Golf, tweets in Trump's weekend

JUPITER, Fla. -- President Donald Trump spent Saturday morning golfing with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as he hosts his first foreign leader at his winter estate in Palm Beach, Fla.

While in Florida, Trump sent out a series of tweets regarding policy issues like his promised construction of a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico.

Trump's weekend of meetings, dinners and golf with Abe comes after a rocky diplomatic start that included contentious phone calls with the leaders of Mexico and Australia.

The president and first lady Melania Trump hosted a delegation dinner with Abe and his wife Saturday night at his Mar-a-Lago estate. At the dinner, Trump said the Abe visit had been "very, very good" and that he and the Japanese leader "got to know each other very, very well" over their two days together.

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Trump and Abe, both frequent golfers, left Mar-a-Lago early Saturday and headed north to one of Trump's golf courses in Jupiter, Fla., where they were joined by professional golfer Ernie Els.

Reporters and photographers from both countries, who were held in a room with blacked-out windows, did not catch a glimpse of the pair as they played. But Trump later posted a photo on social media of them giving each other a high-five on the golf course and tweeted, "Having a great time hosting Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the United States!"

The pair also paid a visit to another nearby Trump property: the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.

Abe had joked at a joint news conference Friday at the White House that he was looking forward to playing golf with Trump, even though, he claimed, he's not nearly as good on the links.

He said he planned to use the time to discuss the future of the world, the Pacific region and U.S.-Japanese relations.

In a sign of unity, neither Japanese nor White House officials volunteered the pair's final score.

The White House issued a statement after the pair returned saying the day was "both relaxing and productive" and that the two discussed "a wide range of subjects."

As their husbands golfed, Melania Trump and Akie Abe toured the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in nearby Delray Beach. It was Melania Trump's first solo event as first lady. The women also had lunch together at Mar-a-Lago.

The two couples touched down Friday afternoon in Florida and headed straight to Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club, where they enjoyed a late dinner at its crowded patio restaurant. Paying members and club guests took in the scene and mingled with Trump and Abe into the night.

Trump also was expected to tend to other business while in Florida: calling Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos as he continues conversations with foreign leaders.

Trump and Abe appeared to have hit it off early, despite Trump's sometimes hostile rhetoric toward Japan on the campaign trail. Abe was the only world leader to meet with Trump before his inauguration, and Trump welcomed Abe to the White House with a hug.

Trump and Abe have plenty to discuss, including the defense treaty between the nations and their trade relations. One of Trump's first actions as president was to withdraw the U.S. from a 12-nation, trans-Pacific trade agreement that was negotiated by President Barack Obama's administration and strongly supported by Tokyo.

In other foreign-relations news, the Guardian newspaper reported Saturday that Trump's state visit to the U.K. will be postponed until sometime between late August and the end of September, and most likely occur when Parliament is in summer recess. The paper cited unidentified U.K. government officials.

The report came after House of Commons Speaker John Bercow said Monday that he would veto any attempt to invite Trump to address Parliament. Bercow now faces a no-confidence motion.

Bercow wasn't immediately available for comment when contacted by email regarding the article in the Guardian. The speaker must be politically impartial, and once elected to the role is required to resign from his political party.

'price will come down'

Also Saturday, Trump reiterated his promise to build a wall on the border with Mexico, vowing in a series of tweets to negotiate the costs of constructing it "way down," after a government analysis estimated the price at $21.6 billion.

The Department of Homeland Security said last week that the wall would cost $21.6 billion and take 3½ years to construct. Reacting to the estimate, Trump tweeted: "I am reading that the great border wall will cost more than the government originally thought, but I have not gotten involved in the...design or negotiations yet. When I do, just like with the F-35 FighterJet or the Air Force One Program, price will come way down!"

During his transition period before being sworn in as president, Trump spoke with executives of Lockheed Martin and Boeing to try to negotiate down the costs of the government's contracts to build new F-35 fighter jets and a modern Air Force One jumbo jet. After the discussions, both companies, highly dependent on government defense contracts, announced efforts to reduce costs on the programs.

The border wall is a signature campaign promise of Trump's. He said on the campaign trail that it would cost about $8 billion.

In another Saturday tweet, Trump said the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision to halt his executive order suspending the nation's refugee program and barring citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries had allowed a flood of refugees to pour into the country.

"Our legal system is broken!" Trump wrote in a Twitter post. "So dangerous!" the president added.

Trump cited a report in The Washington Times that asserted that 77 percent of the refugees who entered the United States since Judge James Robart of U.S. District Court in Seattle blocked the order on Feb. 3 had been from the seven "suspect countries."

While the administration maintains that all options are on the table -- including a Supreme Court appeal -- Trump said Friday that he was considering signing a "brand new order" as early as Monday.

Portions of Trump's tweets Saturday were sent in all-caps.

transgender rights

Separately, the Trump administration signaled Friday that it was changing course on the previous administration's efforts to expand transgender rights, submitting a legal brief withdrawing the government's objections to an injunction that had blocked guidance requiring that transgender students be allowed to use restrooms that match their gender identity.

The move by the Justice Department does not immediately change the situation for the nation's public schools, as a federal judge already had put a temporary hold on the guidance as a lawsuit by a dozen states moved through the courts.

But it signals that the Trump administration will take a different approach on transgender rights, which many conservatives thought went too far under Obama.

And how the administration decides to proceed on the particular issue of transgender students and restroom use would affect several other cases in which students are challenging their school districts' policies, including one involving Virginia student Gavin Grimm, which is scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court later this spring.

The brief, filed in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, came as part of a long-running suit by 12 states opposed to Education Department guidance issued last year directing the nation's public schools to allow transgender students to use the restrooms of their choice. The Obama administration took the position that barring the students from restrooms that matched their gender identity was a violation of Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in public schools.

U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor had sided with the states and issued a temporary injunction blocking the guidance last year. The Obama administration appealed the decision and asked that the injunction apply only to those 12 states. Oral arguments in the case were scheduled for Tuesday in Austin.

But the Justice Department and the suing states said in a joint brief Friday that they were withdrawing that request. The brief asked the court to cancel arguments, explaining that "the parties are currently considering how best to proceed in this appeal."

The request was granted immediately, according to Equality Case Files, a nonprofit that provides legal updates on cases related to gay and transgender rights.

The decision drew immediate criticism from gay- and transgender-rights groups.

"Transgender students are entitled to the full protection of the United States Constitution and our federal nondiscrimination laws," Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement. "It is heartbreaking and wrong that the agency tasked with enforcing civil rights laws would instead work to subvert them for political interests."

Information for this article was contributed by Jill Colvin of The Associated Press; by Sandhya Somashekha, Moriah Balingit and Philip Rucker of The Washington Post; by Julie Hirschfeld Davis of The New York Times; and by Stefania Spezzati of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 02/12/2017