Nancy Pelosi defends Taiwan trip as ‘more important today than ever’ amid China tensions – live

If Joe Biden is less than delighted that Nancy Pelosi is in Taiwan, quite a lot of Republican senators feel quite the opposite. Twenty-five of them – half the caucus in the evenly divided chamber – released a statement earlier, in support of the House speaker, otherwise a much-demonised figure throughout the GOP:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We support Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan. For decades, members of the United States Congress, including a previous Speaker of the House, have travelled to Taiwan. This travel is consistent with the United States’ One China policy to which we are committed. We are also committed now, more than ever, to all elements of the Taiwan Relations Act.

The supportive senators are: Susan Collins (Maine), Dan Sullivan (Alaska), Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), John Thune (South Dakota), Jim Inhofe (Oklahoma), Jim Risch (Idaho), Roy Blunt (Missouri), John Cornyn (Texas), John Barrasso (Wyoming), Kevin Cramer (North Dakota), Ben Sasse (Nebraska), Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee), Thom Tillis (North Carolina), Tommy Tuberville (Alabama), Steve Daines (Montana), Deb Fischer (Nebraska), Todd Young (Indiana), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Rob Portman (Ohio), Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia), Mike Crapo (Idaho), Richard Burr (North Carolina), John Boozman (Arkansas), Tim Scott (South Carolina), Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania).

There weren’t many Trumpian fire-eaters among the 25 but one senator who has been known to blow hot in such a fashion, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, had harsher words for Biden, tweeting: “The world overlooked Wuhan’s role in the Covid pandemic. The world overlooked Beijing’s human rights record during the genocide games. Now, Biden is pressuring the world to forget all about Taiwan’s freedom.”

At the White House, the spokesman John Kirby said: “We will continue to support Taiwan, defend a free and open Indo-Pacific and seek to maintain communication with Beijing”. He also said the United States “will not engage in sabre-rattling”.

China’s opposition to Nancy Pelosi’s trip has been well known and very well signaled by its government.

The visit has plunged the Asia-Pacific region into a diplomatic crisis – though how much is just sabre-rattling is hard to tell. One person who will be told for sure is the US ambassador to China.

This story is moving on the Chinese news wire Xinhua: CHINESE VICE FOREIGN MINISTER XIE FENG URGENTLY SUMMONED US AMBASSADOR TO CHINA NICHOLAS BURNS LATE TUESDAY NIGHT.

• Washington to China and everywhere in between reacted to House speaker Nancy Pelosi arriving in Taiwan as the first speaker of the house to do so in a quarter of a century.
• The justice department filed a lawsuit against the restrictive abortion law in Idaho, arguing that by prohibiting individuals from receiving abortions even if it may save their lives violated the federal emergency medical treatment and labor act, which requires every hospital that receives Medicare funds to provide necessary stabilizing treatment.
• The senate is purportedly gearing up for a vote on the Honoring our Pact Act, the bipartisan legislation that would make it easier for veterans to access military care related to exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam and toxins from burn pits used to get rid of military waste in Iraq and Afghanistan. Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer believes will pass after senators reached an agreement on amendments. There was widespread anger last week after Senate Republicans abruptly halted a procedural vote to advance the legislation. Veterans have been protesting outside the US Capitol since last week, camping outside the building and refusing to leave until lawmakers pass the legislation.
• Joe Biden is on his fourth day of his rebound case of Covid-19 and is still testing positive, and is suffering from a return of a loose cough.
• Senate Democrats remained optimistic on the $740bn reconciliation bill, officially known as Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Senator Joe Manchin was seen speaking to his fellow moderate Democrat, senator Kyrsten Sinema, whose position on the package is still unknown.

Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan has caused a headache for Joe Biden who most likely would prefer not to be dealing with a foreign policy crisis when he has some – rare – successes to boast about at home and abroad.

Here is some Reuters copy on the White House’s mixed feelings about the trip with what sounds like pleading to not “amp this up”. Its a delicate tightrope between not wanting to be seen to be critical of Pelosi, but also kind of wishing this was not happening.

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The Biden administration wants to keep tensions between Washington and Beijing inflamed by a high level visit to Taiwan from boiling over into a conflict, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday.

In a briefing with reporters, Kirby noted that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was within her rights to visit Taiwan on Tuesday but also stressed that the trip did not constitute a violation of Chinese sovereignty or America’s longstanding “one-China” policy.

“What we don’t want to see is this spiral into any kind of a crisis or conflict,” Kirby said. “There’s just no reason to amp this up.”

Pelosi arrived in Taiwan late on Tuesday on a trip she said shows an unwavering American commitment to the Chinese-claimed self-ruled island, but China condemned the highest-level US visit in 25 years as a threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby spoke vaguely about the efforts to negotiate the release of WNBA star Brittney Griner and former marine Paul Whelan, two high-profile Americans currently detained in Russia. “We are working hard, government to government, to get Paul and Brittney home,” he said.

“We made a serious proposal. We made a serious offer,” Kirby said. “We urge the Russians to take that offer because it was done with sincerity and we know we can back it up.”

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White House national security spokesman John Kirby acknowledged that the killing of top al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri signifies a violation of the Doha agreement – the landmark peace agreement in which the Taliban agreed to sever ties with al-Qaida and other international terror groups.

Secretary of state Antony Blinken had previously said the Taliban “grossly violated the Doha Agreement and repeated assurances to the world that they would not allow Afghan territory to be used by terrorists to threaten the security of other countries”.

While Kirby said he could not speak to what steps the US was going to take to hold the Taliban accountable for violating the agreement, “we made it very clear that that was a violation of the Doha agreement”.

“We made it clear to the Taliban that we know what they did,” he said. “We know who they harbored. We know some of the steps they tried to take after the strike to cover up the evidence of it. We’re mindful of it. But I’m not going to get ahead – policy decisions haven’t been made. We’re not going to take the Taliban at their word. They claim they want a relationship with the United States and the West. They claim they want to open up and be part of the international community. They claim they want financing. If that’s true and if that’s what they really want, it would behoove them to pay close attention to what we just did over the weekend and meet their agreements under the Doha agreement.”

He said he felt that with or without the Taliban’s cooperation, this weekend’s drone strike proved that Afghanistan would not be a safe haven for terrorists.

“The strike itself shows how serious we are about accountability,” Kirby said. “It shows how serious we are about defending our interests. We’re going to maintain this over-horizon capability. We’re going to continue to improve that capability going forward.”

Later, Kirby said, “Mr Zawahiri’s death is good for everyone in the world. He was a killer. It’s a good thing that he’s no longer walking the face of the earth.”

As to House speaker Nancy Pelosi and her trip to Taiwan, White House national security spokesman John Kirby reiterated much of what he said at yesterday’s briefing. He put some distance between her and Joe Biden, saying that Congress was its own separate branch of government that could make its own travel decisions, but that her trip was in line with US policy and China was out of line for reacting with threats.

“Let me be clear: the speaker’s visit is totally consistent with our long-standing One China policy. We have been very clear that nothing has changed with our One China policy,” Kirby said. “We have said that we do not support Taiwan independence and we said that we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.”

He said China’s reaction – China put its military on high alert and announced a series of targeted military operations – was “right in line with what we anticipated”.

“There’s no reason for Beijing to turn this visit, which is consistent with long-standing US policy, into some sort of crisis, or use it as some kind of pretext to increase aggressiveness and military activity in or around now or beyond her travel,” Kirby said.

Kirby continued: “The United States will not seek and does not want a crisis. We are prepared to manage what Beijing chooses to do. At the same time, we will not engage in sabre rattling. We will continue to operate in the seas and the skies of the western Pacific as we have for decades. We will continue to support Taiwan, defend a free and open Indo-Pacific and seek to maintain communication with Beijing.”

White House national security spokesman John Kirby kicked off today’s press briefing by addressing the US drone strike in Afghanistan that killed the top al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Joe Biden has described Zawahiri as one of the world’s most wanted men who was the deputy and successor to Osama bin Laden.

“President Biden has consistently said that we will not allow Afghanistan to become a safe haven for terrorists who might bring harm to Americans and the homeland,” Kirby said. “We have met that commitment. This action demonstrates that without American forces on the ground in Afghanistan and in harm’s way, we still remain able to identify and locate even the world’s most wanted terrorists and take actions to remove them from the battlefield.”

An update on the reconciliation bill, officially known as the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the $740bn legislative package that seeks to enact deficit reduction to fight inflation, lower energy costs, reduce carbon emissions by roughly 40% by 2030 and allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, among other things.

This week, Senate Democrats must meet with the Senate parliamentarian, who will parse through the text of the bill to make sure it meets all the rules of what’s allowed within the scope of reconciliation. That’s not the only challenge they face though: Senate Republicans have vowed to thwart the bill, and it’s still unclear whether moderate Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema is on board or not.

But two days into the week, Democrats remain optimistic.

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said senators have reached an agreement on the Honoring our Pact Act, the bipartisan legislation that would make it easier for veterans to access military care related to exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam and toxins from burn pits used to get rid of military waste in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He said he’s planning to call a vote at 5pm local time.

Several Senate Democrats have introduced a bill seeking to impose term limits on supreme court justices.

“Speaker Pelosi was right.”