US Politics

US bans China-based TikTok app on all federal government devicesMove follows House of Representatives ban, which TikTok called a ‘political measure that will do nothing’ for national security TikTok has been banned on all federal government devices in the US, with limited exceptions, after Joe Biden signed a $1.7tn (£1.4tn) spending bill on Thursday containing a provision that outlaws the China-based app over growing security concerns.The ban – which was approved by Congress in a vote last week – is a major step targeting the fastest-growing social media platform in the world as opponents express worry user data stored in China could be accessed by the government.Various government agencies will develop rules for implementing the ban over the next two months. It will mean that federal government employees are required to remove TikTok from their government-issued devices unless they are using the app for national security or law enforcement activities.TikTok banned on devices issued by US House of RepresentativesRead moreIt follows a flurry of legislative action against the platform in the US, after more than a dozen governors have issued similar orders prohibiting state employees from using TikTok on state-owned devices. Earlier this week, Congress passed legislation to ban TikTok on devices issued to members of the House of Representatives.TikTok did not immediately respond to request for comment. In a statement released after the initial House ban, TikTok said the move was a “political gesture that will do nothing to advance national security interests”.Meanwhile, there has been a push to ban TikTok outright in the US, with legislation introduced by Senator Marco Rubio earlier this month to “ban Beijing-controlled TikTok for good”. That bill echoes moves from the previous administration, after Donald Trump issued an executive order in August 2020 prohibiting US companies from doing business with TikTok’s parent company ByteDance.The order was later revoked by Biden in June 2021 under the condition that the US committee on foreign investment conducted a security review of the platform and suggested a path forward. That investigation has been ongoing for several years.Although ByteDance is based in China, the company has long claimed all US user data is stored in data centers in Virginia and backed up in Singapore.But political pressure began to build anew after BuzzFeed reported in June that China-based ByteDance employees had accessed US TikTok user data multiple times between September 2021 and January 2022.Legislators have expressed concern that the Chinese Communist party could manipulate young users with pro-China content on its algorithmic home page and access sensitive user data.“TikTok, their parent company ByteDance, and other China-based tech companies are required by Chinese law to share their information with the Communist party,” Senator Mark Warner said in July when calling for further investigation of the platform.“Allowing access to American data, down to biometrics such as face prints and voice prints, poses a great risk to not only individual privacy but to national security,” he added.The legislative pressure on TikTok comes as the app has exploded in popularity in recent years, amassing a user base of more than 1 billion after reporting a 45% increase in monthly active users between July 2020 and July 2022. In 2022 it became the most downloaded app in the world, quietly surpassing longstanding forebears Instagram and Twitter.With the meteoric rise has come broad concerns about the app’s impact on its relatively young users. Nearly half of people between 18 and 30 in the US use the platform, a recent Pew Research Center report showed – and 67% of users between the ages of 13 and 18 use the app daily.TopicsTikTokChinaUS politicsBiden administrationnewsReuse this content More

Trump tax returns show China bank account as six years of records releasedReturns date from 2015 to 2020 and span nearly 6,000 pages as former president rails against effort by ‘radical left Democrats’ Six years of Donald Trump’s tax returns were made public by a congressional committee on Friday, ending the former president’s long-running effort to break precedent and keep them secret.Trump says tax returns release will ‘lead to horrible things for so many people’ – liveRead moreThe documents, dating from 2015 to 2020, offer insights into the complex finances and foreign bank accounts of a man who was accused of abusing the presidency for personal profit and who has already announced another bid for the White House.A House of Representatives report released earlier this month analyzed the documents and showed Trump and his wife Melania paid no federal income tax in 2020, the last full year he was in office.The couple paid $641,931 in federal income taxes in 2015, the year Trump began his campaign for president. They paid $750 in 2016 and 2017, nearly $1m in 2018, $133,445 in 2019 and $0 in 2020, the year Trump unsuccessfully sought re-election.Such numbers reflect heavy business losses and undermine Trump’s self-perpetuated narrative of commercial wealth and success – a crucial part of his brand during his successful 2016 campaign.Trump reported bank accounts in Britain, China and Ireland from 2015 to 2017, and from 2018 only reported a bank account in Britain.During a presidential debate in 2020, Trump said the Chinese account “was closed in 2015, I believe” and insisted: “I closed it before I even ran for president, let alone became president.”Responding to the release on Friday, Daniel Goldman, a congressman-elect from New York who was counsel to House Democrats in Trump’s first impeachment, said: “Generally, you only have bank accounts in a foreign country if you are doing transactions in that country’s currency. What business was Trump doing in China while he was president?”The returns also show Trump claimed foreign tax credits for taxes paid on business ventures around the world, including licensing arrangements for the use of his name on development projects and his golf courses in Scotland and Ireland.During his first three years in office, Trump apparently fulfilled his campaign promise to give his salary to charity. But in 2020, he reported $0 in charitable giving.The returns span nearly 6,000 pages, including more than 2,700 pages of individual returns from Trump and Melania and more than 3,000 pages from Trump’s businesses. Sensitive information such as social security and bank account numbers have been redacted.Trump responded angrily to their release, saying in a statement: “The Democrats should have never done it, the supreme court should have never approved it, and it’s going to lead to horrible things for so many people. The great USA divide will now grow far worse. The Radical Left Democrats have weaponized everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!”Defending his business record, he added: “The ‘Trump’ tax returns once again show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises.”The congressional report published last week also found that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) failed to conduct mandatory audits of Trump in his first two years in office. By contrast, there were audits of Joe Biden for the 2020 and 2021 tax years, according to the White House.Richard Neal, the Democratic chairman of the ways and means committee, said in a statement on Friday: “A president is no ordinary taxpayer. They hold power and influence unlike any other American. And with great power comes even greater responsibility.“We anticipated the IRS would expand the mandatory audit program to account for the complex nature of the former president’s financial situation yet found no evidence of that. This is a major failure of the IRS under the prior administration, and certainly not what we had hoped to find.”Trump’s finances have been shrouded in mystery since the 1980s and his days as a New York property developer. In 2016, he became the first major-party candidate for president in four decades to refuse to release his tax returns. He continued to do so in office.In 2019, the House ways and means committee, which has the authority to see any taxpayer’s federal returns, requested the documents from the treasury department. The Trump administration refused to provide them, setting off a three-year legal battle. In November, the supreme court ruled that the committee could access the returns.Last week, the committee decided in a party-line vote to make the returns public. Democrats argued that transparency and the rule of law were at stake. Republicans said the release would set a dangerous precedent with regard to privacy protections.Don Beyer, a Virginia Democrat, presided over a pro forma House session on Friday as the returns were released, days before Democrats cede control to Republicans.Beyer said: “Despite promising to release his tax returns, Donald Trump refused to do so, and abused the power of his office to block basic transparency on his finances and conflicts of interest which no president since Nixon has foregone.“Trump acted as though he had something to hide, a pattern consistent with the recent conviction of his family business for criminal tax fraud. As the public will now be able to see, Trump used questionable or poorly substantiated deductions and a number of other tax avoidance schemes as justification to pay little or no federal income tax in several of the years examined.”Kevin Brady of Texas, the ranking Republican, condemned the move, saying: “This is a regrettable stain on the ways and means committee and Congress, and will make American politics even more divisive and disheartening. In the long run, Democrats will come to regret it.”Trump stalled efforts to put his taxes in the public domain. Running for president in 2016, he promised to release them once he had been audited. But later that year he appeared to take pride in not paying taxes.Kayleigh McEnany a ‘liar and opportunist’, says former Trump aide Read moreDuring a presidential debate, his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, said: “The only years that anybody’s ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax.”Trump replied: “That makes me smart.”But in 2018 the New York Times reported leaked records that showed Trump received a modern-day equivalent of at least $413m from his father’s property holdings, much of it coming from “tax dodges” in the 1990s.In 2020 the paper showed Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018, and no income taxes at all in 10 of 15 years because he generally lost more than he made.Trump continues to face major scrutiny about his business practices. Earlier this month, a New York jury found the Trump Organization guilty of 17 counts of criminal tax fraud. Though Trump was not part of the trial, prosecutors said he was aware of the off-the-books practices at issue. Lawyers for the Trump Organization blamed Allen Weisselberg, the longtime chief financial officer.The New York attorney general, Letitia James, is suing Trump for fraud related to inflating his net worth. Trump and his company have denied wrongdoing.TopicsDonald TrumpMelania TrumpUS taxationRepublicansUS politicsUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

Biden pardons Ohio woman, 80, who killed abusive husband decades agoPresident issues six full pardons, mostly for minor drug offenses but including one for Beverly Ann Ibn-Tamas over 1977 death Joe Biden on Friday announced six full pardons, most for minor drug offenses but including a pardon for an 80-year-old woman from Columbus, Ohio, who killed her abusive husband when she was 33.In a statement, a White House official said the president was granting pardons to “individuals who have served their sentences and have demonstrated a commitment to improving their communities and the lives of those around them.“These include individuals who honorably served in the US military, volunteer in their communities, and survived domestic abuse.”As described by the White House, Beverly Ann Ibn-Tamas, now 80, was convicted in 1977 “of murder in the second degree while armed for killing her husband.“Ms Ibn-Tamas, 33 at the time of the incident, was pregnant and testified that before and during her pregnancy her husband beat her, verbally abused her and threatened her. According to her testimony, her husband had physically assaulted her and threatened her in the moments before she shot him.“During her trial, the court refused to allow expert testimony regarding battered woman syndrome, a psychological condition and pattern of behavior that develops in victims of domestic violence.”Ibn-Tamas was sentenced to one to five years in jail. Her appeal, the White House said, “marked one of the first significant steps toward judicial recognition of battered woman syndrome, and her case has been the subject of numerous academic studies”.Ibn-Tamas became director of nursing for an Ohio-based healthcare business, the White House said, and continues to work there as a case manager. The White House noted that as a single mother, Ibn-Tamas raised two children, one of whom, her daughter, is now an attorney.The other recipients of full pardons included Gary Parks Davis, 66 and from Yuma, Arizona, who was jailed over a cocaine deal when he was 22 then became a pillar of his local community, and Edward Lincoln De Coito III, from Dublin, California, now 50, a pilot and army veteran convicted of marijuana trafficking at 23.Vicente Ray Flores of Winters, California, now 37, was convicted at 19 for using ecstasy and alcohol while in the army. Charles Byrnes Jackson, 77 and from Swansea, South Carolina, was convicted when 18 of possession and sale of distilled spirits without tax stamps. John Dix Nock III, from St Augustine, Florida, now 72, pleaded guilty 20 years ago to renting out a place where marijuana was grown.The White House official said the pardons followed “the categorical pardon of thousands of individuals convicted of simple marijuana possession … announced earlier this year, as well as the pardons of three individuals in April”.Biden pardons thousands with federal convictions of simple marijuana possessionRead moreThe April pardons concerned two people convicted of drugs offences and a former Secret Service agent who was convicted of attempting to sell government information, a charge he denied.Advocacy groups welcomed the thousands of pardons announced in October, for marijuana possession. Kassandra Frederique, the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, told the Guardian then her organisation was “thrilled”, though the move was “incredibly long overdue”.On Friday, the White House official said Biden “believes America is a nation of second chances, and that offering meaningful opportunities for redemption and rehabilitation empowers those who have been incarcerated to become productive, law-abiding members of society.“The president remains committed to providing second chances to individuals who have demonstrated their rehabilitation – something that elected officials on both sides of the aisle, faith leaders, civil rights advocates and law enforcement leaders agree our criminal justice system should offer.”TopicsUS newsUS politicsUS justice systemJoe BidennewsReuse this content More

‘I’ll be crashing on someone’s couch till I get paid’: life as the first Gen Z congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost, a Florida gun-control activist and former Uber driver, won a resounding victory in the US midterms. Now he just has to find somewhere to liveWhen we last visited 25-year-old Maxwell Alejandro Frost in September he was campaigning to become the first Gen Z member of the US Congress, and driving Uber shifts to make ends meet in the meantime. In early November he defeated his Republican rival, Calvin Wimbish, by a considerable margin, winning 59% of the vote in Florida’s 10th congressional district, which includes Orlando and many of its surrounding theme parks.Frost’s life has only become messier since. Chiefly, he has yet to sort out his living accommodation in Washington DC, and must decide whether to keep paying rent for the Orlando home he shares with two others, as well as working out how to foot these bills until his $174,000 (£142,000) federal salary kicks in. He says: “I’ll probably crash on someone’s couch in DC for the first month at least.”‘I’ve been Maced, I’ve been to jail …’ Can 25-year-old Maxwell Frost now be the first Gen Z member of Congress?Read moreEven finding potential roommates among his fellow representatives brings unforeseen challenges for the congressman-elect, who has been back and forth for freshman orientations. “A lot of people are looking to get their roommates before 3 January,” says Frost. “I just can’t operate on that timeline. Even after I start getting paid it’s not like I’m flush in one day. I have a lot of debt.” Earlier this month he vented on Twitter about being turned down for a DC apartment due to bad credit: “This ain’t meant for people who don’t already have the money,” he wrote.As full-circle a moment as it was for Frost, who made his first big trip to DC with his high-school band to play in Barack Obama’s 2013 inauguration parade, election night was bittersweet due to the Democrats losing control of the House of Representatives – and losing races across Florida.“I mean, we had a lot, a lot of losses,” Frost says. “I actually had a joint watch party with [fellow Florida congress member] Carlos Guillermo Smith, a progressive champion for working-class people, for the LGBTQ+ community – a good friend of mine and someone I really look up to. He lost re-election. It was really, really hard.”In his victory speech to supporters, Frost stressed the importance of forging ahead anyway, acknowledging his voters’ yearning for “bold champions” to enact “bold transformational change”. He even made a reference to Mamie Till – the mother of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Black teenager tortured and murdered by white supremacists in 1955, which ignited the civil rights movement. With fewer in his number, Frost feels a responsibility to fight even harder.Frost campaigned on gun control, the issue that first drove his activism, crisscrossing the country with survivors of the 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting before his congressional run. The mass shootings continue (there were seven in the seven days after his election), so he is eager to roll up his sleeves and get to work, but cautions that he cannot solve this seemingly intractable scourge alone. “I’ve gotten messages that are like: ‘You’re our saviour,’” he says. “But, no. There’s not one politician who’s going to save us. We shouldn’t think that way. This is a movement. I’m a small piece of a very big puzzle.”Still, the fact that Frost – an Afro-Cuban child of adoption – is now a piece of the puzzle at all would once have been unimaginable to his 97-year-old maternal grandmother, a Cuban émigré. It pains him that she died a month before his election victory; Frost had been so diligent about staying away to keep her safe from Covid-19. “She came here in the late 1960s with no money, no nothing,” he says. “She worked three factory jobs making, like, a buck an hour, no union protecting her, nobody looking out for her. She was grinding so my mom and my aunt could have a better life.“It’s something I think about a lot, all the work she put in. It’s really been pushing my beliefs, and it makes me even more excited for the future.”TopicsLife and style2022: what happened next?US politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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Politics Weekly America is taking a break. So this week, Jonathan Freedland revisits the conversation he had in July, with writer for The Atlantic, Jennifer Senior, about the former White House chief strategist under Donald Trump, Steve Bannon

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Southwest Airlines’ competitors cap prices to help stranded passengersAmerican, United and Delta among airlines capping fares after budget carrier plans return to normal operations on Friday Several of Southwest Airlines’ competitors will place price caps on travel to help the thousands of passengers stranded by the budget carrier’s mass flight cancellations this week. This news comes as the embattled air company said it planned to operate one-third of its schedule on Thursday 29 December but then “to return to normal operations with minimal disruptions on Friday” 30 December.American Airlines and United will implement a ceiling on air fares between certain cities, according to CNN. Delta has implemented “walk-up fare caps in US domestic markets”, a spokesperson for the carrier told Axios.Southwest Airlines under investigation as more flights canceled after stormRead moreAlaska Airlines, which told Axios that it already had price ceilings in place, will also cut fares in certain cities. Frontier Airlines reportedly said that it limited its top fares to “pre-disruption levels”. Spirit, meanwhile, was waving “modification changes or fare difference” between dozens of cities through 3 January, the news outlet said.Southwest has axed 2,357 flights on Thursday, far eclipsing any other carrier, data from Flightaware.com indicates. On Wednesday, Southwest cancellations reached 2,510. Federal authorities said they would investigate the transit meltdown.Southwest’s descent into logistical chaos started on Thursday 22 December. While many airlines saw cancellations due to a historic winter storm that brought blizzard-like conditions to much of the US, Southwest cancelled numerous flights in areas such as southern California that were not reeling from inclement weather.The cancellations waylaid thousands of flyers over the holiday weekend and into this week, with no clear path for returning home. There were numerous accounts of hours-long lines, days-long delays, overflowing baggage claims and teary Southwest agents who were contending with livid customers.Southwest’s rebooking policy worsened the company’s customers’ plight. The airline does not rebook passengers on competing airlines, according to CNN.As Southwest does not have agreements with other carriers that would permit rebooking on rival airlines, this limits customers’ options. “Southwest is unique in the industry in that we don’t have codeshare partners,” a Southwest spokesperson told CNN. “That is just part of our business model.”“I’m truly sorry,” Southwest’s chief executive, Bob Jordan, said in a video on Tuesday. He blamed cancellations on cold temperatures across the US, claiming they affected flight paths. “[A]fter days of trying to operate as much of our full schedule across the busy holiday weekend, we reached a decision point to significantly reduce our flying to catch up.”Asked for comment on its rivals’ initiatives, Southwest told the Guardian in an email this morning: “We can’t comment on other airlines.”“We continue to operate a reduced schedule by flying roughly one-third of our schedule through Thursday, as of now. We have no updates or adjustments to share regarding Friday’s schedule,” the company said. “Our teams are continuing the work of reuniting customers with their bags.”Southwest said it stood up additional resources to aid customers in the form of webpages to locate luggage and information on where they can contact Southwest torebook or request a refund.The airline said later on Thursday that it believed it could “return to normal operations” on Friday after one more day of running one-third of its schedule.The US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, has said the federal transit agency would investigate Southwest’s mass cancellations and determine whether it was meeting its legal obligations to affected customers. Buttigieg said that Southwest at a minimum should pay cash refunds for cancelled flights, as well as pay for passengers’ lodging and food costs.“While we all understand that you can’t control the weather, this has clearly crossed the line from what is an uncontrollable weather situation to something that is the airline’s direct responsibility,” Buttigieg recently said on NBC Nightly News.The US Senate’s commerce committee chairperson, Maria Cantwell, also vowed to conduct an investigation. Two of Cantwell’s fellow Democratic senators and commerce committee members have also demanded that Southwest give “significant” compensation to marooned customers, insisting that the carrier is capable of doing so if its plans to dole out $428m in dividends this January is any indication.While the pandemonium at Southwest caused widespread misery, some passengers who were left stuck managed to find a way home together. Some hapless travelers – who were strangers to each other – banded together on road trips rather than wait out the airline.Bridget Schuster, one of these road-trippers, went on TikTok and documented her journey from Florida to Ohio with three other passengers, all initially strangers.“So far, no serial killer vibes,” Schuster quipped.The Associated Press contributed reportingTopicsUS newsUS politicsAir transportnewsReuse this content More

Michelle Obama says she ‘couldn’t stand’ husband Barack for 10 yearsFormer first lady says caring for their young daughters put strain on their marriage in Revolt TV interview promoting latest book Former first lady Michelle Obama has said she “couldn’t stand” her husband for a decade while the couple’s children were young.In frank comments to the Black news station Revolt TV last week, Obama – one of the most popular women in America – said that raising children had put strains on her three-decade marriage to Barack Obama, the US president for two four-year terms beginning in 2009.The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama review – a guide for life from the former first ladyRead more“People think I’m being catty by saying this – it’s like, there were 10 years where I couldn’t stand my husband,” she told a round-table forum. “And guess when it happened? When those kids were little.”Obama, 58, was speaking with Kelly Rowland, H.E.R., Winnie Harlow and Beyoncé’s mother Tina Knowles-Lawson, about an imbalance in her marriage to Barack Obama while his political star was ascending and she was primarily looking after their daughters, Sasha and Malia, who are now in their 20s.“And for 10 years while we’re trying to build our careers and, you know, worrying about school and who’s doing what and what, I was like, ‘Ugh, this isn’t even,’” Obama said. “And guess what? Marriage isn’t 50/50 – ever, ever.“There are times I’m 70, he’s 30. There are times he’s 60, 40, but guess what?” she continued. “Ten years – we’ve been married 30. I would take 10 bad years over 30 – it’s just how you look at it. And people give up … [saying], ‘Five years – I can’t take it.’”The former first lady is currently promoting a new book, The Light We Carry. In the discussion about the difficulties of a marriage, she said that she and her husband hadn’t discussed how much work is required and “how hard it is even when you are madly in love with the person, even when everything works out right”.When Barack Obama was elected president, the couple’s daughters were 10 and seven. In a recent extract from her book published in the Guardian, the former first lady described how she and her husband learned that for all the “dreaming, preparing and planning for family life to go perfectly … in the end, you’re pretty much just left to deal with whatever happens”.“You can establish systems and routines, anoint your various sleep, feeding and disciplinary gurus from the staggering variety that exist,” Obama wrote in the excerpt. “You can write your family bylaws and declare your religion and your philosophy out loud, but, at some point, sooner rather than later, you will almost surely be brought to your knees, realizing that despite your best and most earnest efforts, you are only marginally – and sometimes very marginally – in control.”In her latest comments, she added: “Little kids, they’re terrorists. They have demands. They don’t talk. They’re poor communicators. They cry all the time.”TopicsMichelle ObamaBarack ObamaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Maryland representative Jamie Raskin says he has ‘serious but curable’ lymphomaTrump adversary and top Democrat in next House oversight committee says prognosis is ‘excellent’ and will continue to legislate Maryland representative Jamie Raskin said on Wednesday that he has a type of lymphoma that’s a “serious but curable form of cancer” and he is beginning several months of treatment.Raskin, who will be the top Democrat on the House oversight and reform committee in the next Congress, said he expects to be able to work through his outpatient treatment at a Washington-area hospital.‘Do you have no shame?’: Tulsi Gabbard grills congressman-elect George SantosRead moreIn a statement on Wednesday, Raskin said he has diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and the “prognosis for most people in my situation is excellent after four months of treatment”. He said he has been advised his chemotherapy treatment will cause hair loss and weight gain.“I am still holding out hope for the kind that causes hair gain and weight loss,” he joked.Raskin has played a leading role in recent years as House Democrats twice impeached Donald Trump and investigated the former president’s role in the January 6 insurrection. He was the lead impeachment manager when the House impeached Trump one week after the attack, and he currently sits on the House committee investigating the siege. That panel issued its final report last week and is set to dissolve when the new Republican-led House is sworn in on 3 January.This is the second time the Maryland Democrat has been diagnosed with cancer, as he previously battled colorectal cancer in 2010. The news comes almost exactly two years after his 25-year-old son, Tommy, committed suicide on 31 December 2020.Tommy’s death came just a week before the insurrection, and Raskin had brought his daughter and son-in-law to the Capitol that day. Through tears, Raskin spoke about their ordeal as he argued for Trump’s conviction in the Senate impeachment trial. They hid under a desk as the violence unfolded, and his daughter later told him she didn’t want to return to the Capitol.“Of all the terrible, brutal things I saw and I heard on that day and since then, that one hit me the hardest,” Raskin told the Senate jurors, who later acquitted Trump for a second time.Raskin wrote a book, Unthinkable, about working through his trauma from both events.Of his most recent trial, Raskin says: “I plan to get through this and, in the meantime, to keep making progress every day in Congress for American democracy.”TopicsHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More