was hopeful the
White House and Congress can reach a
deal that includes border and immigration
enforcement measures. She said building
a wall along the Mexico border was “fi rst
and foremost,” and the administration
wanted to end “loopholes” on issues
that include handling asylum claims and
local police working with immigration
authorities.
“I remain optimistic. You have to be,”
Nielsen said. “It’s very important. The
American people have said they wanted
it. I think we should fi nd common ground.
The devil’s in the detail.”
Nielsen said she and other senior
administration offi cials would discuss a
potential deal with members of Congress
this week, and the president would take it
up in a meeting Wednesday with congres-
sional leaders on legislative priorities for
2018.
The secretary spoke hours after the
president blasted Democrats for “doing
nothing” to protect DACA recipients.
Trump tweeted that “DACA activists and
Hispanics will go hard against Dems,
will start ‘falling in love’ with Republi-
cans and their President! We are about
RESULTS.”
Nielsen, who visited prototypes of
Trump’s proposed border wall in San
Diego, said the president would request
$1.6 billion next year for the barrier, in
addition to $1.6 billion he is seeking this
year to build or replace 74 miles (118
kilometers) in California and Texas.
“It’s all a down payment,” she said.
— Dennis Hull, National Weather Service forecaster
See IMMIGRATION/2A
Staff photo by Kathy Aney
Long-time National Weather Service forecaster Dennis Hull poses in front of the radar dome near the Pendleton NWS offi ce.
Hull’s last day is Wednesday.
The weather man
Dennis Hull retiring after 39 years with National Weather Service
By KATHY ANEY
East Oregonian
Veteran weather forecaster
Dennis Hull predicts sunny days
ahead.
The prediction, defying
the gray inversion clearly in
view outside our windows, is a
metaphor for his retirement that
begins Thursday. Hull retires
after 39 years with the National
Weather Service, almost 20 of
them in Pendleton.
Much has changed over the
decades. On Tuesday, Hull took a
lingering look around the center’s
NASA-esque control room.
Several fellow forecasters sat
in the cool glow of three or four
computer monitors apiece, scru-
tinizing weather data in a variety
of forms, examining maps that
overlaid one another, zooming
in and out and gazing at looping
satellite images.
A low-tech pair of binoculars
sat on a window sill. Outside was
Staff photo by Kathy Aney
A meteorologist monitors several screens of weather data
Tuesday at the National Weather Service offi ce in Pendleton.
a panoramic view of the Blue
Mountains. Once in a while,
Hull said, someone will get up
from their desk and peer through
the binoculars at lightning or
gathering clouds or a bluebird
sky. Inevitably, a coworker will
jokingly yell, “That’s cheating.”
This data-rich environment
contrasts Hull’s early days on
the job in Montana, Mississippi,
Utah and Kansas.
“When I fi rst started, paper
maps (18 inches by two feet)
came out of a fax machine,” Hull
said. “We posted them on the
wall and stood back.”
Meteorologists typed their
forecasts onto punch tape and
sent them out on the teletype.
Technology steadily evolved
during Hull’s career. The advent
of Doppler radar helped fore-
casters more closely pinpoint
storm activity by calculating
motion and detecting the intensity
of precipitation. A deadly tornado
that swept into Mississippi when
he worked as a forecaster there
still haunts him, because Doppler
weather radar would likely have
given people time to take precau-
tions.
“The storm killed a dozen
people about two miles from
where I lived,” Hull recalled.
“It was rocking and rolling.
We drove around later and saw
See WEATHER/8A
Walden navigates newfound power, Trump backlash
Oregon’s only Republican
in Congress charts course
By JEFF MAPES
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
In this May 2017 fi le photo, U.S. Rep. Greg Walden talks at a town hall
meeting in Baker City.
Oregon Rep. Greg Walden,
R-Hood River, is an increasingly
powerful fi gure in Washington,
D.C. — and he is sticking more
closely than ever to his party in the
tumultuous fi rst year of the Trump
presidency.
Just as Donald Trump rose to the
presidency, Walden was taking over
the chairmanship of one of the most
powerful committees in Congress.
The reach of the House Energy &
Commerce committee is huge —
ranging from health care to the internet
to the electrical grid. Colleagues treat
Walden with a certain deference and
lobbyists fl ock to his fundraisers.
But Oregon’s only Republican
congressman is also under a critical
spotlight more than ever before. He
was besieged at town halls back home
by voters upset with his high-profi le
attempts to repeal the Affordable Care
Act and for his support of the Trump
administration.
Life in the spotlight
“He’s getting his ass kicked out
there,” said Walden’s best friend in
the House, Texas Republican Rep.
Pete Sessions, of the raucous town
halls. “He’s got the gavel and he’s
got a lot of things but we are fi nding
that the perception of Republicans is
based on the president’s viewpoint.”
The diffi culty of working with
Trump became clear earlier this year
when Walden shepherded the GOP
See WALDEN/8A