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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department, reacting to Spanish efforts to block a Catalan independence bid, said on Friday that Catalonia is an integral part of Spain and Washington backs Madrid s efforts to keep the country united. Catalonia is an integral part of Spain, and the United States supports the Spanish government s constitutional measures to keep Spain strong and united, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement.

U.S. backs Spanish efforts to block break-away by Catalonia

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump will meet this weekend with Indiana Governor Mike Pence, a Pence spokesman said on Friday, after a report the governor was being vetted as a potential running mate for the Republican presidential candidate. As the Republican candidate for vice president, Pence, a social conservative from a Midwestern state, could help the real estate mogul reassure wary Republicans. The governor, who faces a tight race for re-election to a second term in Indiana, has praised Trump in the past but did not back him in the Republican Party’s nominating race. “Governor Pence has accepted an invitation to spend a little time with Mr. Trump this weekend,” said Marc Lotter, deputy campaign manager of Pence’s re-election effort. “This meeting is very consistent with meetings Mr. Trump is holding with many key party leaders.” Earlier, MSNBC, citing unnamed sources, said Trump is considering Pence, 57, as a potential running mate. The network, which first reported the upcoming meeting, said it was part of the vetting process. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich are also under consideration to be Trump’s running mate, sources told Reuters. “Trump is meeting with a number of Republican leaders in the run-up to the convention in Cleveland, and he has a good relationship with Gov. Pence,” Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller said in an email. Republicans will hold their party convention July 18-21 in Cleveland to formally pick their nominee ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election. Trump, 70, a real estate mogul and former television reality star, was scheduled to speak at rally in Colorado on Friday. He has said he has narrowed down his potential running mates to five or six contenders, according to media reports. On Thursday, Pence told reporters he had not spoken with Trump since before Indiana’s May 3 primary contest, MSNBC said. The governor had earlier pledged to back former Trump rival Ted Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas and Tea Party favorite.

Trump to meet Indiana Governor Mike Pence over the weekend

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two senior Republican U.S. senators criticized Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Sunday for saying that Russia may have the “right approach” on Syria and for what they called his lack of focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan. “His statements about Syria really disturb me. No, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin does not have it right when it comes to Syria,” Senator Lindsey Graham said. In separate television interviews, Graham and Senator John McCain, prominent Republican foreign policy voices, took aim at Tillerson’s remarks last week that Russia may have “got the right approach” and the United States the wrong approach to Syria. Russia has backed President Bashar al-Assad in Syria’s civil war, while the United States supports rebel groups trying to overthrow him. McCain told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that he “sometimes” regretted backing Tillerson’s nomination by Republican President Donald Trump and that his comments on Russia being “right” on Syria made him emotional and upset. “I know what the slaughter has been like. I know that the Russians knew that Bashar Assad was going to use chemical weapons. And to say that maybe we’ve got the wrong approach?” he said. Both senators backed the nomination of Tillerson in January, even while expressing concern about his dealings with Russia when he was chief executive of ExxonMobil. (XOM.N) Graham, who visited Afghanistan and Pakistan last week with McCain, accused Tillerson of being “AWOL” on the two countries and failing to fill key State Department posts. “I am so worried about the State Department,” Graham said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” A State Department official responded to the criticism of Tillerson by saying that a U.S.-Russian-brokered ceasefire for southwest Syria was an example of what the secretary had described as the potential to coordinate with Russia, in spite of unresolved differences, “to produce stability and serve our mutual security interests.” The official, who did not want to be identified, also said the State Department was taking an active role in a review of Afghanistan and Pakistan policy and continued to work with the White House on nominations. Since the exit of most foreign troops in 2014, Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed government has lost ground to a Taliban insurgency in a war that kills and maims thousands of civilians each year.

Two senior Republican senators criticize Tillerson comments on Russia

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr said on Monday that indictments announced by Special Counsel Robert Mueller do not change anything regarding his panel’s investigation of potential Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election. “It doesn’t change anything with our investigation,” Burr said in a statement. “We received documents from and had interest in two of the individuals named, but clearly the criminal charges put them in the Special Counsel’s purview.”

Senate Intelligence chairman: Indictments do not change panel's investigation

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Dominican-born Adriano Espaillat claimed victory on Tuesday in the U.S. congressional race to succeed longtime Representative Charles Rangel, signaling change in the historically black neighborhood of Harlem that has grown increasingly Hispanic. Nine Democrats ran in the primary to select the party’s candidate for November’s general election. In a district where Democratic voters heavily outnumber Republicans, Tuesday’s winner will have a virtual lock on taking Rangel’s vacated seat in the House of Representatives. Espaillat, once an illegal immigrant, would be the first Dominican-American member of Congress. A state senator, Espaillat, held a 3-point lead on state Assemblyman Keith Wright, an African-American who was endorsed by Rangel and benefited from the political machine of a man who held the job for 46 years. With 98 percent of polling places reporting, Espaillat had 36.7 percent of the vote compared with 33.7 percent for Wright, a difference of nearly 1,300 votes. “The voters of the 13th congressional district made history tonight,” Espaillat, 61, said in a victory speech. “The voters ... elected a country boy from Santiago de los Caballeros in the Dominican Republic,” he said, mixing Spanish and English. Wright, however, refused to concede, telling supporters: “No candidate can declare victory tonight, not until every vote is counted.” The district is dominated by Harlem, long a leading cultural center, home to black political and commercial life, and an incubator for jazz. Harlem notably has grown more white with gentrification, but it also has become more Hispanic. Besides Harlem, the district also includes predominantly Latino neighborhoods further to the north where Espaillat has his base. Rangel, 86, a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, won his first congressional election in 1970, and since then Harlem voters routinely returned him to office every two years, even after his 2010 censure for ethics violations. Espaillat tried and failed to unseat Rangel in 2012 and 2014 primary elections. Gentrification emerged as a leading issue in the campaign, as a decade-long influx of affluent people, many of them white, has transformed Harlem’s once-blighted blocks of 19th century brownstone town houses. Change has muted the distinctive black identity of the area, the home of the Apollo Theater, the Cotton Club and other monuments of African-American culture. Once an upscale Dutch neighborhood named after the city near Amsterdam, Harlem drew African-Americans during the northward migration of former slaves in the late 19th Century and again between the world wars. In decades past, affluent New Yorkers avoided venturing too far north, or “uptown.” But soaring property values have turned Harlem into one of New York’s trendiest real estate markets.

Hispanic claims victory in Harlem race to replace Rangel in U.S. Congress

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott signed into law on Sunday a measure to punish “sanctuary cities,” despite a plea from police chiefs of the state’s biggest cities to halt the bill they said would hinder their ability to fight crime. The Texas measure comes as Republican U.S. President Donald Trump has made combating illegal immigration a priority. Texas, which has an estimated 1.5 million illegal immigrants and the longest border with Mexico of any U.S. state, has been at the forefront of the immigration debate. “As governor, my top priority is public safety, and this bill furthers that objective by keeping dangerous criminals off our streets,” Abbott said in a statement. The law will take effect on Sept. 1. The Republican-dominated legislature passed the bill on party-line votes and sent the measure to Abbott earlier this month. It would punish local authorities who do not abide by requests to cooperate with federal immigration agents. Police officials found to be in violation of the law could face removal from office, fines and up to a year in prison if convicted. The measure also allows police to ask people about their immigration status during a lawful detention, even for minor infractions like jaywalking. Any anti-sanctuary city measure may face a tough road after a federal judge in April blocked Trump’s executive order seeking to withhold funds from local authorities that do not use their resources to advance federal immigration laws. Democrats have warned the measure could lead to unconstitutional racial profiling and civil rights groups have promised to fight the Texas measure in court. “This legislation is bad for Texas and will make our communities more dangerous for all,” the police chiefs of cities including Houston and Dallas wrote in an opinion piece in the Dallas Morning News in late April. They said immigration was a federal obligation and the law would stretch already meager resources by turning local police into immigration agents. The police chiefs said the measure would widen a gap between police and immigrant communities, creating a class of silent victims and eliminating the potential for assistance from immigrants in solving or preventing crimes. One of the sponsors of the bill, Republican state Representative Charlie Geren, said in House debate the bill would have no effect on immigrants in the country illegally if they had not committed a crime. He also added there were no sanctuary cities in Texas at present and the measure would prevent any from emerging.

Texas governor signs into law bill to punish 'sanctuary cities'

PENSACOLA, Fla. (Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump vowed on Friday that any Iranian vessels that harass the U.S. Navy in the Gulf would be “shot out of the water” if he is elected on Nov. 8. Trump, at a rally before thousands of supporters in Pensacola, Florida, laid out an aggressive national security policy with a beefed-up U.S. military “so strong that nobody’s going to mess with us.” He talked tough about how he would respond to any Iranian harassment of American ships in the Gulf. A U.S. Navy coastal patrol ship changed course after an Iranian fast-attack craft came within 100 yards (91 meters) of it on Sunday. It was the fourth such incident in the past month. “When they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats and they make gestures at our people that they shouldn’t be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water,” he said. Trump has based his foreign policy beliefs on keeping the United States out of what he called “endless wars” in the Middle East. Visiting a city with a U.S. Navy base and where many military veterans live, Trump said he wants a stronger military to project American power and bolster the United States as the leader of the world. Trump this week laid out a plan to spend many billions of dollars on bolstering the U.S. military, including more ships, planes and troops. “We’re going to put us in a position of leadership of the world again so we can negotiate from a position of great, great strength. But more important than negotiating, we will be secure again,” he said. Trump, who has drawn criticism for his frequent praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin, also mentioned a recent incident in which a Russian fighter jet came within 10 feet (3 meters) of a U.S. Navy surveillance plane over the Black Sea. “Putin laughs, believe me, he laughs at our leaders. Yesterday he had a plane 10 feet away, taunting us, toying with us, just like Iran,” he said.

Trump vows harsh response to Iranian vessels that harass U.S. Navy

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - An international investigation into who is to blame for chemical weapons attacks in Syria will end on Friday after Russia blocked for the third time in a month attempts at the United Nations to renew the inquiry, which Moscow has slammed as flawed. In the past two years, the joint U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) inquiry has found the Syrian government used the nerve agent sarin in an April 4 attack and has also several times used chlorine as a weapon. It blamed Islamic State militants for using mustard gas. Russia vetoed on Friday a Japanese-drafted U.N. Security Council resolution to extend the inquiry for one month. It was an eleventh-hour bid to buy more time for negotiations after Russia blocked U.S.-drafted resolutions on Thursday and Oct. 24 to renew the investigation, which the council created in 2015. Syrian ally Russia has cast 11 vetoes on possible Security Council action on Syria since the country s civil war began in 2011. The Japanese draft received 12 votes in favor on Friday, while China abstained and Bolivia joined Russia to vote no. After Friday s vote, the council moved to closed-door discussions at the request of Sweden s U.N. Ambassador Olof Skoog to ensure we are absolutely convinced we have exhausted every avenue, every effort to try and renew the investigation. After a brief discussion, Italian U.N. Ambassador Sebastiano Cardi, council president for November, told reporters: The council will continue to work in the coming hours and days, constructively, to find a common position. Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the council earlier on Friday that the inquiry could only be extended if fundamental flaws in its work were fixed. He said that for the past two year the investigators had rubber-stamped baseless accusations against Syria. The council voted on a rival Russian-drafted resolution on Thursday to renew the inquiry, but it failed after only garnering four votes in favor. A resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, France, Russia, Britain or China to be adopted. Russia is wasting our time, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the council on Friday. Russia s actions today and in recent weeks have been designed to delay, to distract and ultimately to defeat the effort to secure accountability for chemical weapons attacks in Syria, Haley said. While Russia agreed to the creation of the inquiry two years ago, it has consistently questioned its work and conclusions. The April 4 sarin attack on Khan Sheikhoun that killed dozens of people prompted the United States to launch missiles on a Syrian air base. Haley warned on Thursday: We will do it again if we must. Despite the public deadlock and war of words between the United States and Russia at the United Nations, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Thursday that President Donald Trump believed he could work with Russian President Vladimir Putin on issues like Syria. Syria agreed to destroy its chemical weapons in 2013 under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States.

Syria toxic gas inquiry to end after Russia again blocks U.N. renewal

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq s parliament voted on Tuesday on a formula to halt financial transactions with the Kurdistan region, in retaliation for last week s independence referendum, Iraqi State TV said, without specifying if vote was binding on the government. The formula would preserve the interests of Kurdish citizens, the channel said, hinting that the measures would target the Kurdish leadership. The channel gave no further details.

Iraq parliament votes to halt transactions with Kurdistan: state TV

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India on Monday formed a panel of government officials to investigate cases that figure in the so-called Paradise Papers, a trove of leaked documents about offshore investments of wealthy individuals and institutions. Officials from government bodies and the central bank will carry out and monitor the investigation, the finance ministry said. The leaked documents were obtained by Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and some media outlets. Reuters has not independently verified the documents which relate to the affairs of individuals and institutions ranging from U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth and trading firm Glencore (GLEN.L).

India orders investigation after Paradise Papers leak

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It will be difficult for future U.S. administrations to undo President Barack Obama’s policy of easing trade and travel restrictions with Cuba because of the benefits associated with the measures, a senior U.S. official said on Friday. “We’ve increased the space for this type of travel, people to people exchange, commercial opportunities in ways that are already having a positive impact on the lives of Americans and Cubans,” the official said. “Turning back the clock on that policy would only take away those opportunities.”

U.S. policy changes on Cuba will be tough to undo: official

EDINBURGH/OTTAWA (Reuters) - The standoff between Madrid and supporters of independence in Spain s wealthy Catalan region has stirred separatist feelings far beyond the Spanish borders. Politicians across the globe criticized armed Spanish police who used truncheons and rubber bullets on voters, injuring hundreds in a crackdown on Sunday s secession vote, considered illegal under Spain s 1978 Constitution. Several politicians from regions with their own separatist movements said it was time for politics to resolve the crisis in the euro zone s fourth-biggest economy. Catalan leaders said the result showed its people wanted to leave Spain and it would push ahead with secession. Madrid has ruled out talks until, it said, Catalonia acts within the law. The solution is political. It won t be through repression, it won t be through brutality, and what needs to happen is a political discussion. I think that s reality, Quebec s premier Philippe Couillard told reporters. He drew parallels for a potential solution to his own province, which has held two referendums on whether to separate from Canada and the last of which in 1995 was narrowly defeated. Other politicians called on the European Union, currently facing a huge challenge to its unity in Britain s impending exit from the bloc, to intervene in a deepening crisis that has shaken the euro and Spanish stocks and bonds. They said it was a matter of human rights. Joanna Cherry, a lawmaker from the Scottish National Party, called on the EU to up its game. Her party lost a legally binding referendum on Scottish independence from the UK in 2014 the terms of which were hammered out between both sides. The SNP-led Scottish government is urging talks to let Catalans decide their own future. Spain will maintain that this vote is not legitimate, but the strength of feeling demonstrated cannot be ignored by Spain, it said. Matt Carthy, European lawmaker for Irish nationalists Sinn Fein whose aim is to unite British-run Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic, called the EU a shower of utter hypocrites. The EU has ignored a vicious assault on EU citizens in Catalonia because they had the audacity to vote, he told fellow European lawmakers in an emotionally-charged speech. We are told the EU stands for peace, democracy and human rights. Where were those values on Sunday? Opinion polls conducted before the Catalan vote suggested a minority of around 40 percent of Catalans backed independence, but a majority wanted a referendum to be held. Catalan officials released preliminary referendum results showing 90 percent support in favor of breaking away, but turnout was 43 percent and low among those who favor remaining part of Spain mainly boycotted the ballot. Spain s constitution determines that the majority which counts is Spain as a whole, not Catalonia s 5.3 million voters. Ireland s prime minister Leo Varadkar has said his government respects Spain s constitution but he also described the violence as disproportionate and counterproductive. Spain s deputy prime minister and European Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans have said the use of force was proportionate . Turkey, which condemned last week s referendum for Kurdish independence in northern Iraq, also spoke of the importance of respecting Spanish law and territorial integrity. We believe that Spain ( ) will overcome such challenges and establish a national dialogue environment through a democratic approach, Turkey s foreign ministry said. In Serbia, officials accused the EU of double standards by refusing to recognize Catalonia s vote and at the same time supporting the independence of Serbia s former province Kosovo. Another would-be breakaway group, the Movement for the Autonomy of Slask (RAS) which wants autonomy for Poland s Slask region, said that events in Spain were proof of the temptation to use repression to control political dissent. The European community should work out rules and procedures for solving similar conflicts, it said. Its indifference with respect to the forceful repression of aspirations of Catalan people for self-rule will be interpreted as a sign of weakness and will deepen the confidence crisis that many Europeans feel toward EU institutions.

Catalan standoff touches separatist hearts beyond Spain

JACKSONVILLE, Fla (Reuters) - When U.S. manufacturing employment peaked, Jimmy Carter was president, inflation was 11 percent, and craftsmen at Frontier Contact Lenses made the company’s products one at a time on diamond-tipped lathes. As presidential candidates promise to reclaim jobs lost in the intervening decades, they might want to visit the company now. Bought by Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) in 1981, the fully automated factory allows four workers to produce in a 12-hour shift what more labor-intensive methods produced in a year. The Jacksonville plant and one in Ireland make 4 billion soft contacts a year, and between the robots and lasers and computer algorithms no worker touches the product from the start of the process through final packaging. “I don’t think you could even make 4 billion lenses” using the old method, said David Turner, vice president of research and development for Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, Inc. “You’d need a guy with a lathe in every town.” Since peaking at 19.5 million in 1979, the number of U.S. manufacturing jobs has fallen 37 percent to around 12.2 million as of March, or just over 10 percent of the private sector workforce. (Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/1WqpioK) That may be as good as it gets. Despite the promises made on the campaign trail by Republican frontrunner Donald Trump and other candidates, the next president will find it hard to raise manufacturing’s share of a U.S. labor force that keeps shifting toward services. While much of the jobs debate has centered on trade pacts that Democrats and Republicans have backed over the last quarter century, both successful and struggling companies and sectors offer evidence of long-term trends that neither sharp trade negotiators nor aggressive political leaders can easily reverse. Even critics of trade deals acknowledge that labor intensive industries, such as textiles, which once employed hundreds of thousands of less-skilled workers, are probably gone for good. Technology continues to diminish the share of labor in production and its spread around the world has made other nations - notably China, but also Korea, Brazil, Mexico and former Soviet bloc countries - competitive both as exporters and in their own markets. Investment worldwide is drifting steadily toward services, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, and Americans are spending relatively less of their income on manufactured goods. A Reuters analysis of federal data for 1,267 categories of goods shows that the United States has been running a trade deficit in more than 500 of them since at least 1992 - before the North American Free Trade Agreement came into force or China joined the World Trade Organization, events often cited as turning points for U.S. manufacturing. Since the 2007-2009 recession manufacturing has added about 800,000 jobs, but that has lagged overall job growth. As a result manufacturing’s share of private employment has continued to fall, from about 11 percent since the recession ended. “The move toward a more global market hurts the marginal, low-skilled worker, but it was inevitable and you cannot roll it back,” said Brookings Institution senior fellow Barry Bosworth. At CareerSource Northeast Florida, a job development group, President Bruce Ferguson, Jr. said by necessity he focused on finding a “path” for entry level service sector employees to move up a career ladder, because services are where the growth is. “The raw (manufacturing) numbers don’t look anything like the service sector and they never will,” he said. A majority of 6,500 Americans surveyed in March as part of Reuters/Ipsos 2016 campaign polling acknowledged that free trade brings lower prices, but also saw it as a drag on wages and jobs and an “important” issue for the next president to confront. Tapping such concerns, Trump has promised punitive tariffs to “bring back” jobs for those left behind in the current recovery, particularly the roughly two thirds of Americans without a college degree. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton switched gears as a candidate to oppose a major Pacific trade deal and promises billions in public support for manufacturing. Her Democratic rival Bernie Sanders calls for worker protection against what he considers unfair trade, while Republican Ted Cruz has focused on trimming government red tape. However, playing tough on trade carries some risks and there are limits to what trade talks and tariffs can accomplish. The U.S. steel industry is a case in point. The American Iron and Steel Institute estimates around 12,000 jobs were lost to a recent jump in imports, mainly from China. It reckons those jobs could be recovered with steps, such as the anti-dumping duties imposed by Washington late last year. That pales, however, in comparison with more than 200,000 jobs that the sector has lost since the early 1980s, some because of imports, but some because the amount of labor needed to produce a ton of steel has fallen from 10 hours to less than two. “There has been a short term loss that is definitely attributable to imports, while a longer term trend reflects technological innovation,” said Kevin Dempsey, the institute’s senior vice president. Such dynamic is not limited to old industries like steel. Florida is home to successful manufacturers big and small in a wide range of sectors, which export nearly half of their output - double the national average. Yet, as is the case nationally, the share of jobs available to those with a high school degree has been shrinking since 2000, according to federal data, and wages have been stagnant. Johnson & Johnson Vision Care’s recent approval of a $300 million expansion, which added some 100 jobs, cements the company’s U.S. presence, but also shows how technology and innovation reshape the landscape. The company’s local workforce has risen to around 1,700, but about 60 percent of that are white collar and non-manufacturing jobs - from research positions for PhD scientists to those in sales and a highly automated shipping operation. Florida development officials say the trend is clear: manufacturers keep cutting the labor content of their products and each round of investment tends to drive up the skill levels that workers need. That may benefit the state’s economy, but acts as a reality check for workers who hope that the November 8 presidential vote can reverse decades-old trends. “How do you evaluate a company that says we will spend a lot of money and make the workforce more qualified but not create many jobs?” said Aaron Bowman, senior vice president for business development at JAXUSA Partnership, a regional economic development agency and division of the local chamber of commerce. “Over time you see more projects that bring in fewer jobs but a bigger bang.”

Trump's jobs homecoming a long shot even in manufacturing hot spots

SAN DIEGO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal judge on Thursday said he was leaning toward approving a $25 million settlement of fraud claims against President Donald Trump and his Trump University real estate seminars but deferred a final decision to a later date. At a hearing in San Diego, Judge Gonzalo Curiel noted that, under the class action settlement, former Trump University students were expected to recover 80 percent of the money they spent on courses and mentoring programs. “That is an extraordinary amount,” the judge said, noting the recovery rate in similar lawsuits is usually closer to between 11 and 20 percent. He did not specify when he would rule. A Florida woman objected to the settlement, saying she should have the opportunity to opt out and take Trump to court herself. Patrick Coughlin, a class action lawyer for the students, said the students would actually receive over 90 percent of their money back. Some 3,730 students submitted claim forms in the class action that dates to 2010, according to court papers. The students, who paid as much as $35,000 for the seminars, claimed they were lured by false promises that they would learn Trump’s investing “secrets” from his “hand-picked” instructors. Trump vowed to continue fighting the fraud claims during the presidential election campaign but agreed to the settlement soon after. He has admitted he did not personally select the instructors, but his lawyers have described the claim as mere sales “puffery.” Trump accused Curiel of bias last year based on the Indiana-born judge’s Mexican ancestry. Sherri Simpson, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who paid $19,000, objected to the settlement provision blocking students from opting out of the deal. She has said in court papers she would like to seek full recovery from Trump, plus punitive damages and other relief. Gary Friedman, a lawyer for Simpson, argued in court the notices were defective. Curiel questioned Friedman and said he would consider the objection.

U.S. judge views $25 million Trump University settlement favorably