Marc Anthony to Trump: Shut the f— up about NFL, worry about Puerto Rico

Marc Anthony has some scathing words for Donald Trump, pleading with the president to forget about football and focus instead on hurricane-hammered Puerto Rico.

Anthony tweeted on Monday night: “Mr. President shut the f— up about NFL. Do something about our people in need in #PuertoRico. We are American Citizens too.”

The 49-year-old singer was born in New York, but his parents are from Puerto Rico, which was hit hard by Hurricane Maria.

Trump did tweet about Puerto Rico later Monday night, but dwelled on the island’s “billions of dollars” of debt to “Wall Street and the banks.”

Anthony is one of many entertainers with Puerto Rican roots trying to summon support.

“Hamilton” star Lin-Manuel tweeted that he’s “texting every famous Puerto Rican singer I know and several I don’t.”

Puerto Rico’s nonvoting representative in the U.S. Congress said Sunday that Hurricane Maria’s destruction has set the island back decades, even as authorities worked to assess the extent of the damage.

“The devastation in Puerto Rico has set us back nearly 20 to 30 years,” said Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner Jenniffer Gonzalez. “I can’t deny that the Puerto Rico of now is different from that of a week ago. The destruction of properties, of flattened structures, of families without homes, of debris everywhere. The island’s greenery is gone.”

Puerto Rico’s National Guard diverted an oil tanker that broke free and threatened to crash into the southeast coast, said Gov. Ricardo Rossello, and officials still had not had communication with nine of 78 municipalities.

“This is a major disaster,” he said. “We’ve had extensive damage. This is going to take some time.”

The death toll from Maria in Puerto Rico was at least 10, including two police officers who drowned in floodwaters in the western town of Aguada.

Buck Sexton: Trump is pushing Kim Jong Un into a corner. Who knows what happens next?

President Trump is forcing North Korea’s hand.  With his executive order imposing new sanctions on entities that do business with the rogue nation, the president has sent a clear message to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un that the United States will not be trifled with.

America is now in the midst of a nuclear standoff with the highest possible stakes.

The White House has cast aside the ineffectual “strategic patience” doctrine of the Obama era, and has replaced it with a demand for “complete denuclearization” of North Korea.

Kim has responded with even more belligerent rhetoric, including calling our commander-in-chief a “mentally deranged dotard” in an official statement.

Much more troubling than the personal insult is Kim’s threat to detonate a thermonuclear device over the Pacific Ocean. Given recent North Korean provocations, including missiles fired over our close ally Japan, the threat of such a major escalation has to be taken seriously.

Nobody knows with any certainty how the Kim regime will respond. A government that uses mass hunger as a mechanism of control, that executes its citizens for the crime of carrying a Bible, and that maintains a vast modern-day gulag is thoroughly evil.

And given its absence of moral boundaries, the North Korean government is also unpredictable. Kim certainly doesn’t care how much his people suffer, and would likely be willing to sacrifice huge numbers of them in a military conflict of his choosing.

Many major wars throughout history have started under what appeared to be unthinkable, irrational circumstances. While it should not be overstated, North Korea certainly poses such a risk.

The Kim regime is a cult of personality presiding over a hyper-militaristic state steeped in both a siege mentality and promises of a glorious future victory. Its vast parades of troops and missiles, alongside its paranoid and aggressive propaganda, are not just for show.

Given this mentality and history of the Kim regime, catastrophic miscalculation is a dark specter that hangs above the Korean peninsula and it is growing.

This nuclear brinksmanship will not soon be resolved. For the Kim regime, weapons of mass destruction are more than just a bargaining chip. The very legitimacy of the Kim dynasty is built on its ability to defy international pressure and eventually reunify the Korean peninsula through force.

From Kim’s perspective, abandoning the very weapons that may neutralize the military advantage of South Korea’s allies would be irrational.

North Korea could live without nuclear weapons. But if Kim thinks he can’t, it won’t matter how much outside pressure is placed on his pariah state. His overriding motivation will be defiance, and his hostility to the United States and its allies will reach new heights.

This is why President Trump’s approach is fraught with risk. By disrupting the status quo on North Korea relations, he has accelerated the timetable. This could result in a rash response from the dangerous, vicious dictator who rules North Korea.

But after decades of delay by other administrations, President Trump is finally confronting the monster above the 38th parallel.  If he is successful and North Korea begins to denuclearize, it will be the most important diplomatic breakthrough of a generation, perhaps a lifetime.

But it’s very early, and we are in uncharted territory. President Trump is pushing Kim Jong Un into a corner. How the tyrant of Pyonyang responds will determine the fate of millions.

Fires rage through West; California governor declares state of emergency

Hundreds of people in California evacuated from their homes this weekend to escape a monster inferno being described as the largest in Los Angeles’ history.

California Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency Sunday, the Los Angeles Times reported. Brown’s declaration, which allows for state and federal assistance to be provided to Los Angeles County quickly, came after Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti issued a similar declaration.

Firefighters battled flames that chewed through nearly 8 square miles of brush-covered mountains as authorities issued mandatory or voluntary evacuation orders for more than 700 homes in Los Angeles, Burbank and Glendale.

The wildfires, just north of downtown L.A., had grown Saturday to the largest in city history, Garcetti said. Three structures had burned, at least two of them homes, but fire officials were confident they could extinguish the fire unless winds picked up.

Wildfires also entered a 2,700-year-old grove of giant sequoia trees near Yosemite National Park and have driven people from their homes in Washington State, Oregon, Montana and other areas struggling with a weeklong heat wave that’s gripped Western states.

San Francisco, meanwhile, set a heat record for the day, hitting 94 degrees before noon. By mid-afternoon, it was 101 in the coastal city — hotter than Phoenix. With an all-time high of 106 on Friday, it became just the third time since the 1870s that San Francisco had back-to-back triple-digit days.

Temperatures reached 115 south of the city. It was a rare heat wave at a time of year that San Francisco residents usually call “Fogust” for its cloudy chill.

The region was so hot that officials with the Bay Area Rapid Transit system ordered trains to slow down on rails that were exposed to sun, expecting the heat would expand and possibly shift the metal track slightly, spokeswoman Alicia Trost said.

In Montana, a fire sweeping the Lolo Peak and Florence areas of the state grew to more than 41,300 acres as it continues to burn, KPAX reported.

The fire, sparked by a lightning strike in mid-July, is being handled by 575 people assigned to the blaze.

“So yesterday the fire got established in the bottom of One Horse Creek and then started moving up the mountain and got up toward the top of the ridge. And then last night weather conditions became more favorable for burnout operations,” said Lolo Peak Fire Information Officer Derek Ibarguen. “And we conducted a burnout operation of about 50 to 60 acres that connected with the other burn blocks that have been in the past, to help shore up that eastern side of the fire.”

In Oregon, dozens of wildfires were sending up large plumes of smoke, causing disruptions in holiday travel as roads close and shutting down camping areas.

The wildfires forced about 140 hikers to shelter in place overnight Saturday on a popular trail about 90 miles east of Portland after they got stuck between two blazes.

The hikers were led 14 miles by search-and-rescue teams toward Wahtum Lake, and made it out by Sunday morning.

Many of the hikers were traveling along the Eagle Creek Trail Saturday, but a blaze on the trail made it difficult for the hikers to leave, so officials had them shelter overnight near Tunnel Falls.

Fire spokeswoman Mary Huels said a crew of about 18 firefighters who had been assigned to the south end of the older fire as lookouts were keeping track of the people in the area and getting them to safe areas.

Three other hikers in a different areas nearby were rescued by helicopter Saturday evening.

In the Pacific Northwest, high temperatures and a lack of rain this summer have dried out vegetation that fed on winter snow and springtime rain. Officials warned of wildfire danger as hot, dry, smoky days were forecast across Oregon and Washington over the holiday weekend.

A fire about 80 miles southeast of Seattle has burned more than 23 square miles and led to new evacuation notices Saturday. About 3,800 homes were threatened, authorities said.

The weeklong heat wave was generated by high pressure over the West, the National Weather Service said.

Trump pushing for $6 billion in Harvey recovery funding

President Trump is requesting that nearly $6 billion be made available for the Harvey recovery process.

The administration urged Congress on Thursday to approve and provide $5.95 billion for the initial response and recovery efforts related to the devastating hurricane affecting parts of Texas and Louisiana, Axios reported.

A senior administration official told the website that White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney will be calling Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill this week, asking them for their support on the funding plan.

The official added that the Trump administration believes the requested amount will be more than enough to support hurricane recovery efforts until year’s end.

If approved by Congress, $5.5 billion would go to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for its disaster relief operations and $450 million to the Small Business Administration to assist affected businesses.

To access the funding, the U.S. debt limit would have to be increased – a move that would aim at lowering the risk of default, Bloomberg Politics reported.

A separate official told the news site that the White House was looking to extend the limit long enough to move back the threat of default until Congress is able to draft a budget for the full federal fiscal year.

Trump has expressed his desire to move swiftly on recovery efforts and rebuild damaged areas in Houston and southeast Texas. Some Democrats have said that the area could need more than $150 billion in federal aid. The initial request is expected to be a down payment on a larger federal aid package, the Washington Post reported.

The news came on the same day that President Trump pledged $1 million of his personal money to aid victims of Hurricane Harvey in both Texas and Louisiana.

“The president is pledging a million dollars of personal money to help,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters Thursday.

Sanders said the president asked that she “check with” reporters for “suggestions” on groups and organizations that would be “best and most effective in providing aid.”

The press secretary was asked whether Trump would pay the $1 million from his personal funds, or from the Trump Organization.

“I know the president said he was going to give — I don’t know the legal part of exactly that, but he said his personal money,” Sanders answered. “So I assume that comes directly from him.”

Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed reporting to this story.

Perry Chiaramonte is a reporter for FoxNews.com. Follow him on Twitter at @perrych