Biden administration

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden warns Russia over cyber-attacks, says Putin doesn't want cold war – video

      by

      Joe Biden warned Russian president Vladimir Putin that the US has significant cyber capability as he looked to pressure his counterpart over cyber-attacks. The US leader says Putin wasn’t seeking to intensify confrontation with the west after the two held “good and positive” talks. “I think that the last thing he wants now is a Cold War,” Biden said

      Biden warns US will hit back if Russia continues with cyber strikes More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      US poised to make Juneteenth a federal holiday

      by

      The United States will soon have a new federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the nation.Congress has approved a bill that would make Juneteenth, or 19 June, a holiday – a bill Joe Biden is expected to sign into law. Juneteenth commemorates the day in 1865 when news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached the people of Galveston, Texas, freeing slaves in the last rebel state. Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, freeing enslaved people in the southern states, and Confederate soldiers surrendered in April 1865. But the proclamation wasn’t enforced in Galveston until federal soldiers read out the proclamation on 19 June 1865. “Our federal holidays are purposely few in number and recognize the most important milestones,” said the Democratic congresswoman Carolyn Maloney. “I cannot think of a more important milestone to commemorate than the end of slavery in the United States.”Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat, speaking next to a large poster of a Black man whose back bore massive scarring from being whipped, said she would be in Galveston this Saturday to celebrate along with Republican senator John Cornyn of Texas.“Can you imagine?” said Jackson Lee, who made a joke about her height. “I will be standing maybe taller than Senator Cornyn, forgive me for that, because it will be such an elevation of joy.”The Senate unanimously passed the measure yesterday, and the House voted to pass the bill on Wednesday afternoon.About 60% of Americans knew “nothing at all” or just “a little bit” about Juneteenth, according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday. And federal recognition of Juneteenth comes as Republican officials across the country move to ban schools from teaching students “critical race theory”, the history of slavery and the ongoing impacts of systemic racism.“Congress overwhelmingly voted to establish Juneteenth as a federal holiday. But let us not forget that in Florida and Texas, educators are banned from teaching critical race theory,” wrote human rights advocate Martin Luther King III, the son of Martin Luther King Jr. “Let Juneteenth be both a day of celebration and a day of education of our nation’s true history.”For some critics, the move felt like a hollow gesture. “No more performative gestures for Juneteenth,” said Janeese Lewis George, a District of Columbia councilmember. “Stop giving us things we didn’t ask for and ignoring the things that matter.”Cori Bush, a Democratic representative of Missouri, called for broader reforms to address systemic racism.It’s Juneteenth AND reparations.It’s Juneteenth AND end police violence + the War on Drugs.It’s Juneteenth AND end housing + education apartheid.It’s Juneteenth AND teach the truth about white supremacy in our country.Black liberation in its totality must be prioritized.— Cori Bush (@CoriBush) June 17, 2021
      Fourteen House Republicans opposed the effort. Congressman Matt Rosendale said creating the federal holiday was an effort to celebrate “identity politics”.“Since I believe in treating everyone equally, regardless of race, and that we should be focused on what unites us rather than our differences, I will vote no,” he said in a press release.The vast majority of states recognize Juneteenth as a holiday or have an official observance of the day, and most states hold celebrations. Juneteenth is a paid holiday for state employees in Texas, New York, Virginia and Washington.Under the legislation, the federal holiday would be known as Juneteenth National Independence Day.The Republican congressman Clay Higgins said he would vote for the bill and he supported the establishment of a federal holiday, but he was upset that the name of the holiday included the word independence rather than emancipation.“Why would the Democrats want to politicize this by co-opting the name of our sacred holiday of Independence Day?” Higgins said.“I want to say to my white colleagues on the other side, getting your independence from being enslaved in a country is different from a country getting independence to rule themselves,” the Democratic congresswoman Brenda Lawrence replied, adding: “We have a responsibility to teach every generation of Black and white Americans the pride of a people who have survived, endured and succeeded in these United States of America despite slavery.” More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      US ends Trump-era asylum rules for immigrants fleeing violence

      by

      The US government on Wednesday ended two Trump administration policies that made it harder for immigrants fleeing violence to qualify for asylum, especially Central Americans. Attorney general Merrick Garland issued a new policy saying immigration judges should cease following the Trump-era rules that made it tough for immigrants who faced domestic or gang violence to win asylum in the United States. The move could make it easier for them to win their cases for humanitarian protection and was widely celebrated by immigrant advocates. “The significance of this cannot be overstated,” said Kate Melloy Goettel, legal director of litigation at the American Immigration Council. “This was one of the worst anti-asylum decisions under the Trump era, and this is a really important first step in undoing that.” Garland said he was making the changes after President Joe Biden ordered his office and the Department of Homeland Security to draft rules addressing complex issues in immigration law about groups of people who should qualify for asylum. The changes come as US immigration authorities have reported unusually high numbers of encounters with migrants at the southern border. In April, border officials reported the highest number of encounters in more than 20 years, though many migrants were repeat crossers who previously had been expelled from the country under pandemic-related powers. The number of children crossing the border alone also has been hovering at all-time highs. Many Central Americans arrive on the border fleeing gang violence in their countries. But it isn’t easy to qualify for asylum under US immigration laws, and the Trump-era policies made it that much harder. More than half of asylum cases decided by the immigration courts in the 2020 fiscal year were denials, according to data from the department of justice’s executive office for immigration review. Four years earlier, it was about one in five cases. In the current fiscal year, people from countries such as Russia and Cameroon have seen higher asylum grant rates in the immigration courts than people from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, the data shows. One of the Trump administration policies was aimed at migrants who were fleeing violence from non-state actors, such as gangs, while the other affected those who felt they were being targeted in their countries because of their family ties, said Jason Dzubow, an immigration attorney in Washington who focuses on asylum. Dzubow said he recently represented a Salvadoran family in which the husband was killed and gang members started coming after his children. While Dzubow argued they were in danger because of their family ties, he said the immigration judge denied the case, citing the Trump-era decision among the reasons. Dzubow welcomed the change but said he doesn’t expect to suddenly see large numbers of Central Americans winning their asylum cases, which remain difficult under US law. “I don’t expect it is going to open the floodgates, and all of a sudden everyone from Central America can win their cases. Those cases are very burdensome and difficult,” he said. “We need to make a decision: do we want to protect these people?” More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden to name antitrust researcher Lina Khan to top trade commission post – report

      by

      Joe Biden reportedly plans to name Lina Khan, an antitrust researcher who has focused on the immense market power of big tech, as chair of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), a key win for progressives who have pushed for tougher laws to tackle monopolies and growing corporate power.The Senate confirmed Khan as a commissioner to the FTC earlier on Tuesday, with strong bipartisan support. Biden intends to tap her as chair of the commission, sources told Reuters, a decision that follows the selection of fellow progressive and big tech critic Tim Wu to join the National Economic Council.The appointment comes as the federal government and groups of states have issued an array of lawsuits and investigations into the tech giants. The FTC has sued Facebook and is investigating Amazon while the justice department has sued Alphabet’s Google.Khan is highly respected by progressive antitrust thinkers who have pushed for tougher antitrust laws or at least tougher enforcement of existing law.She most recently taught at Columbia Law School, but was on the staff of the House judiciary committee’s antitrust panel, and helped write a report that sharply criticized Amazon, Apple Facebook and Alphabet for allegedly abusing their dominance.In 2017, she wrote a highly regarded article, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox”, for the Yale Law Journal which argued that the traditional antitrust focus on price was inadequate to identify antitrust harms done by Amazon.Progressive civil rights organization Color of Change applauded the decision, saying it signaled “a long-awaited commitment to antitrust reform from the federal government”.“It’s clear these tech corporations are unable to adequately self-regulate, because they continue to operate on broken business models that prioritize growth and profit above Black lives and the integrity of our democracy,” said Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change. “Government intervention is necessary to check their outsized power and end this era of corporate greed and monopolization.”Many conservative groups also approved of the choice, including advocacy group the Internet Accountability Project (IAP), which said the vote was “testament to the sea change in opinion on the right for antitrust modernization and enforcement”.“Big tech brought this on themselves with their abusive, censorial and anticompetitive behavior,” the group said. “The era of unchecked big tech monopoly power is over.”US Senator Elizabeth Warren tweeted that the administration’s selection of Khan was “tremendous news”.“With chair Khan at the helm, we have a huge opportunity to make big, structural change by reviving antitrust enforcement and fighting monopolies that threaten our economy, our society, and our democracy,” Warren said in a separate statement.In addition to antitrust, the FTC investigates allegations of deceptive advertising. On that front, Khan will join an agency which is painfully adapting to a unanimous supreme court ruling from April which said the agency could not use a particular part of its statute, 13(b), to demand consumers get restitution from deceptive companies but can only ask for an injunction. Congress is considering a legislative fix.Khan previously worked at the FTC as a legal adviser to Commissioner Rohit Chopra, Biden’s pick to be director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.Reuters contributed to this report More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      US Covid deaths hit 600,000 as ex-Biden adviser says high toll was avoidable

      by

      The US death toll in the coronavirus pandemic passed 600,000 on Tuesday. As it did so, a former White House Covid adviser, Andy Slavitt, was under fire from the right for saying Americans could have avoided such severe losses if they had been prepared to “sacrifice a little bit for one another”.Throughout the pandemic, Republicans have been less likely to wear masks and observe other public health measures meant to mitigate virus transmission. Donald Trump eschewed social distancing guidelines to hold rallies or events. His supporters are now more likely to say they will “definitely not” get vaccinated than Democrats or independents.Slavitt left the Biden administration this month. His remarks on CBS on Monday echoed past comments about the importance of wearing masks and social distancing to protect essential workers.“We would have had a pandemic here in the US no matter what, but we can count the mistakes,” he said. “We obviously had a set of technical mistakes with the testing and the PPE that we know about.”He added: “We all need to look at one another, and ask ourselves what do we need to do better next time, and in many respects being able to to sacrifice a little bit for one another to get through this and save more lives … I think that’s something we could have all done a little better on.”Most counts on Tuesday put the US past 600,000 deaths – the widely trusted and cited count by Johns Hopkins University passed the milestone at lunchtime. Cases are down but the US still has among the worst death rates per capita, eclipsed only by Peru, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Those nations had later access to Covid-19 vaccines and have vaccinated fewer people.Slavitt is promoting a book, Preventable: The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics and Selfishness Doomed the US Coronavirus Response.Critics on the right argued that Americans had sacrificed enough.“The government screwed up testing, slow-rolled vaccine approval, discouraged masks in the early days, told people to wash their groceries and closed parks and beaches,” said an editor of the libertarian magazine Reason on Twitter, referring to the early days of the pandemic under the Trump administration, in spring 2020. “But [according to Slavitt] it is you, the citizen, who did it wrong.”Public health leaders including Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, defended Slavitt, saying criticism “does not reflect what we know about who has been at greatest risk of infection”.On Tuesday, Slavitt spoke to CNN.“We as a country could have put the lives of people higher on the list versus our own individual liberties,” he said.“We as a country decided that we were going to get many, many more people exposed without pay, without healthcare insurance, without support. And so we decided that the creature comforts – keeping the meatpacking plants open when they were unsafe – were more important than making sure we protected each other.”Although the US had several lockdowns, most were far less severe than in other countries, leading to increased spread of Covid-19. The issue quickly became political. Michigan, for example, saw sustained anti-lockdown sentiment and also suffered some of the worst outbreaks in the pandemic. Experts have argued that the US still does not have enough testing to tamp down future outbreaks.Just over half of the US population has received one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, with vaccination rates inching upward. But vaccination rates in Republican- and Democratic-leaning states have diverged.States across the south and west, most likely to be led by Republicans, have the lowest vaccination rates. Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Wyoming, Louisiana and Tennessee all have less than 35% of their populations fully vaccinated.The predominantly Democratic north-east is leading in vaccination rates, with Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire all having more than 50% fully vaccinated.Republicans, rural residents and white evangelical Christians are most likely to say they will “definitely not” get vaccinated. All three groups are disproportionately likely to identify as Republican and support Trump.On CNN on Tuesday, Slavitt was asked about the danger of Covid variants.“If you’re vaccinated,” he said, “… the vaccines are proving to be quite effective even against the Delta variant, so you’ve very little to worry about. If you’re not vaccinated, the Delta variant will spread in your community more quickly. It will take less exposure to get Covid-19.”Slavitt also warned: “If you have more than roughly half the population vaccinated, it’s not as if half the people you know are vaccinated and half aren’t. Either just about everybody you know is vaccinated or everybody you know isn’t.”New outbreaks would probably not have “quite the wildfire spread as we saw in 2020”, he said. “But they’re still going to impact [less vaccinated] communities pretty strongly.” More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      White House unveils first national strategy to fight domestic terrorism

      by

      The White House has published its first ever national strategy for countering domestic terrorism five months after a violent mob stormed the US Capitol in Washington.The framework released on Tuesday by the national security council describes the threat as now more serious than potential attacks from overseas but emphasises the need to protect civil liberties.Anticipating Republican objections that Joe Biden could use counterterrorism tools to persecute supporters of Donald Trump, the strategy is also careful to state that domestic terrorism must be tackled in an “ideologically neutral” manner.It cites examples such as “an anti-authority extremist” ambushing, shooting and killing five police officers in Dallas In 2016; a lone gunman (and leftwing activist) wounding four people at a congressional baseball practice in 2017; and an “unprecedented attack” on Congress on 6 January.“They come across the political spectrum,” a senior administration said on a media conference call. “We acknowledge the shooting at the congressional baseball, the attack on police officers in Dallas, just as we acknowledge the attack in Charlottesville and the attack on the Capitol on January 6.“So it’s not motivating politics or ideology that matters for us or, more importantly for the strategy and its implementation. It’s when political grievances become acts of violence and we remain laser focused on that.”The strategy, to be formally announced by the attorney general, Merrick Garland, on Tuesday, follows an order from Biden on his first full day in office for a review of government efforts to address domestic terrorism, which is described as “the most urgent terrorism threat the United States faces today”.An expert assessment of the threat provided by intelligence and law enforcement, a summary of which was released in March, found that its two most deadly elements are white supremacists and anti-government violent extremists.A senior administration said: “Further, it found that violent extremists who promote the superiority of the white race have the most persistent transnational connections and may be in frequent contact with violent extremists abroad.“However, it’s important to underscore that the study provided to us by ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] did not find a robust nexus between domestic terrorism and foreign actors. This is largely today an inside-out problem, not an outside-in problem, although we do know that our adversaries are seeking to sow divisions in our society.”The strategy consists of four pillars: efforts to understand and share information regarding the full range of domestic terrorism threats; efforts to prevent domestic terrorists from successfully recruiting, inciting, and mobilising Americans to violence; efforts to deter and disrupt domestic terrorist activity before it yields violence; long–term issues that contribute to domestic terrorism that must be addressed to ensure that this threat diminishes over generations.The prevention aspect includes a focus on working with big tech companies such as Facebook, which has been strongly criticised for allowing rightwing hate groups to thrive and coordinate, including ahead of the 6 January insurrection.An official said: “We as the government see different things from what any particular tech company might see, Any particular tech company often knows its own platform very well but the government sees things such as threats of violence across platforms … The process has already begun between the government and the tech sector and it will continue.”Biden’s budget for fiscal year 2022 includes more than $100m in additional resources for analysts, investigators, prosecutors and other personnel and resources to thwart domestic terrorism.The government says it is improving employee screening to enhance methods for identifying domestic terrorists who might pose “insider threats”. The defence, justice and homeland security departments are pursuing efforts “to ensure domestic terrorists are not employed within our military or law enforcement ranks and improve screening and vetting processes”.The strategy does not take a position on whether there should be a new statute criminalising domestic terrorism, leaving the question to a review by the justice department.Despite its plea for neutrality, a White House fact sheet does cite key Biden legislation – the American Rescue Plan, American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan – as providing “relief and opportunity” that can help counter long term distrust in democracy and its ability to deliver.It adds: “Government will also work to find ways to counter the polarization often fueled by disinformation, misinformation, and dangerous conspiracy theories online, supporting an information environment that fosters healthy democratic discourse.” More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Nato summit: leaders declare China presents security risk

      by

      Nato leaders have declared China presents a security risk at their annual summit in Brussels, the first time the traditionally Russia-focused military alliance has asserted it needs to respond to Beijing’s growing power.The final communique, signed off by leaders of the 30-member alliance at the urging of the new US administration, said China’s “stated ambitions and assertive behaviour present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order”.After the summit, Joe Biden said that the US had a “sacred commitment” to come to the defence of its Nato allies in an effort to soothe residual nervousness in the wake of Donald Trump’s hostility. Biden said that his fellow leaders at the summit knew most Americans were committed to democracy and that the US was a “decent, honourable nation”.On the question of potential Ukrainian membership of Nato, Biden said the Russian occupation of Crimea would not be an impediment, but that Ukraine still had work to do on corruption before it could join a membership action plan.“It depends on whether they meet the criteria. The fact is, they still have to clean up corruption,” Biden said.The Nato leaders declared their concern about China’s “coercive policies” – an apparent reference to the repression of the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang – the expansion of its nuclear arsenal and its “frequent lack of transparency and use of disinformation”.The language, notably stronger than the China remarks contained in the G7 statement agreed on Sunday, follows lobbying and pressure by the Biden administration, seeking to create a counterweight of democratic nations in response to Beijing’s growing economic and military might.However, Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, insisted China was “not an adversary”, saying instead the emerging strategy was to address “the challenges” posed by Beijing, which will “soon be the biggest economy in the world” and “already has the second-largest defence budget, the biggest navy”.At the beginning of the summit, Biden said there was a growing recognition that Nato faced new challenges. “We have Russia, which is acting in a way that is not consistent with what we had hoped, and we have China.”Nato, founded in 1949 at the start of the cold war, was created to respond to the Soviet Union and more recently Russia, while Beijing rarely posed a serious security concern for its members.China had never previously been mentioned in a Nato summit declaration, apart from a brief reference in 2019 to the “opportunities and challenges” the country posed for members of the western alliance – a time when Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, was president.On Sunday night, Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, promised Nato would increase its focus on Beijing, saying that China “will feature in the communique in a more robust way than we’ve ever seen before”.Other countries have highlighted the importance of striking a balance. Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, said as he arrived at the gathering: “I think when it comes to China, I don’t think anybody around the table today wants to descend into a new cold war.”G7 leaders criticised Beijing over human rights in its Xinjiang region, called for Hong Kong to keep a high degree of autonomy and demanded a full investigation of the origins of the coronavirus in China.China’s embassy in London said such mentions of Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan distorted the facts and exposed the “sinister intentions of a few countries such as the United States”. It added: “China’s reputation must not be slandered.”Stoltenberg also said the alliance’s relationship with Russia was at “its lowest point since the end of the cold war”. He blamed Russia’s “aggressive actions” for the deterioration in relations at the start of a one-day summit attended by Biden for the first time since he took office.Alliance members had hoped for a strong statement of support for Nato from Biden after several years in which Donald Trump dominated the summits, threatening to pull out of Nato in 2018 and storming home early in 2019.“Nato is critically important for US interests in and of itself,” Biden said as he met Stoltenberg. The president described Nato’s article 5, under which an armed attack against one member is deemed an attack against them all, as “a sacred obligation”.He added: “I want Nato to know America is there.”The allies denounced Moscow’s “hybrid actions”, “widespread disinformation campaigns”, “malicious cyber activities”, and election interference directed against Nato members. “Until Russia demonstrates compliance with international law and its international obligations and responsibilities, there can be no return to ‘business as usual’,” the statement said. “We will continue to respond to the deteriorating security environment by enhancing our deterrence and defence posture.”Alliance members agreed a new cybersecurity strategy in response, and will for the first time help each other out in the case of “cyber-attacks of significance”, mirroring Nato’s obligation of collective defence in the traditional military sphere, enshrined in article 5. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Manchin faces growing pressure from Democrats over Biden agenda

      by

      Joe Manchin, the conservative Democratic West Virginia senator whose defiance over the filibuster rule threatens to stall Joe Biden’s domestic legislative agenda, found himself under pressure from both wings of his party on Sunday.Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, adopted a conciliatory approach on CNN’s State of the Union show, offering a novel interpretation of Manchin’s assertion a week earlier that he would refuse to support Biden’s flagship For the People voting rights act, or vote to end the filibuster that would allow it to pass.“I don’t give up on Joe Manchin. I think he left the door open, I think it’s ajar [and] I’m not giving up,” she said, offering an olive branch following harsh criticism from other Democrats.“He has certain concerns about the legislation that we may be able to come to terms on. We have to make this fight for our democracy. It isn’t about Democrats or Republicans, it’s not about partisanship, it’s about patriotism so we must pass it.”Later in the same show, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive congresswoman from New York, assailed Manchin for clinging to what she said he saw as “the romanticism of bipartisanship” and an era of Republicanism “that simply does not exist any more”.“We have the influence of big money [donors] that impacts both parties in Congress and I believe that that old way of politics has absolutely an influence in Joe Manchin’s thinking, and the way he navigates the body,” Ocasio-Cortez said.“You have the Koch brothers and associated organizations really doing victory laps about Joe Manchin’s opposition to [ending the] the filibuster.”The contrasting approaches to the Manchin problem underscore the growing rift in the Democratic party. It controls the White House and House of Representatives but appears increasingly unable to progress key elements of Biden’s agenda, including voting rights, a $1.7tn infrastructure plan, racial justice efforts and gun reforms, through the Senate.There, seats are divided 50-50 and the Democrats have a tie-breaking vote in the vice-president, Kamala Harris, but the filibuster rule means the minority party can block much legislation that does not have the support of at least 60 members.Colleagues have urged Manchin to support efforts to end or restructure the Senate filibuster, but he is not in favor.Ocasio-Cortez said Democrats now faced “a fork in the road”.“Do we settle for much less and an infrastructure package that has been largely designed by Republicans in order to get 60 votes, or can we really transform this country, create millions of union jobs, revamp our power grid, get bridges fixed and schools rebuilt with 51 or 50 Democratic votes?” she said. More