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      in Elections

      FBI broke own rules in January 6 and BLM intelligence search, court finds

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      FBI officials repeatedly violated their own standards when they searched a vast repository of foreign intelligence for information related to the January 6 insurrection and racial justice protests in 2020, according court order released Friday.FBI officials said the thousands of violations, which also include improper searches of donors to a congressional campaign, predated a series of corrective measures that started in the summer of 2021 and continued last year. But the problems could nonetheless complicate FBI and justice department efforts to receive congressional reauthorization of a warrantless surveillance program that law enforcement officials say is needed to counter terrorism, espionage and international cybercrime.The violations were detailed in a secret court order issued last year by the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court, which has legal oversight of the US government’s spy powers. The Office of the Director of the National Intelligence released a heavily redacted version on Friday in what officials said was the interest of transparency.“Today’s disclosures underscore the need for Congress to rein in the FBI’s egregious abuses of this law, including warrantless searches using the names of people who donated to a congressional candidate,” said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the ACLU’s National Security Project.“These unlawful searches undermine our core constitutional rights and threaten the bedrock of our democracy. It’s clear the FBI can’t be left to police itself.”At issue are improper queries of foreign intelligence information collected under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enables the government to gather the communications of targeted foreigners outside the US.That program, which is set to expire at the end of the year, creates a database of intelligence that US agencies can search. FBI searches must have a foreign intelligence purpose or be aimed at finding evidence of a crime. But congressional critics of the program have long raised alarm about what they say are unjustified searches of the database for information about Americans, along with more general concerns about surveillance abuses.Such criticism has aligned staunch liberal defenders of civil liberties with supporters of Donald Trump, who have seized on FBI surveillance errors during an investigation into his 2016 campaign. The issue has flared as the Republican-led House has been targeting the FBI, creating a committee to investigate the “weaponization” of government.In repeated episodes disclosed on Friday, the FBI’s own standards were not followed. The April 2022 order, for instances, details how the FBI queried the section 702 repository using the name of someone who was believed to have been at the Capitol during the January 6 6 riot. Officials obtained the information despite it not having any “analytical, investigative or evidentiary purpose”, the order said.The court order also says that an FBI analyst ran 13 queries of people suspected of being involved in the Capitol riot to determine if they had any foreign ties, but the justice department later determined that the searches were not likely to find foreign intelligence information or evidence of a crime.Other violations occurred when FBI officials in June 2020 ran searches related to more than 100 people arrested in connection with civil unrest and racial justice protests that had occurred in the US over the preceding weeks. The order says the FBI had maintained that the queries were likely to return foreign intelligence, though the reasons given for that assessment are mostly redacted.In addition, the FBI conducted what’s known as a batch query for 19,000 donors to an unnamed congressional campaign. An analyst doing the search cited concern that the campaign was a target of foreign influence, but the justice department said only “eight identifiers used in the query had sufficient ties to foreign influence activities to comply with the querying standard”.Officials said the case involved a candidate who ran unsuccessfully and is not a sitting member of Congress, and is unrelated to an episode described in March by congressman Darin LaHood, an Illinois Republican, who accused the FBI of wrongly searching for his name in foreign surveillance data.Senior FBI officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to reporters under ground rules set by the government, attributed the majority of the violations to confusion among the workforce and a lack of common understanding about the querying standards.They said the bureau has made significant changes since then, including mandating training and overhauling its computer system so that FBI officials must now enter a justification for the search in their own words than relying on a drop-down menu with pre-populated options.One of the officials said an internal audit of a representative sample of searches showed an increased compliance rate from 82% before the reforms were implemented to 96% afterward. More

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      in US Politics

      US debt ceiling talks hit bump as White House says ‘real differences’ remain – as it happened

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      From 5h ago“Real differences” exist between the two sides in the negotiations over raising the debt ceiling, a White House official told the Guardian after Republican lawmakers said they were pausing their participation in the ongoing talks.“There are real differences between the parties on budget issues and talks will be difficult. The President’s team is working hard towards a reasonable bipartisan solution that can pass the House and the Senate,” the official said.Talks between negotiators appointed by Joe Biden and House speaker Kevin McCarthy over raising the debt ceiling suddenly veered off course, with Republicans saying the discussions are “not productive” and the White House acknowledging “real differences” between the two sides. There is still time for a deal to be reached, but not a lot of it: the best estimate of when the US government will run out of cash and potentially default on its bond payments and other obligations remains 1 June.Here’s a look back at the day’s news:
      Just before the impasse became public, Donald Trump said the GOP should take a hardline position in the debt limit talks.
      A top House Democrat threatened to stop the reauthorization of a foreign spying program after reports emerged that the FBI queried its database for information about the January 6 insurrection and Black Lives Matter protests.
      Tim Scott filed paperwork to officially launch his presidential bid, but the Republican senator from South Carolina is only expected to make the run public in a Monday speech.
      Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg is reportedly pressuring ex-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg to testify against the former president.
      Biden’s decision to cancel his trip to Australia may prove very costly for some in the White House press corps.
      After reports emerged that the FBI broke its own rules by using a repository of foreign intelligence to search for information about the January 6 insurrection and the protests following George Floyd’s death, a top Democrat is threatening not to support the reauthorization of a contentious surveillance program.At issue is section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows US authorities to surveil the communications of foreigners outside the country and expires at the end of the year unless renewed. The information is not meant to be used for domestic purposes, but according to a court order released today the FBI did just that.The Biden administration says it supports reauthorizing section 702, but it looks like it will have to win over skeptics in its own party. Here’s what the top Democrat on the House judiciary committee Jerry Nadler had to say about today’s revelations:So what’s the hangup in the debt ceiling talks?Based on comments from Republicans, it appears they’re far apart with Joe Biden’s team over total government spending. Last month, House Republicans approved a bill to increase the debt limit while also capping government spending in the next fiscal year at its levels from the 2021-2022 fiscal year. That amounts to a spending cut, since spending on government often increases from year to year.Biden and the Democrats have opposed this outright, arguing it would harm the economy and the government’s ability to provide services. But in comments to reporters, GOP speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy indicated the party was sticking to its guns:CNN spoke to Republican representative Dusty Johnson, who confirmed the spending issue was a top sticking point, but not the only one:Here’s a different sort of American media story. The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington spoke to disinformation expert Nina Jankowicz, who is pursuing a lawsuit against Fox News – which she fears presents a threat to US democracy:The woman suing Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News for defamation in the wake of the $787m settlement with the voting machine company Dominion has accused the media giant of waging a campaign of “vitriolic lies” against her that amounts to a threat to democracy.Nina Jankowicz sued Fox News and its parent company Fox Corporation for allegedly damaging her reputation as a specialist in conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns. The lawsuit was lodged in a Delaware state court exactly a year after she resigned as executive director of a new Department of Homeland Security unit combatting online disinformation.The Disinformation Governance Board was abruptly shut down in the wake of a storm of virulent rightwing criticism, allegedly fueled by Fox News. Jankowicz and the new DHS division she led were attacked as being part of a conspiracy to censor rightwing comment spearheaded by Joe Biden.It became clear how serious the debt limit situation was earlier this week, when Joe Biden cut short his planned trip to Asia in order to be back in Washington DC on Sunday, saying he needed to ensure that the US government is able to avoid a default.The president kept his travel plans to Japan, but nixed stops in Australia and the first-ever presidential visit to Papua New Guinea, a decision critics say harmed Washington’s efforts to build alliances against China.It also proved to be a very expensive decision for the media organizations who place their reporters in the White House press corps and task them with following the president’s every move. The Washington Post reports that the White House Travel Office had booked a charter flight to Australia for the dozens of journalists that were planning to come along with Biden, while their employers were also planning to shell out thousands for their hotels, transportation and logistics.All of that had to be canceled, but according to the Post, news outlets are now on the hook for as much as $25,000 per person in the form of sunk costs for charter flights and other travel arrangements. While the country’s biggest news outlets all have reporters at the White House, the news industry has been financially tumultuous for the better part of 15 years, and the Post says some reporters fear the debacle will make their bosses cut back on travel with the president – which could mean less scrutiny of what Biden and his successors actually do with their time.Here’s more from the Post:
      The now-canceled charter flight, organized by the White House Travel Office, cost $760,000, or about $14,000 for each of the 55 journalists who’d booked seats on it. Journalists will immediately lose their deposits, about $7,700 each, and may be on the hook for the rest, according to a memo sent to reporters on Wednesday by Tamara Keith, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.
      But a lengthy list of other costs — hotel reservations, ground transportation, a shared press-filing center, among them — may also be unrecoverable. And journalists will lose some or all of the cost of their return flights from Sydney to Washington, as they scramble for last-minute flights from Hiroshima to Washington.
      Bottom line: The bill for not going to Australia could run upward of $25,000 per person before any refunds kick in, according to several people involved in efforts to recover the money. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of negotiations over the funds.
      In an interview, Keith said her organization is seeking to recover as much of the travel money as possible, though it wasn’t clear how much was possible.
      “When the president travels amid a budget crisis or a debt ceiling crisis, his [travel] plans can change,” she said, noting that presidents Obama and Trump also canceled trips during their terms. “These are the risks we undertake with our eyes open. We hope it never happens. But it just did.”
      Speaking of pandemic emergency measures, Reuters reports that migrant encounters at the US southern border continue to plunge after last week’s expiration of Title 42.The rule, imposed by Donald Trump’s administration as Covid-19 spread in March 2020, allowed the US to turn away most asylum seekers, and its expiration at midnight last Friday raised fears of a surge in new border crossers. But that hasn’t materialized, and top homeland security official Blas Nunez-Neto said border authorities are seeing 70% less encounters since it ended. That may be because Joe Biden unveiled a slew of new restrictions to replace Title 42, leading to accusations by immigration rights groups that he is imitating his predecessor’s policies.Here’s more from Reuters:
      Speaking in a call with reporters, Nunez-Neto said the number had continued to tick down after an average 4,000 encounters a day as of May 12.“In the last 48 hours there were 3,000 encounters a day on the border, this is a more than 70% reduction,” he said.Nunez-Neto also said about 11,000 people were removed from the U.S. in the last week and sent to more than 30 countries, including more than 1,100 people from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti and Cuba returned to Mexico.
      Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch says emergency measures taken during the Covid-19 crisis that killed more than 1 million Americans were perhaps “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”The Associated Press reports:
      The 55-year-old conservative justice points to orders closing schools, restricting church services, mandating vaccines and prohibiting evictions.
      Gorsuch’s broadside is aimed at local, state and federal officials, and even his own colleagues.
      He says officials issued emergency decrees “on a breathtaking scale.”
      His comments came in an eight-page statement that accompanied an order formally dismissing a case involving the use of the Title 42 policy to prevent asylum seekers from entering the United States.
      The policy was ended last week with the expiration of the public health emergency first declared more than three years ago because of the coronavirus pandemic.
      The emergency orders about which Gorsuch complained were first announced in the early days of the pandemic, when Trump was president, and months before the virus was well understood and a vaccine was developed.
      WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court got rid of a pandemic-related immigration case with a single sentence.
      Justice Neil Gorsuch had a lot more to say, leveling harsh criticism of how governments, from small towns to the nation’s capital, responded to the gravest public health threat in a century.
      The justice, a 55-year-old conservative who was President Donald Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, called emergency measures taken during the COVID-19 crisis that killed more than 1 million Americans perhaps “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”
      He pointed to orders closing schools, restricting church services, mandating vaccines and prohibiting evictions. His broadside was aimed at local, state and federal officials — even his colleagues.
      “Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale,” Gorsuch wrote in an eight-page statement Thursday that accompanied an expected Supreme Court order formally dismissing a case involving the use of the Title 42 policy to prevent asylum seekers from entering the United States.
      The policy was ended last week with the expiration of the public health emergency first declared more than three years ago because of the coronavirus pandemic.
      FBI officials repeatedly violated their own standards when they searched a vast repository of foreign intelligence for information related to the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol and racial justice protests in 2020, according to a heavily blacked-out court order released on Friday.The Associated Press reports:
      FBI officials said the violations predated a series of corrective measures that started in the summer of 2021 and continued last year. But the problems could nonetheless complicate FBI and Justice Department efforts to receive congressional reauthorization of a warrantless surveillance program that law enforcement officials say is needed to counter terrorism, espionage and international cybercrime.
      The violations were detailed in a secret court order issued last year by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has legal oversight of the U.S. government’s spy powers. The Office of the Director of the National Intelligence released a redacted version on Friday in what officials said was the interest of transparency. Members of Congress received the order when it was issued last year.
      At issue are thousands of improper queries of foreign intelligence information collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enables the government to gather the communications of targeted foreigners outside the US. That program expires at the end of the year unless it is renewed.
      In repeated episodes disclosed Friday, the FBI’s own standards were not followed.
      The full AP report is here.A Washington DC police officer was arrested on Friday on charges that he lied about leaking confidential information to the Proud Boys extremist group leader Enrique Tarrio and obstructed an investigation after group members destroyed a Black Lives Matter banner in the nation’s capital.The Associated Press reports:
      An indictment alleges that Metropolitan Police Department Lt Shane Lamond, 47, of Stafford, Virginia, warned Tarrio, then national chairman of the far-right group, that law enforcement had an arrest warrant for him related to the banner’s destruction.
      Tarrio was arrested in Washington two days before Proud Boys members joined the mob in storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Earlier this month, Tarrio and three other leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy charges.
      A federal grand jury in Washington indicted Lamond on one count of obstruction of justice and three counts of making false statements.
      The indictment accuses Lamond of lying to and misleading federal investigators when they questioned him in June 2021 about his contacts with Tarrio.
      Lamond is scheduled to make his initial court appearance on Friday. He was placed on administrative leave by the police force in February 2022.
      Lamond, who supervised the intelligence branch of the police department’s Homeland Security Bureau, was responsible for monitoring groups like the Proud Boys when they came to Washington.
      Lamond’s name repeatedly came up in the Capitol riot trial of Tarrio and other Proud Boys leaders.
      Talks between negotiators appointed by Joe Biden and House speaker Kevin McCarthy over raising the debt ceiling suddenly veered off course, with Republicans saying the discussions are “not productive” and the White House acknowledging “real differences” between the two sides. There’s time for a deal to be reached, but not a lot of it: the best estimate of when the US government will run out of cash and potentially default on its bond payments and other obligations remains 1 June. We’ll see if the GOP and Democrats find cause to sit down again before today is through.Here’s a look back at what else has happened today so far:
      Just before the impasse became public, Donald Trump said the GOP should take a hardline position in the debt limit talks.
      Tim Scott filed paperwork to officially launch his presidential bid, but the Republican senator from South Carolina is only expected to make the run public in a Monday speech.
      Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg is reportedly pressuring ex-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg to testify against the former president.
      CNN has more downbeat comments from Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy on the status of the debt limit talks, which indeed appear to be paused:That’s a reversal from yesterday, when McCarthy sounded optimistic about the chances a deal is reached before the default deadline, which is estimated as 1 June.“Real differences” exist between the two sides in the negotiations over raising the debt ceiling, a White House official told the Guardian after Republican lawmakers said they were pausing their participation in the ongoing talks.“There are real differences between the parties on budget issues and talks will be difficult. The President’s team is working hard towards a reasonable bipartisan solution that can pass the House and the Senate,” the official said.About an hour ago, and just a few minutes before reports emerged that the debt limit talks had broken down, Donald Trump called for the GOP to demand, well, “everything” in the negotiations.Here’s what he wrote on Truth social:
      REPUBLICANS SHOULD NOT MAKE A DEAL ON THE DEBT CEILING UNLESS THEY GET EVERYTHING THEY WANT (Including the “kitchen sink”). THAT’S THE WAY THE DEMOCRATS HAVE ALWAYS DEALT WITH US. DO NOT FOLD!!!
      Here’s more of the grim assessment of the debt ceiling talks given by Garret Graves, the House Republican appointed by Kevin McCarthy to negotiate with the White House.“We’re not there,” he told reporters as he departed a meeting with Joe Biden’s officials, the Wall Street Journal said. “We’ve decided to press pause because it’s just not productive.”He said he was not sure if the two sides would be getting together over the weekend. “Until people are willing to have reasonable conversations about how you can actually move forward and do the right thing, then we’re not going to sit here and talk to ourselves,” he added.The Journal also saw Biden’s negotiators, director of the White House office of management and budget Shalanda Young and adviser Steve Ricchetti, leaving the meeting. Asked if the two sides would meet again today, Ricchetti replied, “playing by ear.”Amid reports that negotiations over raising the debt ceiling have broken down, the top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell is out with a tweet blaming Joe Biden for the impasse:Kevin McCarthy and the House Republicans have taken the lead on negotiating with the White House on a deal, but the Senate will eventually have to vote on whatever bill emerges from the talks – assuming that happens. More

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      in US Politics

      DeSantis says only he can beat Biden in 2024 presidential election

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      The rightwing governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, reportedly told top donors only he, Donald Trump and Joe Biden are “credible” candidates for president in 2024 – and he is the only Republican who can beat the incumbent Democrat.“You have basically three people at this point that are credible in this whole thing,” DeSantis said during a call on Thursday run by a fundraising committee, the New York Times said, adding that a reporter was listening.“Biden, Trump and me. And I think of those three, two have a chance to get elected president – Biden and me, based on all the data in the swing states, which is not great for the former president and probably insurmountable because people aren’t going to change their view of him,” DeSantis said.DeSantis has long been expected to run but reports indicate he will make it official on Wednesday, filing documents with the Federal Election Commission and releasing an announcement video.A meeting of donors is reportedly scheduled for Miami the same day, with a rally to follow in DeSantis’s home town, Dunedin, between 30 May and 1 June, according to Bloomberg and the Miami Herald.Trump faces unprecedented legal jeopardy, from criminal and civil cases arising from his treatment of women to investigations of his business affairs, his retention of classified documents and his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, culminating in the January 6 attack on Congress.A decision on indictments in the investigation of election subversion in Georgia is expected in August, sources told the Guardian and other outlets.Nonetheless, by presenting himself as the victim of political witch-hunts, Trump has established big polling leads.DeSantis lags by more than 30 points in polling averages but is way ahead of other candidates, declared or not, the former vice-president Mike Pence and the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley chief among them. The South Carolina senator Tim Scott is expected to announce his campaign on Monday.Polling pitting DeSantis against Biden produces narrow wins for either man.DeSantis’s bold words on Thursday also reflected his formidable fundraising. Groups including the Super Pac Never Back Down, which organised the call, and Empower Parents (previously Friends of Ron DeSantis) have amassed big war chests.The name change of the latter group indicates DeSantis’s pitch to voters: as the champion of culture-war attacks on progressive values, including restrictions on the teaching of LGBTQ+ issues and a six-week abortion ban, one of the toughest in any state.But a battle the Times said DeSantis did not mention on his call could cast a pall over his campaign.On Thursday, Disney, one of the biggest employers in Florida, pulled out of a $1bn office development in Orlando. DeSantis is battling the entertainment giant over its opposition to his so-called “don’t say gay” public education law, a fight that has cost him donor support.Progressives, Democrats and many observers think DeSantis may have marched too far right to win a general election.On the Thursday call, the Times said, DeSantis said many Republicans thought “We’ve got to win this time”, a veiled jab at Trump’s defeat in 2020 and bad results in midterm elections either side of that contest.He also claimed: “The corporate media wants Trump to be the nominee.”Quoting a voter he said he spoke to in Iowa, he said: “You know, Trump was somebody, we liked his policies but we didn’t like his values. And with you, we like your policies but also know that you share our values.”Of his hardline legislative record, DeSantis said: “When we say we’re going to do something, we … get it done.”The governor also boasted about sales of his book, The Courage to be Free, which he said outpaced similar volumes by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The Times said that claim was “roughly in line with the true totals”.DeSantis said: “I think the voters want to move on from Biden. They just want a vehicle they can get behind [but] there’s just too many voters that don’t view Trump as that vehicle.” More

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      in US Politics

      China wants to subordinate west, US politician claims on UK visit

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      Beijing wants to “subordinate and humiliate” the west, according to the Republican chair of a newly created China committee in Congress who is leading a delegation of hawkish US politicians on a two-day trip to the UK.Mike Gallagher argued that China, under President Xi Jinping, believed in “the inevitable demise of capitalism”, and said he hoped to better understand how far British politicians of all parties shared his committee’s concerns.Beijing’s goal, Gallagher argued, was “to render us subordinate, humiliated and irrelevant on the world stage and make the CCP [Chinese Communist party] the dominant global power”. He thanked the UK for adopting a “forward posture” in the Indo-Pacific after Britain deployed an aircraft carrier there two years ago.Gallagher was speaking alongside Haley Stevens, the China committee’s lead Democrat. She said the US was overly reliant on the Chinese market, particularly when it came to commodities and green technology. That was “not a preparedness strategy” when thinking about a conflict over Taiwan, she said.Gallagher said he believed the world was “in the window of maximum danger” for “a potential kinetic confrontation” – a possible war – over Taiwan, and he hoped the UK’s commitment to supplying nuclear submarines to Australia would “help prevent world war three before it’s too late”.He said the long-term goal of the US was to “win the competition” with China, which he defined as “reclaiming our economic independence”. Stevens said the US and China both “want access to one another’s markets” but the US-China trade deficit was “egregious”.Xi has accused the US of pursuing a policy of “containment” against China, and has criticised what he describes as the “new cold war” mentality of the west. The Biden administration has introduced a number of policies designed to prevent China from accessing advanced technologies, such as semiconductors, the supply chains of which are concentrated in the US and its allied countries.Gallagher suggested the US should instead pursue a policy of “constrainment”, which “recognises the fact that … we’re not going to totally decouple, but we want to constrain [the CCP’s] worst behaviour”.The Republican, who has not been to China himself, argued against “relentless engagement”, saying “30 years of experimentation with that hypothesis” had proven unsuccessful.He is leading a delegation of eight Republicans and three Democrats, who met Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, for lunch on Friday and the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (Ipac), a cross-party group of MPs and peers concerned about Beijing’s rising assertiveness and treatment of its Uyghur minority.At a joint press conference of the US delegation and Ipac on Friday, MPs criticised the British prime minister for failing to take a tough enough stance on China.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDavid Alton, a crossbench peer, said: “Only a few months ago, Rishi Sunak himself was saying that he regarded the CCP as a threat to this country.”However, Sunak was now “backing off”, Alton said, adding: “If you go on feeding the crocodiles, then one day the crocodile will come and eat you.”Concern at the rise of China is a rare issue of bipartisan consensus in the US, although some European lobbyists argue that the rhetoric of a clash of civilisations is provocative and risks inching the two sides closer to a new cold war. More

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      in US Politics

      Christiane Amanpour criticises CNN decision to hold Trump town hall – video

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      The CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour said she strongly disagreed with her network’s decision to host a town hall event with Donald Trump last week and had had ‘a very robust exchange of views’ with Chris Licht, the chief executive under fire for approving and then defending the decision to stage it. ‘I would have dropped the mic at ‘nasty person’, but then that’s me, she said at Columbia Journalism School in New York. Trump called the CNN moderator, Kaitlan Collins, a ‘nasty person’, one of number of raucous moments during the event More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on American-Chinese relations: looking beyond governments | Editorial

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      Richer and more complex stories lie behind dominant narratives, as the British Museum’s fascinating new exhibition, China’s Hidden Century, reminds us. It challenges the conventional wisdom that the country’s “long 19th century” was solely a time of decay and decline. It documents domestic turmoil and aggression and plunder by foreign powers – notably Britain – but also resilience and innovation. By looking beyond the Qing court, it includes individuals, ideas and possibilities that complicate our understanding of China’s identity and trajectory. Alongside splendid imperial robes, visitors see a cook’s uniform. They hear not only Empress Dowager Cixi’s words, but those of the feminist and revolutionary martyr Qiu Jin.At a time when hostility towards the west and especially the US is growing in China, and vice versa, looking beyond headlines and politicians to other parts of the story is crucial. When intergovernmental relations hit the rocks, the contacts between societies and individuals – whether through tourism, academic discussion or shared cultural interests – are even more important. They can offer a less pressured and public space for exploring options. They can help to build understanding and prevent escalation. Conversely, domestic nationalism can make it harder for governments to pull back in a crisis even if they wish to. As the American and Chinese scholars Scott Kennedy and Wang Jisi warn in a recent report on academic exchange, Breaking the Ice: “Less connectivity is not only a product of worsening ties, it also has contributed to the decline of relations … A rise in estrangement reinforced fears about the other side’s motives.”Gallup says that the proportion of Americans with a favourable view of China has plummeted from 38% in 2018 to just 15% this year – a record low. While it is extremely hard to gauge public opinion in China, the business intelligence firm Morning Consult says it found that 66% of adults saw the US as an enemy or unfriendly, while 64% of Americans believed the same of China. A decade ago, 15,000 Americans were studying in China; in the 2020-21 academic year there were just 382. (The US has seen a less dramatic decline in Chinese students.) Severe pandemic restrictions were primarily responsible – but numbers were already dropping, and there is little confidence that they will return to anywhere near the old levels.China’s detention of two Canadians after Ottawa arrested Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, at the behest of the US, its sanctioning of academics over criticisms of human rights abuses in Xinjiang and the introduction of Hong Kong’s draconian national security law have made scholars and others understandably reluctant to travel there. Even businesses, which have often sought to push back against tougher US action, are having second thoughts. Economic stagnation and governmental attempts to “derisk” supply chains are key, but recent raids at high-profile consulting firms that help foreign businesses assess investments have highlighted concerns about staff safety.On the US side, the surge in anti-Asian hate, the targeting of Chinese scholars for scrutiny and now state legislation banning or restricting land purchases by Chinese nationals have all made it less attractive. Dr Kennedy and Prof Wang note that non-governmental exchanges are necessary though not sufficient to stabilise ties, and urge both sides to restore connections “across the entire span of the two societies”. The aim is laudable. It will, however, be extremely hard to realise.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      in US Politics

      US China hawks to press UK minister for tougher line on Beijing

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      A Republican-led group of China hawks from the US Congress will visit Westminster on Friday where they are expected to meet the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, for lunch and press for the UK to take a tougher line on Beijing.The 11-strong delegation is led by the Republican congressman Mike Gallagher, who chairs a high-profile, newly created China committee. Some fear a strident anti-Beijing tone will alienate centrist and left-leaning politicians in the UK.Gallagher has called for a total ban on the Chinese-owned app TikTok, and argued in the committee’s first prime-time hearing that the US and China were locked in an “existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century”.The group of eight Republicans and three Democrats – one senator and 10 from the House – will see Wallace informally in a restaurant away from the Ministry of Defence building, where they are almost certain to lobby him in person.The MoD declined to say whether the meeting meant Wallace supported Gallagher’s anti-China positions. “Ministers routinely engage with elected representatives from different governments to discuss our respective policy positions on the key issues,” an official said.Heavy Republican-led China lobbying has been seen as counterproductive in Europe, where critics of Beijing’s authoritarianism, such as the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (Ipac), want to build a cross-party consensus for firmer action against Beijing.One British-based China expert said: “The US select committee has a reputation for being exceptionally hawkish on China, and it’s clear the energy comes from the Republican side.” They warned there could be a clash with Ipac when they meet.A group of eight British MPs and peers, including members of the Conservatives, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP, are due to hold a joint event with Ipac on Friday before the lunch with Wallace. They are expected to include the former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, Labour’s Rushanara Ali and the Lib Dem peer David Alton.A statement released by Gallagher before the visit set out the visiting delegation’s aspirations. “Chinese Communist party aggression is global, and the United States and United Kingdom face common economic, military and ideological threats posed by the CCP,” the congressman began.“For the sake of both our nations and the sake of the free world, we must work hand in hand to stand up to CCP tech theft, united front work [Beijing’s global influence operation], transnational repression and flagrant violations of our sovereignty.”The US delegation’s arrival in the UK comes shortly after the former prime minister Liz Truss began a five-day visit to Taiwan, where she gave a speech calling for an “economic Nato” to tackle Beijing’s authoritarianism and growing military strength.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTaiwan’s independence from China could only be protected by “hard power”, Truss said, arguing that the answer was greater defence cooperation between western nations in the Indo-Pacific.Leaked Pentagon papers from February show that Wallace was considering whether to base one of the UK’s two aircraft carriers in either Japan or South Korea after 2025, which the US said would demonstrate Britain was committed to a previously announced Indo-Pacific tilt in foreign policy.Worries about the economic and military rise of China are a rare bipartisan issue in the US, with the Pentagon closely monitoring the development of Beijing’s armed forces and sabre-rattling over Taiwan. But in the UK, Labour has argued that Britain should show realism and focus on Russia and the Euro-Atlantic rather than the Indo-Pacific. More

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      in World Politics

      Will Democracy Survive the Rise of China?

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