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      Russia arrests US man on drug trafficking charges

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      A US national has been arrested on drug trafficking charges in Russia, the latter nation said on Tuesday, bringing the number of Americans detained by authorities in Moscow to at least three as tensions rise over the Ukraine war.Robert Romanov Woodland, 32, was arrested on 5 January, Reuters reported, citing the Russian news website Mash, which said Woodland faced a 20-year prison sentence if convicted.A district court in the northern Moscow suburb of Ostankino ruled on Saturday to keep Woodland in custody until 5 March on charges of attempted large-scale production and sale of illegal drugs.No other details were immediately available. Neither the US state department nor US the embassy in Moscow has commented, and the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, did not address it at a press conference later on Tuesday in Tel Aviv.Russian media said that the name of the accused matches that of a US citizen interviewed by the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2020, who said he was born in the Perm region of Russia’s Ural mountains in 1991 and adopted by an American couple at the age of two.The man said he later traveled to Russia to find his birth mother, and after locating her he decided to stay in the town of Dolgoprudny, 15 miles north of central Moscow. He said he worked as an English teacher at a local school.Woodland’s arrest comes as relations between the US and Russia grow increasingly strained as the war in Ukraine continues. Efforts by the Biden administration to secure the release of two other Americans jailed in Russia – the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and the former marine Paul Whelan – were rejected last month, and Woodland’s detention will fuel analysts’ fears that they are being held as bargaining chips.Russia freed the American basketball star Brittney Griner, who spent almost 10 months in jail on drug charges, in December 2022 in exchange for the notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, the so-called “Merchant of Death” who was held in a US prison for 12 years.At the time, Joe Biden expressed regret the deal did not include Whelan, 53, a corporate security executive from Michigan who was jailed in 2018 on espionage charges his family and US officials say are false.“While we have not yet succeeded in securing Paul’s release, we are not giving up. We will never give up,” the president said, although in an interview last month Whelan, who is serving a 16-year sentence, said he felt “abandoned and betrayed” by the US.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRussia’s president, Vladimir Putin, said last month his government had talked with the US over the two detainees and hoped to “find a solution”.Gershkovich, 32, is the first American journalist to be held in Russia on spying charges since the end of the cold war. He was arrested in the Urals city of Ekaterinburg on a reporting trip in March 2023 and has been held behind bars since. Like Woodland, he faces a 20-year prison term if convicted.No trial date has been set, and the US government has declared him to be wrongfully detained.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Young voters helped Biden to victory. They may abandon him this year

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      Elise Joshi stumped for Joe Biden as a college freshman, motivated in no small part by her sense of urgency about climate change. The environmental policy student campaigned before the 2020 election as part of TikTok for Biden, in hopes of persuading other young people to show up to the polls.The work undertaken by Joshi and her peers paid off for Democrats – youth voter turnout surged in 2020, and has been widely credited as playing a key role in propelling Biden to victory.But as the Israeli bombing of Gaza has killed more than 22,000 Palestinians to date, Joshi is feeling disillusioned with the president she once “happily” voted for. She’s not alone. With US military support for Israel holding steady, Joshi says that the White House’s current handling of the situation in Palestine is alienating young people – the very demographic Biden will need to win re-election in 2024.“My generation is appalled. There’s a lot of people who are not willing to put their votes towards this administration as a result of their actions in Gaza,” she said.And if Democrats think their climate track record will be enough to redeem them, she said, then they’re miscalculating how young people view the current administration’s actions on climate in the first place.Biden has sometimes been described as the “climate president” for signing into law the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the largest investment in clean energy in American history. But many young people in Joshi’s cohort are more concerned with the oil and gas provisions within the IRA, as well as Biden’s unwillingness to declare a climate emergency. Joshi also says her peers are frequently disappointed over the Willow Project, an oil-drilling project approved by the Biden administration early last year that’s estimated to emit more climate pollution per year than 99.7% of all single-point sources in the country.Joshi is just one leader connected to the youth climate movement trying to warn the current administration about the potential consequences of its stance on Gaza. She signed an open letter to that effect in her capacity as executive director of Gen-Z for Change – the organization formerly known as TikTok for Biden — alongside leaders from groups like the Sunrise Movement and March for Our Lives this fall.“The vast majority of young people in this country are rightfully horrified by the atrocities committed with our tax dollars, with your support,” the letter read. “The position of your administration is badly out of step with young people and the positions of Democratic voters, whom have been shown to support a ceasefire by supermajorities in multiple polls.”Numerous polls have indeed shown Biden trailing Trump among young voters, in stark contrast to their overwhelming preference for Biden in 2020. Recent polling by the New York Times suggests that young people’s support of Biden is wavering in light of his stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “The young Biden ’20 voters with anti-Israel views are the likeliest to report switching to Mr Trump,” the Times’ analysis read.That prospect would be extremely concerning to the youth climate vote, who understand the risk Trump poses to the environment.War as environmental injusticeWhile many big green groups and climate-focused news organizations in the US have been slow to address Israeli attacks on Gaza, the youth climate movement globally has overwhelmingly expressed solidarity with Palestinians, and staunchly rejected the idea that criticizing the actions of the Israeli government is inherently antisemitic. From Greta Thunberg posting a picture of herself holding a “Stand with Gaza” sign to activists at COP28 staging pro-Palestine rallies, climate-focused youth have made clear that they see the war as an environmental justice issue.For climate activists used to raising the alarm about the ways that climate change is causing displacement and forced migration, increasing food and water insecurity and ravaging beloved landscapes and ecosystems, it’s not hard to draw a parallel to the way that Israel’s bombing is having the same impacts on Gaza and its inhabitants. That’s not to mention the emissions associated with military operations, nor the symbolic connection many environmentalists, whom some call “tree huggers”, might feel to Palestinians who have been photographed hugging olive trees after their orchards were attacked by Israeli settlers.“Many of these people that are from global south countries had an unwavering support for Palestine,” said Isaias Hernandez of his experience meeting other young people at the UN climate conference in Dubai. Hernandez, who posts environmental content under the username @queerbrownvegan, is one of more than 120 content creators with a combined audience of millions who signed onto an open letter of their own in support of a “free Palestine”.Youth climate activists are often close with their peers in other countries, connecting via social media, meeting up and working together to stage actions at global conferences multiple times a year. That sense of global solidarity is helping bolster US youth in their convictions about Gaza.“We are a nonviolent movement that is fighting for the safety and well-being of all people in their communities,” said Michele Weindling, the political director of the Sunrise Movement. “We feel a direct link and a stake in what’s happening in Gaza in that we believe that no people should lose access to life-sustaining resources like water.”Even for young people who might be hesitant to weigh in on a geopolitical conflict with a long, complex and painful history, the simple math of US spending is enough to spark outrage.“Our president has, time and time again, told us we don’t have the money or the resources to implement climate solutions at the scale that we’re asking for; that we can’t forgive student debt at the scale that we need; but that we have the resources to send more bombs to the Israeli military,” Weindling said. “And young people are really upset about that.”The road to NovemberBoth Weindling and Joshi want to make clear that they’re not asking their movement to withhold votes in the primary election. On the contrary, they want young people to vote.“I really hope young people don’t become apathetic to voting in the first place and stop showing up to the polls, because the president is an important job,” Joshi said. “I’m incredibly worried about that.”But both organizers want to warn the current administration about where the youth vote is currently headed. What’s more, they argue that the administration’s reluctance to call for a ceasefire in Gaza will make it increasingly challenging for grassroots groups to mobilize youth voters who are disillusioned with Biden’s “pro-war” stance.“This is not only a morally problematic direction of leadership, but it’s also politically a very risky one,” said Weindling. “We cannot explain [Biden’s] position to our generation, and that will have significant effects, not just on how young people turn out in 2024 to vote, but also on whether or not they volunteer and get their friends and family out to vote.”Still, the alternative – potentially four more years of Trump – is “frightening”, according to Joshi. Not only did Trump make the US dirtier and the planet warmer in his four years in office, weakening environmental regulations, pulling the nation out of international climate agreements and more, but he recently promised to expand oil drilling on day one of the presidency if he’s re-elected.This – along with the havoc Trump wreaked on immigration rights, voting rights and the democratic process, among other things – is why Hernandez said he plans to vote. He sympathizes with his peers who plan to opt out, but he wants “to help reduce harm and violence throughout the world”.If Biden wants to lure more young people back to the voting booth come November, he may still have time to course-correct, the young activists said, but he needs to act decisively, and soon.“The first step toward preventing a Trump administration is calling for a ceasefire right now,” said Joshi. “Climate voters and voters that care about Palestinians – they’re one and the same.” More

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      ‘Extraordinary’: Biden administration staffers’ growing dissent against Gaza policy

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      Dissent inside the Biden administration over the president’s Gaza policy is growing, with a public resignation this week of a Department of Education official, and a letter signed by more than a dozen Biden campaign staffers calling for a ceasefire and the conditioning of aid to Israel.“It’s pretty extraordinary levels of dissent,” said Josh Paul, a career official working on arms sales at the state department who resigned in protest in October, of the mounting signs of discontent. “I am hearing in recent weeks from people who are thinking more seriously about resigning.”Tariq Habash, the Department of Education official, also says that he has heard from many more officials than he had anticipated who are contemplating their own exits. “It speaks to the continued shift and concerns about our current policies,” he said. “I hope it resonates with the president and the people who are making policy decisions on this issue that is affecting millions of lives.”Habash, who is Palestinian American, is the first political appointee from the Biden administration to bring his resignation to the media and publish an open letter. “I cannot stay silent as this administration turns a blind eye to the atrocities committed against innocent Palestinian lives,” he wrote in announcing his resignation from his position as adviser to its policy planning office. In the letter, he objected to the president not pressuring Israel “to halt the abusive and ongoing collective punishment tactics” that have led to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. He also took issue with administration leaders’ repetition of “unverified claims that systemically dehumanize Palestinians”.A day before Habash quit, 17 current campaign staffers anonymously called for a ceasefire and conditioning military aid to Israel. Their letter urged Biden to take “concrete steps to end the conditions of apartheid, occupation, and ethnic cleansing that are the root causes of this conflict”. An organizer of the letter, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “We know we’re not alone in this, and there is a very big coalition asking for the same thing.”These are just the latest internal criticisms of Biden. Last month, a group of administration officials hid their faces with masks and scarves and staged a vigil in front of the White House in support of a ceasefire. More than 500 alumni of Biden’s presidential campaign signed an open letter calling for a ceasefire in November, and congressional aides and USAid employees sent their own petitions this fall. Current state department officials who do not want to risk their jobs by speaking out have increasingly taken advantage of sanctioned routes to criticizing the president, by filing dissent memos to the secretary of state.The Guardian spoke to several current political appointees and career staffers from the state department who are critical of the administration’s approach but declined to speak on the record. Some say they are trying to create change from within. Others say that the president’s entire Middle East approach is being guided by the White House and in many sense the president himself, defying the recommendations of policy experts.Of Habash’s resignation, the White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said that “people have the right to voice their opinion”. She and the state department directed questions to the Department of Education, whose spokesperson wished Habash the “best in his future endeavors”.Biden’s advisers sought to diffuse internal dissatisfaction with a series of listening sessions at the White House and the state department in October and November. “It’s a sign of strength that an administration not only hears but welcomes dissent from within,” said Emily Horne, a former spokesperson for the Biden White House.Since the first days after Hamas’s 7 October attacks, the administration has shifted some of its rhetoric. Biden is now talking more about the humanitarian catastrophe than he was during the initial days of Israel’s ground incursion into Gaza and has repeatedly urged Israel to take steps to protect civilians. But the acute situation in Gaza caused by Israel’s ongoing operations, which have killed more than 22,000 Palestinians, along with risks of famine and severely restricted medical care, have overshadowed any purported shifts in US policy.This week, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will travel to the Middle East “to underscore the importance of protecting civilian lives in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza”. The state department criticized statements from Israeli ministers who have called for the relocation of Palestinians from Gaza. But even that condemnation came just days after the secretary of state bypassed Congress to rush arms to Israel.“There is a feeling among Arab Americans and Muslim Americans in government that the administration does’t take their opinions or dissent seriously,” said Jasmine El-Gamal, a former civil servant who worked on Middle East policy at the Department of Defense during the Obama years.Paul, the senior state department career official who resigned in protest in October, said he’s in contact with several people currently in government who are thinking about leaving over Biden’s handling of Israel. “If there was universal healthcare, there would be more people willing to resign,” he said, in reference to many government employees’ reliance on their jobs for medical care.Habash’s resignation, coupled with the 3 January letter from current campaign staff, comes amid fears that Biden could be losing important members of his base as the 2024 presidential election begins in earnest. Even former Obama administration officials now hosting popular podcasts like Pod Save America have become vocally critical of Biden. The campaigners’ letter said that re-election campaign “volunteers quit in droves, and people who have voted blue for decades feel uncertain about doing so for the first time ever, because of this conflict”.For now, the dissent does not seem to be affecting Biden’s approach or that of the close-knit circle of advisers around him. A former official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, downplayed the resignations and open letters. “Some of these criticisms resonate, but I don’t see them actually making a significant difference,” they said. “The times when it matters to this administration is when it starts to play into domestic politics and becomes a concern for the next election.”Habash says he remains aligned with much of Biden’s domestic policies, and hopes his departure pushes the president to change course on Gaza. “Our elected officials are not in touch with their base and their voters,” he warned. More

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      US-Mexico border crossings in December set monthly record high

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      More than 300,000 people were on track to cross the US-Mexico border in December without authorization and are being processed by American immigration officials, a tally that sets the latest monthly record, according to government figures obtained by CBS.The number of crossings, averaging roughly 8,400 apprehensions a day by US border agents, comes amid urgent efforts by the Joe Biden White House to curb migrant flows that have become a domestic political liability for him as he seeks re-election in 2024.In the first 28 days of December, border agents processed nearly 235,000 people without permission crossed the southern border in between ports of entry, alongside 50,000 who entered the country under an appointment system. Included in that number were nearly 96,000 parents traveling together with their children.The previous monthly high in US-Mexico border crossings was in September, when the agency processed nearly 270,000.Earlier in December, the White House had hinted it may accept new limits on asylum seekers as well as an expansion of detention and deportation efforts – a potential reversal of immigration liberalizations announced early in Biden’s presidency.Mexico and Venezuela on Saturday announced that they had restarted repatriation flights of Venezuelans migrants in Mexico. That comes after a high-level meeting between US and Mexico officials aimed at curbing the flow while maintaining cross-border trade.Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador said last week that he had received a request from Biden to discuss the issue. “He was worried about the situation on the border because of the unprecedented number of migrants arriving at the border,” López Obrador later said, according to the Associated Press. “He called me, saying we had to look for a solution together.”A recent CBS poll found that immigration ranks second among concerns facing the country, behind inflation but ahead of concerns about the stability of the democratic system.According to government figures, most people who entered the US without permission are released with court notices, without any asylum screenings. The immigration court system, with fewer than 800 immigration judges, has a backlog of 3m pending cases – or 4,500 for each judge, and it may take three years to clear.A caravan of about 6,000 people was reportedly making its way north through Mexico toward the US, placing additional pressure on authorities. On Sunday’s political talkshows, the mayors of Chicago and Denver described the burden that the backlog of immigration cases was placing on their cities.Republican US senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told CBS’s Face the Nation that “expedited removal [of migrants] is on the table” amid negotiations with Democrats for approval of an aid deal for Ukraine. Graham said he looks “at the border problems as a national security nightmare for America”.Later, Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson, a Democrat, told CBS: “This is clearly an international and federal crisis that local governments are being asked to subsidize, and this is clearly unsustainable.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe mayor placed blame on Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, whose administration is sending planes and buses of migrants to northern cities. Abbott, he said, “is determined to continue to sow seeds of chaos”.In the same conversation, the Denver mayor, Mike Johnston, said his city had received 35,000 migrants in December who had been successfully integrated. “What we don’t want is people arriving at two in the morning at a city and [at] county buildings with women and children outside in 10-degree weather and no support,” he said.Ohio congressman Mike Turner, chairman of the US House intelligence committee, told ABC’s This Week that White House action on the issue would have to come before he and his fellow Republicans moved on administration requests on Congress to approve a national security package that includes aid for Ukraine and Israel in their respective ongoing wars.“We have cities across the country who are having … huge impacts, who are calling on the administration to address it,” Turner added. More

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      Virginia senator Tim Kaine condemns Biden’s arms transfer to Israel

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      Virginia senator Tim Kaine has added his voice to a rising chorus within the Democratic party questioning the Biden administration’s legislatively unconstrained transfer of US munitions to Israel.In a news release on Saturday, the Democratic senator – a member of the Senate armed services committee – said weapons transfers must come under congressional oversight.“Just as Congress has a crucial role to play in all matters of war and peace, Congress should have full visibility over the weapons we transfer to any other nation. Unnecessarily bypassing Congress means keeping the American people in the dark,” Kaine wrote.“We need a public explanation of the rationale behind this decision – the second such decision this month,” he added.On Friday, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency said the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, had approved the sale of 155mm projectiles and related equipment valued at $147.5m, an increase from an earlier approved order for tens of thousands of rounds of the heavy artillery munitions.It said that Blinken had “determined and provided detailed justification to Congress that an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale to the Government of Israel” and that the sale was “in the national security interests of the United States” and thereby exempt from congressional review under arms-export control laws.“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self defense capability,” the statement added.Kaine said in his statement that he “strongly condemned” Hamas’s 7 October attacks on Israeli civilians, which killed about 1,200 people, and had been vocal about the need to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.At least 21,672 people have been killed in Gaza and 56,165 wounded since the war began, according to the most recent numbers from the Gaza health ministry.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKaine’s statement added to administration concerns that its policy of military transfers to Israel, including a $14.3bn package announced in November that Biden called “an unprecedented support package for Israel’s defense”, is out of step with US domestic and international public opinion.On Friday, South Africa called on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to find that Israel’s war in Gaza is a violation of the Genocide Convention of 1948. The filing accused Israel of engaging “in genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza”.Separately, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said that soldiers with the IDF fired on a UN aid convoy returning from a delivery in northern Gaza, an incident the UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths condemned as “unlawful”. More

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      US threatens to sue Texas over law allowing state police to arrest migrants

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      The US Department of Justice has threatened to sue the state of Texas if it implements a law that would allow state police to arrest any person deemed suspicious of crossing the border illegally.The law, called Senate Bill 4, is scheduled to go into effect on 5 March. One of the strictest immigration laws ever passed in American history, SB4 seeks to “prohibit ‘sanctuary city’ policies, that prohibit local law enforcement from inquiring about a person’s immigration status and complying with detainer requests”.The law would include “improper border entry” as a new criminal offense, placing undocumented Texas residents and migrants within the grips of the state’s criminal justice system.Immigration and border enforcement is a function of the federal government, the justice department argues: since the US supreme court ruled so in the landmark United States v Arizona case in 2012, immigration policy has long been under the purview of the US federal government – not individual states.In a letter addressed to the Republican Texas governor, Greg Abbott, the Biden administration has given the Lone Star state a deadline of 3 January to reverse course.The letter says, in part: “SB 4 is preempted and violates the United States constitution. Accordingly, the United States intends to file suit to enjoin the enforcement of SB 4 unless Texas agrees to refrain from enforcing the law. The United States is committed to both securing the border and ensuring the processing of noncitizens consistent with the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). SB 4 is contrary to those goals.”On X, Abbott wrote: “The Biden Admin. not only refuses to enforce current U.S. immigration laws, they now want to stop Texas from enforcing laws against illegal immigration. I’ve never seen such hostility to the rule of law in America.”He added: “Biden is destroying America. Texas is trying to save it.”The move is one of several attempts by Texas at enforcing border security, all a part of Operation Lone Star, a joint operation between the Texas department of public safety and the Texas military department with the mission of countering illegal immigration.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEarlier this year, in July, Abbott and his administration were condemned as inhumane by immigrant and civil rights groups for deploying razor wire and a large floating buoy in the Rio Grande to deter illegal migration – another issue on which the US Department of Justice pursued legal action against Texas.In May, shortly after the Biden administration ended the pandemic-era policy Title 42, which had given US officials authority to turn away people who had come to the US-Mexico border claiming asylum in order to prevent the spread of Covid-19, Abbott deployed a security unit called the Texas tactical border force to the US-Mexico border. The force is equipped with aircrafts, boats, night vision devices and riot gear.In recent years, Texas has also joined Republican-led Florida in bussing undocumented immigrants from their states to “sanctuary” cities such as Chicago, New York and Boston. More

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      Biden poised to loosen restrictions on marijuana, but some say it’s not enough

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      The US government appears poised to announce next year the most sweeping changes in decades to how it handles marijuana, the psychoactive drug dozens of states allow to be sold from storefronts, but which federal law considers among the most dangerous substances.Evidence suggests that Joe Biden’s administration, responding to a policy the president announced last year, is working on moving marijuana to schedule III of the Controlled Substance Act (CSA), a change from its current listing on the maximally restrictive schedule I. That would lessen the tax burden on businesses selling the drug in states where it is legal, and potentially change how police agencies view enforcement of marijuana laws.“If it’s going to be finalized at schedule III, it’s going to be the moment that the industry really is able to turn the corner and we begin to see the growth in the cannabis space amongst the legal operators that we’ve been waiting on for so long,” said David Culver, senior vice-president of public affairs for the US Cannabis Council, a trade group.But other marijuana legalization advocates regard changing its classification as a half-measure that would do nothing to resolve conflicts between state and federal laws that emerged after weed legalization picked up speed a decade ago.Marijuana faces the same federal restrictions as drugs like heroin and ecstasy under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), but 38 states have approved its use for medical conditions, and 24 states and the District of Columbia allow adults to also consume it recreationally. That conflict has complicated the marijuana industry in states where it is legal, particularly when it comes to access to banking services, and Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (Norml), said rescheduling the drug would not resolve that.“Classifying it as schedule III would make every existing state cannabis law that’s currently inconsistent with federal law as equally inconsistent going forward. So, it doesn’t solve any of the problems before it,” he told the Guardian.“It needs to be descheduled for logistical reasons, for practical reasons, because we have a system right now where the majority of states are choosing to regulate marijuana as a legal commodity through their own state-specific systems, and that act is not permitted for any substance that is in the CSA. That is only permitted for substances that are not scheduled.”Last month, Gallup released a survey that found 70% of Americans think marijuana use should be legal, a record number.Biden does not appear ready to go that far. In his statement announcing marijuana reform, which was released about a month before last year’s midterm elections, the president pardoned all people convicted of simple marijuana possession federally, and also kicked off the review of the drug’s classification under the CSA.That process is typically a bureaucratic affair, in which the Department of Health and Human Services reviews the substance and sends its findings to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which then decides whether to change its classification. Yet signs have already emerged that marijuana is being treated like no drug before it.On 30 August, the US health and human services secretary, Xavier Becerra, announced on X that his department had completed its review, an unusual public status update for a process that is typically opaque. And his account made the post at 4.20pm, a number of great significance in cannabis culture.Becerra did not specify what his department had recommended, but Bloomberg News obtained a letter from HHS to the DEA that recommended marijuana be put on schedule III, alongside drugs like ketamine and anabolic steroids.Tahir Johnson, a board member at Minority Cannabis Business Association who is planning to open a dispensary in New Jersey next month, said rescheduling would help his business by lessening its tax burden. Federal law currently prohibits marijuana businesses from deducting their expenses from their income, meaning they sometimes pay tax rates upwards of 80%.“It will help all cannabis businesses. But, I think especially for minority businesses, where capital and finances are tight, being able to alleviate that is certainly meaningful,” said Johnson.Armentano also expects a rescheduling could help Biden’s reputation with the voters who make up the Democratic coalition, as well as people outside his base. Gallup found 87% of Democrats think marijuana should be legal, along with 55% of Republicans and 64% of people older than 55.“It behooves the president to have this core base passionate about something that he’s doing to try to address the enthusiasm gap that he seems to have now,” he said.Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which opposes legalizing the drug, argued dropping pot to a lower CSA schedule would harm public health.“It’s going to ramp up commercialization, it’s going to ramp up the marketing and the glamorization of marijuana,” Sabet said. “It’s going to do that both in a practical way with this deducting expenses, and it’s going to do so in a global way, by just sending the message that this is harmless.”Until marijuana is legalized federally, it will still be up to Congress to resolve the conflicts between state and federal law, and progress there has been slow. A bill to allow cannabis businesses access to more financial services, known as the Safer Banking Act, has been passed by the House of Representatives six times, and is currently working its way through the Senate.Starting in 1972, groups including Norml have petitioned the DEA and HHS to reschedule marijuana, to no avail. Armentano said the stage appears to be set for political considerations to finally get federal agencies to back down, at least partially.“Frankly, if this petition is successful, and the DEA reverses 50 years of precedent, then it just speaks to the fact that all along this process has simply been a political one,” he said. More

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      Biden officials decry Trump’s anti-migrant xenophobia – yet quietly copy his stance| Moustafa Bayoumi

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      At a campaign rally in New Hampshire last Saturday, the former president Donald Trump repeated a claim he made back in September: immigrants coming to the United States, he said, are “poisoning the blood of our country”. The phrase is particularly disturbing as it evokes Nazi language about blood and nation.The last time Trump uttered this “poisoning the blood of our country” phrase, criticism from historians and civil libertarians was swift. This time, Joe Biden’s re-election campaign saw an opportunity and pounced. “Donald Trump channeled his role models as he parroted Adolf Hitler,” a Biden-Harris 2024 spokesperson wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, adding that “Trump is not shying away from his promise to lock up millions of people in detention camps.”Yes, that’s true, but while Trump’s rhetoric and promises are odious and must be rejected, the Biden campaign is also talking out of both sides of its mouth.First, to Trump. By now, only a visitor from another planet (who would certainly be locked up by Trump for illegal entry) would be surprised by the ex-president’s rhetoric. Trump’s jingoistic ability to sow fear of foreigners and hatred of others is a large part of his rightwing populist appeal. Over the weekend, Trump also claimed that “drugs, criminals, gang members and terrorists are pouring into our country”. He said the United States was facing something “like a military invasion” from would-be immigrants and asylum seekers and promised to implement “the largest deportation operation in American history”.Even the cadence of his speech is reminiscent of a reel highlighting the Greatest Worst Things Trump Ever Said. Remember what he said about Mexico in 2015? “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems to us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”Today, even the “good people” are gone. Now, Trump describes those crossing the border this way: “They come from prisons. They come from mental institutions and insane asylums. Many are terrorists.” (It’s a 2024 remix!) He also makes a point to say: “They’re coming from all over the world. They’re coming from Africa, from Asia,” as if we should be afraid of Latinos, Africans and Asians, leaving me to wonder whom we shouldn’t be afraid of. I’m not really wondering. The answer is as plain as vanilla.But far more troubling than Trump’s putrid but predictable xenophobia is hearing the Biden campaign trumpet how morally opposed it is to Trump’s border policies at precisely the same time that the White House is negotiating with Republicans to adopt immigration policies that look suspiciously and horribly Trump-like. There is a word for such a stance: hypocrisy.The reason for the negotiations is no secret. The Biden administration has been seeking to send US military assistance to both Ukraine and Israel, but the funding bills have stalled in Congress. To vote for the money, Republicans are demanding the administration overhaul its immigration policy to align more closely with theirs, and – disturbingly – the Democrats seem poised to do so.Put another way, the Democrats are ready sell out immigration for foreign policy, even though the impact on immigration could be substantial and long-lasting, while Democratic foreign policy goals are both unclear and increasingly unpopular.Joe Biden entered office with an immigration reform agenda, one that sought to reverse many of the inhuman positions of his predecessor, such as the family separation policy that the Trump administration cruelly deployed. Biden didn’t always succeed, but the aspiration was clear. Early on in his term, he proposed the US Citizenship Act of 2021, which would have offered a path to citizenship for undocumented people, brought Dreamers – undocumented people brought to the United States as children – immigration relief, set up refugee processing centers in Central America and funded more immigration judges, among other things.It never passed.Instead of convincing the other side of the aisle of the need for immigration reform, the Biden administration has slowly given up on reform over the years. It’s been happening piecemeal for a while now (such as Biden funding the construction of 20 miles of Trump’s border wall), but reports of the latest negotiations read like a major capitulation to the Republican worldview.The Biden administration is reportedly discussing rolling back its historical commitments to asylum seekers in exchange for aid to Ukraine and Israel and inducting a new system to apprehend undocumented immigrants already in the country. Being discussed is expanding “expedited removal” of migrants at the border without a hearing, significantly raising the criteria for asylum, making permanent pandemic-era border restrictions (like the public health provision known as Title 42) and mandating immigration detention for some immigrants who are awaiting a court date.“A return to Trump-era policies is not the fix,” is how Alex Padilla, a Democratic senator from California, has responded. Padilla is the first Latino chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on immigration, citizenship and border safety. “In fact, it will make the problem worse,” he said. “Mass detention, gutting our asylum system, Title 42 on steroids. It is unconscionable.”Trump’s racist comments about “poisoning the blood of the nation” are typical of Trump’s bigotry, but Biden’s immigration approach reads more like a betrayal. Biden’s willingness to trade away American traditions of asylum protection and meaningful immigration reform for an Israeli military campaign on Gaza that is widely acknowledged – even by Biden himself – as unacceptably dangerous to civilian life, having killed upwards of 20,000 people, makes Biden’s calculation here seem not only cynical but disastrous, both for Gaza’s civilians and for Biden’s prospects for re-election. (Meanwhile, why wouldn’t Israel’s leaders continue to ignore Biden’s pleas to limit their military assault? Ignoring Biden makes him look weak, as they too would almost certainly prefer a Trump presidency.)The Biden administration wants to have it both ways. Biden officials want to believe they can criticize Trump’s positions but adopt positions close to Trump’s when it’s expedient. To answer this fundamental contradiction, they seem to be throwing their weight behind the appeal of a “lesser of two evils” argument for Democratic voters.What they don’t seem to realize, or want to acknowledge, is that every time someone asks you to choose between a lesser of two evils, they’re still asking you to choose evil. And that’s a choice some voters simply aren’t willing to make.
      Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist More