Author: PolitCens

President Joe Biden saluted his “friend of five decades” Walter Mondale on Sunday, traveling to the University of Minnesota to remember the former vice president and Democratic Party elder whose memorial service was delayed for a year due to the pandemic. 

Mondale died in April 2021 at age 93. He is credited with transforming the office of the vice presidency — which Biden himself held for eight years under President Barack Obama — expanding its responsibilities and making himself a key adviser to President Jimmy Carter. 

Mondale “was a giant in American political history,” Biden said of Mondale, known to friends as “Fritz.” He added that Mondale was one of the “toughest, smartest men I’ve ever worked with” both as Senate colleagues and as a mentor when Biden was Obama’s No. 2 and then later as president. 

Biden emphasized Mondale’s empathy, recalling his own promise during the 2020 presidential campaign to unite the country. That’s something the president has strayed from a bit in recent weeks, as he seeks to draw a starker contrast between his administration and congressional Republicans who have opposed it on nearly every major issue. 

“It was Fritz who lit the way.” Biden said. “Everybody is to be treated with dignity. Everybody.” 

Biden added of Mondale: “He united people sharing the light, the same hopes — even when we disagreed, he thought that was important.” 

“It’s up to each of us to reflect that light that Fritz was all about.” 

The invitation-only, 90-minute service Sunday inside a stately campus auditorium featured plentiful organ music. Biden, who received a standing ovation, said he spoke with Mondale’s family beforehand and “got emotional” himself. 

Democratic Sen. Tina Smith called Mondale a “bona fide political celebrity” who still dedicated time to races large and small back in their home state. Minnesota civil rights icon Josie Johnson spoke of what a good listener Mondale was and how he championed inclusiveness. 

Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar described once being an intern who climbed under chairs and a table to carry out a furniture inventory when Mondale was vice president. 

“That was my first job in Washington. And, thanks to Walter Mondale, this was my second,” Klobuchar said of being a senator, noting that Mondale encouraged her to run and taught “the pundits in Washington how to say my name.” 

Democratic Gov. Tim Walz said Minnesota may be better known as Mondale’s home state than its moniker “The Land of 10,000 Lakes,” and praised Mondale’s intellect, humility, humor and optimism. 

“He embodied a sense of joy. He lived his life every single day,” Walz said. “At 91, he was still fishing for walleye. Unlike me, he was catching some.” 

A booklet given to attendees for the “afternoon of remembrance and reflection” quoted from Mondale’s 2010 book, “The Good Fight”: “I believe that the values of the American people — our fundamental decency, our sense of justice and fairness, our love of freedom — are the country’s greatest assets, and that steering by their lodestar is the only true course forward.” 

Its back cover showed Mondale’s face next to the slogan, “We told the truth. We obeyed the law. We kept the peace,” which Klobuchar described as being memorialized after the then-vice president said them at the end of the Carter administration. 

Mondale was a graduate of the University of Minnesota and its law school, which has a building named after him. During Sunday’s remembrance, Biden wiped his eyes as a performance of “Tomorrow” from the musical “Annie” played, and the service closed with the university’s marching band, which sent people away with the “Minnesota Rouser” fight song. 

Mondale followed a trail blazed by his political mentor, Hubert H. Humphrey, serving as Minnesota attorney general before replacing Humphrey in the Senate. He was Carter’s vice president from 1977 to 1981. 

Mondale also lost one of the most lopsided presidential elections ever, to Ronald Reagan in 1984. He carried only Minnesota and the District of Columbia after bluntly telling voters to expect a tax increase if he won. But he made history in that race by picking Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, of New York, as his running mate, becoming the first major-party nominee to put a woman on the ticket. 

Mondale remained an important Democratic voice for decades afterward, and went on to serve as ambassador to Japan under President Bill Clinton. In 2002, at 74, he was drafted to run for the Senate again after Sen. Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash shortly before the election. Mondale lost the abbreviated race to Republican Norm Coleman. 
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The White House press corps’ annual gala returned Saturday night along with the roasting of Washington, the journalists who cover it and the man at the helm: President Joe Biden.

The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, sidelined by the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, featured Biden as the first president in six years to accept an invitation. Donald Trump shunned the event while in office.

“Just imagine if my predecessor came to this dinner this year,” Biden told an audience of 2,600, among them journalists, government officials and celebrities. “Now that would really have been a real coup.”

The president took the opportunity to test out his comedic chops, making light of the criticism he has faced in his 18 months in office while taking aim at his predecessor, the Republican Party and the members of the press.

“I’m really excited to be here tonight with the only group of Americans with a lower approval rating than I have,” Biden said to the Hilton ballroom filled with members of the media.

Biden also made light of the “Let’s Go Brandon” slogan, which has become the right’s stand-in for swearing at the president.

“Republicans seem to support one fella, some guy named Brandon,” Biden said, causing an uproar of laughter among the crowd. “He’s having a really good year. I’m happy for him.”

As far as roasting the GOP, he said, “There’s nothing I can say about the GOP that Kevin McCarthy hasn’t already put on tape.”

In addition to speeches from Biden and comedian Trevor Noah, the hourslong event had taped comedic skits that included late-night TV hosts, comedians and even Biden himself.

“Thank you for having me here,” Noah said to Biden. “And I was a little confused on why me, but then I was told that you get your highest approval ratings when a biracial African guy is standing next to you.”

While most of the speech was filled with cutting jabs, Biden did make note of the important role journalism plays in American democracy, especially in the last decade.

“I mean this from the bottom of my heart, that you, the free press, matter more than you ever did in the last century,” he said. “You are the guardians of the truth.”

The dinner had other serious moments, with tributes to pioneer journalists of color, aspiring student reporters as well as a dedication to the journalists detained, injured or killed during the coverage of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The premier event for news media in Washington, the correspondents’ dinner mixed Washington journalists like CNN’s Jake Tapper and MSNBC’s Joy-Ann Reid with celebrities Kim Kardashian, Pete Davidson, Brooke Shields, Caitlyn Jenner, Drew Barrymore and Martha Stewart. Among the large swath of government officials and other prominent figures was Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Accompanied by the first lady, the president came to the event while trying to strike a careful balance with the nation fatigued by the pandemic yet facing an uptick in infections. The ongoing national threat has struck closer to home for the president: Vice President Kamala Harris tested positive this past week and Dr. Anthony Fauci skipped the dinner for health precautions.

The U.S. was experiencing a COVID-19 case spike from a highly contagious subvariant of omicron, with confirmed infections rising to about 44,000 per day, up from 26,000 a month ago. Still, virus deaths and hospitalizations were near, or at, pandemic lows, with the BA.2 variant proving less severe than earlier virus strains.

In the wake of the recent Gridiron Club press dinner in Washington, dozens of attendees, including members of Congress and of Biden’s Cabinet and journalists, tested positive for COVID-19. The White House Correspondents’ Association said it was requiring same-day antigen testing for its dinner attendees even before the Gridiron outbreak, then added a vaccination requirement.

Biden, 79, decided to pass up the meal but turn up later for the program. While he planned to be masked when not speaking, a maskless president greeted award winners on the dais and could be seen smiling broadly during the dinner program.

The correspondents’ dinner debuted in 1921. Three years later, Calvin Coolidge became the first president to attend, and all have since, except Trump. Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon opted not to attend every year of their presidencies, however, and Reagan, then recovering from an assassination attempt, missed the 1981 installment — but called in from Camp David.

“The thing I think this shows is the restoration to the health of the relationship,” Harold Holzer, author of the book The Presidents vs. The Press and the director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College in New York, said ahead of the dinner. “It’s still barbed, there are still tense moments. But that’s OK.”
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U.S. President Joe Biden will resume a Washington tradition by speaking at the White House Correspondents Association dinner on Saturday night, the first president to speak at the annual event since 2016.

After being canceled for two years due to COVID-19 pandemic and boycotted by Donald Trump during his presidency, the event returns with gusto this year, featuring remarks by comedian Trevor Noah.

More than 20 WHCA-related parties are being staged around Washington before and after the major event on Saturday night and several senior administration officials will attend as well as a smattering of celebrities from the entertainment world.

However, a recent rise in COVID-19 cases in Washington, in particular an outbreak at the journalists’ white-tie Gridiron dinner early in April, has brought an undercurrent of caution to the White House dinner.

Organizers are requiring every attendee be tested for the virus, and some top officials, including infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, have dropped out.

The White House said Biden will take extra precautions at the event – skipping the dinner portion and attend only the speakers program, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Wednesday. He may opt to wear a mask when he is not speaking.

Asked what Biden will tell the crowd, Psaki said, “I will lower expectations and say it’s not funny at all.”

In recent weeks, the president has mostly been unmasked at crowded White House events, but those events had lower attendance than Saturday’s dinner, which is expected to seat about 2,600 journalists, Washington officials and celebrities.  

The White House Correspondents Association was founded in 1914 and has held a dinner nearly every year since the first one in 1921 to celebrate the reporters who cover the presidency and raise money for scholarships.
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The Biden administration is asking Congress for additional legal authority to make it easier for the U.S. government to seize Russian government and oligarch assets and transfer the proceeds to Ukraine.

The White House released the package of legislative changes Thursday as President Joe Biden asked Congress for $33 billion in additional aid for Ukraine as it seeks to fend off a devastating Russian invasion, now in its third month.

If enacted, the proposed measures would “establish new authorities for the forfeiture of property linked to Russian kleptocracy, allow the government to link the proceeds to support Ukraine, and further strengthen related law enforcement tools,” the White House said in a statement.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland urged Congress to quickly enact the changes.

“The proposals the president announced today will give the Justice Department critical resources and tools to continue and strengthen this work,” Garland said Thursday during a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told Garland during a hearing earlier this week that “there will be a receptive audience to give you more money if that’s what it takes to go after the people who profited from destroying the Russian economy.”

The proposal comes as Ukrainian officials asked Western governments to hand over Russian oligarch and government assets seized since the start of the Russian invasion on Feb. 24.

Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said seized Russian assets, including frozen Russian Central Bank reserves, “have to be used to rebuild Ukraine after the war, as well as to pay for the losses caused to other nations.”

So far, European countries in which Putin’s wealthy associates have long maintained homes and investments, have led in seizing their assets.

According to the White House, European Union member states have reported freezing more than $30 billion in Russian assets, including $7 billion worth of boats, helicopters, real estate and artwork.

By contrast, the U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned and blocked boats and aircraft belonging to Russian elites worth more than $1 billion, the White House said.

The confiscations include the seizure earlier this month of a $90 million yacht owned by Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.

In addition, the department has frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in assets belonging to Russian elites held in U.S. bank accounts, the White House said.

U.S. lawmakers have voiced support for stepped-up enforcement of sanctions imposed on Russian individuals and companies.

Critics say some of the proposed legislative changes go too far and could lead to government abuse of civil forfeiture authority.

“It’s not just aimed at ‘oligarchs’ and ‘Russian elites,’ whatever that means,” said David Smith, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice. “Many of the provisions would greatly expand the government’s civil forfeiture powers in other cases, as well.”

Here is a look at the new enforcement tools the administration is seeking.

Transferring Russian assets to Ukraine

The administration’s key proposal would allow the departments of Justice, Treasury and State to hand over to Ukraine Russian assets forfeited to the U.S. government.

At present, forfeited property goes into the Justice Department’s Asset Forfeitures Fund, which is primarily used to compensate victims of crime and to fund investigations.

To empower the government to give the money to Ukraine, “multiple statutes” would have to be amended, according to the Justice Department.

These include the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), a 1970 law enacted to fight organized crime.

Garland said during the House hearing that the proposed changes would make it “easier” to transfer seized Russian assets to Ukraine.

Seizing property used to evade sanctions

Under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the primary U.S. sanctions statue, proceeds from violating sanctions are subject to forfeiture to the government.

The administration wants Congress to amend the 1977 law, extending the government’s authority to forfeit – or take ownership of – “property used to facilitate sanctions violations,” not just “proceeds of the offenses.”

The IEEPA authorizes the president to impose sanctions on foreign actors, including individuals and government officials.

Defining sanctions evasion as ‘racketeering activity’

The administration wants sanctions evasion to be defined as a “racketeering activity” under RICO.

Famously used in the 1980s to bring down mob leaders, the law includes a long list of crimes as racketeering, from bribery and money laundering to drug trafficking and kidnapping.

The proposed change “would extend a powerful forfeiture tool against racketeering enterprises engaged in sanctions evasion,” according to the Justice Department.

Creating a new criminal offense

The proposal would create a new criminal offense, making it illegal to possess proceeds obtained from “corrupt dealings” with the Russian government.

Smith said the proposed creation of a new offense is “scary.”

“How are ‘corrupt dealings’ to be defined?” he wrote in an email to VOA.  “Presumably to make it as easy as possible for the government to seize and forfeit ‘oligarchs’ assets.”

Extending the time limit for prosecuting oligarchs

The proposal would extend the so-called statutes of limitations for prosecuting money laundering and seeking forfeiture of their assets from five years to 10 years.  A statute of limitations limits the prosecution of an offense within a specified time.

Conducting such investigations can be complicated and time-consuming.

“Extending the statute of limitations would provide additional time for investigators and prosecutors to hold oligarchs criminally accountable,” the White House said in a statement.
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U.S. President Joe Biden is set to travel to South Korea and Japan next month to meet with leaders and discuss economic and security ties. 

The White House announced the trip Wednesday, saying Biden would go to the region May 20-24. 

In South Korea, Biden will hold talks with President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was elected in March. 

In Japan, Biden is due to meet with Prime Minister Kishida Fumio and to hold talks with leaders from the Quad group of countries that includes Japan, Australia, India and the United States.
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This week’s French presidential contest boiled down to a debate between nationalism and globalism — and globalism prevailed in the victory of President Emmanuel Macron, an ally of President Joe Biden. What can the U.S. learn from this as Biden’s party faces elections? VOA’s Anita Powell reports.
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The U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed legislation Wednesday calling on the State Department to submit a plan to help Taiwan regain its observer status at the World Health Organization, seeking to boost the island as it faces pressure from China.

The House passed the bill 425-0, sending it to the White House because it passed the Senate in August. Congressional aides said they expected President Joe Biden to sign the measure into law.

Taiwan is excluded from most global organizations such as the WHO, the U.N. health agency, because of the objections of China, which considers the island one of its provinces and not a separate country.

The measure directs the U.S. secretary of state to establish a strategy for obtaining observer status at the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the WHO.

Taiwan was stripped of that status in 2017.

Urging support for the bill, Democratic Representative Gerry Connolly praised Taiwan’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that it had only 37,000 confirmed cases despite a population of 23.5 million, and that it shared expertise and donated protective equipment internationally.

“Taiwan’s leadership and contribution to global health security demonstrate why it ought to be part of the general conversation on public health,” he said.

Taiwan has raised its alert level since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, wary that Beijing might make a similar move on the island, though it has reported no signs this is about to happen.

Similar concerns have fueled efforts in the United States to support Taiwan, such as increasing its participation in international organizations like the WHO.
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The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol is redoubling its efforts to have GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy appear for an interview amid new revelations concerning his private conversations about the deadly attack, the chairman said Tuesday.

Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said the panel expects to decide this week about issuing a second request to McCarthy, who has declined to voluntarily appear before the panel. The committee is also looking at summoning a widening group of House Republicans for interviews, Thompson said, as more information emerges about their conversations with the Trump White House in the run-up to the Capitol siege.

The committee is racing to wrap up this phase of its work amid newly released audio recordings of McCarthy’s private remarks after the Jan. 6 attack, when supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol trying to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.

In a Jan. 10, 2021, audio recording released Tuesday by The New York Times, McCarthy tells fellow Republican leaders that Trump’s far-right allies in the House are “putting people in jeopardy” with their public tweets and comments that could put other lawmakers at risk of violence.

Earlier, the Times reported that McCarthy, in conversations with House Republicans, had blamed Trump for the attack. The audio recordings released by the Times are part of reporting for a forthcoming book, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future.

Thompson said the committee met most of Tuesday deciding next steps on McCarthy and other House members.

“We will probably look at engaging some of the lawmakers by invitation at this point, and we’ll go from there,” Thompson said at the Capitol.

The panel had previously sought interviews from McCarthy and Republican Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, two Trump allies central to the effort to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election that Trump lost to Biden.

All three have declined to voluntarily appear, but the committee has stopped short of taking the more dramatic step of issuing subpoenas to the sitting members of Congress to compel their testimony.

Thompson noted that the earlier invitation to McCarthy was sent “before this latest revelation that was reported on tape.” He told reporters that “in all probability” McCarthy would get another invitation.

At the same time, the panel is broadening its outreach to a potentially much wider group of Republican lawmakers who are now known to have played a more substantial role than previously understood ahead of the riot and as it unfolded.

“We’ll make a decision on any others before the week is out,” Thompson said.

Republican Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, a Trump ally who was with a group of lawmakers who met in December 2020 at the White House, has suggested he would appear before the panel. Brooks also spoke at Trump’s Jan. 6 rally before the mob descended on the Capitol.

Additionally, the panel is now eyeing other House Republican lawmakers reported to have been working closely with Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, as they sought to challenge Biden’s win.

A handful of lawmakers’ names were included in testimony released late Friday as part of a court filing as the committee seeks access to Meadows’ text messages.

“We will probably look at engaging some of the lawmakers by invitation at this point, and we’ll go from there,” Thompson said Tuesday.

The panel is working swiftly to launch public hearings, which it hopes to both start and conclude by June, before issuing an initial report of its findings in fall.
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President Joe Biden will eulogize former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at her funeral Wednesday at the Washington National Cathedral.  

The invitation-only service will be livestreamed beginning at 11 a.m. Eastern time.  

“When I think of Madeleine, I will always remember her fervent faith that ‘America is the indispensable nation,'” Biden wrote in a statement after Albright’s death last month. 

Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also will give speeches, along with Albright’s three daughters. Musicians Chris Botti, Judy Collins, and Herbie Hancock will perform.  

Albright, who died last month at age 84, was appointed by President Clinton in 1997 as the country’s 64th secretary of state and the first woman to serve in that position. She had previously served as his U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. 

An immigrant from Prague, Czechoslovakia, she helped steer Western foreign policy in the aftermath of the Cold War, in addition to promoting human rights and democracy around the world.  

During an interview on “PBS NewsHour” last month, President Clinton said that Albright “represented America’s best possible future.” 

Her death was “an immense loss to the world in a time when we need the lessons of her life the most,” President Clinton said in a statement. 
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U.S. President Joe Biden is returning to in-person political fundraising with the easing of coronavirus precautions that limited his exposure to large crowds. The president’s ability to draw political donations is especially important for Democrats as the face serious challenges to sustain their majorities in the House and Senate. VOA’s Natasha Mozgovaya has the story from Seattle.
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Orrin G. Hatch, who became the longest-serving Republican senator in history as he represented Utah for more than four decades, died Saturday at age 88.

His death was announced in a statement from his foundation, which did not specify a cause. He launched the Hatch Foundation as he retired in 2019 and was replaced by Mitt Romney.

A conservative on most economic and social issues, he nonetheless teamed with Democrats several times during his long career on issues ranging from stem cell research to rights for people with disabilities to expanding children’s health insurance. He also formed friendships across the aisle, particularly with the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

He also championed GOP issues like abortion limits and helped shape the U.S. Supreme Court, including defending Clarence Thomas against sexual harassment allegations during confirmation hearings.

Toward the end of his career, he also helped pass a federal tax overhaul and pushed for President Donald Trump to downsize two national monuments in Utah as he called for a return to an era of political civility. He became an ally of Trump.

He was also noted for his side career as a singer and recording artist of music with themes of his religious faith, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

He is survived by his wife, Elaine, and their six children. 
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President Joe Biden opened a two-day visit to the Pacific Northwest by focusing on improvements planned for the runway and roof of the airport where he landed Thursday, rather than any of the region’s traditional, natural attractions.

Portland International Airport lies on a tectonic plate fault line, but crews are working on a series of modernizations, including a new, earthquake-resistant runway capable of accommodating jets coming and going even after a major natural disaster. The design is modeled after the runway of the Sendai airport in Japan, which Biden said he’d visited and which survived the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in that country.

The trip is Biden’s first as president to this part of the country and comes as he has increased travel across the U.S. to tout the $1 trillion, bipartisan infrastructure package his administration supported and Congress approved last fall. Just since last week, Biden has been to Iowa, North Carolina and New Hampshire, and will travel to Seattle after the Oregon stop.

The president has been trying to promote the idea that he’s successfully advanced key policy goals — including providing badly needed funding for long-neglected public works projects around the country — despite Republicans in Congress opposing many of the White House’s priorities at every turn. The GOP counters that Biden has done little to tackle many of the nation’s most pressing issues, failing to control inflation that has climbed to its highest levels in more than 40 years or slow crime rates that are on the rise in some parts of the country.

“We’ve fallen behind. We haven’t invested in ourselves,” Biden said in a speech during which he noted that the public works package includes $25 billion to improve airports across America. “It bothers the heck out of me that there’s this belief that we can’t do big things anymore. We can.”

He added, “America invented modern aviation, but a lot of our airports are far behind our competitors.”

Portland’s airport is flanked by mountains and hills, yet, before his remarks, Biden was more attentive to the workers as they explained how the improvements would increase resiliency and energy efficiency. Officials are spending $2 billion on the airport revamp, including upgrades to the complex’s roof whose new sections will be primarily made of wood.

The roof is being disassembled into 20 sections and then pieced back together over the terminal, which Democratic Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley called “an incredible investment in mass timber.”

The White House says about 19.8 million passengers traveled through Portland’s airport in 2019 and says air cargo has increased more than 19% since 2019 as online commerce has grown amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Among those on hand was Oregon Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio, who said, “I’ve been fighting my entire career for investments that will rebuild our nation’s crumbling infrastructure.” He said the U.S. continues to face systemic challenges, including “an economy that rewards wealth instead of work.”

Biden later headed to a Democratic Party fundraiser at Portland’s yacht club, where he took aim at the GOP and Florida Sen. Rick Scott’s proposals for tax increases on the middle class and a potential end to Social Security. The president noted that Florida Republicans also are fighting with the Walt Disney Co. over their “don’t say gay” law for schools and predicted that Democrats would add two seats to secure a 52-48 majority in the Senate.

“The far right’s taken over that party,” Biden said. “And it’s not even conservative in a traditional sense of conservatism. It’s mean. It’s ugly.”

Historically, the party that controls the White House usually loses congressional seats in the next midterm races — and Republicans have suggested for months that they will easily win control of the House and Senate in November. Scott, the head of the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, has proposed imposing income taxes on more than half of Americans who currently don’t pay any, and moving to phase out federal legislation after five years — which could presumably threaten Social Security.

Biden plans to mark Earth Day on Friday in Seattle by speaking about a need to bolster the nation’s resilience in the face of threats like wildfire, and a need to rapidly deploy clean energy, the White House said.

In an Earth Day statement, Biden called the infrastructure law “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build on these actions and accelerate our nation’s ability to confront the environmental and climate challenges we face.”

“For the future of our planet, for our health, and for our children and grandchildren, we must act now,” it said. 
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David Satterfield to leave post amid political and economic turmoil in Ethiopia and Sudan 
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Space is being increasingly militarized, says the ‘Challenges in Security in Space Report – 2022’
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For President Joe Biden, the pain Americans are feeling in their pocketbooks comes down to an increasingly repeated slogan: “Putin’s price hike.” For more than a month now, his administration has tried to blame rising prices on the Russian president’s invasion of Ukraine. But the truth is a little more complicated, analysts say. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from Washington.
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Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a bill into law on Tuesday that makes it a felony to perform an abortion, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, as part of an aggressive push in Republican-led states across the country to scale back abortion rights. 

The bill, which takes effect 90 days after the Legislature adjourns next month, makes an exception only for an abortion performed to save the life of the mother. Abortion rights advocates say the bill signed by the GOP governor is certain to face a legal challenge. 

Its passage comes as the conservative U.S. Supreme Court considers ratcheting back abortion rights that have been in place for nearly 50 years. 

“We want to outlaw abortion in the state of Oklahoma,” Stitt said during a signing ceremony for the bill, flanked by anti-abortion lawmakers, clergy and students. “I promised Oklahomans that I would sign every pro-life bill that hits my desk, and that’s what we’re doing here today.” 

Under the bill, anyone convicted of performing an abortion would face up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine. It does not authorize criminal charges against a woman for receiving an abortion. 

Sen. Nathan Dahm, a Broken Arrow Republican now running for Congress who wrote the bill, called it the “strongest pro-life legislation in the country right now, which effectively eliminates abortion in Oklahoma.” 

Abortion rights advocates say the bill is clearly unconstitutional, and similar laws approved recently in Arkansas and Alabama have been blocked by federal courts. 

“Oklahoma legislators are trying to ban abortion from all sides and merely seeing which of these dangerous, shameful bills they can get their governor to sign,” Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi, an obstetrician and gynecologist in Texas and Oklahoma and a board member at Physicians for Reproductive Health, said in a statement. Although similar anti-abortion bills approved by the Oklahoma Legislature in recent years have been stopped as unconstitutional, anti-abortion lawmakers have been buoyed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to allow new Texas abortion restrictions to remain in place. 

The new Texas law, the most restrictive anti-abortion law to take effect in the U.S. in decades, leaves enforcement up to private citizens, who are entitled to collect what critics call a “bounty” of $10,000 if they bring a successful lawsuit against a provider or anyone who helps a patient obtain an abortion. 

“The U.S. Supreme Court’s failure to stop Texas from nullifying the constitutional right to abortion has emboldened other states to do the same,” Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement. “We’ve sued the state of Oklahoma ten times in the last decade to protect abortion access and we will challenge this law as well to stop this travesty from ever taking effect.” 

Several states, including Oklahoma, are pursuing legislation similar to the Texas law this year. 

The Texas law bans abortion after roughly six weeks of pregnancy and makes no exceptions in cases of rape or incest. Abortions in Texas have plummeted by about 50% since the law took effect, while the number of Texans going to clinics out of state and requesting abortion pills online has gone up. 

One of the Texas-style Oklahoma bills that is one vote away from the governor’s desk would ban abortions from the moment of conception and would take effect immediately upon the governor’s signature. 
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Mandatory evacuation comes as authorities in Chinese financial hub gradually eases strict lockdown orders in some neighborhoods  
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