Trump targets F-35, but aircraft means jobs in 45 states

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump is vowing to corral the "out of control" cost of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. But congressional Republicans and Democrats, aware of the tens of thousands of jobs the aircraft generates in 45 states, will be wary of any plans by Trump to cut the program.

A Monday morning tweet from Trump targeting the F-35 doesn't explain exactly how he'll save billions of dollars in military purchases while also honoring a campaign vow to rebuild the armed forces. Once Trump is in office, he can propose deep cuts to the F-35 or even elect to cancel the program altogether. But Congress, not the president, controls the government's purse strings and makes the final decisions about the budget.

Built by defense giant Lockheed Martin, the nearly $400 billion price tag for the F-35 makes the program the Pentagon's most expensive weapons acquisition ever. Despite the huge cost, the program has strong bipartisan support in Congress, where lawmakers view the aircraft as essential to national security.

Lockheed Martin's stock tumbled after Trump's tweet, wiping out nearly $2 billion of the company's market value. The company's shares fell $6.42, or 2.5 percent, to close at $253.11 Monday.

The F-35 program made up 20 percent of Lockheed's total 2015 revenue of $46.1 billion. U.S. government orders made up 78 percent of its revenue last year.

"Whoever has this airplane will have the most advanced air force in the world. That's why we're building the F35. That's why it's important to not only the U.S., our partners and our partners like the Israeli Air force to have this airplane," said Jeff Babione, general manager of the F-35 program, at a base in Israel.

Israel and several other U.S. allies are also buying the F-35, expanding the program's international footprint. Defense Secretary Ash Carter visited Israel on Monday as Tel Aviv received the first two next-generation F-35 fighter jets that will help preserve the country's military edge in the volatile Mideast.

The F-35, which uses stealth technology to avoid being detected by radar, is being built in different configurations to be used by the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. The Navy's version, for example, is designed to take off and land on an aircraft carrier.

Current plans call for the United States to buy nearly 2,500 F-35s. Close to $13 billion will be needed annually between 2016 and 2038 to hit that procurement number, according to the Government Accountability Office.

While the F-35 had massive budget overruns early on, the cost has stabilized and even dropped a bit following tough negotiations between the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin, according to Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Trump is unlikely to squeeze more blood out of this rock," Harrison said.

Lockheed said that it has worked to lower the price of the F-35 by 60 percent and expected the aircraft to cost $85 million each in 2019 and 2020. But the company's estimate appears to omit the price of the engine and the cost of development. When those elements are added in, the cost per F-35 in current-year dollars is closer to $138 million, according to Harrison.

Companies from 45 states are involved in the F-35's production, with Texas, Georgia, California, Arizona and Florida playing the leading roles in testing and manufacturing the jet fighter. The company is teamed with more than 1,250 domestic suppliers to produce thousands of components ranging from highly sophisticated radar sensors to parts of the aircraft's fuselage, according to Lockheed Martin.

Overall, the F-35 program is responsible for more than 146,000 U.S. jobs, the company said.

The Lockheed Martin plant where the F-35 is being built is located in Texas Republican Rep. Kay Granger's district. She's vice chair of the defense appropriations subcommittee. Rep. Mac Thornberry, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, represents the district next door to Granger's.

In a statement Monday, Granger hailed the F-35 delivery to Israel, calling the aircraft "what we need to keep our two countries safe in these dangerous times."

Thornberry's committee has supported buying more F-35s than the Obama administration had asked for in its budget request. The F-35 will replace an aging inventory of U.S. aircraft that many lawmakers believe are becoming increasingly unsafe to fly.

Claude Chafin, a committee spokesman, said Thornberry "shares the president-elect's determination to have the Pentagon get weapons in the hands of our troops faster, while being better stewards of the taxpayer dollar."

The tweet on the F-35 marks the second time in a week Trump has blasted U.S. aircraft spending. Last week, he tweeted that costs to build new presidential planes by Boeing Corp. were "out of control" and ended the tweet with "Cancel order!"

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Trump expected to tap Exxon's Tillerson to lead State Dept.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump moved closer to nominating Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as his secretary of State on Saturday, a decision that would bring a business leader with close ties to Russia into the Cabinet.

Trump has privately signaled that he plans to tap Tillerson for the powerful Cabinet post, but had not formally offered him the job as of Saturday evening, according to people who have spoken with Trump and his transition team. Some advisers worry that Tillerson's Russia connections would lead to a contentious Senate confirmation hearing and keep alive questions about Trump's own relationship with Moscow.

Trump and Tillerson met privately in New York on Saturday, their second meeting in a week. The president-elect's transition team said an announcement was not expected over the weekend. 

Tillerson rose to prominence through Exxon's Russian energy business and was awarded Russia's Order of Friendship. He has argued against sanctions the U.S. and European allies imposed on Russia after it annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

In an interview airing Sunday, Trump praised Tillerson as "much more than a businessman."

"He's a world-class player," Trump said on Fox News Sunday. "To me, a great advantage is he knows many of the players and he knows them well. He does massive deals in Russia, he does massive deals, not for himself, for the company."

Trump's own relationship with Russia was an issue through much of the campaign. The CIA has concluded with "high confidence" that Russia sought to influence the U.S. election on behalf of the Republican, an assessment Trump has rejected.

The president-elect's deliberations over his pick to lead the State Department — particularly his consideration of Mitt Romney for the post — have exposed anew the deep rivalries within Trump's team. Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway warned publicly that Trump supporters would feel betrayed if he were to choose a fierce rival for the post, especially given that some loyal allies — most notably former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani — also wanted the job.

Giuliani officially took himself out of consideration for the Cabinet on Friday, though his standing had already been diminished. In addition to Romney, Trump has also been considering Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker and John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Trump's team has discussed bringing Bolton on as a No. 2 to Tillerson.

The people who have spoken to Trump and the transition team about the State Department decision insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the internal deliberations publicly.

Internal divisions were also complicating efforts to set up Trump's senior White House staff. Longtime aides are fearful of being left out of the mix as incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus builds out the West Wing team. Trump had given Priebus wide authority in the decision-making over White House jobs.

But four people involved in the transition said Trump was irritated after learning of his loyalists' frustrations with Priebus in recent press reports. Trump made his displeasure clear to Priebus, who has begun outreach to some of the people who worked on Trump's campaign from the start.

Two of those sources said Trump's irritation contributed to a decision to hold off on announcing his pick to succeed Priebus at the Republican National Committee. Priebus, who is fiercely protective of the RNC, is said to back Michigan GOP chair Ronna Romney McDaniel for the job. She appeared at Trump's rally in Michigan Friday night, but no announcement was made.

McDaniel, who is Mitt Romney's niece, is still likely to get the RNC job, a Trump transition official said.

Priebus was among a handful of Trump advisers who traveled with him to Maryland Saturday for the annual Army-Navy football game. The president-elect was cheered by the crowd as he joined decorated officers in private boxes at the stadium and he pumped his fist in the air a couple of times.

The president-elect flew to Maryland from New York, where he'd met privately with Tillerson. Trump is said to be intrigued by the prospect of putting an international businessman at the State Department. He's already selected others with predominantly private sector experience to his Cabinet, including billionaire investor Wilbur Ross for Commerce.

The 64-year-old Tillerson is a Texas native who joined Exxon straight out of college in 1975 and never left. Exxon also has operations in Indonesia, Azerbaijan, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, and many other countries. Africa and Asia were its leading sources of oil production in 2015, ahead of the U.S. The company says it has a diverse portfolio of oil and gas projects around the world to mitigate risks, including political ones.

Tillerson has held posts in the company's operations in both Yemen and Russia. Success in the latter post required aligning the company's interests with that of the Russian government.

Early in the company's efforts to gain access to Russian market, Tillerson cut a deal with state-owned Rosneft. The neglected post-Soviet company didn't have a tremendous amount to offer, but Exxon partnered with it "to be on the same side of the table," Tillerson said, according to Private Empire, an investigative history of Exxon by reporter Steve Coll.

Tillerson, who became CEO on Jan. 1, 2006, is expected to retire in 2017. Tillerson's heir apparent, Darren Woods, was put in place a year ago, so there would be virtually no additional disruption to Exxon's succession plans if Tillerson were to become secretary of state.

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Nelson Christmas Parade returns to Oak Ridge

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Pence claims mandate for incoming Trump administration

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President-elect Mike Pence claimed a governing mandate for the incoming White House, calling on Republican activists to help the Trump administration pass an ambitiously conservative agenda.

The Indiana governor made little reference to still-simmering national divides in his Tuesday evening remarks before top donors of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that's working closely with Donald Trump's transition effort.

"We truly do believe that our president-elect has secured a mandate for leadership," he told the crowd, gathered in the "presidential ballroom" of Trump's Washington, D.C. hotel. 

Despite winning the electoral vote, Trump is 2.6 million behind Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton in the popular vote. Clinton's lead there has sparked calls from Democrats to abolish the Electoral College.

Just hours after Trump tanked shares of Boeing stock with a tweet questioning the aircraft manufacturer's $4 billion contract to build a new presidential plane, Pence also defended the billionaire businessman against charges that his administration could threaten capitalist ideals. Trump's comments on Boeing along with a recent decision to cut a deal with United Technologies Corp. to keep factory jobs in Indianapolis have raised concerns among some conservatives about the incoming Republican president's economic policies.

As he frequently did during the presidential campaign, Pence attempted to reassure Republicans nervous about Trump's conservative credentials by vouching for his character and principals.

"Make no mistake about it, our president-elect and I believe fervently in the free market," he said.

Pence also laid out some of the top priorities of the Trump administration, vowing to repeal the health care law, expand the military, cut taxes, slash government regulations, appoint conservative justices to the Supreme Court and revoke many of President Barack Obama's executive orders.

"The work is ahead of us not behind us and I want to challenge you to be ready to do that," he told the cheering crowd.

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Trump officially announces Pentagon pick Mattis

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on President-elect Donald Trump (all times EST):

8:20 p.m.

President-elect Donald Trump is officially announcing he will nominate retired Marine Gen. James Mattis to be his Defense Secretary, bringing his pick onstage in North Carolina.

Mattis briefly addressed the crowd in Fayetteville, thanking Trump for the nomination.

Fayetteville is the latest stop in Trump's "thank you" tour to salute his supporters. The venue is near several major military bases, including Fort Bragg.

Trump is also repeating his vow to reinforce the nation's military, believing it will lead to "peace through strength."

He says, "We seek to build up our arms not to seek conflict, but to avoid conflict."

Mattis will require a congressional waiver to accept the post since he has not been out of uniform for the required seven years.

___

7:50 p.m.

Vice President-elect Mike Pence is claiming a governing mandate for the Trump administration, calling on conservative activists to help the incoming White House pass an ambitiously conservative agenda.

Pence made little reference to still-simmering national divides in his address at a Tuesday night event honoring top donors to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that's working closely with Donald Trump's transition effort.

"We truly do believe that our president-elect has secured a mandate for leadership," he said.

Despite winning the electoral vote, Trump is 2.6 million behind Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton in the popular vote. Clinton's lead there has sparked calls from Democrats to abolish the Electoral College.

Pence spoke in the "presidential ballroom" of Trump's Washington, D.C., hotel.

__

5:50 p.m.

Vice President-elect Mike Pence is acknowledging that the son of Donald Trump's incoming national security adviser was helping his father with scheduling and administrative items. But Pence says "that's no longer the case."

Pence says in an interview with CNN that Michael Flynn Jr., the son of retired Gen. Michael Flynn, was helping his father during the transition.

Flynn Jr. sent numerous posts on Twitter about the conspiracy theories of Pizzagate, a fake news story that falsely suggested a Washington, D.C., pizza shop had played a key role in a child sex trafficking ring run by Hillary Clinton.

Pence was pressed repeatedly by host Jake Tapper on whether a security clearance was requested for Flynn Jr. The vice president-elect declined to directly answer the question.

___

4:35 p.m.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich is advising state electors not to vote for him in an anti-Donald Trump protest.

Kasich, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for president, told The Associated Press Tuesday he is not a candidate for president, the election was held and Trump was the winner.

He says the U.S. is divided, with raw emotions on both sides, but an anti-Trump protest vote will only further divide the country.

Kasich says unity is needed now and it's time for all to come together as Americans.

Trump won 306 electoral votes in the Nov. 8 presidential election, easily enough to make him president when the electoral college meets Dec. 19.

Electors are pledged to candidates but allowed to change their votes, though they almost never do.

___

3:25 p.m.

When the Trump administration takes office in January, it's going to be back to the future for Republican senators — on Tuesday afternoons, anyway.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says Vice President-elect Mike Pence will periodically have Tuesday lunches with GOP senators. Senate Republicans have closed-door lunches together on Tuesdays to discuss legislation and politics, usually in the Capitol. Senate Democrats do the same thing.

Vice President Dick Cheney used to lunch frequently with Senate Republicans while he served under President George W. Bush from 2001 through 2008.

McConnell told reporters Tuesday that those lunches with Cheney were a big help to lawmakers. The Kentucky Republican says that gives them "access to the second most important person in the executive branch, on a routine basis."

___

2:35 p.m.

After meeting with Donald Trump on Tuesday, Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son said he would invest $50 billion in the United States and "commit" to creating 50,000 new jobs.

Son said he "came to celebrate" Trump's new job, and said, "The U.S. will become great again."

As the founder and chief executive of Softbank, Son controls the U.S. telecom Sprint. Shares in Sprint spiked after the announcement was made. Son left Trump Tower escorted by the president-elect.

The financial details about the commitment and its time frame are unclear.

But Trump quickly took credit for the commitment, saying on Twitter, "Masa said he would never do this had we (Trump) not won the election!"

__

12: 15 p.m.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel says he has spoken to President-elect Donald Trump by telephone and mentioned Chicago's status as a sanctuary city for immigrants.

Emanuel said Trump called him to talk about the White House transition. Emanuel is a former White House chief of staff to President Barack Obama and also worked in the Clinton administration.

Emanuel spoke about the call at an unrelated event Monday. The mayor said he discussed "a range of things" with Trump. He said he specifically mentioned Chicago being a sanctuary city, which means city employees and police officers can't ask residents about their immigration status.

During the presidential campaign, Trump promised to withhold federal funding for sanctuary cities.

Emanuel didn't offer more details about the call.

__

11:25 a.m.

A spokesman for Donald Trump says the president-elect sold all of his stocks in June. The spokesman did not provide any proof or specify the stocks that were sold.

Aide Jason Miller was responding to a question from reporters about whether Trump had stocks in Boeing. Earlier Tuesday, Trump said the government should cancel its multibillion-dollar order with Boeing for new Air Force One presidential planes.

Miller confirmed to the AP that he was referring to all of Trump's stocks. He said he was not aware if Trump had any stocks in Boeing at the time.

The AP has requested proof of Trump's stock sales, but Trump's transition team has so far not provided any.

___

11 a.m.

President-elect Donald Trump is slated to attend the annual Army-Navy football game this Saturday in Baltimore.

Transition officials said Tuesday that Trump would attend the 117th annual game. He will sit on Navy's side of the field for one half of the game, and on Army's side for the other.

The game between the two military academies has long drawn commander in chiefs. President Barack Obama attended the game in 2011. President George W. Bush also attended the game while in office.

The game is held at a neutral site and in recent years has largely alternated between Baltimore and Philadelphia. Navy has won the game 14 straight years.

__

10:47 a.m.

House Speaker Paul Ryan is defending President-elect Donald Trump's phone conversation with the Taiwanese president, calling it "much ado about nothing."

The Taiwanese president called Trump last Friday.

Ryan told reporters Tuesday that it is "prudent" for Trump to accept congratulatory phone calls. Ryan says he himself spoke to President Tsai Ing-wen two months ago.

Ryan says not taking the call would be "considered a snub."

Taiwan split from China in 1949, but China still considers the island part of its territory and would consider it unacceptable for the U.S. to recognize Taiwan's leader as a head of state.

Trump advisers have made conflicting statements about whether the call was a congratulatory conversation or a signal of a new policy toward China.

__

10:20 a.m.

President-elect Donald Trump has thanked Czech President Milos Zeman for his support, and the two have exchanged invitations to visit.

Zeman's office says Trump appreciated the fact that Zeman "was the only European president" to endorse him during the campaign against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

During the Tuesday phone call, Trump invited Zeman to visit him in the White House in April. Zeman's office says the Czech president returned the invitation by suggesting the president-elect visit Prague — and that invitation was accepted.

Their views of the fight against Islamic terrorism and political and economic cooperation between the U.S. and the Czech Republic were also discussed.

Zeman endorsed Trump with several other European leaders, such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Trump's former wife, Ivana is of Czech origin.

___

9:50 a.m.

Donald Trump wants the government's contract for a new Air Force One canceled.

The president-elect tweeted that the contract with Boeing for a new presidential plane is costing $4 billion.

He later told reporters at Trump Tower that the manufacturer is "doing a little bit of a number" and the cost is "ridiculous."

Trump added that, "We want Boeing to make a lot of money, but not that much money."

The government has contracted with Boeing to build two or more new planes that would go into service around 2024.

___

8:00 a.m.

Vice President-elect Mike Pence says the conspiracy-minded son of a key adviser to Donald Trump has no role in the president-elect's transition. Pence told MSNBC Tuesday that the son of retired Gen. Mike Flynn "has no involvement in the transition whatsoever."

The statement comes after Mike Flynn Jr. sent numerous posts on Twitter about the conspiracy theories of Pizzagate, a fake news story suggesting a Washington, D.C., pizza shop, Comet Ping Pong, plays a key role in a child sex trafficking ring run by Hillary Clinton. Police say the conspiracy theory led to violence Sunday when a North Carolina man fired a rifle in the restaurant as he sought to investigate the accusations. No one was injured, and the man was arrested.

Flynn Jr., who has accompanied his father to presidential transition meetings inside Trump Tower and lists the presidential transition website as part of his Twitter bio, tweeted Sunday night that, "Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story."

___

7:44 a.m.

Donald Trump's choice for defense secretary will be with him at a Tuesday night rally in North Carolina.

That's according to Vice President-elect Mike Pence. The Indiana governor told MSNBC Tuesday that Trump intends to officially announce the nomination of James Mattis to the helm of the Pentagon. The retired general will escort Trump to the rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

The rally is part of Trump's tour of battleground states where voters helped him defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. He'll be in Des Moines, Iowa on Thursday and Grand Rapids, Michigan on Friday.

___

7:14 a.m.

NATO's chief says the alliance and the European Union are moving forward on deepening cooperation, as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump insists European allies start pulling their own military weight.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters before chairing talks between NATO foreign ministers Tuesday that "we have a momentum now."

He said NATO and the EU would endorse 40 proposals for boosting cooperation on cyber security and hybrid threats, operations at sea and helping neighboring countries better defend themselves.

Stoltenberg said "questions have been asked with respect to the strength of the trans-Atlantic bond" and that the best way to respond is to boost NATO-EU cooperation.

Trump lambasted Europeans during the U.S. campaign for not paying their fair share of defense budgets and wants NATO to do more against terrorism.

___

3:33 a.m.

President-elect Donald Trump is taking his show back on the road.

Trump is slated to hold the second stop of this "thank you" tour Tuesday in North Carolina, less than a week after his bombastic return to rallies at an Ohio appearance that felt more like a raucous campaign stop than a traditional speech by a president-to-be.

At that Cincinnati stop, Trump disparaged the media as "dishonest," inspired loud "Build the wall" chants and stunned his own aides with his surprise announcement from the stage that that he was appointing retired Gen. James Mattis as secretary of defense.

The Tuesday appearance in Fayetteville will be followed by rallies in Iowa and Michigan later this week as Trump barnstorms the country to salute his supporters.

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City’s oldest active fire station back in business

Lynchburg Fire Department’s Station 6 at Miller Park is up and running again after about 11 months and $815,000 worth of renovations.

Battalion Chief of Training Jonathan Wright said the station’s fire pole — the last one in Lynchburg — will be getting some use again when firefighters respond to calls starting Wednesday. A total of 18 personnel working different shifts will be working from Station 6.

The station was built in 1912, and firefighters said the last major renovation to the building was done in the late ’80s. Compared to the other seven Lynchburg stations, Wright said Station 6 is the oldest but now has the most contemporary equipment and furnishings.  “Preserving this history, I think, is really important. And it’s an icon in the community,” he said.

As they hauled furniture up to the second floor — which has an entirely new layout from before — firefighters who once worked out of Station 6 recalled when there was no central air system or when they’d haul their own furniture to and from the station.

The newly finished third floor once was a dusty storage area with a number of old firefighting artifacts from the station’s earlier days. Many of those pieces will be part of a future exhibit at the Lynchburg Museum.

Rod Smith worked with the Lynchburg Fire Department for more than 32 years and fought his first fire out of Station 6 years ago. He and Wright took out the antiques, including old nozzles, old rubber coats and gear, a 16-foot wooden roof ladder and other equipment from old fire engines dating back to 1913.

“Why they stored and kept that stuff I don’t know, but I’m glad they did,” he said.

Smith took on his own renovation project with the station’s benches, which have been the dining seats and resting spots for firefighters throughout the years.

“I’ve had a lot a guys say that they’ve caught many a nap on those benches,” he said.

Now the third floor is easily accessible by a new, sturdier flight of concrete steps. Firefighters now have an additional 2,500 square feet of training space and an improved exercise room under the building’s original wooden ceiling.

Scott Glass, Lynchburg’s facilities manager, said upgrades to the building’s mechanical, electric and plumbing systems made up a significant portion of the project. A historical architect by trade, he said renovations of such old buildings usually try to keep as many original elements of the building as possible.

“If you don’t have to mess with it, it’s good not to,” he said.

Firefighters from Station 6 began leaving the station to work from Station 1 on Clay Street and Station 2 on Grace Street in November 2015, and work on the building began in January of this year. Renovation work was estimated to end by September, but the building’s age meant there were a few stumbling blocks along the way, according to Glass. 

“We’re a couple of months behind where we would’ve liked to have been, but I’m not surprised,” he said.

Change orders added to the project’s price tag, bringing it from $795,384 to about $815,000.

Lynchburg Fire Chief Steven Ferguson said Station 6 has been iconic within the department and is unique with its three floors.

“It was important for us to maintain the look of the old station. That station happened to be at one time … one of our busiest stations,” he said, adding it may take back that title.

Other Lynchburg fire stations in league with Station 6 in age no longer are in use. Ferguson said building a new facility would’ve been expensive, and the existing station has been an anchor in the community in an ideal, central location.

“I think with a lot of downtown renovations … we’ve become much more aware of maintaining our historic buildings,” he said. “I think it’s been kind of a pretty neat project.”

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Trump DC hotel attracting foreign envoys and controversy

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump's new luxury hotel in Washington D.C. has been attracting foreign envoys, special interest groups — and a bit of controversy.

One of the latest groups to book the hotel is the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank whose big donors gathered there Tuesday night for a speech by Vice President-elect Mike Pence. Pence spoke on Trump administration priorities.

The Heritage Foundation said its decision to use the hotel was driven by space needs. The Trump International Hotel has come under scrutiny by government ethics experts who worry that foreign governments, special interest groups and others will book rooms and events there to curry favor with the president-elect.

The Washington Post reported last month that about 100 foreign diplomats from around the world used the hotel for a reception just a week after the election. On Dec. 15 an umbrella organization for U.S. Jewish groups is holding a joint Hanukkah party with the Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan there.

Malcolm Hoenlein, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said using the hotel was in no way an attempt to gain favor with the president, and that conflicts of interest are not an issue anyway because Trump isn't president yet.

"Until January 20, he's a private citizen so I don't think the conflict issue comes in," Hoenlein said. He added, "Do you think the president-elect knows who rents rooms for two hours?"

The Azeri embassy did not respond to a phone message requesting comment. The Obama administration criticized Azerbaijan its latest annual report on human rights in April.

A party to be held at the hotel by another foreign embassy is causing a stir.

On Monday, U.S. Rep. James McGovern of Massachusetts sent a letter to Trump urging him not to accept any money from the Bahraini monarchy for use of his hotel. He cited news reports that the Embassy of the Kingdom of Bahrain will hold its National Day celebrations at the hotel on Wednesday.

The embassy did not reply to an email and phone call about the event. In June, a bipartisan group of senators wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry saying they were "deeply alarmed" by the government of Bahrain's suppression of free speech and political dissent.

Trump tweeted last month that he would disclose plans on Dec. 15 to "take me completely out of business operations" without elaborating what that means. He had previously said that he plans to hand over management of his business to three of his adult children. That is far short of what some government ethics experts are pushing him to do: sell his assets, and put the money in a "blind trust" overseen by an independent manager not related to him.

The Trump Organization did not immediately reply for comment about events at its hotel.

Since the election, government ethics experts have called for the Trump Organization to sell its interest in the hotel.

Aside from attempts to use the hotel to influence the president-elect, they worry about a 60-year lease that his company took out with the U.S. to use the government-owned building that houses the hotel. In addition to an annual rental fee, the Trump Organization has to pay a special annual payment based on various measures on how well the hotel is doing.

Any disputes over that payment will be handled by the General Services Administration, the federal agency overseeing the property. The head of the GSA will be appointed by the new president.

The Pence speech on Tuesday was the highlight of the Heritage Foundation's annual gathering for its biggest donors. The event was mostly being held at the Ronald Reagan Center across the street from the hotel.

"The space wasn't large enough and there are security concerns," said Heritage spokesman Wesley Denton. "It's just this one speech."

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Stop NYC from erasing ID card data amid Trump concern

NEW YORK (AP) — Two state politicians sued on Monday to try to stop New York City from destroying personal records related to its immigrant-friendly municipal ID cards, a move the city is considering to prevent the data from becoming a deportation tool for a new Republican federal administration.

The lawsuit comes ahead of a Dec. 31 date for the city to decide whether to delete copies of the passports, birth certificates, educational records and other documents submitted by more than 900,000 IDNYC cardholders. The date was built into the program from its 2014 start, partly out of concern about the possible election of a Republican president such as President-elect Donald Trump, whose campaign promises included deporting millions of people in the U.S. illegally.

Republican state Assembly members Ron Castorina and Nicole Malliotakis, citing state public-records laws, say in their lawsuit that destroying government records "due to the results of a federal election is against the ideals of the United States and has no basis in law."

The lawmakers, both from Staten Island, argue that the information could help to trace cardholders if they commit crimes or obtain municipal IDs under fraudulent identities, perhaps for nefarious purposes.

"As elected officials, we have a duty to protect our constituents from unlawful government action that compromises their safety," Malliotakis said in a statement.

Castorina said he was appalled that the program's authors would "play politics" with the data.

Asked about the lawsuit on Monday, Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio said city officials wouldn't "allow ourselves to be in a situation where those records would be turned over to the federal government."

"The reason people were willing to trust us is: We made very clear that there would never be a situation where it would lead to their deportation, and we're going to keep that pledge," he said.

Officials said no decision had been made on retaining the records, however.

Municipal ID programs began in 2007 in New Haven, Connecticut, and have expanded to about 10 cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco. New York's program is the most ambitious.

Officials encouraged all New Yorkers to sign up, but the program was aimed at those without other forms of ID, including homeless people and, especially, the estimated 500,000 immigrants living illegally in the city. The ID would help them do such everyday things as cash checks or attend parent-teacher conferences at public schools, supporters said.

But with civil liberties advocates worried about authorities requesting the data, city law provided for destroying applicants' identity and residency information at the end of this year if administrators don't move to keep it.

"Protecting it from a possible Republican president" was among reasons for the provision, according to City Councilman Carlos Menchaca, a Democrat.

City officials say applicants' documents are carefully verified to guard against ID fraud, and the city notes IDNYC cards can't be used to get driver's licenses, board planes or cross borders.

"Claims that IDNYC is being used by those intending serious harm is reckless fearmongering," mayoral spokeswoman Rosemary Boeglin said.

Some immigrants have said they remain hopeful the city IDs won't backfire.

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