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    Biden to 'hit ground running' as he rejoins Paris climate accords

    Joe Biden is set for a flurry of action to combat the climate crisis on his first day as US president by immediately rejoining the Paris climate agreement and blocking the Keystone XL pipeline, although experts have warned lengthier, and harder, environmental battles lie ahead in his presidency.In a series of plans drawn up by Biden’s incoming administration for his first day in office, the new president will take the resonant step of bringing the US back into the Paris climate accords, an international agreement to curb dangerous global heating that Donald Trump exited.The Democrat, who will be sworn in on Wednesday, is also set to revoke a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, a controversial cross-border project that would bring 830,000 barrels of crude oil each day from Alberta, Canada, to a pipeline that runs to oil refineries on the US’s Gulf of Mexico coast. The president-elect is also expected to reverse Trump’s undoing of rules that limited the emission of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas drilling operations.“Day one, Biden will rejoin Paris, regulate methane emissions and continue taking many other aggressive executive climate actions in the opening days and weeks of his presidency,” said Paul Bledsoe, who was a climate adviser to Bill Clinton’s White House, now with the Progressive Policy Institute.Bledsoe said Biden’s nominees to tackle the climate crisis, spearheaded by the former secretary of state John Kerry, who will act as a climate “envoy” to the world, is “by far the most experienced, high-level climate team US history. They intend to hit the ground running.”The aggressive opening salvo to help address the climate crisis, which Biden has called “the existential threat of our time”, is set to include various executive orders to resurrect a host of pollution rules either knocked down or weakened by the Trump administration.The US will convene an international climate summit in Biden’s first few months in the White House and is set to join a global effort to phase out the use of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, which are used in refrigeration and air conditioning and contribute to the heating of the planet.Biden has also vowed to support federal government scientists beleaguered by years of climate change denial and sidelining of politically inconvenient science by the Trump administration.“It will be a starkly different approach to the Trump administration on almost every front,” said Helen Mountford, vice-president for climate at the World Resources Institute. “Science will once again guide America’s policymaking and inauguration day will mark a new era for climate ambition in the US. He will have a lot on his plate but there’s no doubt that Biden intends to make a full court press on climate change.”However, climate experts point out that simply re-establishing Barack Obama’s climate policies will not be enough to help the world avoid the worst ravages of heatwaves, flooding and mass displacement of people.“It’s not sufficient for where the science says we need to be and it’s not sufficient because we’ve lost critical time over the last couple of years,” said Brian Deese, Biden’s nominee for director of the National Economic Council. Planet-heating emissions dipped in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic but are already surging back to previous levels despite the UN warning countries must at least triple their emissions cuts promised under the Paris deal.Biden has pledged to cut US emissions to net zero by 2050 and has a $2tn plan he claims will create millions of new jobs in energy efficient retrofits for buildings and clean energies such as solar and wind. These ambitions have been bolstered by Democrats’ slender control of the US Senate, although several of the party’s senators, such as West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, who once shot a piece of climate legislation with a gun in a TV campaign advertisement, are wary of big-spending climate bills. US lawmakers have been divided and inert on climate legislation for a decade, despite polls showing record bipartisan support for climate action among the American public.The outcome of the political wrangling will be most keenly felt by poorer people and people of color who disproportionally live near sources of air and water pollution such as coal-fired power plants and highways. Biden has promised to help these communities but will need to “put his money where his mouth is”, said Mustafa Santiago Ali, a former senior official at the Environmental Protection Agency.“Folks will be more focused on the greenhouse gas side of the paradigm, which is maybe a quarter of the work,” Ali said. “There needs to be a comprehensive federal strategy for environmental justice. We have to rebuild trust with communities that we took decades to build up and then was broken. The bogeyman, which is Trump, may be gone but we still need to focus on dismantling that structural environmental racism. Trump just threw more gasoline on what was already there.” More

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    The Next Trump

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Next TrumpThere is no one quite like him in the Republican Party. So where should we look for the president’s inheritors?Opinion ColumnistJan. 19, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesMost Americans want Donald Trump out of sight and out of mind after he leaves office on Wednesday. Most Americans except Republicans, that is.In every recent poll on Trump, Republicans stand apart. Ask whether Trump should remain a “major national figure for years to come,” as the Pew Research Center did in a survey taken just after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and 68 percent of Americans say no, whereas 57 percent of Republicans say yes.Or ask whether Trump should be disqualified from future office. A majority of adults — 56 percent, according to a recent poll conducted for ABC News and The Washington Post — also say yes, whereas 85 percent of Republicans say no.Of course, the reason the Republican rank and file doesn’t think Trump should slink away is because they think he won the election. Among his voters, 75 percent say he received enough votes in enough states to claim victory. For them, there’s no reason Trump should leave the field as a pariah or relinquish his claim on the party itself. It’s no surprise, then, that most Republican officeholders are sticking with the president and that the most loyal among them hope to harness the pro-Trump energy of the base for their own personal ambitions.This dynamic is part of what spurred Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley to amplify the lie that the election was tainted. It’s what kept Mike Pence from turning on the president that made him the target of a deadly mob, and it’s what led Mike Pompeo to turn on his former administration colleague Nikki Haley, for criticizing Trump’s rhetoric since the election.Each of them (to say nothing of the party’s other presidential contenders) all hope to be, in one way or another, the next Trump. The problem for each of them is that this may be impossible.In 2015 and 2016, Donald Trump wasn’t just an unconventional politician with a direct appeal to the prejudiced attitudes of the Republican base, and he wasn’t just a fixture of conservative media and entertainment. He was a bona fide celebrity and household name, with 30 years on the public stage as the embodiment of wealth and luxury. And for more than 10 of those years, he was star of “The Apprentice,” a popular reality television series in which he played the most successful businessman in America, whose approval could turn an ordinary nobody into an extraordinary somebody. His was a persona that rested on the valorization of entrepreneurship and the worship of success.This wasn’t a dour or self-serious performance. Trump wasn’t Ebenezer Scrooge. He was a winking, cheerful vulgarian who knew the show was an act and played along with the viewers. From his cameos on the big screen in films like “Home Alone 2” to his parodic appearances in professional wrestling, he was affable, even charming.It’s hard to overstate how important this was for Trump’s first campaign. If modern American politics is entertainment as much as civics, then Trump was its star performer. And his audience, his supporters, could join in the performance. This is crucial. Trump could say whatever they wanted to hear, and they could take it in as part of the act, something — as one sympathetic observer wrote — to be taken seriously, not literally. Words that might have doomed any other Republican candidate, and which have in the past, meant nothing to the strength of Trump’s campaign.When he finally ran against Hillary Clinton, celebrity helped him appeal to those voters who hated politicians — who sat at the margins of politics, if they participated at all — but could get behind an irreverent figure like Trump. Did he lie? Sure. But the shamelessness of his lies, and his indifference to decorum, was its own kind of truth. Celebrity was his shield and his sword, and his life as a reality television star primed his supporters to see his presidency as a show that would never end.Since the 1990s, the Republican Party has struggled to win a majority of voters nationwide in a presidential election. They’ve done it exactly once, in 2004, with the re-election of George W. Bush. Trump’s path to victory — a minority-vote Electoral College win with high turnout in rural and exurban areas — may be the only one the party has left. As one group of House Republicans said ahead (and in support) of the vote to confirm the results of the 2020 election,If we perpetuate the notion that Congress may disregard certified electoral votes — based solely on its own assessment that one or more states mishandled the presidential election — we will be delegitimizing the very system that led Donald Trump to victory in 2016, and that could provide the only path to victory in 2024.The big question is whether it took a Trump to make 2016 happen in the first place. Given the Republican Party’s struggle to build a national majority, was he the only candidate that could pull off a win? And if so, was his celebrity the X factor that made it possible? The fact that Republicans lost when Trump was not on the ballot is evidence in favor of the case.If celebrity is what it takes, then there’s no Republican politician who can carry Trump’s mantle. No one with his or her hat obviously in the ring — neither Cruz nor Hawley, neither Tom Cotton nor Haley — has the juice. There are the Trump children, of course. But the Trump name doesn’t actually stand for success, and there’s no evidence yet that any of them can make the leap to winning votes for themselves.Perhaps the next Trump, if there is one, will be another celebrity. Someone with a powerful and compelling persona, who traffics in fear and anger and hate. Someone who “triggers the libs” and puts on a show. Someone who already has an audience, who speaks for the Republican base as much as he speaks to them. Republican voters have already put a Fox News viewer into the White House. From there it’s just a short step to electing an actual Fox News personality.What are your hopes for the next four years?It could be a better economy, a personal milestone or an ambitious policy. Tell us what you’re hoping will happen during the Biden administration. We may include your responses in a special feature publishing on Inauguration Day.

    The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    On King Holiday, New York’s Mayoral Hopefuls Vie for Attention

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn King Holiday, New York’s Mayoral Hopefuls Vie for AttentionWith the Rev. Al Sharpton playing host in Harlem, the crowded field of Democratic candidates tried to sell themselves and inspire a battered city.Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, emphasized his long-held ties to New York City, as a former police officer and as an elected official.Credit…Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York TimesJan. 18, 2021, 7:22 p.m. ETIt was something of a familiar scene: One by one, the candidates running for mayor of New York City took a turn at the lectern at the Rev. Al Sharpton’s headquarters in Harlem to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday.Eric Adams talked about being a Black police officer and invoked another officer’s memory: the one who saved Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life after a stabbing in 1958.Raymond J. McGuire talked about how his goal was to get the Black community more than just “crumbs” when it comes to economic empowerment.And Andrew Yang recalled how he campaigned in Georgia in the U.S. Senate races with Martin Luther King III, who is now Mr. Yang’s campaign co-chairman.For three decades, lawmakers and would-be public servants have turned out at Mr. Sharpton’s National Action Network in Harlem on the third Monday in January to spend a few minutes speaking about Dr. King’s legacy and to court the Black vote, trying to draw church-like shouts of approval from one of the toughest assemblages north of 110th Street.But this year’s ceremony felt different. The country was days removed from a riot on Capitol Hill aimed at overturning the results of an election in which Black voters played a pivotal role in delivering a victory for the Democratic candidate.New York City — once the center of the coronavirus pandemic and still reeling unevenly from its effects — is five months away from holding its most consequential mayoral primary election in a generation.The gathering at the National Action Network in Harlem has become a must-attend event for many political hopefuls.Credit…Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York TimesWith much of the mayoral campaign being conducted virtually, the Sharpton event was the first public gathering of many of the candidates, and many acknowledged the precarious moment, pledging to enact sweeping policies such as police reform, universal basic income and equity bonds for every child in New York City that would uplift the lives of the city’s most vulnerable.“We are ending in 48 hours the most bigoted and racist presidential term in our lifetime,” Mr. Sharpton told the audience.The candidates, he said later, have a tough road ahead with the myriad problems facing the country and the difficulties awaiting whoever is elected to succeed Mayor Bill de Blasio.“People feel vulnerable,” Mr. Sharpton said. “So we have to have a mayor that makes you feel comfortable that they understand that your basic existence is at stake.”In spite of the high stakes, the race for mayor is still a messy and amorphous affair. There are established politicians such as Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, and Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller. They have both collected massive war chests and a string of important endorsements.There are wild card candidates like Mr. Yang, the former presidential candidate who attracted a storm of attention, both good and bad, when he entered the race last week; Maya Wiley, the former MSNBC commentator who bolstered her campaign by meeting fund-raising goals; and Mr. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive and favored candidate of the business community who raised $5 million in just three months.Andrew Yang has snared Martin Luther King III to become his campaign manager.Credit…Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York TimesMr. Yang, the first mayoral candidate to speak, said that universal basic income, the proposal he is most associated with, was based on the beliefs and teachings of Dr. King.“It was what he was fighting for, what he was assassinated for, a universal basic income,” Mr. Yang said to polite applause.Mr. Yang added that Dr. King was a revolutionary thinker whose memory “has been sanitized.”Maya Wiley, a former MSNBC analyst who was counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, became the third mayoral candidate to qualify for public matching funds.Credit…Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York TimesMs. Wiley said the country “stands at a crossroads” and was “staring down the face of white supremacy.” Falling back on her initial introduction as a police reformer she said that “we the people will tell you the police department what the job is and what the rules of the road are.”Mr. Adams told the crowd that he had been fighting for the Black community in New York City for decades, even when he was a police officer seeking to reform the department from within. He also recalled how a Harlem police officer, Al Howard, once came to Dr. King’s aid after he was stabbed in 1958.“I am not new to this, I am true to this,” he said, drawing some of the loudest applause of the day.Mr. Sharpton spoke highly of Mr. McGuire, defending his background in business and saying that he had secretly financed the efforts of activists to fight for civil rights and against police brutality.“A lot of us resent the stigmatizing of Black success,” Mr. Sharpton said. “Don’t beat a guy up because he’s successful in a city where we tell every white kid to be successful. He shouldn’t be subjected to a double standard.”Mr. McGuire leaned into his support from the business community and Wall Street background, saying that he was here to fix the city’s crisis in a way that benefited those who have not always shared in its economic success.“We’ve been outside for so long that they give us crumbs and want us to feel full,” Mr. McGuire said. “I’m not interested in crumbs. I’m not interested in cake. I’m interested in the bakery.”The Rev. Al Sharpton disclosed that Raymond McGuire had given Mr. Sharpton’s group some financial assistance when it was struggling.Credit…Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York TimesThere were no clear winners among the candidates. Dianne Morales, a nonprofit executive and perhaps the most progressive candidate in the race, said the current tensions the city and nation are seeing are part of the ongoing struggle to realize Dr. King’s vision of a “radical redistribution of political and economic power.”Zach Iscol, a former Marine, spoke of how his combat experience had shaped him; Shaun Donovan, a former federal housing secretary under President Obama, suggested providing $1,000 “equity bonds” to every child in New York City, a proposal last heard from Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey during the presidential campaign.Loree Sutton, the former veteran affairs commissioner, slightly flubbed the melody and some lyrics when she led the crowd in a rendition of “We Shall Overcome,” but the crowd persevered, carrying her to the end of the song.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Regnery Publishing Picks Up Senator Hawley's Book

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutLatest UpdatesInside the SiegeVisual TimelineNotable ArrestsCapitol Police in CrisisAdvertisementContinue reading the main storyAs Biden’s Inauguration Approaches Pressure Mounts on Some Trump AppointeesRegnery Publishing picks up Senator Hawley’s book after it was dropped by Simon & Schuster.Jan. 18, 2021, 11:47 a.m. ETJan. 18, 2021, 11:47 a.m. ETSenator Josh Hawley of Missouri sitting in the House Chamber before a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6.Credit…Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesRegnery Publishing, a conservative publishing house, said Monday that it had picked up a book by Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, after Simon & Schuster ended its contract to publish it in the wake of the assault on the Capitol.Mr. Hawley had come under criticism for challenging the results of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory and was accused of helping incite the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. His book, “The Tyranny of Big Tech,” is scheduled to be published this spring, Regnery said.Thomas Spence, the president and publisher of Regnery, said in a statement that the publishing house was proud to stand with Mr. Hawley. “The warning in his book about censorship obviously couldn’t be more urgent,” Mr. Spence said. His company’s statement said that Simon & Schuster had made Mr. Hawley a victim of cancel culture.Most major publishers, including Simon & Schuster, one of the “Big Five” book publishers in the United States, publish books across the political spectrum. But Simon & Schuster said it called off its plan to publish Mr. Hawley’s book after the Capitol attack.“As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints: At the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat,” Simon & Schuster said in a statement. The company declined to comment on Regnery’s accusations.After his book was dropped, Mr. Hawley described it as “Orwellian.”“Simon & Schuster is canceling my contract because I was representing my constituents, leading a debate on the Senate floor on voter integrity, which they have now decided to redefine as sedition,” he wrote in a post.In recent years, Regnery’s best-selling authors have included Ann Coulter, the conservative pundit, and Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas. Mr. Hawley’s book is about technology corporations like Google, Facebook and Amazon and their political influence.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    US Capitol on security lockdown ahead of Biden inauguration – video

    The tightest security measures in recent memory are in place in Washington, two days ahead of the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the US.
    25,000 National Guard soldiers from across the east coast are stationed in the city. The streets around the Capitol remain eerily empty as all but the most determined protesters have stayed away after the pro-Trump riot at the Capitol on 6 January. 
    The FBI has vetted all troops who are guarding the event because of fears of an insider attack at the inauguration.  More

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    Investors Push Home Depot and Omnicom to Steer Ads From Misinformation

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutLatest UpdatesInside the SiegeVisual TimelineNotable ArrestsCapitol Police in CrisisAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyInvestors Push Home Depot and Omnicom to Steer Ads From MisinformationCompanies have struggled to keep their ad dollars from going to online outlets that promoted fraudulent theories about the 2020 election.Home Depot advertises heavily on Facebook.Credit…Steven Senne/Associated PressTiffany Hsu and Jan. 18, 2021Shareholders in Home Depot and the advertising giant Omnicom have filed resolutions asking the companies to investigate whether the money they spent on advertisements may have helped spread hate speech and misinformation.The resolutions were filed in November but were not made public until Monday. They were coordinated by Open MIC, a nonprofit group that works with shareholders at media and technology companies.The two shareholder resolutions, which used similar language, asked Home Depot and Omnicom to commission independent investigations into whether their advertising policies “contribute to the spread of hate speech, disinformation, white supremacist activity, or voter suppression efforts.”“Advertisers are not passive bystanders when they inadvertently finance harm,” the resolutions said. “Their spending influences what content appears online.”Omnicom manages $38 billion a year for its marketing clients, while Home Depot advertises heavily on Facebook, according to the filings.Misinformation about voter fraud, spread in large part through online platforms, contributed to a siege of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by a mob fueled by debunked conspiracy theories about a stolen election — theories promoted by President Trump and his allies.These days, companies devote more than half their spending on global marketing to digital ads. Because many of those ads are placed by third-party vendors using automated algorithms, often with little human oversight, companies are frequently unaware when their ads show up on websites that peddle misinformation.A report last week by NewsGuard highlighted the problem. The company evaluates the trustworthiness of online news outlets, and was started by Steven Brill, the founder of the magazine The American Lawyer, and Gordon Crovitz, a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal. The report found that 1,668 brands ran 8,776 unique ads on 160 sites that published misinformation about the 2020 election.The outlets flagged by NewsGuard include The Gateway Pundit, Infowars, Newsmax and websites affiliated with the right-wing pundits Sean Hannity, Dan Bongino and Rush Limbaugh.Companies have struggled in recent years to reach potential customers while making sure their online ads do not appear close to dubious, salacious or potentially harmful content. AARP, which was mentioned in the NewsGuard report as one of the companies that had placed ads on sites promoting false election claims, said that, despite rigorous monitoring procedures, some ads slipped through the cracks.“We follow strict ad placement protocols, but no system is 100 percent foolproof,” Martha Boudreau, an AARP executive vice president, said in a statement.An AARP internal review found that “a tiny portion” of its ads, less than 1/100th of 1 percent, appeared on the sites flagged by NewsGuard, Ms. Boudreau added.Matt Skibinski, the general manager of NewsGuard, said companies should treat sites that publish misinformation the same way they treat sites that promote behaviors that do not align with their corporate values or that publish content they do not want to be associated with..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1cs27wo{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1cs27wo{padding:20px;}}.css-1cs27wo:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}Capitol Riot FalloutFrom Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and the ongoing fallout:As this video shows, poor planning and a restive crowd encouraged by President Trump set the stage for the riot.A two hour period was crucial to turning the rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.The House voted to impeach the president on charges of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.“At many brands, there is somebody whose job it is to make sure they don’t place ads in what they would call unsafe or unsuitable environments, and that includes violence, pornography and gambling,” Mr. Skibinski said. “We need the industry to start seeing misinformation in that category — of creating real-world harm.”NewsGuard reported that Procter & Gamble ads had appeared on The Gateway Pundit, one of the sites it called out for publishing election misinformation. In an email, Procter & Gamble said it had not intentionally advertised on the site. Erica Noble, a Procter & Gamble spokeswoman, said that when the company’s ads are placed on a site that does not meet its standards, it acts quickly to remove them.“These are all standards that were in place well before the horrific events of Jan. 6, but we appreciate they take on renewed importance now,” she said.Since the Capitol siege, social media platforms have cracked down. Facebook, which weathered an advertiser boycott during the summer over misinformation and hate speech, barred Mr. Trump from its platform and said it would remove content related to the “Stop the Steal” movement. Twitter took similar action.Omnicom said in a statement that it “is committed to ensuring our clients’ ads do not appear next to harmful content on social media platforms” and pointed to an effort it spearheaded in the summer to audit and track platforms’ ad placement practices.Home Depot said in a statement that it was “saddened and outraged by the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol and our lawmakers” and “disgusted” by malicious content on social media.“We’re addressing the proposal through the appropriate process,” said Sara Gorman, a spokeswoman.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    How Biden era could kickstart coordinated approach to Russia

    Joe Biden’s accession to the US presidency has spawned a huge body of literature about his intentions towards China, but in his four years out of office Biden has in fact made Russia his primary focus in combatting authoritarianism. Now, just days from coming into office, the arrest of the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny has suddenly presented him with a test case, which may also lead to friction with two of his closest allies: Germany and the UK.Germany under Angela Merkel has always resisted a full confrontation with Russia, and has fought hard to keep the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany going, saying it is a commercial not a political issue.But Merkel has met Navalny, who was nursed back to health in the German capital after his poisoning and has been described as “the Berlin patient” by Vladimir Putin, and her government may now feel a personal obligation, beyond rhetoric, to help him. The Putin entourage is already heavily sanctioned by the EU as a result if their repression in Belarus as well as Navalny’s poisoning, so her options for showing disapproval through further individual sanctions is limited. And the Nord Stream 2 project will not be far from Merkel’s thoughts.In the case of the UK, British prime ministers have been rhetorically strong about Russia, but are open to the charge that the rhetoric does not extend to clamping down on the lawyers, accountants and army of estate agents that enable the Russian kleptocracy to invest their corruptly-obtained wealth in London. Chatham House, the sober minded thinktank, is, for instance, hosting an event on Tuesday promoted as follows: “The most startling findings of the ‘Russia’ report from parliament’s intelligence and security committee were not about the extent of Moscow’s malign influence in the UK, but about how unwilling the British government had been to take steps to detect and counter it.“The report identified gaping holes in both awareness of the problem, and legislation to deal with it. A formulaic response from the government promised that at least some of these holes have been plugged”. Six months on, how many holes in measures such as ”unexplained wealth orders”, have been filled?But perhaps by coincidence matters are coming to a head. Since 2019, the threat of US sanctions has left the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline about 94% complete. If finished, the 764-mile (1,230km) pipeline will terminate in Lubmin, a coastal village in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and more than double Germany’s imports of Russian natural gas.On Friday, Germany’s federal maritime authority approved extending the project’s operational time frame because of “unforeseen delays outside German waters”.Since US sanctions would target private companies involved in the project, the state government of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has gone to the lengths of establishing a public foundation that could take over the potentially sanctionable activity. Germany believes the US would not have the nerve to sanction a public body, even though this foundation is largely Russian funded.Nicholas Burns the former US assistant secretary of state suggested to the German business newspaper Handelsblatt this week that if Germany suspended construction of the pipeline the US could lift sanctions.Equally, the UK as host of the G7 summit in June looks as if it is going to revive the anti-corruption drive David Cameron started the last time Britain held the event.The west has been hampered in the past four years by the fatal ambiguity of US policy towards Russia. The State Department had been willing to confront Russia, but Donald Trump remained inexplicably averse to doing anything but indulge Putin.Biden has appointed an experienced team with a deep knowledge of Russia including: William Burns, director of the CIA; Victoria Nuland, deputy secretary of state for political affairs; Andrea Kendall-Taylor, senior director for Russia and Central Asia in the future NSC; Kathleen Hicks, first female deputy head of the Pentagon; and Shanthi Kalathil, coordinator for human rights and democracy. Collectively they will try to give Germany clearer signals on US policy to Russia, and both how to combat democratic backsliding in Europe and Russian meddling. The huge cyber-attack on Washington institutions, attributed to Russia’s foreign intelligence, lies heavily on the minds of Congress.Biden has promised that he will make the promotion of democracy his guiding foreign policy principle, including a summit to attack the weapons of the authoritarians. Many have questioned the wisdom of the US presenting itself as the standard bearer of liberal values given its state of crisis.But the attack on the Capitol in Washington has only made his allies more convinced of this agenda, and its relevance to America. So the frontline of the “battlefield” where the new US administration and Russia will confront each other is likely to be extended to the post-Soviet space and will include at least Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia. For all the talk of the rise of China and the implications of the “Asian century” on America, it is the threat posed by the old cold war enemy that for now at least may most exercise the transatlantic alliance. More

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