Author: PolitCens

The Senate Judiciary Committee has set a confirmation hearing for Merrick Garland, President Joe Biden’s nominee for attorney general.Garland’s confirmation hearing will begin on February 22. The two-day hearing will include Garland’s testimony and a second day for outside witnesses to testify.The committee’s chair, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, said Garland’s hearing was particularly urgent after the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, when hundreds of supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol as Congress was meeting to vote to certify Biden’s electoral win.The Field of Empty Chairs is seen during the 20th Remembrance Ceremony, the anniversary ceremony for victims of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, at the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma April 19, 2015.Garland is a federal appeals court judge who in 2016 was snubbed by Republicans for a seat on the Supreme Court. He held senior positions at the Justice Department decades ago, including as a supervisor of the prosecution of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.The pick will force Senate Republicans to contend with the nomination of someone they spurned four years ago — refusing even to hold hearings when a Supreme Court vacancy arose — but Biden is banking on Garland’s credentials and reputation for moderation to ensure confirmation.”Judge Garland will serve the Justice Department and our country with honor and integrity,” Durbin said. “He is a consensus pick who should be confirmed swiftly on his merits.”The committee is set to vote on Garland’s nomination on March 1. 
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Arguments are under way in Washington in the historic second impeachment trial of former U.S. President Donald Trump, with lawmakers set to decide whether it is legal under the Constitution to try him after he has already left office.Nine Democratic lawmakers from the House of Representatives, acting as prosecutors against the former U.S. leader, are arguing at Trump’s trial before the 100-member Senate that he should be held accountable for inciting the storming of the Capitol on January 6. They say he urged hundreds of supporters to confront lawmakers as they were certifying that Democrat Joe Biden had defeated him in last November’s election.Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland told the Senate that if Trump is not held accountable, it “would create a brand-new January exception” where future presidents would not face consequences for any wrongdoing during their final month in office through impeachment and trial in the Senate.WATCH TRIAL LIVEThe Democrats showed the Senate a video of the chaos that unfolded in the Capitol building, with rampaging protesters storming past authorities and lawmakers scrambling to avoid the violence.  Trump’s lawyers are expected to respond that the trial is unconstitutional because the Constitution says impeachment is a tool to remove officials from office if they are found guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” That is impossible in Trump’s case, they contend, because Trump’s four-year term ended when Biden was inaugurated on January 20.  The Senate, however, conducted an 1876 impeachment trial of a Cabinet secretary who resigned moments before he was impeached. Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives while still in office.Up to four hours of arguments are scheduled on the constitutional issue, but Trump’s legal effort to end the trial before it starts in earnest is likely to fail.FILE – Supporters of then-President Donald Trump riot in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021.Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a staunch Trump supporter, attempted last month to block the trial on the same grounds, but five Republicans joined all 50 Democrats in voting 55-45 to proceed with the trial.  However it requires a two-thirds majority for conviction, meaning at least 12 of those Republican senators would have to reverse their votes for the prosecution to prevail. The 10-seat Senate is currently evenly divided 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats.Paul says there is a “zero chance of conviction.” If Trump is convicted, the Senate, on a simple majority vote, could bar him from ever holding federal office again.  The protest January 6 turned into mayhem, as about 800 Trump supporters rampaged past authorities into the Capitol, smashed doors and windows, ransacked some congressional offices and scuffled with police. Five people were killed, including a Capitol Police officer and a rioter shot by an officer.FILE – Pro-Trump protesters storm the U.S. Capitol to contest the certification of the 2020 U.S. presidential election results by Congress, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021.The 100 senators deciding the impeachment case against the single-term president are in a unique position: Many of them were witnesses themselves to the chaos as they fled the Senate chamber.Trump, the only U.S. president to be twice impeached, was acquitted a year ago when he was accused of soliciting the president of Ukraine to dig up dirt against Biden ahead of last November’s election.A week after the storming of the Capitol, the House voted 232-197, with 10 Republicans joining all 222 Democrats, to accuse Trump of “incitement of insurrection.” Then, on January 20, Biden was inaugurated as the country’s 46th president and Trump, no longer in power, flew for the last time on Air Force One to his Atlantic coastline mansion in Florida, where he has stayed since.Trump has declined a request from Democrats to testify in his defense at his impeachment trial and is not expected to attend. The trial could last a week or longer.  The nine Democratic House impeachment managers bringing the case against Trump – several of them former prosecutors – say that Trump, by urging his supporters to contest his election defeat at the Capitol, was “singularly responsible” for the riot that ensued.  Trump urged supporters to come to Washington on January 6, saying it would be “wild.” At a rally near the White House shortly before his supporters walked 16 blocks to the Capitol, Trump continued his weeks-long barrage of unfounded claims that election fraud had cost him another four-year term.  At one time in speaking for more than an hour, Trump told his supporters “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard” by marching to the Capitol.Later in the week, the Senate will have an opportunity to debate whether to call witnesses. The House managers could call some of the rioters to testify they were responding to Trump’s call for them on to confront lawmakers certifying Biden’s victory.   Trump’s lawyers have mounted a vigorous defense and contend that the former president bears no responsibility for what occurred last month.  In a brief filed Monday, they said the case against him amounts to “political theater” brought by anti-Trump Democrats. Trump’s lawyers suggested that he was simply exercising his constitutionally guaranteed right of free speech when he disputed the election results and argued that he explicitly encouraged his supporters to engage in a peaceful protest.  “Instead, this was only ever a selfish attempt by Democratic leadership in the House to prey upon the feelings of horror and confusion that fell upon all Americans across the entire political spectrum upon seeing the destruction at the Capitol on Jan. 6 by a few hundred people,” the lawyers wrote.”Instead of acting to heal the nation, or at the very least focusing on prosecuting the lawbreakers who stormed the Capitol, the Speaker of the House (Nancy Pelosi) and her allies have tried to callously harness the chaos of the moment for their own political gain.”  In response, the House Democrats prosecuting Trump said, “We live in a nation governed by the rule of law, not mob violence incited by presidents who cannot accept their own electoral defeat.”  “The evidence of President Trump’s conduct is overwhelming,” the managers wrote. “He has no valid excuse or defense for his actions. And his efforts to escape accountability are entirely unavailing. As charged in the Article of Impeachment, President Trump violated his Oath of Office and betrayed the American people.” 
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President Joe Biden’s choice to the lead the Office of Management and Budget apologized Tuesday for spending years attacking top Republicans on social media as she tried to convince senators she’ll leave partisan politics behind if confirmed.  
Neera Tanden also admitted to spending “many months” removing past Twitter posts, saying, “I deleted tweets because I regretted them.” But she refused to say she did so to help her nomination.  
“I know there have been some concerns about some of my past language on social media, and I regret that language and take responsibility for it,” Tanden, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton and the president of the center-left Center for American Progress, told a Senate committee.  
She later added, “I deeply regret and apologize for my language.”  
Tanden would be the first woman of color to lead the OMB. Her nomination requires approval from the Senate, which has moved fairly quickly to pass many of Biden’s choices for powerful posts. That’s despite it being divided 50-50 among Democrats and Republicans and this week grappling with the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump.  
Democrats hold the majority thanks to the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.
None in the party have yet opposed Tanden, meaning she’s likely to ultimately be approved. But Republicans have signaled that the process may trigger a political battle unseen with other Biden nominees, given her history of criticism of GOP lawmakers she’d now have to work with.  
Republican Ohio Sen. Rob Portman noted that, despite going back and trying “to cover what you said” by deleting tweets, copious “harsh” criticism” and “personal attacks about specific senators” endured. He said that included Tanden calling Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton “a fraud” and tweeting that “vampires have more heart” than Ted Cruz, R-Texas.  
Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford said Tanden had tweeted more over the past four years than even Trump did.  
“Something that this committee’s asked pretty frequently of nominees is, ‘Will you commit to working across the aisle?,'” Lankford said. “And that’s one that we have to ask you a little more blunt than others because it’s been pretty clear that hasn’t been your position in the past.”
Tanden said she recognizes “that this role is a bipartisan role, and I know I have to earn the trust of senators across the board.”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that Biden remains confident Tanden will get confirmed, but that no one in the administration directed her to apologize to ease the process.
“We certainly did not ask her to make any specific comments in her testimony,” Psaki said.
With the coronavirus pandemic wreaking havoc on the economy, Tanden promised that she’d use the post of budget chief to “vigorously enforce my ironclad belief that our government should serve all Americans, regardless of party, in every corner of the country.”
Still, Senate discussion of Tanden’s nomination is likely to center more on her past tweets than her budget priorities. Cotton has said they were “filled with hate.” Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn suggested previously that she’d face “certainly a problematic path” to nomination.  
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley offered another potential line of Republican criticism on Tuesday, noting that the Center for American Progress had collected large donations from Wall Street firms and groups associated with major tech firms while Tanden headed it.  
“How can you ensure us that you’ll work to see that these Silicon Valley and Wall Street firms don’t exercise undo influence,” Hawley asked, “in the making of government policy and the control of our economy?”
Tanden replied that she’d called for higher taxes on tech companies and more regulation of Wall Street and major corporate interests because “we should be moving to rebalance power in our economy.”
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Democratic U.S. Rep. Anthony Brindisi conceded Monday that it was “time to close the book on this election,” hours after New York officials certified Republican Claudia Tenney’s razor-thin victory in the nation’s last undecided congressional race. Brindisi’s statement came three days after a state judge ruled that Tenney won the race for central New York’s 22nd Congressional District by 109 votes. Brindisi said he congratulated Tenney and offered to make the transition as smooth as possible after several months of legal wrangling over the results. “It has been the honor of a lifetime serving my hometown, the place I grew up and am raising my family,” Brindisi said in a prepared statement. “Unfortunately, this election and counting process was riddled with errors, inconsistencies and systematic violations of state and federal election laws.”  FILE – Anthony Brindisi speaks to supporters on election night at the Delta Hotel in Utica, N.Y., Nov. 6, 2018.Judge Scott DelConte on Friday directed New York to certify results immediately. Commissioners with the state Board of Elections approved the results Monday in less than two minutes. Tenney had been the district’s representative for one term, until she was defeated by Brindisi in 2018. “Claudia looks forward to serving her constituents once again as their duly-elected representative in Congress,” campaign spokesperson Nick Stewart said in a prepared statement. DelConte’s ruling came after he spent three months reviewing ballot challenges and trying to fix a series of problems with vote tabulations. Tallies shifted as county election officials counted a flood of absentee ballots and courts weighed in on which challenged ballots could be counted. DelConte rejected an argument by Brindisi’s lawyers that certification of the election results should be delayed until an appeals court had a chance to review the case. The judge said that even if the results end up changing after any litigation, New York could simply amend its certification. The judge said only the U.S. House can order a new election or recount at this point.  “Sadly, we may never know how many legal voters were turned away at the polls or ballots not counted due to the ineptitude of the Boards of Election, especially in Oneida County,” said Brindisi, hoping there will be an investigation into the “massive disenfranchisement of voters.” Democrats control the House with 221 seats. With Tenney yet to be sworn in, Republicans held 210 seats following the death on Sunday of U.S. Rep. Ron Wright of Texas, according to the House’s website. 
 
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The historic second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump starts Tuesday in the U.S. Senate, with Trump accused of inciting insurrection a month ago by urging his supporters to confront lawmakers at the U.S. Capitol as they were certifying that Democrat Joe Biden had defeated Trump in the 2020 election.The protest turned into mayhem, as about 800 supporters of Trump stormed past authorities into the Capitol, smashed doors and windows, ransacked some congressional offices and scuffled with police. Five people were left dead, including a Capitol Police officer whose death is under investigation as a homicide and a rioter shot by a police officer.The 100 senators — 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats — hearing the impeachment case against the single-term president are in a unique position: many of them were witnesses themselves to the chaos of January 6 as they fled the Senate chamber for their own safety.With a two-thirds vote needed for conviction, 17 Republicans would have to turn against Trump, their Republican colleague, for him to be convicted, assuming all 50 Democrats vote to convict. As such, Trump almost certainly will be acquitted, just as he was a year ago when he was accused of soliciting the president of Ukraine to dig up dirt against Biden ahead of last November’s election.FILE – U.S. President Donald Trump looks on at the end of his speech during a rally to contest the certification of the 2020 U.S. presidential election results by the U.S. Congress, in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021.Whatever the outcome, however, Trump stands alone in more than two centuries of U.S. history as the only president to be impeached twice.A week after the storming of the Capitol, the House of Representatives voted 232-197, with 10 Republicans joining all 222 Democrats, to accuse Trump of “incitement of insurrection.” Then, on January 20, Biden was inaugurated as the country’s 46th president and Trump, no longer in power, flew for the last time on Air Force One to his Atlantic coastline mansion in Florida, where he has stayed since.Trump has declined a request from Democrats to testify in his defense at his impeachment trial and is not expected to attend it. The trial could last a week or longer.FILE – House impeachment managers walk the article of impeachment against former U.S. President Donald Trump through the Rotunda of the U.S. CapitolThe nine Democratic House impeachment managers bringing the case against Trump — several of them former prosecutors — claim that Trump, by urging his supporters to contest his election defeat at the Capitol, was “singularly responsible” for the riot that ensued.Trump urged supporters to come to Washington on January 6, saying it would be “wild.” At a rally near the White House shortly before his supporters walked 16 blocks to the Capitol, Trump continued his weeks-long barrage of unfounded claims that election fraud had cost him another four-year term.At one time in speaking for more than an hour, Trump told his supporters “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard” by marching to the Capitol.But he also exhorted them, saying, “Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and that’s what this is all about. To use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal.”“And we fight,” he said. “We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”Ahead of the trial, the House impeachment managers said in a legal brief, “President Trump’s responsibility for the events of January 6 is unmistakable” and that the former president’s “conduct must be declared unacceptable in the clearest and most unequivocal terms,” even though he is no longer in office.The U.S. Constitution allows for the removal of officials found guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Trump’s two experienced trial lawyers he hired — David Schoen and Bruce Castor — have argued that since Trump is no longer president, and therefore could not be removed from office, his impeachment trial is unconstitutional.The Senate, however, has conducted impeachment trials of former officials, not allowing them to avoid a trial for possible wrongdoing by resigning, as happened in an 1876 case, or in Trump’s case, by leaving office as his term ended. Moreover, the House impeachment lawyers argue that Trump incited the insurrection and was impeached by the House while he was still in office.FILE – In this image from video, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., makes a motion that the impeachment trial against former President Donald Trump is unconstitutional in the Senate at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 26, 2021.Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a staunch Trump supporter, attempted to block the trial on such constitutional grounds, but five Republicans joined all 50 Democrats in voting 55-45 to proceed with the trial. But the vote also signaled Trump’s seeming Republican support for acquittal remains significant, more than enough to block his conviction.Paul says there is a “zero chance of conviction.” If Trump were to be convicted, the Senate, on a simple majority vote, could bar him from ever holding office again.On Tuesday, as the trial starts in earnest, lawyers for Trump and the House managers prosecuting him again are expected to debate the constitutionality of holding the trial. But assuming the Senate votes to go ahead with it, House managers would begin to present their case on Wednesday, likely showing some of the clips of hours of videos of the mayhem.FILE – In this Jan. 6, 2021, photo, supporters of President Donald Trump are confronted by U.S. Capitol Police officers outside the Senate Chamber inside the Capitol in Washington.Then the president’s lawyers would respond with his defense. Later in the week, the Senate could debate whether to call witnesses if the House managers decide they want to have witnesses testify how they felt Trump had urged them on to confront lawmakers certifying Biden’s victory.Trump’s lawyers have mounted a vigorous defense and contend that the former president bears no responsibility for what occurred January 6.In a brief filed Monday, they contended that the case against him amounts to “political theater” brought by anti-Trump Democrats. Trump’s lawyers suggested that he was simply exercising his constitutionally guaranteed right of free speech when he disputed the election results and argued that he explicitly encouraged his supporters to engage in a peaceful protest.”Instead, this was only ever a selfish attempt by Democratic leadership in the House to prey upon the feelings of horror and confusion that fell upon all Americans across the entire political spectrum upon seeing the destruction at the Capitol on Jan. 6 by a few hundred people,” the lawyers wrote. “Instead of acting to heal the nation, or at the very least focusing on prosecuting the lawbreakers who stormed the Capitol, the Speaker of the House (Nancy Pelosi) and her allies have tried to callously harness the chaos of the moment for their own political gain.”In response, the House Democrats prosecuting Trump said, “We live in a nation governed by the rule of law, not mob violence incited by presidents who cannot accept their own electoral defeat.”“The evidence of President Trump’s conduct is overwhelming,” the managers wrote. “He has no valid excuse or defense for his actions. And his efforts to escape accountability are entirely unavailing. As charged in the Article of Impeachment, President Trump violated his Oath of Office and betrayed the American people.” 
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This week, Washington will tackle two important issues – the $1.9 trillion economic relief package President Joe Biden has proposed and the Senate impeachment trial of his immediate predecessor, Donald Trump. VOA’s Michelle Quinn reports.
Video editor: Mary Cieslak
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This week, Washington will tackle two important issues – the $1.9 trillion economic relief package President Joe Biden has proposed and the Senate impeachment trial of his immediate predecessor, Donald Trump. VOA’s Michelle Quinn reports.
Video editor: Mary Cieslak
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Sunday it “will take years” to get the country’s coronavirus-ravaged economy back on track if Congress fails to enact President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief package, rejecting Republican claims that it is too big. Yellen told CNN that with passage of the relief deal, the economy could return to what is considered full employment in the world’s biggest economy by 2022, with a 4% jobless rate compared to the 6.3% rate in January. “There’s tremendous suffering in the country,” she said, with nearly 10 million jobs lost in the coronavirus pandemic and a reported 4 million workers who have given up looking for new work. The government reported Friday that the United States added only 49,000 jobs in January. FILE – U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris meet with a group of Republican Senators to discuss coronavirus federal aid legislation inside the Oval Office at the White House, Feb. 1, 2021.Biden also plans to send $1,400 checks to millions of adult Americans, but Yellen said precise details of what income level the payments would be cut off have yet to be worked out. Republicans opposed to Biden’s relief package are pointing to an opinion article published in The Washington Post last week by former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, a Democrat, suggesting that the size of Biden’s relief deal could “set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation.” Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, in a CNN interview, said the U.S. is not facing “an economy in collapse.” He said it is too soon to enact another big coronavirus relief measure. “The ink is hardly dry on the last bill,” Toomey said, referring to a $900 billion package that then-President Donald Trump approved in late December. Toomey said that while Biden has “made great speeches on (political) unity, he’s governing from the hard left.”  
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The Biden administration said on Saturday it was immediately suspending Trump-era asylum agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, part of a bid to undo his Republican predecessor’s hard-line immigration policies.In a statement, State Department Secretary Antony Blinken said the United States had “suspended and initiated the process to terminate the Asylum Cooperative Agreements with the Governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras as the first concrete steps on the path to greater partnership and collaboration in the region laid out by President Biden.”The so-called “safe third country” agreements, inked in 2019 by the Trump administration and the Central American nations, force asylum seekers from the region to first seek refuge in those countries before applying in the United States.Part of a controversial bid by Trump to crack down on illegal immigrants from Central America who make up a large part of migrants apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border, the policies were never implemented with El Salvador and Honduras, the State Department said on Saturday.Transfers under the U.S.-Guatemala agreement have been paused since mid-March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, the statement added.The moves announced Saturday came after Biden unveiled a host of measures last week aimed at revamping the U.S. immigration system, including a task force to reunite families separated at the United States-Mexico border and another to increase an annual cap on refugees.One of the orders called for Blinken to “promptly consider” whether to notify the governments of the three countries that the United States intended to suspend and terminate the safe third country deals. It also called on the Secretary of Homeland Security and the attorney general to determine whether to rescind a rule implementing the agreements.
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President Joe Biden gave a pep talk to a California woman who was laid off because of the coronavirus pandemic, during a conversation the White House said was part of an effort to help him engage more consistently with regular Americans.The White House on Saturday released a 2½-minute video of Biden’s long-distance telephone conversation with Michele Voelkert, identifying her only as Michele.After losing her job at a startup clothing company in July, she wrote Biden a letter. He read it, then called her.The Roseville, California, woman told Biden “it’s been a tough time” trying to find work.Biden, who spoke from his Oval Office desk, replied that his father used to say a job is about dignity and respect as much as it is about a paycheck. He described his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan, which calls for $1,400 payments to people like Voelkert, and other economic aid for individuals and small businesses. There’s also money to help distribute coronavirus vaccines.”I’ve been saying a long time, the idea that we think we can keep businesses open and moving and thriving without dealing with this pandemic is just a nonstarter,” Biden said.’Riding high’The Sacramento Bee said it spoke to Voelkert, 47, after the call.”It was the opportunity of the lifetime,” she said. “I’m still riding high.”The conversation is part of an effort to help Biden, who has largely limited his travel because of the pandemic, communicate directly with Americans, the White House said. Biden did fly to Wilmington, Delaware, on Friday to spend the weekend at home with his family.”There is a time-honored tradition in the country of hearing from the president in this way,” press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday in previewing the video. She referenced Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” and Ronald Reagan’s establishment of a weekly radio address.The radio address eventually grew to include a video version viewed over the internet.Psaki said Biden’s weekly address would be produced in a variety of forms. 
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The United States said Friday it intends to revoke the terrorist designation for Yemen’s Houthi movement in response to the country’s humanitarian crisis, reversing one of the most criticized last-minute decisions of the Trump administration.The reversal, confirmed by a State Department official, comes a day after President Joe Biden declared a halt to U.S. support for the Saudi Arabia-led military campaign in Yemen, widely seen as a proxy conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran.”Our action is due entirely to the humanitarian consequences of this last-minute designation from the prior administration, which the United Nations and humanitarian organizations have since made clear would accelerate the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” the official said.The United Nations describes Yemen as the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis, with 80% of its people in need.Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blacklisted the Houthis on Jan. 19, a day before Biden took office.The Trump administration exempted aid groups, the United Nations, the Red Cross and the export of agricultural commodities, medicine and medical devices from its designation. But U.N. officials and relief groups said the carve-outs were not enough and called for the decision to be revoked.The State Department official stressed that the action did not reflect the U.S. view of the Houthis and their “reprehensible conduct.”The Saudi-led military coalition intervened in Yemen in 2015, backing government forces fighting the Iran-aligned Houthis. U.N. officials are trying to revive peace talks as the country also faces an economic crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy welcomed the decision.”The designation … stopped food and other critical aid from being delivered inside Yemen and would have prevented effective political negotiation,” he said in a statement.
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken pressed Beijing on its treatment of Uighurs, Tibetans and Hong Kong in the first conversation between top officials of the two powers since President Joe Biden took office.   “I made clear the U.S. will defend our national interests, stand up for our democratic values, and hold Beijing accountable for its abuses of the international system,” Blinken said on Twitter of his call with senior Chinese official Yang Jiechi.   Blinken told Yang that the United States “will continue to stand up for human rights and democratic values, including in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong,” a State Department statement said of the call, which took place Friday, Washington time.   Blinken also “pressed China to join the international community in condemning the military coup in Burma,” it said, using the former name of Myanmar.   The top U.S. diplomat said the United States would hold Beijing “accountable for its efforts to threaten stability in the Indo-Pacific, including across the Taiwan Strait, and its undermining of the rules-based international system.”   The tough tone comes after Blinken in his confirmation hearing said he would continue former president Donald Trump’s approach to China in a rare point of agreement between the two administrations.   Blinken has said he agrees with a determination by the State Department under Trump that Beijing is carrying out genocide in the western region of Xinjiang, where rights groups say more than one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim Turkic-speaking people have been rounded up in camps.   Beijing has also ramped up a crackdown in Hong Kong, arresting leading activists, after imposing a new law against subversion following major protests in the financial hub to which it had guaranteed a separate system.   Biden nonetheless offered a small olive branch during a speech on foreign policy on Thursday, saying that while the United states will “confront” China, “We are ready to work with Beijing when it’s in America’s interest to do so.”   Blinken has previously spoken of climate change as an area of cooperation as China and the United State are the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases.   Beijing has long enjoyed a privileged relationship with Myanmar, supporting the junta that gave way to democracy a decade ago with U.S. support.   The military in the Southeast Asian nation this week carried out a coup, arresting civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, in what Chinese state media described as “a major cabinet reshuffle.”   Biden, who has vowed to promote democracy worldwide after Trump’s flirtations with autocratic leaders, strongly condemned the coup and threatened sanctions if the military did not relinquish power.      
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President Joe Biden said Friday that Donald Trump should not be allowed to receive classified intelligence briefings, a courtesy that historically has been granted to outgoing presidents.Asked in an interview with CBS News what he feared if Trump continued to receive the briefings, Biden said he did not want to “speculate out loud” but made clear he did not want Trump to continue getting them.”I just think that there is no need for him to have the intelligence briefings,” Biden said. “What value is giving him an intelligence briefing? What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?”White House press secretary Jen Psaki said earlier this week that the issue of granting Trump intelligence briefings was “something that is under review.”Some Democratic lawmakers, and even some former Trump administration officials, have questioned the wisdom of allowing Trump to continue to be briefed.Susan Gordon, who served as the principal deputy director of national intelligence during the Trump administration from 2017 to 2019, in a Washington Post op-ed last month urged Biden to cut off Trump.”His post-White House ‘security profile,’ as the professionals like to call it, is daunting,” Gordon wrote days after a pro-Trump mob laid siege to the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers sought to certify his defeat in last November’s election. “Any former president is, by definition, a target and presents some risks. But a former President Trump, even before the events of last week, might be unusually vulnerable to bad actors with ill intent.”Whether to give a past president intelligence briefings is solely the current officeholder’s prerogative. Biden voiced his opposition to giving Trump access to briefings as the former Republican president’s second impeachment trial is set to begin next week.Gordon also raised concerns about Trump’s business entanglements. The real estate tycoon saw his business founder during his four years in Washington and is weighed down by significant debt, reportedly about $400 million. Trump during the campaign called his debt load a “peanut” and said he did not owe any money to Russia.”Trump has significant business entanglements that involve foreign entities,” Gordon wrote. “Many of these current business relationships are in parts of the world that are vulnerable to intelligence services from other nation-states.”Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, also urged Biden not to allow briefings for Trump.”There’s no circumstance in which this president should get another intelligence briefing,” Schiff said shortly before Trump ended his term last month. “I don’t think he can be trusted with it now, and in the future.”
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President Joe Biden challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday to release opposition leader Alexey Navalny immediately and without condition, in a stark break from his predecessor. The Kremlin has rejected what it described as an “ultimatum” from Biden, as VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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Donald Trump has resigned from the Screen Actors Guild after the union threatened to expel him for his role in the Capitol riot in January.In a letter dated Thursday and addressed to SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris, Trump said he was resigning from the union that he had been a member of since 1989. “I no longer wish to be associated with your union,” wrote Trump in a letter shared by the actors guild. “As such, this letter is to inform you of my immediate resignation from SAG-AFTRA. You have done nothing for me.”  The guild responded with a short statement: “Thank you.”  Last month, the SAG-AFTRA board voted that there was probable cause that Trump violated its guidelines for membership by his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol siege. Trump, the guild said, had sustained “a reckless campaign of misinformation aimed at discrediting and ultimately threatening the safety of journalists, many of whom are SAG-AFTRA members.” Trump’s case was to be weighed by a disciplinary committee. In his letter, the former president said he had no interest in such a hearing. “Who cares?” he wrote.”While I’m not familiar with your work, I’m very proud of my work on movies such as ‘Home Alone 2,’ ‘Zoolander’ and ‘Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps’; and television shows including ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,’ ‘Saturday Night Live,’ and of course, one of the most successful shows in television history, ‘The Apprentice’ — to name just a few!” wrote Trump. “I’ve also greatly helped the cable news television business (said to be a dying platform with not much time left until I got involved in politics), and created thousands of jobs at networks such as MSDNC and Fake News CNN, among many others,” Trump continued.  On Thursday, the Screen Actors Guild announced nominees to its annual awards. Losing guild membership doesn’t disqualify anyone from performing. But most major productions abide by union contracts and hire only union actors.
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President Joe Biden’s drive to enact a $1.9 trillion coronavirus aid bill gained momentum early on Friday as the U.S. Senate narrowly approved a budget blueprint allowing Democrats to push the legislation through Congress in coming weeks with or without Republican support.
 
At the end of approximately 15 hours of debate and back-to-back votes on dozens of amendments, the Senate found itself in a 50-50 partisan deadlock over passage of the budget plan. That deadlock was broken by Vice President Kamala Harris, whose “yes” vote provided the win for Democrats.
 
Shortly before the final vote, Democrats flexed their muscle by offering an amendment reversing some earlier votes regarding the future of the Keystone XL pipeline and coronavirus aid to immigrants living in the United States illegally.
 
With Harris presiding, she broke a 50-50 tie to win this amendment for her fellow Democrats.
 
It marked the first time Harris, in her role as president of the Senate, cast a tie-breaking vote after being sworn in as Biden’s vice president on Jan. 20.
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President Joe Biden visited the State Department Thursday and outlined his vision for U.S. foreign policy, ordering an end to U.S. support for offensive military operations in Yemen and an overall shift toward diplomacy. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
Producer: Kim Weeks
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