Author: PolitCens

Donald Trump endangered the lives of all members of Congress when he aimed a mob of supporters “like a loaded cannon” at the U.S. Capitol, House Democrats said Tuesday in making their most detailed case yet for why the former president should be convicted and permanently barred from office.
The legal brief forcefully links Trump’s baseless efforts to overturn the results of the presidential election to the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, saying he bears “unmistakable” blame for actions that directly threatened the underpinnings of American democracy. It argues that he must be found guilty when his impeachment trial opens before the Senate next week on a charge of inciting the siege.
“His conduct endangered the life of every single Member of Congress, jeopardized the peaceful transition of power and line of succession, and compromised our national security,” the Democratic managers of the impeachment case wrote. “This is precisely the sort of constitutional offense that warrants disqualification from federal office.”  
The legal brief lays out for the first time the arguments House lawmakers expect to present at the impeachment trial. It not only explicitly faults him for his role in the riot but also aims to preemptively rebut defense claims that Trump’s words were somehow protected by the First Amendment or that an impeachment trial is unconstitutional, or even unnecessary, now that Trump has left office. It says Trump’s behavior was so egregious as to require permanent disqualification from office.  Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 11 MB480p | 16 MB540p | 21 MB720p | 45 MB1080p | 84 MBOriginal | 264 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioThe Constitution specifies that disqualification from office can be a punishment for an impeachment conviction.
“This is not a case where elections alone are a sufficient safeguard against future abuse; it is the electoral process itself that President Trump attacked and that must be protected from him and anyone else who would seek to mimic his behavior,” the legal brief states.
Lawyers for Trump are expected to file their own brief Tuesday. In a Fox News appearance Monday night, one of the attorneys, David Schoen, said he would argue that the trial was unconstitutional, that efforts to bar Trump from office were undemocratic. and that his words were protected by the First Amendment.Who Will Represent Trump at His Impeachment Trial ? Less than two weeks before the Trump’s second impeachment trial, the former president introduces new defense team Democrats made clear that they disagree with all points.
“The only honorable path at that point was for President Trump to accept the results and concede his electoral defeat. Instead, he summoned a mob to Washington, exhorted them into a frenzy, and aimed them like a loaded cannon down Pennsylvania Avenue,” they wrote in their 77-page brief.
The Democrats draw heavily on the words of prominent Republicans who have criticized the former president, including Wyoming. Rep. Liz Cheney, who voted for his impeachment and said there has never been a “greater betrayal” by a president, and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who said Trump “provoked” the rioters.
Still, Republicans have signaled that acquittal is likely, with many saying they think Congress should move on and questioning the constitutionality of an impeachment trial — Trump’s second — now that he has left office. In a test vote in the Senate last week, 45 Republicans voted in favor of an effort to dismiss the trial over those constitutional concerns.
Though no president has been tried after departing the White House, Democrats say there is precedent, pointing to an 1876 impeachment of a secretary of war who resigned his office in a last-ditch attempt to avoid an impeachment trial. The Senate held it anyway.Who Are the Impeachment Managers Prosecuting Trump’s Trial? The former president is facing a charge of “incitement of insurrection” in connection with the mob that invaded the Capitol as US lawmakers met to certify the election results that put President Joe Biden in office  The Democrats write that the framers of the Constitution would not have wanted to leave the country defenseless against “a president’s treachery in his final days, allowing him to misuse power, violate his Oath, and incite insurrection against Congress and our electoral institutions” simply because he is leaving office. Setting that precedent now would “horrify the Framers,” the brief says.
“There is no ‘January Exception’ to impeachment or any other provision of the Constitution,” the Democrats wrote. “A president must answer comprehensively for his conduct in office from his first day in office through his last.”
Trump was impeached by the House while still in office, they note, forcing a Senate trial. And there are precedents for trying former officials.
“Trump is personally responsible for a violent attack on the Capitol,” they wrote. “He was impeached while still in office. The case for trying him after he has left office is stronger than any of the precedents.”
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New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Monday gave a live, roughly 90-minute, sometimes emotional account of the January 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former U.S. president Donald Trump, saying at one point she feared for her life.On her Instagram social media account, Ocasio-Cortez gave a detailed account of the time leading up to the day. She also revealed, without elaborating, that she was a victim of sexual assault.  She brought it up in the context of members of Congress arguing that it is best for the country to move on from the insurrection and put it behind us. “These folks who tell us to move on, that it’s not a big deal, that we should forget what’s happened or even telling us to apologize — these are the same tactics of abusers,” she said. Ocasio-Cortez said these people also have the same motives, in that they want to move on so they can do it again.  Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 7 MB480p | 11 MB540p | 15 MB720p | 37 MB1080p | 62 MBOriginal | 68 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioCapitol Siege: Americans See Images They Can’t BelieveIn her account, Ocasio-Cortez talked about being in her office with one other staff member on Jan. 6 when they heard a vigorous pounding at her office doors. Alarmed, she hid in her office bathroom and soon she heard a loud male voice walking through her office repeatedly shouting, “Where is she?”  She said in that moment she thought she was about to die.The man turned out to be a Capitol police officer, though he never identified himself and, she said, he looked at her “with a tremendous amount of anger and hostility.”  She said she and her staff member were instructed to go to another congressional office building, where she eventually ended up in the office of California Representative Katie Porter, and, later, Massachusetts Representative Ayanna Pressley, both fellow Democrats.Ocasio-Cortez also sought to dispel the statements that the insurrection at the Capitol was not planned ahead of time but was spontaneous. She said she began getting text messages on her phone the week prior to the siege, warning her to be careful on January 6.She said, “Those text messages came from other members of Congress. They were not threats, but they were other members, saying that they knew, and that they were hearing — even from Trump people and Republicans that they knew in their life — that there was violence expected on Wednesday.”
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U.S. President Joe Biden is hosting 10 Republican senators for talks Monday about a new round of coronavirus economic relief, but Biden and the lawmakers are far apart on how much should be spent. The Democratic president, in the second week of his four-year term, has proposed a $1.9 trillion package but the opposition lawmakers on Monday called for only a $618 billion spending deal.  The White House meeting comes after the Republicans sent a letter to Biden on Sunday, urging him to negotiate on a new relief deal rather than trying to get his approved solely with the votes of congressional Democrats by invoking arcane budget rules. The Republicans called for stricter limits on who would qualify for direct payments from the national government. Both Biden and the Republicans are calling for $160 billion for COVID-19 testing, vaccines and personal protective equipment on top of hundreds of billions that were approved last year as the virus swept into the United States.  But the president and the Republican lawmakers diverge on other aid proposals. Biden wants to increase $300 weekly unemployment insurance payments from the federal government to $400 and extend them through September, while the Republicans want to keep the supplemental federal payments at the current $300 and only through July. Biden has proposed sending most Americans, all but the biggest wage earners, $1,400 checks on top of the $600 checks that were approved by former President Donald Trump in late December. The Republicans are supporting $1,000 checks for lower-income Americans. Biden agreed to meet with the Republicans as Democratic congressional leaders mapped plans to move quickly this week to adopt Biden’s plan with only the votes of Democrats, who control both chambers of Congress.  FILE – Senator Susan Collins talks to reporters before attending the impeachment trial of then-President Donald Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, Jan. 28, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington.The Republican senators, led by Senator Susan Collins of Maine, told Biden in the letter over the weekend that they “recognize your calls for unity and want to work in good faith with your administration to meet the health, economic, and societal challenges of the COVID crisis.” Whether Biden and the lawmakers agree to a deal is uncertain. FILE – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of N.Y., heads to an interview on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 25, 2021.Senate Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York complained that the Republicans are not starting near Biden’s spending proposal. He said the Democrats must avoid the mistake of former Democratic president Barack Obama who held down the size of his financial relief package during the Great Recession under pressure from the Republican minority, only to regret it later.  “We cannot do the mistake of 2009 [during the Great Recession] where they whittled down the program so that the amount of relief was so small that the recession lasted four or five years,” Schumer told the New York Daily News on Sunday.  But Republicans say Biden will get his administration off to a bad start if he doesn’t compromise with them on coronavirus legislation. “In the spirit of bipartisanship and unity, we have developed a COVID-19 relief framework that builds on prior COVID assistance laws, all of which passed with bipartisan support,” the Republican senators wrote in their letter to Biden. “Our proposal reflects many of your stated priorities, and with your support, we believe that this plan could be approved quickly by Congress with bipartisan support.” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement, “With the virus posing a grave threat to the country, and economic conditions grim for so many, the need for action is urgent, and the scale of what must be done is large. As leading economists have said, the danger now is not in doing too much: it is in doing too little.  Americans of both parties are looking to their leaders to meet the moment.” FILE – White House press secretary Jen Psaki listens as National Economic Council Director Brian Deese speaks during a press briefing at the White House, Jan. 22, 2021, in Washington.Brian Deese, the director of Biden’s National Economic Council, told CNN on Sunday that the president’s proposal is “calibrated to the economic crisis that we face,” but that Biden would look at the Republican proposal.  Deese said Biden is “uncompromising when it comes to the speed we need to act at to address this crisis,” including a reeling economy, a sluggish rollout of coronavirus vaccinations across the country and a steadily increasing U.S. coronavirus death toll. It now stands at more than 441,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.  Biden has said Democrats will push through their version of the relief package on a party line vote in Congress if they need to, rather than engage in protracted negotiations.  Deese declined to say what overall amount Biden would be willing to agree to.  But he said the president was willing to target the cash stipends so that money does not go to bigger wage earners.  “We want to get cash into the pockets of people who need it the most,” Deese said.  “The immediate focus,” he said, “is putting a floor under the economic crisis.”  Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, one of the 10 Republicans calling for a compromise with Biden, said, “Let’s focus on those who are struggling.”  He said it was “not in the interest of the Democratic Party to ram through” its version of the relief bill. “If you can’t find bipartisanship on COVID-19, I don’t know where you can,” Portman said. COVID-19 is the illness caused by the coronavirus.  
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the Biden administration is considering possible action against Russia, a day after police used batons and tasers against protesters demanding the release of jailed opposition politician Alexey Navalny. In an TV interview that aired on Monday, Blinken said he was “deeply disturbed by the violent crackdown.” He also said in the wide-ranging interview that China acted “egregiously” to undermine Hong Kong and warned Iran was months away from the ability to produce the fissile material needed for a nuclear weapon. Russia’s Foreign Ministry claimed that Washington was behind the protests, alleging a “gross intervention in Russia’s affairs.” Riot police detain a man during a rally in support of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Moscow, Russia, Jan. 31, 2021.”The Russian government makes a big mistake if it believes that this is about us,” he said in the interview with NBC News. “It’s about them. It’s about the government. It’s about the frustration that the Russian people have with corruption, with autocracy, and I think they need to look inward, not outward.” In the interview, taped on January 31, Blinken did not commit to specific sanctions against Moscow. He said he was reviewing a response to the actions against Navalny, as well as Russian election interference in 2020, the Solar Wind hack, and alleged bounties for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. “The president could not have been clearer in his conversation with President [Vladimir] Putin,” Blinken said of Joe Biden’s telephone call last week with the Russian leader. IranOn Iran, Blinken warned that Tehran was months away from being able to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon, saying it could be only “a matter of weeks” if Iran continued to lift restraints in the nuclear deal. He said the United States was willing to return to compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal if Iran does and then work with U.S. allies and partners on a “longer and stronger” agreement including other issues.Pressed about whether the release of detained Americans, which was not part of previous negotiations, would be an absolute condition for an expanded nuclear treaty, he did not commit. “Irrespective of… any deal, those Americans need to be released. Period,” he said. “We’re going to focus on making sure that they come home one way or another.” China
Regarding China, Blinken said that despite World Health Organization inspectors on the ground in Wuhan, Beijing is “falling far short of the mark” when it comes to allowing experts access to the sites where the coronavirus was discovered. He called China’s lack of transparency a “profound problem” that must be addressed. Blinken said the Biden administration would be looking to see whether the U.S. tariffs imposed on Chinese imports by the previous Trump administration were doing more harm to the United States than to their target. He also criticized Chinese actions in Hong Kong, where he said China had acted “egregiously” to undermine its commitments to the semiautonomous island. Under a sweeping national security law criminalizing secession and subversion, pro-democracy demonstrators have been swept up in waves of arrests.  
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Former U.S. President Donald Trump announced Sunday a new team of lawyers to lead his defense at his second impeachment trial. Defense lawyer David Schoen, a frequent television legal commentator, and Bruce Castor, a former district attorney in Pennsylvania who has faced criticism for his decision to not charge actor Bill Cosby in a sex crimes case, will represent Trump at the Senate trial that begins next week. In a statement issued through Trump’s office, both attorneys said Sunday they were honored to take the job. “The strength of our Constitution is about to be tested like never before in our history. It is strong and resilient. A document written for the ages, and it will triumph over partisanship yet again, and always,” Castor said.U.S. Capitol Police officers stand watch outside the Senate as lawmakers vote on procedures to proceed with the impeachment of former President Donald Trump for inciting the January 6, 2021.Two prominent South Carolina lawyers, Butch Bowers and Deborah Barbier, had been expected to be Trump’s lead lawyers.  The relationship unraveled due to differences over what legal strategy would be appropriate for the trial, including Trump’s insistence on alleging voter fraud, according to media reports citing people familiar with the matter. The former president is facing charges of “incitement of insurrection” in connection with the mob that invaded the U.S. Capitol on January 6. The House impeachment managers serving as prosecutors face a tough task in convincing at least 17 Republicans to vote to impeach Trump.  That is how many would be necessary to meet the threshold of two-thirds of the Senate, assuming all the Democratic caucus backs impeachment. Several Republicans have opposed the impeachment trial, arguing it is unconstitutional since Trump is already out of office. Trump is the first U.S. president to have been impeached twice. He was acquitted by the Senate a year ago on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. 
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Climate isn’t the only thing changing. What comes next in the nation’s struggle to combat global warming will probably transform how Americans drive, where they get their power and other bits of day-to-day life, both quietly and obviously, experts say. So far, the greening of America has been subtle, driven by market forces, technology and voluntary actions. The Biden administration is about to change that.In a flurry of executive actions in his first eight days in office, the president is trying to steer the U.S. economy from one that uses fossil fuels to one that no longer puts additional heat-trapping gases into the air by 2050.The United States is rejoining the international Paris climate accord and is also joining many other nations in setting an ambitious goal that once seemed unattainable: net-zero carbon emissions by midcentury. That means lots of changes designed to fight increasingly costly climate disasters such as wildfires, floods, droughts, storms and heat waves.Think of the journey to a carbon-less economy as a road trip from Washington to California that started about 15 years ago.”We’ve made it through Ohio and up to the Indiana border. But the road has been pretty smooth so far. It gets rougher ahead,” said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, climate and energy director at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research center in Oakland, California.”The Biden administration is both stepping on the gas and working to upgrade our vehicle,” Hausfather said.What isn’t visible, and what isThe results of some of Biden’s new efforts may still not be noticeable, such as your power eventually coming from ever-cheaper wind and solar energy instead of coal and natural gas that now provide 59% of American power. But when it comes to going from here to there, you’ll notice that.FILE – A Chevrolet Volt hybrid car is hooked up at a ChargePoint charging station at a parking garage in Los Angeles, Oct. 17, 2018.General Motors announced Thursday that as of 2035 it hopes to go all-electric for its light-duty vehicles, no longer selling gasoline-powered cars. Experts expect most new cars sold in 2030 to be electric. The Biden administration promised 550,000 charging stations to help with the transition to electric cars.”You will no longer be going to a gas station, but you will need to charge your vehicle whether at home or on the road,” said Kate Larsen, director of international climate policy research at the Rhodium Group, an independent research organization. “It may be a whole new way of thinking about transportation for the average person.”But it will still be your car, which is why most of the big climate action over the next 10 years won’t be too noticeable, said Princeton University ecologist Stephen Pacala.”The single biggest difference is that because wind and solar is distributed you will see a lot more of it on the landscape,” said Pacala, who leads a study on  decarbonizing America by the National Academy of Sciences that will come out next week.FILE – President Joe Biden signs a series of executive orders on climate change, in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, Jan. 27, 2021.Less expensive, plus health benefitsOther recent detailed scientific studies show that because of dropping wind, solar and battery prices, Biden’s net-zero carbon goal can be accomplished far cheaper than had been predicted in the past and with health benefits “many, many times” outweighing the costs, said Pacala, who was part of one study at Princeton. Those studies agree on what needs to be done for decarbonization, and what Biden has come out with “is doing the things that everyone now is concluding that we should do,” Pacala said.These are the types of shifts that don’t cost much — about $1 day per person — and won’t require people to abandon their current cars and furnaces but replace them with cleaner electric vehicles and heat pumps when it comes time for a new one, said Margaret Torn, a senior scientist at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, who co-authored a study published recently by Berkeley Lab, the University of San Francisco and the consulting firm Evolved Energy Research.Part of the problem, said study co-author Ryan Jones, co-founder of Evolved Energy Research, is that for years, people have wrongly portrayed the battle against climate change as a “personal morality problem” where individuals have to sacrifice by driving and flying less, turning down the heat and eating less meat.”Actually, climate change is an industry economy issue where most of the big solutions are happening under the hood or upstream of people’s homes,” Jones said. “It’s a big change in how we produce energy and consume energy. It’s not a change in people’s day-to-day lives, or it doesn’t need to be.”One Biden interim goal — “a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035″ — may not be doable that quickly, but can be done by 2050, said study co-author Jim Williams of the University of San Francisco.FILE – Todd Miller stands next to solar panels on the roof of his solar installation business in Ankeny, Iowa, April 15, 2019.Electric vehicles, conservation, wind energyBiden’s executive orders featured plans for an all-electric federal fleet of vehicles, conserving 30% of the country’s land and waters, doubling the nation’s offshore wind energy and funding to help communities become more resilient to climate disasters. Republicans and fossil fuel interests objected, calling the actions job-killers.”Using the incredible leverage of federal government purchases in green electricity, zero-emission cars and new infrastructure will rapidly increase demand for home-grown climate-friendly technologies,” said Rosina Bierbaum, a University of Michigan environmental policy professor.The next big thing for the administration is to come up with a Paris climate accord goal — called Nationally Determined Contribution — for how much the United States hopes to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. It has to be ambitious for the president to reach his ultimate goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050, but it also has to be doable.His administration promises to reveal the goal, required by the climate agreement but nonbinding, before its Earth Day climate summit, April 22.That new number “is actually the centrally important activity of the next year,” said University of Maryland environment professor Nate Hultman, who worked on the Obama administration’s Paris goal.Getting to net zero carbon emissions at midcentury means about a 43% cut from 2005 levels — the baseline the U.S. government uses — by 2030, said the Rhodium Group’s Larsen. The U.S. can realistically reach a 40% cut by 2030, which is about one-third reduction from what 2020 U.S. carbon emissions would have been without a pandemic, said Williams, the San Francisco professor.All this work on power and vehicles, that’s easy compared with decarbonizing agriculture with high methane emissions from livestock and high-heat industrial processes such as steelmaking, Breakthrough’s Hausfather said.”There’s no silver bullet for agriculture,” Hausfather said. “There’s no solar panels for cows, so to speak, apart from meat alternatives, but even there you have challenges around consumer acceptance.” 
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Former President Donald Trump has parted ways with his lead impeachment lawyers little more than a week before his trial, two people familiar with the situation said Saturday.FILE – Attorney Deborah Barbier speaks to reporters outside the federal courthouse in Charleston, S.C., April 29, 2016.The change injected fresh uncertainty into the makeup and strategy of his defense team.Butch Bowers and Deborah Barbier, both South Carolina lawyers, left the defense team in what one person described as a “mutual decision” that reflected a difference of opinion on the direction of the case.The two people familiar with the legal team discussions insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations. One said new additions to the legal team were expected to be announced in a day or two.FILE – Attorney Butch Bowers speaks during a news conference at the Statehouse in Columbia, S.C., Sept. 10, 2009.Bowers and Barbier did not immediately return messages seeking comment.Trump is scheduled to stand trial beginning the week of February 8 on a charge that he incited the riot inside the U.S. Capitol. Republicans and Trump aides have made clear that they intend to make a simple argument: The trial is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer in office.CNN was first to report the departure of the lawyers.
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American Muslims are welcoming President Joe Biden’s executive order lifting travel restrictions on several Muslim-majority countries, restrictions often referred to as the travel ban or Muslim ban. VOA’s Yuni Salim spoke to American Muslims in this report narrated by Nova Poerwadi.   
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President Joe Biden reversed several Trump administration health care policies Thursday, including one that restricted access to abortion both inside and outside the United States. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has this story on what Biden’s actions may mean for women’s reproductive rights around the world.
Producer: Bakhtiyar Zamanov
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If China’s leadership had any question about how the Biden administration would approach the ongoing trade disputes between the two countries, the appointment of Katherine Tai to be U.S. trade representative ought to have answered them pretty clearly.An attorney by training, Tai comes to the job from the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, where she has been chief trade counsel since 2017. Before joining the committee in 2014, she spent several years at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, including three years as the chief counsel for China Trade Enforcement, where it was her job to manage U.S. disputes with China before the World Trade Organization.A fluent speaker of Mandarin, Tai knows China very well, having spent the years after receiving her undergraduate degree from Yale teaching English at Zhongshan University in Guangzhou.She has been reserved in her comments since her nomination, because she is awaiting Senate confirmation. But in remarks before the National Foreign Trade Council earlier this month, Tai made it clear that she sees the U.S.-China trade relationship as one of the most important factors in a world that “feels like a more complicated and a more fragile place today than it has at any point in my lifetime,” she said.“Our nation and our people confront substantial challenges in navigating and maintaining our values and our place in the world,” she said. “In the international arena, we face stiffening competition from a growing and ambitious China — a China whose economy is directed by central planners who are not subject to the pressures of political pluralism, democratic elections, or popular opinion.”Thoughtful, strategic, assertiveJason E. Kearns, the chairman of the politically independent U.S. International Trade Commission, describes Tai as a “strategic thinker” who nevertheless tries to approach difficult decisions without preconceived notions of how to address them.Kearns preceded Tai in her role on the House Ways and Means Committee, with jurisdiction over taxes and trade, where he hired her and worked with her for years. He agreed to speak about her in a personal capacity and not in his role as USITC chair.“She’s a very deep and inclusive listener,” Kearns said. “And that’s how she approaches all the problems that she handles. She tries to build a lasting consensus, and I think she’s very successful at it.”Tai, he said, combines a good sense of humor with a confidence that will serve her well in international trade negotiations, particularly with China. She recognizes that “China does pose some very serious challenges to us,” Kearns said, and her approach to Beijing will be both “thoughtful” and “assertive.”That’s what many American companies trying to compete in China also hope — and expect — to get from Tai.No ‘pushover’“Anyone that thinks that Katherine Tai is going to be a pushover or easy on China is in for a surprise,” said Doug Barry, a spokesperson for the U.S.-China Business Council, which operates from Washington, Beijing and Shanghai. “She is certainly the most qualified person on China to have come along in that office in recent memory. She knows the issues inside out. She knows China inside out. And as a result, there will be no wool pulled over her eyes by anybody.”Barry said that Tai will be very aware of the past difficulties the U.S. has had making China observe the commitments it has made in previous trade deals.“China’s approach has largely been sort of foot dragging on some of the concessions that it has promised to make, and she will hold them to a much stricter standard and a much more rigorous timeline, in terms of when the Biden administration expects China to fulfill the commitments that it’s been making for years,” he said.Tai’s connections to China run deep. Her parents were born in mainland China, grew up in Taiwan and emigrated to the United States. Tai was born in Connecticut in 1974 but was raised primarily in Washington, where her father worked as a researcher at Walter Reed Medical Center and her mother worked for the National Institutes of Health.After attending Harvard Law School, Tai began making a name for herself as a trade attorney, working at prominent Washington law firms before joining the government.Deep knowledge of the issuesTrade experts know that in Tai, the U.S. is getting someone exhaustively familiar with the arcana of trade deals and the complexities of trade law. Less clear, though, are her own personal beliefs about striking the right balance between those who support trade with as few restrictions as possible and those who believe trade policy ought to be used to protect U.S. jobs and industries from competition with low-cost countries.“I think you’re getting a skilled technician with tons of experience in the weeds,” said Scott Lincicome, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. “Her experience is primarily as a behind-the-scenes counsel. In that regard, you are typically implementing the policies that your principal — a politician — wants, and thus, you are somewhat beholden to those policy positions. And that makes it difficult to really know where she is on the ideological spectrum.”And it’s not only Tai’s preferences that aren’t clear, Lincicome said.“There’s a massive political question mark about what the Biden political side wants to do on trade,” he said. “We saw [Biden] just this week announce his ‘Buy American’ policy, sounding very Trumpian, very economic nationalist, pro industrial policy. … But it’s very early, and it’s difficult to really say where they’re going to go.”Hints on policyTai may have provided some clues in her remarks to the NFTC, when she said that the Biden administration’s goal is to “implement a worker-centered trade policy.”In practice, she said, that means “U.S. trade policy must benefit regular Americans, communities, and workers. And that starts with recognizing that people are not just consumers — they are also workers, and wage earners.“Americans don’t just benefit from lower prices and greater selection in shops and markets,” she continued. “Americans also benefit from having good jobs, with good wages.”
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U.S. President Joe Biden signed two orders expanding health care on Thursday, saying they would “undo the damage” of policies favored by his predecessor, former President Donald Trump. Biden restored U.S. funding for foreign nongovernmental groups that give information to women about abortions, and also opened a special three-month enrollment period for uninsured Americans who now want to buy health insurance, as well as for those who lost their coverage because of the coronavirus pandemic. Trump, like past Republican presidents, had supported what critics have called the “global gag rule” on abortion information and had refused to reopen the government’s market for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.  Biden’s order also increased access to health care funding for impoverished Americans under a program called Medicaid. “There’s nothing new that we’re doing here,” Biden said, other than to restore programs as they were before Trump changed them. Biden contended that Trump made them “more inaccessible, more expensive and more difficult for people to qualify for.” Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
FILE – The HealthCare.gov website is seen on a computer screen in New York, Oct. 23, 2018.Typically, the program is only open for signups for six weeks a year. “As we continue to battle COVID-19, it is even more critical that Americans have meaningful access to affordable care,” the White House said in a statement ahead of the signing. The order directs federal agencies to reexamine policies that undermine the program’s protections for people who have preexisting conditions, including effects from COVID-19. More than 431,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the United States, according to Johns Hopkins University, and another 25.6 million have been infected. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters Wednesday that her agency’s forecasts indicated the U.S. death toll would be between 479,000 and 514,000 by February 20. 
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Coffee shops in downtown Tripoli, Libya, are closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, so Mohammed Abdulwaheb, 37, got his ”to-go” and drank it in the parking lot.  Libya and other countries had been subject to the Trump-era “travel ban” for four years before it was lifted last week. Back then, Abdulwaheb had wanted to attend graduate school in the United States. But that was a long time ago, he said.  “The ban wasn’t fair,” Abdulwaheb added. “And of course it impacted our lives. The end of the ban will especially improve the lives of Libyans in America.” But experts say it will take time to unravel the regulations that grounded so many travelers. And locals in Libya, Nigeria and Sudan — three impacted countries — say resolving the personal setbacks experienced by individuals may take even longer.  FILE – Demonstrators opposed to President Donald Trump’s travel ban listen to speakers during a rally outside the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, in Richmond, Virginia, Jan. 28, 2020.When former president Donald Trump introduced the policy in 2017, critics quickly dubbed it the ”Muslim ban” because it initially applied to Muslim-majority countries and came after Trump had promised to close U.S. borders to Muslims. The administration had said the ban was needed to keep the country safe.  But the measure was introduced so abruptly that travelers were left stranded in airports around the world. It separated families and sparked protests at airports across the U.S.  By the time newly inaugurated President Joe Biden declared the ban canceled last week, it applied to 13 countries in various forms. Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar and Nigeria were added to the list in 2020, which by then also included Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela. Residents of Sudan and Tanzania were prohibited from immigrating through the U.S. Diversity Visa lottery. “Hopefully, with the removing of this ban, we will see a lot of change now,” said Abdulwaheb in Tripoli. “Hopefully.” Missed chances Thousands of kilometers south in Abuja, Nigeria, Wole Olaoye, a leading local journalist, was less sanguine about the ban. His son had already been accepted to a graduate program in California doing research on artificial intelligence when Nigeria was added to the list in early 2020. His son’s visa was subsequently rejected. “I think America needs to make up its mind on whether it wants foreign students or not,” said Olaoye in a phone interview on Wednesday. “You cannot allow your universities to go through the motions of requesting transcripts from universities, processing applications for students, taking initial deposits, only for you to say the students are a ’no go.'”  FILE – Volunteer immigration attorneys organize to help as people grappling with President Donald Trump’s executive order travel ban, at Los Angeles International Airport, Jan. 31, 2017.Besides students, the ban kept out potential workers and tourists, and separated families for years, said Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute. “Immigration is one of the greatest resources for the United States,” she argued. “So the idea that we are just indiscriminately blocking certain populations is a huge loss to the United States. It’s a loss of family reunification. It’s a loss of potential workers and a lot of other intangible things that we can’t quite measure.”  But the end of the ban will not necessarily mean a quick solution for hopeful visa applicants, Pierce said. Rejected applications will have to be reviewed or resubmitted, and many people in the affected countries are expected to put in new applications as the coronavirus pandemic subsides and travel becomes safer.  “It will be difficult,” she said. “But at the very least it is something that the administration is already looking into it.” Long-term impact The lifting of the travel ban is a cause for celebration in Sudan, a country that has long suffered from international isolation.  For decades Sudan has not just been on the U.S. travel ban list, but on a list of states the U.S. said sponsored terrorism. In December, Sudan was also removed from the “terror” list.   Mohammed Ahmed, a 38-year-old civil servant, says it may take a long time for Sudan to feel the impact of the lifting of the travel ban and other restrictions, in Gadarib, Sudan, Jan. 27, 2021 . (VOA/Yan Boechat)In a crowded cafe in Gadarib, Mohammed Ahmed, a 38-year-old civil servant, said the lifting of the travel ban is of little significance to many Sudanese who are more concerned about rising prices and increasing insecurity. But after decades of sanctions and travel restrictions, it could mean an increase in investment, development and general prosperity.  “For me the issue is different,” Ahmed said. “I can see a long-term impact.”  
 
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2020 saw a wave of protests in the U.S. denouncing police brutality and demanding social justice during the final year of the Trump administration. Esha Sarai spoke with activists, protesters and organizers across the country about the future of the movement with a Democrat in the White House.Producer: Esha Sarai. Cameras: Natasha Mozgovaya, Esha Sarai.   
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the humanitarian crisis in Yemen — as well as U.S. relations with Russia and China — are among his immediate priorities.  VOA Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from Washington.
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One of the consistent themes during Joe Biden’s campaign for president and since he won and was inaugurated has been a desire to find bipartisan agreement with Republicans on his agenda items.“The American system contemplates that there has to be cooperation to get most things done,” said Chris Edelson, assistant professor in the School of Government at American University.The false claims by former President Donald Trump that the election was stolen and the votes by Republicans in Congress casting doubt on the election “creates a special challenge for President Biden, and one with no easy solution,” he added.“Joe Biden spent 36 years in the Senate and has a very warm relationship with the body and a veneration for it,” said Norm Ornstein, emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “During the campaign and since his election, he said that he believes he can find Republicans to work with. The initial picture is not as rosy.”If the Democrats hold majorities — slim as they are — in both Houses of Congress, why do they need Republicans to get things done?FilibusterMajority parties almost always get their way in the 435-seat House of Representatives. That is because the rules are written to favor the majority party.In the Senate, long-standing rules protect the minority party’s voice. The filibuster is one such rule. It allows a minority of senators to prevent a vote on an issue by continuing to debate it.Senate rules require three-fifths of the Senate — 60 senators — to vote to end the debate.The way the Senate stands now, 10 Republicans need to agree with all 50 Senate Democrats just to hold a vote to get much of Biden’s agenda enacted.But there are rules to allow Biden and Democrats to get around the filibuster:   reconciliation.ReconciliationReconciliation is an arcane process that dates to the 1970s, allowing legislation to bypass the filibuster, as long as it deals with budget issues.This includes raising or cutting taxes and changing priorities for government spending.Senate debate for a reconciliation bill is limited, with just a simple majority needed to pass. With Vice President Kamala Harris presiding, Democrats hold the tiebreaker in the split Senate.Reconciliation has its limits. It can only be done once per fiscal year and could leave out key Biden goals like immigration reform and passing a new voting rights act.Kill the filibuster?Preserving the filibuster is so important to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell that he held up passage of an organizing resolution seeking a promise that Democrats would not use their slim majority to get rid of it.Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have indicated they will not vote to eliminate the filibuster.While Biden has been quiet about it lately, Republicans tweeted part of his Senate speech from 2005, in which he said the filibuster “is not about stopping a nominee or a bill, it is about compromise and moderation.”But as vice president, Biden saw the filibuster used to thwart President Barack Obama’s agenda and be a useful campaign tool.“When the filibuster was used over and over in 2009 and 2010, in the next midterm election, Republicans won more seats in the House than they had in 100 years,” Ornstein said. “And then after Obama won reelection, it was used again. And in the midterm that followed, they won back the Senate. So, their game plan that’s to obstruct has worked in the past, and it’s likely they’re going to try it again.”Biden navigated those rules of the Senate for 36 years. How he plays by them now will test the success of his presidency. 
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Despite slim Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress, President Joe Biden faces challenges in getting his agenda passed. VOA’s Steve Redisch explains how the rules of the U.S. Senate make Biden’s task more difficult.
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In his first full week in office, President Joe Biden has focused on reversing multiple Trump administration policies and unveiling plans to address the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the economy, immigration and climate change. Michelle Quinn reports on how the flurry of new policies and actions may be received by a deeply divided country.
Producer: Matt Dibble
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