Author: PolitCens

US officials are warning that China and Russia would capitalize on the ‘chaos’ that would ensue if the United States defaulted on its debt. The warnings come amid a monthslong standoff between President Joe Biden and Republicans in securing congressional approval to raise the nation’s debt limit. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has the story.
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A top House Republican subpoenaed FBI Director Chris Wray on Wednesday for what he claimed are bureau records related to President Joe Biden and his family, basing the demand on newly surfaced allegations he said an unnamed whistleblower made to Congress.

The White House said it was the latest example in the years-long series of “unfounded, unproven” political attacks against Biden by Republicans “floating anonymous innuendo.”

Kentucky Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee and Accountability, is seeking a specific FBI form from June 2020 that is a report of conversations or interactions with a confidential source. Comer, in a letter to Wray with Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, said that “it has come to our attention” that the bureau has such a document that “describes an alleged criminal scheme” involving Biden and a foreign national “relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions” when Biden was vice president and includes “a precise description” about it.

The subpoena seeks all so-called FD-1023 forms and accompanying attachments and documents.

The lawmakers used the word “alleged” three times in the opening paragraph of the letter and offered no evidence of the veracity of the accusations or any details about what they contend are “highly credible unclassified whistleblower disclosures.”

Comer and Grassley said those “disclosures” demand further investigation, and they want to know whether the FBI investigated and, if so, what agents found.

To the White House, the subpoena is further evidence of how congressional Republicans long “have been lobbing unfounded, unproven, politically motivated attacks” against the Bidens “without offering evidence for their claims or evidence of decisions influenced by anything other than U.S. interests.”

A White House spokesperson, Ian Sams, said Biden “has offered an unprecedented level of transparency” about his personal finances with the public release of a total of 25 years of tax returns.

The FBI and Justice Department confirmed receiving the subpoena but declined to comment further. The president’s personal lawyers had no comment.

Republicans claim they have amassed evidence in recent years that raise questions about whether Biden and his family have used their public positions for private gain.

House Republicans have used the power of their new majority to aggressively investigate Joe Biden and Hunter Biden’s business dealings, including examining foreign payments and other aspects of the family’s finances. Comer has obtained thousands of pages of the Biden family’s financial records through subpoenas to the Treasury Department and various financial institutions since January.

Comer has not revealed much about the findings of his investigation so far. Most recently, Comer claimed one deal involving the Biden family resulted in a profit of over $1 million in more than 15 incremental payments from a Chinese company through a third party.

Both Comer and Grassley have accused both the FBI and Justice Department of stonewalling their investigations and politicizing the agency’s years-long investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes.

Last month, an IRS special agent sought whistleblower protections from Congress to disclose a “failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition” of a criminal investigation related to the younger Biden’s taxes and whether he made a false statement in connection with a gun purchase.
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Jimmy Carter tried like no president ever had to put human rights at the center of American foreign policy. It was a turnabout dictators and dissidents alike found hard to believe as he took office in 1977. The U.S. had such a long history of supporting crackdowns on popular movements — was his insistence on restoring moral principles for real?

After Carter, now 98, entered hospice care at his home in Georgia, The Associated Press reached out to several former political prisoners, asking what it was like to see his influence take hold in countries oppressed by military rule. They credit Carter with their survival.

Michèle Montas witnessed the impact from the control room of Radio Haiti-Inter, which carefully began challenging the dictatorship of Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier after Carter said U.S. aid would depend on the growth of a civil society.

“So much was done in Haiti because of him. He managed to force the regime to open up,” Montas said.

But when they broadcast Carter’s reelection loss to Ronald Reagan in November 1980, Duvalier’s dreaded enforcers, the TonTon Macoutes, fired weapons and shouted, “Human rights are over, the cowboys are back in the White House!”

“Everyone who could move in Haiti was suddenly arrested, and the country fell into complete silence,” Montas said.

But Carter wasn’t out of office yet. Montas was put on a plane to Miami, one of a list of prominent Haitian prisoners U.S. diplomats presented to the dictator’s staff.

“We were expelled because there was a strong protest on the part of the Carter administration,” said Montas, who later became the U.N. secretary-general’s spokesperson.

Carter had been briefed by outgoing Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whose “realpolitik” approach meant covertly cozying up to autocrats as they terrorized their citizens. But Carter sought a new approach to winning the Cold War.

“We are now free of that inordinate fear of communism which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in that fear,” he announced four months into his presidency. “For too many years, we’ve been willing to adopt the flawed and erroneous principles and tactics of our adversaries, sometimes abandoning our own values for theirs.”

Carter also expanded the State Department’s report on human rights in each country, an annual document authoritarians loathed and feared. His Foreign Corrupt Practices Act aimed to abolish bribery by multinational corporations. And his embassies welcomed victims of state terror, documenting 15,000 disappearances in Argentina alone.

Declassified documents eventually confirmed Kissinger’s secret encouragement of Operation Condor, an effort by South America’s dictators to eliminate each other’s political opponents. Carter’s presidential daily memos, by contrast, included names and numbers of people kidnapped, imprisoned or killed.

Fernando Reati was a 22-year-old Argentine college activist when his whole family was arrested. Although his parents were released and fled into exile, he and his brother were tortured — waterboarding, beatings and stress positions — and narrowly escaped being shot by prison guards.

The U.S. government’s sudden insistence on respecting human rights came as a complete surprise to political prisoners and must have been “very mind-boggling” for Argentina’s military, said Reati.

“They didn’t believe that he was serious, because it was so hard to believe it after decades of U.S. support for all kinds of military dictatorships in Latin America,” said Reati, whose testimony helped convict his torturers of crimes against humanity.

Carter hadn’t focused on human rights until it proved to be a potent campaign issue. As president, he framed it in terms of civil and political rights, avoiding the more difficult rights to food, education and health care, and applied its principles selectively, reflecting pragmatic calculations about U.S. interests, according to historian Barbara Keys, who wrote Reclaiming American Virtue – the Human Rights Revolution of the 1970s.

So while Carter was personally committed to Latin America, he maintained a hands-off approach in Southeast Asia after the U.S. pullout from Vietnam — and his record there suffered for it.

Despite emerging evidence of brutality, Carter waited until 1978 to declare that Cambodia’s bloodthirsty Khmer Rouge was “the worst violator of human rights in the world.” Their nearly four-year reign of terror, from 1975-79, ultimately killed more than 1.7 million people.

In Africa, however, his post-presidential Carter Center helped transform societies by fostering grassroots activism and social justice through public health initiatives, said Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim, a former director of Africa Watch who taught human rights law at Emory University in Atlanta.

An-Naim was a University of Khartoum professor advocating for a Sharia that guarantees women’s equality when the dictator of Sudan, Jaafar al-Nimeiri, decreed a draconian version of Quranic principles. To stifle dissent in the religiously diverse country, al-Nimeiri detained An-Naim and 50 colleagues for 18 months without charges.

At another scholar’s request, Carter wrote a personal appeal. Al-Nimeiri became extremely angry and screamed about traitors and enemies, but “we were released without charge, without trial, without a word,” An-Naim said. “It is Carter the human being who did this.”
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A former U.S. national security adviser called for deeper interaction between the United States and Taiwan during a visit Saturday to the self-ruled island, which has seen increasing military threats from China.

John Bolton, a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2024, said at a pro-Taiwan independence event in Taipei that national security teams from both sides must develop contingency plans on how to respond to actions Beijing might take, warning it would be too late once an attack occurs.

“We have to tell China and Russia what the consequences are if they take actions against Taiwan,” said Bolton. “Not just in the immediate response, but over the longer term, to basically excommunicate China from the international economic system if it did take military actions against Taiwan or attempt to throw a blockade around it.”

Bolton, former President Donald Trump’s hawkish national security adviser, started his weeklong trip to Taiwan on Wednesday. The visit reflects the importance of the island’s democracy as an issue in the U.S. presidential election next year amid heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing.

China flies near Taiwan

Taiwan and China split in 1949 following a civil war that ended with the Communist Party in control of the mainland. The island has never been part of the People’s Republic of China, but Beijing says it must unite with the mainland, by force if necessary.

The U.S. remains Taiwan’s closest military and political ally, despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties between them. U.S. law requires Washington to treat all threats to the island as matters of “grave concern,” though it remains ambiguous over whether American forces would be dispatched to help defend the island.

Bolton said the backlog of U.S. military sales to Taiwan is estimated to be $19 billion and it needs to be resolved.

“Part of that is a U.S. problem. Our defense industrial base is not as strong as it used to be. We need to improve that for global reasons, but particularly for Taiwan,” he said.

On Friday, the Taiwanese Defense Ministry said China’s military flew 38 fighter jets and other warplanes near Taiwan. That was the biggest flight display since the large military exercise in which it simulated sealing off the island after the sensitive April 5 meeting between Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. China opposes any exchanges at the official level between Taiwan and other governments.

China protests U.S. flight

Later Friday, China’s People’s Liberation Army also issued a protest over the flight of a United States Navy P-8A Poseidon anti-submarine patrol aircraft through the Taiwan Strait, calling it a provocation that the U.S. “openly hyped up.” But the U.S. 7th Fleet said Thursday’s flight was in accordance with international law and “demonstrates the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

Bolton is scheduled to join a banquet on Monday organized by the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, a pro-independence organization headquartered in Washington. Tsai also will attend the event.
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“We thought we could die.”

The Russian invasion had just begun when Nancy Pelosi made a surprise visit to Ukraine, the House speaker then the highest-ranking elected U.S. official to lead a congressional delegation to Kyiv.

Pelosi and the lawmakers were ushered under the cloak of secrecy into the capital city, an undisclosed passage that even to this day she will not divulge.

“It was very, it was dangerous,” Pelosi told The Associated Press before Sunday’s one-year anniversary of that trip.

“We never feared about it, but we thought we could die because we’re visiting a serious, serious war zone,” Pelosi said. “We had great protection, but nonetheless, a war — theater of war.”

Pelosi’s visit was as unusual as it was historic, opening a fresh diplomatic channel between the U.S. and Ukraine that has only deepened with the prolonged war. In the year since, a long list of congressional leaders, senators and chairs of powerful committees, both Democrats and Republicans, followed her lead, punctuated by President Joe Biden’s own visit this year.

The steady stream of arrivals in Kyiv has served to amplify a political and military partnership between the U.S. and Ukraine for the world to see, one that will be tested anew when Congress is again expected this year to help fund the war to defeat Russia.

“We must win. We must bring this to a positive conclusion — for the people of Ukraine and for our country,” Pelosi said.

“There is a fight in the world now between democracy and autocracy, its manifestation at the time is in Ukraine.”

Looked beyond US borders

With a new Republican majority in the House whose Trump-aligned members have balked at overseas investments, Pelosi, a Democrat, remains confident the Congress will continue backing Ukraine as part of a broader U.S. commitment to democracy abroad in the face of authoritarian aggression.

“Support for Ukraine has been bipartisan and bicameral, in both houses of Congress by both parties, and the American people support democracy in Ukraine,” Pelosi told AP. “I believe that we will continue to support as long as we need to support democracy… as long as it takes to win.”

Now the speaker emerita, an honorary title bestowed by Democrats, Pelosi is circumspect about her role as a U.S. emissary abroad. Having visited 87 countries during her time in office, many as the trailblazing first woman to be the House speaker, she set a new standard for pointing the gavel outward as she focused attention on the world beyond U.S. shores.

In her office tucked away at the Capitol, Pelosi shared many of the honors and mementos she has received from abroad, including the honorary passport she was given on her trip to Ukraine, among her final stops as speaker.

It’s a signature political style, building on Pelosi’s decades of work on the House Intelligence committee, but one that a new generation of House leaders may — or may not — chose to emulate.

The new Speaker Kevin McCarthy hosted Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library this month, the Republican leader’s first foray as leader into foreign affairs.

Democrat Hakeem Jeffries took his own first trip abroad to as House minority leader, leading congressional delegations last week to Ghana and Israel.

Pelosi said it’s up to the new leaders what they will do on the global stage.

“Other speakers have understood our national security — we take an oath to protect and defend — and so we have to reach out with our values and our strength to make sure that happens,” she said.

‘A fight for everyone’

When Pelosi arrived in Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stood outside to meet the U.S. officials, the photo that ricocheted around the world a show of support for the young democracy fighting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

“The courage of the president in greeting us on the street rather than us just meeting him in his office was yet again another symbol of the courage of the people of Ukraine,” she said.

Pelosi told Zelenskyy in a video released at the time “your fight is a fight for everyone.”

Last year, in one of her final trips as speaker, Pelosi touched down with a delegation in Taipei, Taiwan, crowds lining the streets to cheer her arrival, a visit with the Taiwanese president that drew a sharp rebuke from Beijing, which counts the island as its own.

“Cowardly,” she said about the military exercises China launched in the aftermath of her trip.

Pelosi offered rare praise for McCarthy’s own meeting with Tsai, particularly its bipartisan nature and the choice of venue the historic Reagan library.

“That was really quite a message and quite an optic to be there. And so, I salute what he did,” she said.

In one of her closing acts as House speaker in December, Pelosi hosted Zelenskyy for a joint address to Congress. The visit evoked the one made by Winston Churchill, the prime minister of Britain, at Christmastime in 1941 to speak to Congress in the Senate chamber of a “long and hard war” at the start of World War II.

Zelenskyy presented to Congress a Ukrainian flag signed by frontline troops that Pelosi said will eventually be displayed at the U.S. Capitol.

The world has changed much since Pelosi joined Congress — one of her first trips abroad was in 1991, when she dared to unfurl a pro-democracy banner in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square shortly after the student demonstrations that ended in massacre.

After the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s Russia and China that remain front of her mind.

“The role of Putin in terms of Russia that is a bigger threat than it was when I came to Congress,” she said. A decade after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, she said, Putin went up.

“That’s where the fight for democracy is taking place,” she said.

And, she said, despite the work she and others in Congress have done to point out the concerns over China’s military and economic rise, and its human rights record, “that has only gotten worse.”
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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ very public feud with the Walt Disney Co. entered a new phase this week, when the entertainment conglomerate filed a lawsuit claiming that the governor and his administration violated the company’s First Amendment rights.

Disney, which employs 75,000 people in a cluster of theme parks and hotels in central Florida, said that a series of new restrictions placed on the company were meant to retaliate against it for public criticism of one of DeSantis’ key legislative initiatives. The legislation, commonly known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, restricts the ability of teachers in Florida schools to discuss issues of sexuality and gender identity.

In a series of moves beginning last year, the Florida legislature — at DeSantis’ bidding — stripped the company of the ability to self-govern the land on which its parks and hotels sit, changed the rules governing ride-safety inspections, and took other actions targeting the company. The changes appear to have applied only to Disney, and not to other self-governing districts and theme parks in the state.

The fight with Disney has helped keep DeSantis in the news ahead of what is expected to be an announcement of his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination later this spring. DeSantis is currently second in polls of likely GOP primary voters, trailing former President Donald Trump by a significant margin.

Final straw

This week, a new board appointed to oversee the district where Disney is located moved to void development agreements its predecessor had struck with the company. Those deals, agreed to shortly before the old board was replaced, would have significantly limited the new board’s power over the company.

Within minutes of the vote, Disney announced that it had filed a lawsuit claiming unlawful retaliation.

“A targeted campaign of government retaliation — orchestrated at every step by Governor DeSantis as punishment for Disney’s protected speech — now threatens Disney’s business operations, jeopardizes its economic future in the region, and violates its constitutional rights,” the suit charges.

For his part, DeSantis on Thursday claimed that the lawsuit lacks merit.

“Do you want one company to have their own fiefdom, or do you want everyone to live under the same laws?” he said to reporters in Israel while participating in an overseas trade mission. “The days of putting one company on a pedestal with no accountability are over in the state of Florida.”

Yearlong drama

The battle between the company and the state began last year, while the state legislature was debating the Parental Rights in Education Act which restricts the ability of teachers to discuss sexuality or gender identity with young children. The law has since been expanded to cover all children through high school.

The language in the bill made it unclear whether, for example, a gay teacher with a same-sex spouse could mention his or her marital status to students, earning it the “Don’t Say Gay” nickname from critics.

After taking an unclear stance on the legislation at the start, Disney’s then-CEO Bob Chapek responded to criticism from the company’s employee base by issuing a strong denunciation of the legislation, saying that it should never have been signed into law, and pledging that the company would work toward its repeal.

The move angered DeSantis and his allies in the legislature. The governor immediately began attacking the company in his public pronouncements as “woke” and pledged to “fight back.” In a fundraising email to supporters he wrote, “If Disney wants to pick a fight, they chose the wrong guy.”

Targeted legislation

Within days, Republican state legislator Stephen Roach made it clear that lawmakers were considering action that would eliminate an agreement struck in 1967 to allow Disney broad authority to govern the land on which its parks and hotels are located, known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District (RCID).

Roach seemed to concede that the change was to punish the company for its complaints about the Parental Rights in Education law.

“If Disney wants to embrace woke ideology, it seems fitting that they should be regulated by Orange County,” he said. (The RCID was carved out of land partly in Orange County and partly in Osceola County.)

Over the past few weeks, DeSantis has made other public comments suggesting that he is looking for additional ways to punish Disney.

In recent public comments, he suggested that he and his staff are considering new taxes on the company’s hotels, tolls on the roads that visitors use to travel to the park, and building other projects on nearby state-owned property.

At one news conference, DeSantis floated the idea of locating a new state prison on nearby land. “Who knows? I just think the possibilities are endless,” he said.

Strong claim

First Amendment experts contacted by VOA said that Disney appears to have powerful arguments behind its assertion that DeSantis and the legislature have engaged in unlawful retaliation against protected speech.

“Disney has a quite strong claim here,” RonNell Andersen Jones, a professor of law at the University of Utah, said in an email. “First Amendment doctrine makes clear that it offends the Constitution when [the] government takes actions to retaliate for speech or expressive positions.”

Gregory Magarian, a professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, agreed.

“It is clear — axiomatic, obvious — that if the government retaliates against a speaker for what they say, that is a violation of the First Amendment,” he told VOA.

Magarian said that in order to overcome Disney’s argument, the state would have to argue that the actions it took against Disney were the result of public policy preferences, and were not meant to punish the company.

“My sense is that the public record, and what DeSantis has said and what legislators have said, will make that a fairly uphill climb,” he said.

Republican doubts

DeSantis, broadly seen as a rising star in the Republican Party, has come under fire from some of his erstwhile political allies in recent days over his unrelenting assault on Disney.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the most powerful Republican politician in Washington, on Thursday criticized the governor’s approach.

“This is a big employer inside Florida,” he said. “I think the governor should sit down with them. I don’t think the idea of building a prison next to a place that you bring your family is the best idea. I think it’d be much better if you sat down and solved the problems.”

Former President Trump, writing on Truth Social, a social network owned by his company, also piled on.

“Disney’s next move will be the announcement that no more money will be invested in Florida because of the Governor — In fact, they could even announce a slow withdrawal or sale of certain properties, or the whole thing. Watch!” he wrote. “That would be a killer.”
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Various polls show that American voters, including Democrats, do not want President Joe Biden to run again in 2024, citing his age as one of the primary reasons. Yet he is almost certain to be the Democratic nominee, and the party appears to have little doubt he will win again. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara explains the reason behind their confidence.
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The White House and a newspaper are denying there was collusion this week when a reporter asked U.S. President Joe Biden a question very similar to what was written on a card Biden held while facing journalists in the White House Rose Garden.

“We do not have specific questions in advance. That’s not something that we do,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded when asked at Thursday’s briefing about the president’s pocket card, titled “Question # 1,” which contained the name and photograph of Los Angeles Times correspondent Courtney Subramanian, along with a question: “How are YOU squaring YOUR domestic priorities — like reshoring semiconductors manufacturing — with alliance-based foreign policy?”

Close-up images of the notecard were captured by multiple news photographers in the Rose Garden.

Biden, alongside visiting South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday, called first on Subramanian, who asked: “Your top economic priority has been to build up U.S. domestic manufacturing in competition with China, but your rules against expanding chip manufacturing in China is hurting South Korean companies that rely heavily on Beijing. Are you damaging a key ally in the competition with China to help your domestic politics ahead of the election?”

Biden responded with an extensive and nuanced comment on the topic.

‘It seems like there’s collusion’

Jean-Pierre explained the following day that Subramanian was one of two correspondents called on by Biden because California has the largest Korean American community of any U.S. state.

“We are mindful on who we pick and who we want to communicate out to,” added Jean-Pierre.

Her response did not satisfy the briefing room audience. Among those denied an opportunity to ask a follow-up question about the matter was Jon Decker, White House correspondent for Gray Television, whose career spans 16 White House press secretaries and five presidencies.

“I was just simply trying to ask her is it her contention that the question that everyone could read on that so-called cheat sheet was not similar to the question that was asked at the White House press conference? And it was similar,” he told VOA.

“I’ve never seen an instance where the president is being given a question from a reporter that covers the president at a pre-announced White House press conference,” Decker added. “It really reflects poorly on the White House press corps, and it reflects poorly on the White House for allowing that to happen. It seems like there’s collusion, and for the public that has distrust, skepticism and even disdain for the media, it doesn’t put us in a good light.”

The White House continued to rebuff inquiries following Thursday’s briefing.

“Karine addressed this very clearly and in-depth in the briefing room today,” responded principal deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton to VOA, which attempted to pursue the topic of presubmitted questions to the president.

Subramanian has not commented. Her newspaper issued a statement to inquiries from media organizations.

“Our reporter did not submit any questions in advance of the Q&A with President Biden,” said Hillary Manning, vice president of communications for the Los Angeles Times. Subramanian “is in regular contact with the White House press office seeking information for her reporting. You would have to ask the White House who prepared the document for the president and why they included that question.”

April Ryan, Washington bureau chief of The Grio, who refers to herself as the longest-serving black female journalist covering the White House, said while it is not unusual for presidents to have a card listing journalists who could potentially be called on, she had never seen one that contained a picture of the reporter and the “actual question itself.”

Ryan told VOA it is routine prior to news conferences for the president and his principals, who help him with messaging, to discuss potential questions but what occurred Wednesday seemed unprecedented.

Kayleigh McEnany, a press secretary in the previous administration of Donald Trump, on the set of Fox News on Thursday, said “it’s very unordinary to have the question as specific as semiconductors as they pertain to alliances written out and scripted for the president.”

A correspondent, who asked not to be named and covers the White House for a foreign broadcaster, told VOA: “It raises questions of not only President Biden needing a heads up to come up with answers but also transparency of how the White House chooses who gets to ask questions. It is frustrating for reporters who aren’t in their inner circle.”

Reagan, Bush, had a seating chart

The president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, Tamara Keith of National Public Radio, declined to comment on the issue. The association noted it has no involvement on who gets called on by presidents at news conferences.

During the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the presidents had a seating chart to know where to find a sympathetic questioner, said Charles Bierbauer, who was CNN’s senior White House correspondent from 1983-93.

“The guessing game between the press and the White House has long been to figure out who might ask what of the president at news conferences,” he told VOA.

“I recall presidential aides gleefully telling us when they had anticipated every question. My pattern was to be prepared for the questions I knew I had to ask but always have kind of an offbeat question, too,” recalled Bierbauer, distinguished professor and dean emeritus at the College of Information and Communications at the University of South Carolina.

It is not uncommon for the White House to let a reporter know he or she will be called on during a news conference and to query the reporter about what they might ask, according to former CBS Radio White House correspondent Mark Knoller, who covered eight presidents from Gerald Ford to Trump.

“As a reporter, I always prepared questions on a number of subjects,” Knoller told VOA. “More often than not the White House knows what subjects a reporter is interested in based on questions at briefings and inquiries made previously to the press office. I can’t believe a reporter worth his or her salt would give a detailed question in advance.”
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This month a widely watched lawsuit over how U.S. cable network Fox News covered former President Donald Trump’s false allegations of election rigging in 2020 resulted in the network paying a near-record $787.5 million settlement to avoid a trial. VOA’s Laurel Bowman reports.
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In a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress Thursday, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol told American lawmakers the 70-year-old alliance between their countries was stronger than ever. Earlier this week, Yoon and U.S. President Joe Biden agreed to strengthen nuclear cooperation in the face of increasing regional tensions. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports.
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A federal appeals court on Wednesday night moved former Vice President Mike Pence closer to appearing before a grand jury investigating efforts to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election, rejecting a bid by former President Donald Trump’s lawyers to block the testimony.

It was not immediately clear what day Pence might appear before the grand jury, which for months has been investigating the events preceding the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and efforts by Trump and his allies to subvert the election outcome. But Pence’s testimony, coming as he moves closer to entering the 2024 presidential race, would be a milestone moment in the investigation and would likely give prosecutors a key first-person account as they press forward with their inquiry.

The order from the three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was sealed and none of the parties are mentioned by name in online court records. But the appeal in the sealed case was filed just days after a lower-court judge had directed Pence to testify over objections from the Trump team.

A lawyer for Pence and a spokesperson for Trump did not immediately return emails seeking comment, and a spokesman for the Justice Department special counsel leading the investigation declined to comment.

Pence was subpoenaed to testify earlier this year, but lawyers for Trump objected, citing executive privilege concerns. A judge in March refused to block Trump’s appearance, though he did side with the former vice president’s constitutional claims that he could not be forced to answer questions about anything related to his role as presiding over the Senate’s certification of votes on Jan. 6.

“We’ll obey the law, we’ll tell the truth,” Pence said in an interview with CBS News’ Face the Nation that aired Sunday. “And the story that I’ve been telling the American people all across the country, the story that I wrote in the pages of my memoir, that’ll be the story I tell in that setting.”

Pence has spoken extensively about Trump’s pressure campaign urging him to reject Biden’s victory in the days leading up to Jan. 6, including in his book So Help Me God.

Pence, as vice president, had a ceremonial role overseeing Congress’ counting of the Electoral College vote, but did not have the power to affect the results, despite Trump’s contention otherwise.

Pence has said that Trump endangered his family and everyone else who was at the Capitol that day and history will hold him “accountable.”

“For four years, we had a close working relationship. It did not end well,” Pence wrote, summing up their time in the White House.

The special counsel leading the investigation, Jack Smith, has cast a broad net in interviews and has sought the testimony of a long list of former Trump aides, including ex-White House counsel Pat Cipollone and former adviser Stephen Miller.

Smith is separately investigating Trump over the potential mishandling of hundreds of classified documents at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, as well as efforts to obstruct that probe.

It is not clear when either of the special counsel’s investigations will end or who, if anyone, will be charged.
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Montana statehouse Republicans on Wednesday silenced Democratic transgender legislator Zooey Zephyr from floor debates for breaking decorum after she said lawmakers who backed a ban on gender-affirming health care for minors would have “blood on their hands.”

Under the motion that passed 68-32, Zephyr will be allowed to vote but is barred from the House floor, anteroom or gallery for the remainder of the legislative session, scheduled to end on May 10.

The discord in Montana — which has garnered national attention amid an escalating culture war in the United States over issues such as transgender rights — has brewed since an April 18 debate over Senate Bill 99. The state measure seeks to ban transgender health care treatments for minors, including puberty blockers and hormones.

‘Tantamount to torture’

Zephyr, a first-term representative from Missoula, said in the debate that denying such care was “tantamount to torture,” and that a ban would lead to more suicides.

“If you vote yes on this bill and yes on these amendments, I hope the next time there’s an invocation when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands,” Zephyr said.

In response, the Republican supermajority silenced her within the chamber until she apologized, prompting a large protest by Zephyr supporters at the statehouse on Monday.

When protesters in the gallery disrupted that session by chanting “Let her speak,” the House speaker ordered representatives to abandon the floor, but Zephyr stayed in place, pointing a microphone toward her supporters.

Seven demonstrators were arrested, and Republicans increased their attention on Zephyr, with the ultraconservative Montana Freedom Caucus on Monday urging she be punished.

Majority Leader Sue Vinton, who presented the motion, stressed the need for decorum so that the rights of all representatives were protected.

“Monday, this body witnessed one of its members participating in conduct that disrupted and disturbed the orderly proceedings,” Vinton said. “This member [Zephyr] did not accede to the order of the speaker.”

Zephyr remained defiant on Wednesday, telling the chamber that her “blood on your hands” comment was “not being hyperbolic.”

“When the speaker asks me to apologize on behalf of decorum, what he is really asking me to do is be silent when my community is facing bills that get us killed,” Zephyr said. “He is asking me to be complicit in this legislature’s eradication of our community. And I refuse to do so.”

The Democratic Party, the American Civil Liberties Union and LGBTQ advocates criticized the censure as undemocratic.

500 bills

Republican legislators across the country have sought to ban certain health care for transgender youth. One tracker by a group of independent journalists says more than 500 bills have been introduced that they say would infringe on the rights of non-conforming gender people.

Such bills were once mostly limited to regulating changing rooms and women’s sports but now also include limiting health care access for transgender adults and in some cases seek to charge parents and doctors with child abuse if they provide treatment.

Opponents of such treatment are skeptical of the major medical associations that support gender-affirming care, raising concerns that minors are too easily allowed to make such life-changing decisions.

A similar break in decorum at a statehouse in Tennessee earlier this month led the Republican supermajority to expel two Democratic lawmakers who had protested in support of gun control, drawing national attention. They were promptly reappointed to their seats by their county legislatures and earned a trip to the White House.
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After weeks of hinting he would run for reelection, U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday formally announced his candidacy for 2024 in a three-minute video that drew a stark picture of what he believes is at stake: the very soul of America. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Washington on the prospect of another election battle between Biden and his likely challenger, former President Donald Trump.
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday preserved access to the abortion drug mifepristone while a lawsuit challenging the use of the drug plays out in lower courts.

The high court issued a brief on Friday evening granting emergency requests from the Biden administration and the drug’s manufacturer, Danco Laboratories, to continue to allow women to access the drug. The ruling puts on hold a preliminary injunction from a federal judge in Texas, who earlier this month ordered restrictions on the abortion drug.

Two justices on the nine-member court — conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — dissented from the decision.

The court had set a deadline for itself of midnight Friday to either approve the Biden administration’s request — to keep the drug available while the administration challenges a lower court ruling — or allow limited access to the drug to take effect.

The lower court ruling in question was issued April 7 by a federal judge in Texas after a coalition of anti-abortion groups and doctors argued the U.S. drug regulator, the Food and Drug Administration, improperly approved mifepristone in 2000 and did not fully assess its risks and benefits.

The ruling, which strictly limits availability of the drug, was appealed, and while an appeals court halted a portion of the ruling that would have invalidated the FDA approval, it left the limits on the drug’s availability in place.

The case is expected to be further appealed and could eventually end up being decided by the Supreme Court. Friday’s high court ruling makes it likely that access to mifepristone will continue at least into next year as the appeals play out.

Used in half of all abortions in US

Mifepristone is used in about half of all abortions nationwide. It has been used by as many as 5 million women since it was first approved in 2000, and major medical organizations say it has a strong safety record. The drug is also commonly used to help manage miscarriages.

Currently, the drug can be used by women to end pregnancies in the first 10 weeks, without a surgical procedure. It is available through the mail without an in-person visit to a doctor.

At the time the lower court ruling was made restricting access to the drug, President Joe Biden said in a statement the judge substituted his own judgment for that of the FDA, the expert agency responsible for approving drugs.

Biden said if the ruling is allowed to stand, “there will be virtually no prescription approved by the FDA that would be safe from these kinds of political, ideological attacks.”

Fight follows reversal of Roe v. Wade

The judge who made the ruling, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, was appointed by former President Donald Trump, as were the judges on the appeals court that maintained limits on the availability of the drug.

The fight over mifepristone comes after the conservative majority on the Supreme Court last year overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. The court ruled it is now up to individual states to decide whether abortion should be legal or not.

The FDA has in recent years made it easier to use mifepristone, including in 2016 approving its use to 10 weeks of pregnancy, up from seven, and in 2021 allowing it to be distributed by mail in states that allow access.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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President Joe Biden will formally announce his 2024 reelection campaign as soon as next week, three people briefed on the discussions said Thursday.

The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said they were not aware that a final decision on timing had been made, but that Biden had been eyeing Tuesday, April 25, four years to the day since the Democrat entered the 2020 race. The upcoming announcement is expected to be in the form of a video released to supporters.

Biden, 80, has repeatedly said he intends to run for a second term, but advisers say he has felt little need to jump into campaigning because he faces no significant opposition to his party’s nomination.

It’ll be a markedly different experience from four years ago, when Biden was written off by much of the political establishment until he consolidated support as the candidate Democrats believed was best positioned to defeat then-President Donald Trump while the coronavirus pandemic raged. This time around, he will have to juggle the challenge of running for reelection while also running the country.

Biden in recent months has been focused on implementing the massive infrastructure, technology investment and climate laws passed during his first two years in office and drawing a sharp contrast with Republicans as Washington gears up for a fight over raising the nation’s borrowing limit. Aides believe those priorities will burnish his image ahead of his reelection campaign.

The president will also need to contend with voter concerns about his fitness for the job. He has brushed aside those concerns, telling voters to “watch me,” and aides say he plans to mount a robust campaign ahead of what they expect to be a close general election owing to the country’s polarization, no matter who emerges as the GOP standard-bearer.

Biden has summoned top Democratic donors to Washington next week for what was expected to be a dinner with him and a strategy session with his chief political advisers.

The Washington Post first reported on the expected timing of the announcement.
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Fox Corp. and Fox News on Tuesday settled a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million, averting a high-profile trial that would have put one of the world’s top media companies in the crosshairs over its coverage of false vote-rigging claims in the 2020 U.S. election.

The settlement was announced by Fox, Dominion and the judge in the case at the 11th hour, with a 12-person jury selected on Tuesday morning and the case poised to kick off with opening statements on Tuesday afternoon. Dominion had sought $1.6 billion in damages in the lawsuit filed in 2021, with Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis presiding over the case in Wilmington.

Dominion disclosed the settlement figure, and its CEO John Poulos said Fox had admitted to telling lies about his company. Dominion attorney Justin Nelson said the settlement “represents vindication and accountability” and that “lies have consequences.” Dominion lawyers declined to answer questions about whether Fox News would apologize publicly or make reforms.

“We acknowledge the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false. This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards. We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues,” Fox said in a statement.

At issue in the lawsuit was whether Fox was liable for airing the false claims that Denver-based Dominion’s ballot-counting machines were used to manipulate the 2020 U.S. election in favor of Democrat Joe Biden over Republican then-President Donald Trump. Dominion had argued that these on-air claims caused the company “enormous and irreparable economic harm.”

Davis had ordered a one-day trial postponement on Monday before another delay on Tuesday, as the two sides reached a deal in private.

The deal spared Fox the peril of having some of its best-known figures called to the witness stand and subjected to potentially withering questioning, including executives such as Rupert Murdoch, the 92-year-old media mogul who serves as Fox Corp chairman, and Fox CEO Suzanne Scott as well as on-air hosts including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro.

The decision to settle also followed a ruling by the judge last month that Fox could not invoke free speech protections under the U.S. Constitution in its defense.

Fox News is the most-watched U.S. cable news network, according to Nielsen.

The primary question for jurors was to be whether Fox knowingly spread false information or recklessly disregarded the truth, the standard of “actual malice” that Dominion must show to prevail in a defamation case.

In February court filings, Dominion cited a trove of internal communications in which Murdoch and other Fox figures privately acknowledged that the vote-rigging claims made about Dominion on-air were false.

Dominion said Fox amplified the untrue claims to boost its ratings and prevent its viewers from migrating to other media competitors on the right including One America News Network, which Dominion is suing separately.

Adding to the legal risks for Fox, another U.S. voting technology company, Smartmatic, is pursuing its own defamation lawsuit seeking $2.7 billion in damages in a New York state court. Fox Corp reported nearly $14 billion in annual revenue last year.

Fox had argued that claims by Trump and his lawyers about the election were inherently newsworthy and protected by the Constitution’s First Amendment.

Davis ruled in March that Fox could not use those arguments, finding its coverage was false, defamatory and not protected by the First Amendment.

Dominion in 2021 sued Fox Corp and Fox News, contending that its business was ruined by the false vote-rigging claims that were aired by the influential American cable news outlet known for its roster of conservative commentators.

The trial was to have been a test of whether Fox’s coverage crossed the line between ethical journalism and the pursuit of ratings, as Dominion alleged, and Fox denied. Fox had portrayed itself in the pretrial skirmishing as a defender of press freedom.

The complaints referenced instances in which Trump allies including his former lawyers Rudolph Giuliani and Sidney Powell appeared on Fox News to advance the false allegations about Dominion.

Dominion obtained internal communications and testimony from Murdoch and other Fox News executives and commentators. Murdoch internally described the election-rigging claims as “really crazy” and “damaging” but declined to wield his editorial power to stop them and conceded under oath that some Fox hosts nonetheless “endorsed” the baseless claims, Dominion told the court in a filing.

When Murdoch watched Giuliani and Powell make their claims about Dominion on November 19, he characterized them to Fox News Chief Executive Suzanne Scott as “terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear,” according to the filing.

Under questioning from a Dominion lawyer, Murdoch testified that he thought everything about the election was on the “up-and-up” and doubted the rigging claims from the very beginning, according to Dominion’s filing.

Asked if he could have intervened to stop Giuliani from continuing to spread falsehoods on air, Murdoch responded, “I could have. But I didn’t,” the filing said.
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A major defamation lawsuit against Fox News goes to trial Tuesday, carrying the potential to shed additional light on former President Donald Trump’s election lies, reveal more about how the right-leaning network operates and even redefine libel law in the U.S. Here are some things to know about the case. 

The case 

Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox for $1.6 billion, claiming the news outlet repeatedly aired allegations that the company’s voting machines were rigged to doom Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign while knowing they were untrue. Fox contends that it was reporting newsworthy charges made by supporters of the Republican then-president and is supported legally by libel standards. After a one-day delay that raised the possibility of a last-minute settlement between the litigants, seating of the jury is scheduled to start Tuesday, followed immediately by opening statements.

Election disconnect 

Denver-based Dominion has produced evidence that prominent people at Fox didn’t believe the fraud allegations, even as the network gave Trump’s allies airtime to repeat them. Multiple staffers texted and emailed in disbelief as Trump latched onto increasingly tenuous claims of being robbed by voter fraud. Fox’s Sean Hannity said in a deposition that he did not believe the fraud claims “for one second” but wanted to give accusers the chance to produce evidence. Fox founder Rupert Murdoch, questioned under oath, agreed the 2020 election, won by Democrat Joe Biden, was free and fair: “The election was not stolen,” he said. Murdoch even wrote on Jan. 5, 2021, to a top executive urging that prominent Fox personalities issue a statement acknowledging Biden’s legitimate win. At the same time, Murdoch acknowledged that Fox hosts such as Lou Dobbs and Jeanine Pirro at times endorsed false claims of election fraud.

Fox’s fear 

The court papers have laid out a profound concern at Fox over the impact of its election night call that Biden had beaten Trump in the battleground state of Arizona — a call that was accurate. Fox scooped its rivals on the call, but it infuriated Trump and many Fox viewers, who expressed their anger and began tuning in to rival conservative media outlets such as Newsmax. Emails and memos released in the case show Fox executives were highly aware of a drop-off in their network’s viewership at the same time that Newsmax was gaining viewers, and the executives viewed that dynamic as a potential threat. 

Libel law 

In its defense, Fox has relied on a doctrine of libel law, in place since a 1964 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, that has made it difficult for some plaintiffs to prove defamation by news outlets. Public figures, and Dominion fits that standard in this case, have to prove not only that the information reported was incorrect but that the news organization acted with “reckless disregard” about whether it was true or not. Fox says Dominion can’t prove its case, but some First Amendment advocates suggest the voting machine company has a strong argument. Their worry is that a prolonged legal battle would give the Supreme Court a chance to change libel laws that would weaken protection for all the media. 

Judge’s ire 

The runup to the trial has been rocky for Fox, and not just because the public got a look at such private chatter as primetime host Tucker Carlson saying he “passionately” hated Trump. The trial judge has scolded the network for 11th-hour disclosures about Murdoch’s role at Fox News and about some evidence involving Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, including recordings of her talking off-camera with Trump’s lawyers. (Fox lawyers later apologized to the judge about the Murdoch matter, saying it was a misunderstanding not intended to deceive.) Fox, meanwhile, won some legal fights over limiting what jurors can hear, including a ruling that bars testimony about the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. 

Trump’s interest 

Trump has taken a keen interest in the case, judging by his social media posts. Always concerned about loyalty, and nursing a grudge about the Arizona call, he has expressed anger at revelations in the case that many people at Fox not only did not support his fraud allegations but privately disdained them. Trump had stepped up his criticism of Fox as the 2024 Republican presidential primary gained steam, but he recently has given interviews to Carlson and Hannity. 

The election 

Federal and state election officials, exhaustive reviews in multiple battleground states where Trump challenged his loss, and Trump’s attorney general found no widespread fraud that could have changed the outcome of the 2020 election. Nor did they uncover any credible evidence that the vote was tainted. Trump’s allegations of fraud also have been roundly rejected by dozens of courts, including by judges he appointed. 
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