US Politics

America is about to revive an idea that was left for dead decades ago. It’s called industrial policy and it’s at the heart of Joe Biden’s plans to restructure the US economy.When industrial policy was last debated, in the 1980s, critics recoiled from government “picking winners”. But times have changed. Devastating climate change, a deadly pandemic and the rise of China as a technological powerhouse require an active government pushing the private sector to achieve public purposes.The dirty little secret is that the US already has an industrial policy, but one that’s focused on pumping up profits with industry-specific subsidies, tax loopholes and credits, bailouts and tariffs. The practical choice isn’t whether to have an industrial policy but whether it meets society’s needs or those of politically powerful industries.Consider energy. The fossil fuel industry has accumulated “billions of dollars in subsidies, loopholes and special foreign tax credits”, in Biden’s words. He intends to eliminate these and shift to non-carbon energy by strengthening the nation’s electrical grid, creating a new “clean electricity standard” that will force utilities to end carbon emissions by 2035 and providing research support and tax credits for clean energy.It’s a sensible 180-degree shift of industrial policy.A proper industrial policy requires that industries receiving public benefits act in the public interestThe old industrial policy for the automobile industry consisted largely of bailouts – of Chrysler in 1979 and General Motors and Chrysler in 2008.Biden intends to shift away from gas-powered cars entirely and invest $174bn in companies making electric vehicles. He’ll also create 500,000 new charging stations.This also makes sense. Notwithstanding the success of Tesla, which received $2.44bn in government subsidies before becoming profitable, the switch to electric vehicles still needs pump priming.Internet service providers have been subsidized by the states and the federal government and federal regulators have allowed them to consolidate into a few giants. But they’ve dragged their feet on upgrading copper networks with fiber, some 30 million Americans still lack access to high-speed broadband, and the US has among the world’s highest prices for internet service.Biden intends to invest $100bn to extend high-speed broadband coverage. He also threatens to “hold providers accountable” for their sky-high prices – suggesting either price controls or antitrust enforcement.I hope he follows through. A proper industrial policy requires that industries receiving public benefits act in the public interest.The pharmaceutical industry exemplifies the old industrial policy at its worst. Big pharma’s basic research has been subsidized through the National Institutes of Health. Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act bankroll much of its production costs. The industry has barred Americans from buying drugs from abroad. Yet Americans pay among the highest drug prices in the world.Biden intends to invest an additional $30bn to reduce the risk of future pandemics – replenishing the national stockpile of vaccines and therapeutics, accelerating the timeline for drug development and boosting domestic production of pharmaceutical ingredients currently made overseas.That’s a good start but he must insist on a more basic and long-overdue quid pro quo from big pharma: allow government to use its bargaining power to restrain drug prices.A case in point: the US government paid in advance for hundreds of millions of doses of multiple Covid-19 vaccines. The appropriate quid pro quo here is to temporarily waive patents so manufacturers around the world can quickly ramp up. Americans can’t be safe until most of the rest of the world is inoculated.Some of Biden’s emerging industrial policy is coming in response to China. Last week’s annual intelligence report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence warns that Beijing threatens American leadership in an array of emerging technologies.Expect more subsidies for supercomputers, advanced semiconductors, artificial intelligence and other technologies linked to national security. These are likely to be embedded in Biden’s whopping $715bn defense budget – larger even than Trump’s last defense budget.Here again, it’s old industrial policy versus new. The new should focus on cutting-edge breakthroughs and not be frittered away on pointless projects like the F35 fighter jet. And it should meet human needs rather than add to an overstuffed arsenal.Biden’s restructuring of the American economy is necessary. America’s old industrial policy was stifling innovation and gouging taxpayers and consumers. The challenges ahead demand a very different economy.But Biden’s new industrial policy must avoid capture by the industries that dominated the old. He needs to be clear about its aims and the expected response from the private sector, and to reframe the debate so it’s not whether government should “pick winners” but what kind industrial policy will help the US and much of the world win. More

Joe Biden is coming under pressure from former state department career staff to match the diversity of his cabinet and senior administration positions in foreign postings – and to reform the longstanding practice in the US of rewarding political supporters with plum ambassadorial jobs.More than three months into his first term, Biden’s foreign diplomatic slate remains open, with only one top ambassador – Linda Thomas-Greenfield, to the United Nations, nominated and confirmed.Appointments, typically made soon after a new president is inaugurated, have taken longer to fill under Biden in part because of a balancing act between three competing, interconnected pools of potential appointees: diplomatic staff who endured the chaos of Trump who feel they should be rewarded; returning Obama staff; and Biden political supporters and donors.But in recent days, the White House has signaled it is ready to act after vacating the posts of all but one of Donald Trump’s political appointees – US ambassador to Moscow John Sullivan – and restocking the state department at the level of under secretary, deputy and assistant secretaries. At state, those staff typically run policy and administration in a department of 13,000 foreign service, 11,000 civil service and 45,000 local employees on a $52bn budget.With Biden’s soft power leanings illustrated by his commitment to pull troops from Afghanistan by 11 September, the burden of US foreign policy will fall on a foreign service corps that was undermined by Trump’s unpredictable approach to diplomacy.First order, says one seasoned ambassador, has been to restore the function and morale to the department; second, to reform the balance between political and career staff appointments.“It’s clear they’re going to appoint some political ambassadors but it won’t be as many and they’re going to be more interested in quality,” said Ronald E Neumann, president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, who notes that Trump appointed only two career officers out of 50 appointments at assistant secretary level or above.“The administration is trying to rebuild American diplomacy – but not from the ground up because they already have good career officers,” Neumann said. “The job is to bring them in and use them.”In so doing, the administration has to choose between officials who served during Obama and Clinton administration and existing state department staff that endured serving under the turmoil of Trump’s four years in office.“There’s a certain amount on nail-biting among career officials who stuck it out through the Trump administration who feel they need to recognized and not just bringing back career people,” Neumann added.But the administration’s willingness to follow US political custom to reward non-foreign service allies with foreign appointments has become clearer in recent days.On Monday, Politico reported that Cindy McCain, widow of the Republican senator John McCain, is undergoing vetting to be nominated for US ambassador to the UN World Food Programme, a mission based in Rome.McCain, who had been rumored to be headed to London, gave Biden an electoral boost in the critical state of Arizona with her endorsement of the Democrat over Trump – helping Biden to become the first Democratic presidential nominee to carry the state since Bill Clinton 25 years ago. Others rumored to be in line for a foreign posting include the former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, who is considered too controversial for a domestic administration post.Pressure to conform to a pattern of diversity hiring followed by the administration in Washington, once subtle, is now overt. As it stands, 60% of US diplomatic posts are filled by men and 40% by women. In an 9 April letter, a group of 30 female former ambassadors and national security leaders urged Biden to prioritize gender parity.“Our vision of gender parity means that a man or a woman has an equal chance, at all times, of ascending to each ambassadorship. This should be true across all geographic regions, in posts both large and small,” the Leadership Council for Women in National Security (LCWINS) said in the letter.The letter concluded: “We hope you will pay attention to growing allies within the US government who will also focus upon the diversity America’s representatives to the world should demonstrate.”Piper Campbell, former ambassador to Mongolia and the US mission to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), later told PBS that the timing of the letter was to influence the ongoing selection process. “That’s something that we hope can still be impacted,” she said.But pressure, too, to dismantle longstanding pay-for-play operations is also upon the administration. “Handing out ambassadorships to favored campaign donors is a sordid bipartisan tradition in Washington,” wrote Matt Ford in the New Republic in February, adding: “President Joe Biden has a chance to make a sharp break from this unseemly past.”While political appointments typically number one-third, Trump took the practice to the next level. The American Foreign Service Association found that 43.5% of Trump’s choices were political appointees, compared with 30% for Barack Obama, 31% for George W Bush, and 28% for Bill Clinton.Trump spared some of his nominees even cursory knowledge of the distant lands they would be serving their country in. Fourteen of Trump’s ambassadorships to Canada and the European Union went to people who donated at least $1m to his inaugural committee.Some were tasked with unusual diplomatic errands to run. After his appointment to Britain, Woody Johnson, owner of the New York Jets and a Republican fundraiser, was reportedly asked to campaign for the British Open to be held at Trump’s Scottish golf resort, Turnberry.Following complaints, Johnson was in August last year found by a state department watchdog to have “sometimes made inappropriate or insensitive comments” and directed to watch a video on workplace harassment.One simply never made it to their post. Mark Burkhalter, a Georgia real estate developer, had his nomination for ambassador to Norway returned after he failed to disclose his participation in circulating a racist flyer during a Georgia political contest.While the practice of rewarding supporters with ambassadorships was super-sized by Trump, the Biden administration’s desire to create daylight between it and its predecessor could help to usher in reforms of practice. Echoing Neuman, Axios recently reported that the White House is “tempering the ambassadorial expectations of his big-dollar donors”.According to Sarah Bryner, research director at Center for Responsive Politics, “Trump was a deviation from the norm with patronage appointments” and the Biden administration is likely to reduce but not eliminate the practice.“While the whole concept of patronage is problematic, the thing about ambassadorships is that they’re a pretty low-cost way to reward supporters and allies by placing them in foreign positions that are unlikely to have serious negative consequences,” Bryner told the Guardian.But, Bryner said, “there has been a lot of pressure put on Biden to restore morale in the state department and restore America’s image abroad, so that might result in him being a little bit more cautious. Does that mean we’re not going to see Rahm Emanuel, or other Democratic donors and supporters appointed? No, but there’s still a lot of pressure in this space.” More

Despite a wave of public statements by corporations opposing legislation that would make it harder for people to vote, election reform advocates doubt American capitalism is really coming to the rescue of American democracy.Activists are welcoming corporate involvement in the fight against bills introduced by Republicans in state legislatures across the US to erect barriers to voting that disproportionately affect people of color and other groups that often vote Democratic.Hundreds of companies and business leaders lent their names this week to a two-page ad declaring “we must ensure the right to vote for all of us”, published in the country’s biggest papers.But past corporate interventions in social justice campaigns, including statements of solidarity with Black Lives Matter protesters last summer, did not go far beyond words, activists say.The pursuit of lower taxes and lax regulations, meanwhile, has led corporations to continuously finance the Republican party’s most corrosive projects, from voter suppression to the takeover of the judiciary to the big election lie that led to the sacking of the Capitol in January, they say.“Of course we welcome corporate support against outrageous voter suppression efforts by GOP state legislatures that make it harder for voters, particularly from communities of color and other historically marginalized communities, to vote,” said Ben Jealous, president of People For the American Way.It does feel, on this one, that some of these companies are getting out ahead of a potential boycott from consumers“That reaction is no doubt driven by their fears of losing business from their customers in the midst of heated public anger over such aggressive and targeted voter suppression, and we hope they will put their money where their mouth is and take real action to stop such proposals.”Thenewspaper ad was organized by two African American business leaders – Kenneth Frazier, chief executive of Merck, and Kenneth Chenault, former head of American Express – who have said such bills are racially discriminatory, even as Republicans insist election security is their deepest concern.The corporate decision to speak out created a rare moment of discombobulation for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, who warned chief executives to “stay out of politics” before clarifying a day later, with no hint of self-consciousness: “I’m not talking about political contributions.”But the surface friction between McConnell and his erstwhile patrons belies the mildness of most corporate criticism of anti-voter laws and obscures companies’ ambivalence when it comes to taking a stand on voting rights, activists said.Large Georgia-based companies including AT&T, Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola did not voice concerns last month about legislation to restrict voting in the state until they came under public pressure. Their eventual statements were measured.“We are working together with other businesses through groups like the Business Roundtable to support efforts to enhance every person’s ability to vote,” said AT&T’s chief executive, John Stankey. “In this way, the right knowledge and expertise can be applied to make a difference on this fundamental and critical issue.”The same three companies declined to sign the ad published in the New York Times and Washington Post last week, referring media to their statements about Georgia, though similar high-profile clashes are playing out in Michigan, Arizona, Texas and elsewhere.Walmart declined to sign the ad, with its chief executive, Doug McMillon, who chairs the Business Roundtable, telling employees: “We are not in the business of partisan politics.”Walmart’s reticence was spotlighted by LaTosha Brown and Cliff Albright, co-founders of Black Voters Matter, in a statement that praised the newspaper ad as a “righteous decision to stand up to racism, disenfranchisement, and voter suppression” and criticized those who did not sign.“They – and all of these other companies – continue to issue misleading statements that create a false equivalency between securing elections and attacking voting rights,” Black Voters Matter said. “These corporations are pandering to a big lie that is being used to justify voter suppression. That’s partisan.”Michael Serazio, a professor of communications at Boston College, said corporations appeared to be taking a “proactive” approach on voting rights to protect their bottom lines.“It does feel, on this one, that some of these companies are getting out ahead of a potential boycott from consumers, before the boycott around the laws was going to kick off,” Serazio said.Corporations increasingly feel pressure from consumers and in some cases employees on social and political issues, Serazio said.“Without question, the broader trend over the last decade has been corporations responding to a perceived or real sense that consumers want them to take a stand on political issues that they wouldn’t have done before.”But corporations simultaneously shovel money into the coffers of the very politicians who engineer the policies the companies claim to detest.A report this month by Public Citizen, a government watchdog, found corporations had given more than $50m in campaign donations in recent years to legislators who advanced anti-voter laws and promoted Donald Trump’s big election lie.Josh Silver, director of Represent.us, a non-partisan elections reform group, said corporations have “an extraordinarily important role” to play in the struggle over voting rights and there was “cause for hope”.“But it’s also practical for them,” Silver said. “They have to choose whether to side with an increasingly authoritarian [Republican party], or the majority of their workers and their consumers.“This is not just altruism.” More

Malcolm X, Mark Twain, Malcolm Gladwell. Lewis Carroll, Steve Jobs. Douglas Adams, Mohandas Gandhi, Rocky Balboa – all seem unlikely sources of inspiration for a definition of Trumpism.Yet these are among the prominent figures quoted by members of a new thinktank dedicated to resurrecting former US president Donald Trump’s populist-nationalist agenda.The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) describes itself as both “non-profit” and “non-partisan”. Critics, however, regard it as a cash cow for alumni of the Trump administration whose stained reputations make it hard to find gainful employment.Despite Trump’s campaign promise to “drain the swamp”, the AFPI reportedly has a first-year budget of $20m, which it hopes to double to $40m next year, and plans to expand beyond its current headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, to locations that include a spacious office on Washington’s Capitol Hill.The AFPI unveiled a website this week replete with images of the Stars and Stripes and Mount Rushmore. It profiles 35 team members with, in most cases, an inspirational quotation from a famous person.The board chair, Linda McMahon, for example, a former professional wrestling executive who led Trump’s Small Business Administration, attributes a line to the actor and comedian Lucille Ball: “If you want something done, give it to a busy woman to do it.”Pam Bondi, an ex-Florida attorney general who defended Trump against impeachment, quotes the French fashion designer Coco Chanel: “Keep your heels, head and standards high.” Kaelan Dorr, who was senior adviser at the treasury department, dips into film fiction with the boxer Rocky, played by Sylvester Stallone: “Every champion was once a contender who refused to give up.”But vice-chair Larry Kudlow, former economic adviser to Trump, simply quotes himself: “Free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity.”Trump this week gave the organization his blessing, issuing a statement in praise of its “patriots” as “some of the greatest champions for freedom, free enterprise, national greatness, and the primacy of American workers, families, and communities, that our Nation has ever seen”.The former president said these “freedom warriors” have his full support “as they work not only to preserve the historic accomplishments of my Administration, but also to propel the America First Agenda into the future”.The team includes Rick Perry, former energy secretary, and John Ratcliffe, ex-director of national intelligence. Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, will be informal advisers to the group, according to the Axios website.The AFPI’s president and chief executive is Brooke Rollins, whose past roles have included policy director for Perry when he was governor of Texas, head of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) thinktank and Trump’s top domestic policy adviser.With priorities including criminal justice reform, government efficiency and education reform, Rollins oversaw a significant expansion and enhanced profile of the TPPF during her 15 years there, a formula she hopes to replicate at the new thinktank. Her successor as chief executive of the TPPF, Kevin Roberts, said: “She loves ideas. She loves policy.“She wants to be able to continue to promote the great successes that came from the Trump administration, many of them originating in states; that really makes sense when you think about what she was doing before she went to the White House. I think she’s going to be a forceful and classy voice of objection to some of the priorities of the Biden administration. She’s going to do an exceptional job in leading the group.”Roberts believes that Trump’s policy achievements on criminal justice reform, the US-Mexico border and the pre-pandemic economy are worth preserving, studying and developing. “I think bottling that up into a thinktank and asking questions from an academic point of view – how was it that we achieved that? – is really important,” he said.The AFPI is organized around 20 “policy centers”, such as homeland security and energy independence. A profile of the “Center for 1776” rails against “academic elites and demagogues” who are choosing to “embrace identity politics, division, and submission”. It appears to be picking up where Trump’s “1776 Commission”, a thinly disguised rightwing backlash against the New York Times’s 1619 Project, left off.But some observers found irony in the notion that a president who exhibited few ideological commitments – other than “owning the libs” and Republican orthodoxy on tax cuts for the rich – is now spawning a policy institute.Michael D’Antonio, an author and political commentator on CNN, said: “I guess I give them credit for exhibiting creativity. I didn’t expect that the level of gall would reach the point where they would actually create an institute devoted to policies that never existed in the first place.Many of these people are so disgraced that their options for gainful employment outside of this make-believe world of Trump policy are very limited“Trump is nothing if not energetically imaginative and this is a great way to suggest that there was something that never existed. Maybe they could at last develop Trump-related policies. So maybe now there’ll be a healthcare plan and it could come from this institute.”D’Antonio suggested that the AFPI will spend time attacking Joe Biden and is unlikely to impress political scholars. “I can’t imagine anyone outside of the Trumpian universe taking anything that they produce seriously,” he added. “It’s not exactly a team of policy superstars. Many of these people are so disgraced that their options for gainful employment outside of this make-believe world of Trump policy are very limited.”When a president leaves office, his former staff often slot into lucrative work on a corporate board or in the lobbying industry. Trump’s uniquely divisive leadership appears to have stigmatized former aides, although several – including Kudlow – have taken roles at Fox News, Fox Business or other conservative media. The AFPI offers another refuge.Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman, wondered: “How could anything having to do with Trump have the word ‘think’ in it? No. It’s all just a grift. It won’t be a thinktank. It’ll be a vehicle for people to give money to pay people who worked for Trump and can’t get hired elsewhere to keep Trump relevant.”As Trump resides at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, teasing another run for president in 2024, organizations have sprung up to carry on his legacy. They include the Conservative Partnership Institute, established by the former Republican senator Jim DeMint, and America First Legal, a legal group set up by the former White House policy adviser Stephen Miller.The AFPI will easily be the biggest and may help Trump maintain his grip on the Republican party, but will have to work hard to establish credibility in Washington’s already crowded hive of policy thinktanks.Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, which traces its origins to 1916, said: “This is not the first research centre or joint venture to have been established to give a patina of intellectual respectability to Trumpism and it probably won’t be the last.“After all, there are a lot of unemployed Trump alumni and, to be fair, if you strip away all of the unacceptable personal stuff, all of the prejudice, you are still left with a handful of ideas that form the core of Trumpism, for better or for worse. It obviously represents a shift in the intellectual centre of gravity within the Republican party.”Galston, a former policy adviser to Bill Clinton, added: “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to learn that, in four years or eight years, we’ll look back on this flurry of intellectual activity in the Trumpist wing of the Republican party and say this is where the political eruption that Donald Trump represents was organised into something that the party could newly coalesce around.”The AFPI also includes Paula White-Cain, a Trump spiritual adviser and televangelist who will lead a “Center for American Values”. Her online profile quotes the African American poet Maya Angelou: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” More

The former employee who shot and killed eight people at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis was interviewed by FBI agents last year, after his mother called police to say that her son might commit “suicide by cop”, the bureau has revealed. Coroners released the names of the victims late Friday, a little less than 24 hours after the latest mass shooting to rock the US. Four of them were members of Indianapolis’ Sikh community. The attack was another blow to the Asian American community, a month after six people of Asian descent were killed in a mass shooting in the Atlanta area.The shooter was identified as Brandon Scott Hole, 19, of Indianapolis, deputy police chief Craig McCartt told a news conference. Investigators searched a home in Indianapolis associated with Hole and seized evidence, including desktop computers and other electronic media, McCartt said.Hole began firing randomly at people in the parking lot of the FedEx facility late Thursday, killing four, before entering the building, fatally shooting four more people and then turning the gun on himself, McCartt said. He said he did not know if Hole owned the gun legally.McCartt said the killings took place in a matter of minutes, and that there were at least 100 people in the facility at the time. Many were changing shifts or were on their dinner break, he said.Paul Keenan, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Indianapolis field office, said Friday that agents questioned Hole last year after his mother called police to say that her son might commit “suicide by cop”.He said the FBI was called after items were found in Hole’s bedroom but he did not elaborate on what they were. He said agents found no evidence of a crime and that they did not identify Hole as espousing a racially motivated ideology.A police report obtained by Associated Press shows that officers seized a pump-action shotgun from Hole’s home after responding to the mother’s call. Keenan said the gun was never returned.McCartt said Hole was a former employee of FedEx and last worked for the company in 2020. The deputy police chief said he did not know why Hole left the job or if he had ties to the workers in the facility. He said police have not yet uncovered a motive for the shooting.Indianapolis police chief, Randal Taylor, noted that a “significant” number of employees at the FedEx facility were members of the Sikh community, and a civil rights organization, the Sikh coalition, later issued a statement saying it was “sad to confirm” that at least four of those killed were community members.The coalition said in the statement that it expected authorities to “conduct a full investigation – including the possibility of bias as a factor”.Varun Nikore, executive director of the AAPI victory alliance, a national advocacy group for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, said in a statement that the shootings marked “yet another senseless massacre that has become a daily occurrence in this country”.Nikore said that gun violence in the US “is reflective of all of the spineless politicians who are beholden to the gun lobby”.The Marion county coroner’s office identified the dead as Matthew R Alexander, 32; Samaria Blackwell, 19; Amarjeet Johal, 66; Jaswinder Kaur, 64; Jaswinder Singh, 68; Amarjit Sekhon, 48; Karli Smith, 19; and John Weisert, 74.“You deserved so much better than this,” a man who identified himself as the grandson of Johal tweeted Friday evening. Johal had planned to work a double shift Thursday so she could take Friday off, according to the grandson, who would not give his full name but identifies himself as “Komal” on his Twitter page. Johal later decided to grab her check and go home, and still had the check in her hand when police found her, Komal said.“(What) a harsh and cruel world we live in,” he added.Smith, the youngest of the victims, was last in contact with her family shortly before 11pm Thursday, family members said in social media posts late Friday. Dominique Troutman, Smith’s sister, waited hours at the Holiday Inn for an update on her sister. “Words can’t even explain how I feel. … I’m so hurt,” Troutman said in a Facebook post Friday night.Weisert had been working as a bag handler at FedEx for four years, his wife, Carol, told WISH-TV. The couple had been married nearly 50 years. More

The US Department of Justice has sued Roger Stone, saying the close ally of former president Donald Trump owes about $2m in unpaid federal income taxes, according to a court document. The civil lawsuit, filed in federal court in Florida on Friday, alleged that Stone and his wife, Nydia, used a commercial entity to “shield their personal income from enforced collection and fund a lavish lifestyle despite owing nearly $2m in unpaid taxes, interest and penalties”.Stone did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Stone, 68, is a long-time Republican political operative, known for his high-end wardrobe, outspoken comments and tattoo on his back of former president Richard Nixon. The self-styled “dirty trickster” faced fresh scrutiny after the attack on the US Capitol for his links with far-right groups, though he was not part of the insurrection.Stone advised Trump when the wealthy real estate developer toyed with running for president in 2000 and briefly worked on Trump’s successful 2016 campaign.He was indicted by Robert Mueller, the former special counsel tasked with investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. Mueller’s investigation, which Trump called a “witch hunt”, led to criminal charges against dozens of people, including Trump associates such as political strategist Paul Manafort and former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.A federal jury in Washington convicted Stone on seven counts of lying to Congress, obstruction of justice and witness tampering. At trial, prosecutors said Stone told five different lies to lawmakers on the US House intelligence committee about his contacts with the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks.Trump granted Stone a presidential pardon in December, wiping away the criminal conviction. Trump had previously commuted Stone’s sentence, which was condemned by Robert Mueller, allowing him to avoid a prison sentence. More

Key events

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4.53pm EDT
16:53

White House to raise Trump-era refugee cap next month amid backlash

2.31pm EDT
14:31

Democrats angry after Biden keeps Trump’s cap on refugee admissions

1.00pm EDT
13:00

Today so far

12.22pm EDT
12:22

Gun violence ‘pierces the very soul of our nation’, Biden says

11.50am EDT
11:50

Harris meets with Japanese PM and addresses Indianapolis shooting

11.23am EDT
11:23

White House is ‘horrified’ by Indianapolis shooting, Psaki says

11.13am EDT
11:13

J&J vaccine pause to last for at least another week

Live feed

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5.34pm EDT
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During his press conference with the Japanese Prime Minister, Joe Biden re-emphasized his support of universal background checks and a new assault weapons ban after being asked about where gun violence prevention falls on his priority list.
Biden touted his decades-long dedication to gun control and called the nation’s steady stream of gun violence a “national embarrassment.” He also called on Republicans in Congress to pass the gun control legislation that remains at a constant stalemate.
“It’s not just the mass shootings. Every single day there are mass shootings in the United States if you count those who are killed in our cities and rural areas,” Biden said.

5.12pm EDT
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Hello, this is Abené Clayton reporting from the west coast. I’ll be taking over the blog for the next few hours.
Joe Biden is holding a press conference alongside Yoshihide Suga, Prime Minister of Japan, to announce a new alliance between the two countries to help countries in the Indo-Pacific region recovery from the pandemic.
Suga is the first head of state to visit the White House under Biden.
Watch the press conference live here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/live/

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5.04pm EDT
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Afternoon summary

The White House announced plans to lift a Trump-era cap on refugees after Democrats and activists forcefully denounced a decision to keep admissions at the same level. Biden had previously committed to significantly raising the cap. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the White House would release a “final, increased” number next month.
Biden held his first in-person meeting with a foreign leader, Japanese prime minister Yoshihide Suga, underscoring Biden’s determination to counter China’s growing assertiveness. The leaders are expected to hold a joint press conference shortly.
A founding member of the Oath Keepers has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with federal officials as part of their sprawling investigation into the 6 January attack.

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4.53pm EDT
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White House to raise Trump-era refugee cap next month amid backlash

Press Secretary Jen Psaki is pushing back on criticism of Biden’s presidential determination that keeps the number of refugee admissions at the historically low level set by Trump, asserting that the directive has been the “subject of some confusion”.
In a new statement issued after blowback from Democrats and refugees advocates, Psaki announced that the White House would set a “final, increased” cap in mid-May.

The President’s directive today has been the subject of some confusion. Last week, he sent to Congress his budget for the fiscal year starting in October 2021, which honors his commitment. For the past few weeks, he has been consulting with his advisors to determine what number of refugees could realistically be admitted to the United States between now and October 1. Given the decimated refugee admissions program we inherited, and burdens on the Office of Refugee Resettlement, his initial goal of 62,500 seems unlikely.
While finalizing that determination, the President was urged to take immediate action to reverse the Trump policy that banned refugees from many key regions, to enable flights from those regions to begin within days; today’s order did that. With that done, we expect the President to set a final, increased refugee cap for the remainder of this fiscal year by May 15.

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A government watchdog has reportedly determined that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo violated federal ethics rules when he and his wife asked state department employees to carry out scores of personal tasks for the couple.
According to Politico, which obtained a copy of the report compiled by the state department’s inspector general’s office, government investigators uncovered more than 100 instances in which Mike or Susan Pompeo “asked State Department staffers to handle tasks of a personal nature, from booking salon appointments and private dinner reservations to picking up their dog and arranging tours for the Pompeos’ political allies. Employees told investigators that they viewed the requests from Susan Pompeo, who was not on the federal payroll, as being backed by the secretary.”
Mike Pompeo reportedly defended the actions in an interview with investigators as the “types of things friends do for friends”. His lawyer, William Burck, assailed the report as a politically biased “compilation of picayune complaints cherry-picked by the drafters.”
The inspector general’s office, however, defended the investigation, noting that many of the rules governing such interactions are clear, do not make exceptions for small tasks, and that the Pompeos’ requests ultimately added up to use a significant amount of the time of employees paid by taxpayers.
Among the tasks the Pompeos asked staffers to carry out:

buying a T-shirt for a friend
arranging for flowers to be sent to friends recovering from sickness
helping Susan Pompeo book hair salon appointments when she was in New York during the UN General Assembly
and, in one instance, asking a senior adviser to the secretary and a senior Foreign Service officer to come in on a weekend “to envelope, address, and mail personal Christmas cards for the Pompeos,” the report states.

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4.20pm EDT
16:20

As we await the joint press conference between Biden and Suga, here are some fun facts about the Japanese prime minister, courtesy of Takaaki Abe, deputy bureau chief of Nippon Television.

According to a very vivid and thorough pool report, the 72-year-old prime minister is a paragon of health and wellness who was born in 1948 to a family of strawberry farmers in rural Akita Prefecture, in the northern part of Japan.
Mr Suga has a black belt in Karate.
He likes sweets, and doesn’t drink. Speaking of his eating habit, he lost about 30 pounds by going on a morning soup curry diet almost 10 years ago.
Mr Suga was the chief cabinet secretary under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for almost 8 years from Dec 2012-Sep 2020, and became the longest-serving chief cabinet secretary in the country.
He had a famous morning routine, waking up at 5am, doing 100 sit-ups, and going for a 40 min walk.
His favorite book is “It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership” by Colin Powell and Tony Koltz which has become a bestseller in Japan after Mr Suga mentioned that he drew inspiration and guidance from it during his time as chief cabinet secretary.
Mr Suga became Japan’s 99th Prime Minister on September 16th, 2020, succeeding Mr Shinzo Abe, who was the longest-serving prime minister in the country.
Prime Minister Suga continues his morning walk routine.

Updated
at 4.47pm EDT

4.09pm EDT
16:09

Democrats continue to slam Biden’s reversal on his pledge to raise the refugee admissions cap.
“This Biden Administration refugee admissions target is unacceptable,” Senator Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the chamber. “These refugees can wait years for their chance and go through extensive vetting. Thirty-five thousand are ready. Facing the greatest refugee crisis in our time there is no reason to limit the number to 15,000. Say it ain’t so, President Joe.”
Though the decision has drawn sharp criticism from Democrats, Stephen Miller, Trump’s former White House senior advisor and anti-immigrant crusader, suggested the move validated the Trump administration’s hardline approach as he gloated that it was a “significant promise broken for Biden.”

Michelle Hackman
(@MHackman)
Tough day for Biden when his decision on refugees Angers a wide range of allies, from Democrats to religious leaders, and gives Stephen Miller a reason to gloat https://t.co/ivforfjkuB pic.twitter.com/WonqcsITyG

April 16, 2021

3.58pm EDT
15:58

A few minutes ago, Biden welcomed Prime Minister Suga in the State Dining Room. In their brief remarks, Biden noted that he was the “first foreign leader to visit me in my presidency.”
“We are two important democracies in the Pacific region,” he added.
Suga said he appreciated being the first foreign leader to meet with Biden, and offered his “condolences for the loss of the mass shooting in Indianapolis.”
“The US-Japan relationship is a cornerstone for peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific and the world, and its importance is higher than ever,” he added.

3.49pm EDT
15:49

The explicitly nativist appeal by members of Congress to establish a caucus based on respect for “Anglo Saxon” culture has rightly been condemned as racist and dangerous.
But it’s also made some wonder what exactly the group’s founders envisioned when they called for a restoration of “Anglo Saxon” style architecture.

b-boy bouiebaisse
(@jbouie)
all new buildings must respect our anglo-saxon heritage pic.twitter.com/D6fzVe7FPO

April 16, 2021

Astead
(@AsteadWesley)
u must RESPECT Anglo Saxon traditions and architecture pic.twitter.com/aIQ8lZ45dI

April 16, 2021

In all seriousness, the adoption of Trump’s “America First” slogan for their caucus name is an acknowledgement that a not insignificant part of the former president’s support was rooted in whiteness.

Adam Serwer 🍝
(@AdamSerwer)
You can’t get much clearer than the repeated deployment of “anglo-saxon” here. https://t.co/fGh74Hokyk

April 16, 2021

As an aside, Trump was also fixated on architecture. He even signed an executive order stating that the “preferred architecture” style for new buildings should be classical, not brutalist.

3.10pm EDT
15:10

Attorney General Merrick Garland has rescinded a Trump-era memo that curtailed the use of consent decrees, tools used by federal prosecutors in investigations of police departments.
The Associated Press reports…

Garland issued a new memorandum to all U.S. attorneys and other Justice Department leaders spelling out the new policies on civil agreements and consent decrees with state and local governments.
The memo comes as the Justice Department shifts its priorities to focus more on civil rights issues, criminal justice overhauls and policing policies in the wake of nationwide protests over the death of Black Americans at the hands of law enforcement.
In easing restrictions placed on the use of consent decrees, the Justice Department is making it easier for its prosecutors to use the tool to force changes at police departments and other government agencies with widespread abuse and misconduct.
The memo in particular rescinds a previous memo issued by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions shortly before he resigned in November 2018.
Democrats have long argued the ability of the Justice Department’s civil rights division to conduct sweeping probes of police departments had been curtailed under President Donald Trump. The so-called pattern or practice investigations examine whether systemic deficiencies contribute to misconduct or enable it to persist.
“This memorandum makes clear that the Department will use all appropriate legal authorities to safeguard civil rights and protect the environment, consistent with longstanding Departmental practice and informed by the expertise of the Department’s career workforce,” Garland said.

2.50pm EDT
14:50

Martin Pengelly

Donald Trump, his family and supporters hoped their attacks on Hunter Biden would distract Joe Biden rather than convince people not to vote for him, the president’s son said in an interview on Friday, “whether it ended up in some horrible death, or whatever was their intention”.
The author of the memoir Beautiful Things was speaking to the New Abnormal, a Daily Beast podcast. He discussed his struggles with addiction and attempts to find dirt to use against his father which resulted in Donald Trump’s first impeachment.
Host Molly Jong-Fast asked: “Do you think they did it because they wanted you to kill yourself?”
Biden said: “There literally is nothing more important to my dad than his family, and if they could, whether it ended up in some horrible death or whatever was their intention, I think they thought they would be able to distract my dad enough that he wouldn’t be able to focus on the campaign. And they had the exact opposite effect.”
Jong-Fast also asked Biden about his dealings with energy companies in Ukraine and China, the subject of Trump’s attacks…

2.31pm EDT
14:31

Democrats angry after Biden keeps Trump’s cap on refugee admissions

Rounding up some reaction and analysis to Biden’s action today on refugee resettlement.
The Washington Post reporter Seung Min Kim notes that Biden’s pledge to raise the cap to 62,500 was already prorated for the 2021 fiscal year, which ends on 30 September.
“An apples-to-apples comparison is that Biden pledged 125,000 refugees and decided to stick with 15,000,” she writes.

Seung Min Kim
(@seungminkim)
One thing to remember is that the 62,500 refugee figure Biden pledged was already a prorated figure for a fiscal year that was half over. An apples-to-apples comparison is that Biden pledged 125,000 refugees and decided to stick with 15,000. Quite the stunning drop.

April 16, 2021

The administration’s determination has angered Democrats, who were particularly appalled by the Trump administration’s treatment of refugees to the United States.
New Jersey senator Bob Menendez assailed the decision.
“The White House has not only stymied the number of refugees permitted entrance into the United States,” he said, “but also it has prevented the Department of State from admitting vetted refugees currently waiting in the system who do not fit into the unprecedentedly narrow refugee categories designated by the Trump administration.”
New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the decision “completely and utterly unacceptable”.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
(@AOC)
Completely and utterly unacceptable. Biden promised to welcome immigrants, and people voted for him based on that promise.Upholding the xenophobic and racist policies of the Trump admin, incl the historically low + plummeted refugee cap, is flat out wrong.Keep your promise. https://t.co/A82xYf1XpR

April 16, 2021

The Washington representative Pramila Jayapal went for “simply unacceptable and unconscionable” and said Biden had chosen not to immediately repeal Trump’s “harmful, xenophobic, and racist refugee cap”.
“President Biden has broken his promise to restore our humanity,” she added. “We cannot turn our back on refugees around the world, including hundreds of refugees who have already been cleared for resettlement, have sold their belongings, and are ready to board flights.”

Updated
at 3.36pm EDT More

Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterJoe Biden was condemned on Friday for reversing a campaign pledge by leaving in place the historically low cap on refugee admissions set by his predecessor, Donald Trump.The number of refugees allowed to resettle in the US per year fell from 85,000 to 15,000 under Trump, whose hardline “America first” agenda frequently portrayed migrants as a security threat.Biden had considered raising the cap to 62,500 but instead opted for a policy that officials say will speed up the admissions process while keeping the 15,000 ceiling.The U-turn left Biden facing potentially his first major rebellion from the left of the Democratic party. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive congresswoman from New York, tweeted: “Completely and utterly unacceptable. Biden promised to welcome immigrants, and people voted for him based on that promise.“Upholding the xenophobic and racist policies of the Trump admin, including the historically low and plummeted refugee cap, is flat out wrong. Keep your promise.”Her Washington state colleague Pramila Jayapal said: “It is simply unacceptable and unconscionable that the Biden administration is not immediately repealing Donald Trump’s harmful, xenophobic and racist refugee cap that cruelly restricts refugee admissions to a historically low level … President Biden has broken his promise to restore our humanity.”Biden’s order could allow for a wider group of refugees to be considered for resettlement. It adjusts allocation limits set by Trump, providing more spaces for refugees from Africa, the Middle East and Central America, and lifts restrictions on resettlements from Somalia, Syria and Yemen.Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, posted on Twitter: “America needs to rebuild our refugee resettlement program. We will use all 15,000 slots under the new Determination and work with Congress on increasing admissions and building back to the numbers to which we’ve committed.”But refugee advocacy groups expressed deep disappointment, noting that Biden’s campaign website promised he would “prioritize setting the annual global refugee admissions cap to 125,000”.Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, described the move as both “bad policy and bad politics”.“There is no valid policy reason to maintain the shockingly low refugee cap,” he said. “As a political matter, President Biden will alienate a lot of his supporters by failing to turn the page on President Trump’s racism, xenophobia and scapegoating of immigrants and refugees.”The International Rescue Committee called the order “a disturbing and unjustified retreat” and suggested that at the current rate of admissions, Biden’s administration is on track to resettle the lowest number of refugees of any president in US history.David Miliband, the IRC president and chief executive, said: “This is a time of unprecedented global need and the US is still far from returning to its historic role of safe haven for the world’s persecuted and most vulnerable.”Biden previously signed an executive order pledging to increase the number of refugees admitted in the 2022 fiscal year, which begins on 1 October, to 125,000. In the current fiscal year, just over 2,000 refugees have been resettled.The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, told reporters the delay was because “it took us some time to see and evaluate how ineffective, or how trashed in some ways the refugee processing system had become, and so we had to rebuild some of those muscles and put it back in place”.Another concern has been the record pace of unaccompanied migrants crossing the US-Mexico border, which has drawn in resources that would go to vetting, processing and resettling refugees.“It is a factor,” said Psaki, noting that the Office of Refugee Resettlement “has personnel working on both issues and so we have to ensure that there is capacity and ability to manage both”.Eleanor Acer, refugee protection director at Human Rights First, rejected this argument.“As the administration certainly knows, the United States has the ability to both increase resettlement and uphold its asylum commitments at the border; not doing so means that America’s beacon of safety for refugees and asylum seekers remains dark,” she said.“It’s also disingenuous for this administration to say it is pursuing ‘other legal pathways’ for Central American refugees to come to the United States while maintaining its shutdown of asylum at the border and leaving the limit for refugee admissions at the lowest level in history.”Apparently stung by the outcry, Psaki later released a statement that claimed there had been “some confusion” over the cap. The statement acknowledged that Biden’s initial goal of 62,500 “seems unlikely” but added: “We expect the President to set a final, increased refugee cap for the remainder of this fiscal year by 15 May”. More