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Mr. Trump canceled a trip to Peru and Colombia that was scheduled to start Friday to oversee the response to the Syria attack, but as of early evening, had made no comment about Syria on Twitter or in his public appearances on Tuesday. Instead, he left it to a guest, the visiting emir of Qatar, to express determination to stop atrocities in Syria.
“We see the suffering of the Syrian people,” Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani said with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office. “And me and the president, we see eye to eye that this matter has to stop immediately. We cannot tolerate with a war criminal, we cannot tolerate with someone who killed more than half a million of his own people.”
Mr. Trump spent part of the day huddled with John F. Kelly, his chief of staff, John R. Bolton, his new national security adviser, and other officials. But his spokeswoman declined to discuss the deliberations.
“As we’ve said, all options are on the table,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, “but I’m not going to get ahead of anything the president may or may not do in response to what’s taken place in Syria.”
Heavily backed by Russian air support and Iranian ground forces, Syria is in a different league than adversaries in other places where the United States is at war. Unlike the Islamic State in various parts of the Middle East, the Taliban in Afghanistan or the Shabab in Somalia, the Syrian government has extensive air defense and missile systems capable of shooting down foreign planes.
Sending bombers and fighter jets, with American or French pilots, to strike Syrian airfields or other facilities is considered risky because it could deepen the conflict if a pilot was shot down. That is why the Pentagon is looking at the same sort of retaliation used last year when two Navy destroyers unleashed a fusillade of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Al Shayrat airfield that was believed to have been used to launch chemical attacks.
But less than 24 hours after that strike, Syrian warplanes were again taking off from the damaged airfield, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group. Beyond Al Shayrat base, Syria still had numerous others from which it could launch flights. While Mr. Trump’s advisers argued last year that the strike affected Mr. Assad’s calculations, in the end its limited nature ultimately did not thwart the Syrian government’s ability to launch chemical attacks.
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“There’s a tension between the desire to do something bigger than last time and the president’s clear desire not to stay engaged in sustained operations,” said Michèle A. Flournoy, an under secretary of defense under President Barack Obama. “Conceivably, they could design a larger one-off strike or a series of smaller strikes.”
“But at the end of the day, it’s sustained pressure on Assad that’s going to change his calculation about whether to use chemical weapons,” Ms. Flournoy said.
David F. Gordon, policy planning director at the State Department under President George W. Bush, said Mr. Trump was almost certainly looking to punish Mr. Assad more severely while limiting American engagement.
“What they’re probably searching for is: What can we destroy that weakens this guy?” Mr. Gordon said. “He has to do more than he did last time, and I think he does want to disrupt their capabilities. But I think it’s basically still the one shot — it may be in two waves or something, but I don’t think there’s an ongoing response to this.”
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Already, there were indications that Mr. Assad was moving key aircraft to a Russian base near Latakia, a port city on the Mediterranean Sea, and taking pains to secure important weapons systems.
The Pentagon does not have an aircraft carrier in the area at the moment, which focuses attention on the U.S.S. Donald Cook or the U.S.S. Porter, two Navy destroyers already in the Mediterranean. The Donald Cook departed Larnaca, Cyprus, on Monday after completing a scheduled port visit, Navy officials said.
The Donald Cook is one of four Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers that generally serve Europe and are part of a NATO rotation, officials said. The United States can use the Donald Cook or the Porter to launch multiple Tomahawk cruise missiles at sites in Syria similar to last year’s operation.
Since last year’s strikes, the United States Central Command has been updating lists of possible military and government targets in Syria, including aircraft hangars, ammunition depots and command headquarters. Defense officials said one possibility was to render certain Syrian airfields incapable of being used in the future to launch chemical attacks.
Last year’s strike destroyed a number of aircraft and their hangars, the Pentagon said at the time, but did not hinder the base’s ability to launch aircraft for long. The American missiles used in the attack, BGM-109 Tomahawks, have a range of around 1,000 miles and carry a warhead that weighs half a ton.
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The Donald Cook and the Porter are likely loaded with roughly two dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles each. The U.S.S. New York, an amphibious landing ship and part of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, is also nearby. The New York can launch transport helicopters and landing craft loaded with Marines, but sending in ground forces is highly unlikely, officials said.
In coming days, the U.S.S. Harry S. Truman, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is scheduled to head to the region. While part of a regularly scheduled deployment, the Truman will deploy to the Mediterranean with a complement of strike and reconnaissance aircraft and surface warships sailing alongside.
Whether allied forces would participate remained unclear. President Emmanuel Macron of France said Tuesday that the allies were still discussing a plan and would announce a decision “in the coming days.”
“We do not wish for any escalation in the region,” said Mr. Macron, who was hosting Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. “But we simply wish that international law, and in particular international humanitarian law, be respected.”
Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, said that those behind the reported chemical attack in Syria must be “held accountable,” although he did not say whether Saudi Arabia would join any response. “We are discussing with our allies the steps to respond,” Mr. Jubeir told reporters in Paris.
Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, who spoke by telephone with Mr. Trump on Tuesday, also stressed the responsibility of Mr. Assad’s government for the attack “if confirmed.” In a statement summarizing the leaders’ call, the British government said, “They agreed that the international community needed to respond to uphold the worldwide prohibition on the use of chemical weapons.”
In Washington, most lawmakers remained either supportive of military action or noncommittal, but some liberal Democrats objected. Leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus issued a statement calling on the administration to “redouble its efforts to engage our allies and enforce international prohibitions on chemical weapons diplomatically” rather than use force again.
Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, said Mr. Trump needed permission from Congress before action.
“He’s a president, not a king, and Congress needs to quit giving him a blank check to wage war against anyone, anywhere,” Mr. Kaine said. “If he strikes Syria without our approval, what will stop him from bombing North Korea or Iran?”
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ILLINOIS
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) gave birth Monday to a baby girl, the first time a sitting senator has delivered a child and one of just 10 female lawmakers to bear a child while serving in Congress.
Duckworth, 50, and her husband, Bryan Bowlsbey, named their daughter Maile Pearl Bowlsbey after Bowlsbey’s great-aunt. Pearl Bowlsbey Johnson was an Army nurse during World War II. Duckworth is a double amputee who, as an Army helicopter pilot in the Iraq War, was shot down in 2006. The senator said that she and her husband consulted with former senator Daniel K. Akaka of Hawaii, who died last week, about the choice of name, just as they did with the birth of their first daughter, Abigail, four years ago.
Duckworth spent part of her childhood in Hawaii, and after her military service she became active in veterans issues at the state and federal level. Akaka served as chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.
“Bryan, Abigail and I couldn’t be happier to welcome little Maile Pearl as the newest addition to our family, and we’re deeply honored that our good friend Sen. Akaka was able to bless her name for us — his help in naming both of our daughters means he will always be with us,” Duckworth said in a statement Monday.
She said that being a parent of small children while serving in Congress gives her a perspective that is often missing in debates on federal policy about families and child care. “Parenthood isn’t just a women’s issue; it’s an economic issue and one that affects all parents — men and women alike,” she said. “As tough as juggling the demands of motherhood and being a senator can be, I’m hardly alone or unique as a working parent.”
— Paul Kane
MICHIGAN
A deal was announced Monday to get more health screenings and education services to thousands of children who were exposed to lead in Flint’s drinking water.
Families will be encouraged to get children signed up on a registry, which will lead to tests and screenings to determine any unique education needs. The agreement partly settles a federal lawsuit against the state of Michigan, the Flint school district and a regional education agency.
Participation will be voluntary, but more than 25,000 people could be eligible, including some young adults who haven’t graduated from high school, said attorney Greg Little of the Pennsylvania-based Education Law Center, who is leading a legal team that includes the American Civil Liberties Union.
The state will provide $4.1 million to get the program started by the fall, although the money still must be approved by Michigan lawmakers.
Lead-tainted water flowed in Flint for 18 months before a disaster was declared in 2015. The corrosive water wasn’t properly treated before it moved through old plumbing.
There is no safe lead level in the human body. It can cause behavior problems and a lower IQ.
Little said certain education services are guaranteed under federal law once a special need has been identified.
Mona Hanna-Attisha, who helped expose Flint’s lead issue in 2015, said lead can’t directly be linked to every development problem in children.
“But the sooner you identify an issue, the better the outcomes,” she said.
— Associated Press
FLORIDA
A Florida police officer has been reassigned after he appeared to suggest on social media that a school shooting that left 17 people dead was a hoax.
North Miami Beach police announced Monday that Officer Ericson Harrell was placed on administrative duty with pay pending an internal review.
The Sun Sentinel first reported that a March 29 Facebook post under Harrell’s name asked, “What proof do you have?”
The post was referring to the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
Another post under his name on March 22 referred to five of the school’s students featured on a Time magazine cover as “ALL PAID ACTORS/ACTRESSES!!”
— Associated Press
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