Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York said Sunday she has “a lot of questions” for the Biden administration about the circumstances around the leak of highly classified Pentagon documents.
“I have a lot of questions about: Why were these documents lying around? Why did this particular person have access to them? Where was the custody of the documents and who were they for?” Gillibrand said in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
The Biden administration spent much of the past week scrambling to rectify damages after Jack Teixeira, an airman with the Massachusetts Air National Guard who held top-secret security clearance, posted documents online that revealed blunt details on the US intelligence assessment of the war in Ukraine as well as the extent of US eavesdropping on key allies.
Teixeira, who worked as a low-ranking IT official, was arrested and federally charged last week for facilitating the leak. He allegedly began posting information about the documents online around December and photos of the documents in January, court records show.
Gillibrand, who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, sidestepped criticizing the military’s vetting process for security clearances but said questions needed to be answered at a Senate briefing this week.
“It sounds like he was extremely immature and someone who did not understand the weight and the importance of these documents. And so we need to figure it out and put proper protections in place,” she said.
The Pentagon breach has left looming questions about national security implications. In a statement acknowledging the extent of the problem the leaks exposed, President Joe Biden said Friday that he had directed both the military and intelligence community to “take steps to further secure and limit distribution of sensitive information.”
Pentagon officials have said the Defense Department has moved to tighten the flow of highly sensitive documents, limiting who across the government receives its highly classified daily intelligence briefs. Those briefs are normally available on any given day to hundreds, if not thousands, of people across the government.
Congress is also vowing to investigate what happened and why the US intelligence community failed to discover its secrets were on a public internet forum for weeks.
“We need to know the facts. We need to know who this airman was, why he felt he had the authority or ability to show off confidential documents, secret documents to his friends,” Gillibrand said.
Meanwhile, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Sunday that there was “no justification” for Republicans who have appeared to defend the leaking of classified information.
“Those who are trying to sugarcoat this on the right, you cannot allow a single individual of the military intelligence community to leak classified information because they disagree with policy,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”
House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner echoed that message Sunday in an interview with “Face the Nation” on CBS.
Teixeira, the Ohio Republican said, “is someone who has compromised his country and has certainly compromised our allies. That’s not the oath that he took. That’s not the job that he took.”
“If he’s brought through this process, and he’s found guilty, it will be of espionage. It’s of being a traitor to your country. That’s not someone … to look up to,” Turner said.
Their comments come after Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia tweeted a defense of Teixeira’s actions last week.
“For any member of Congress to suggest it’s OK to leak classified information because you agree with the cause is terribly irresponsible and puts America in serious danger,” Graham said.
This story has been updated with additional information.
President Joe Biden’s pick to be the next labor secretary, Julie Su, has yet to secure the support of key Democrats ahead of her nomination hearing on Thursday, suggesting she faces an uphill battle to confirmation by the Senate.
The tepid reception among some members of the president’s own party is part of a broader issue that’s emerged in recent months for the Biden administration. Despite a narrow majority in the Senate, Democrats have with more recent frequency failed to sign off on high-profile Biden appointees – torpedoing Phil Washington’s nomination to lead the Federal Aviation Administration as well as Gigi Sohn’s nomination to the Federal Communications Commission. If Su does not secure enough support from the Senate, she would be the highest-ranking Biden nominee so far to fail to be confirmed.
In the 51-49 Democratic-controlled Senate, more than two liberal defections could tank the nomination. And if California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has been away from Congress while recovering from shingles for the past two months, or another Democratic senator is absent, the path would narrow ever more.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has called on the chamber to confirm Biden’s labor nominee, and on Tuesday afternoon, Su was on Capitol Hill meeting with Democratic Majority Whip Dick Durbin. But two Democratic senators up for reelection in red states, Montana Sen. Jon Tester and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, are not ready to throw their support behind her yet. It’s also not clear how Arizona independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who left the Democratic Party last year but kept her committee assignments with the majority, will vote.
Tester, who says he plans to meet with Su following Thursday’s hearing, told reporters on Tuesday that he remains “very ambivalent,” adding, “I voted for her before. I don’t have a problem with her right now.”
“I have no comment,” Manchin told CNN three times when asked about Su.
Hannah Hurley, a spokesperson for Sinema’s office, told CNN that the senator “does not preview her votes.”
Su was narrowly confirmed to be the deputy secretary of labor in 2021, receiving unanimous support at the time from Senate Democrats and no support from Republicans. In March, when then-Labor Secretary Marty Walsh departed the administration, Su was appointed acting secretary of the agency.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, the ranking member on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, which will oversee Su’s confirmation hearing, has suggested that Su lacks the bona fides to handle labor negotiations.
“Setting his politics aside, no one could say Marty Walsh didn’t have significant experience in negotiations and managing organizations,” Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, said in a statement Monday. “With 150 labor contracts expiring this year, the potential of replacing him with someone who has no direct experience handling labor disputes should be concerning.”
Prior to joining the Biden administration, Su was the secretary for the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency and the state’s labor commissioner. Su has gained critics over her time in leadership in California as well as her support for A.B. 5, a California law that aims to reclassify certain gig workers as regular employees.
She faced scrutiny for California’s handling of unemployment benefits during the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly her oversight of the state’s Employment Development Department. During the pandemic, the department delayed approving unemployment benefits and paid out billions on fraudulent claims. Su has said EDD’s systems were not prepared for the number of unemployment claims made.
Su will emphasize the importance of American small businesses during the hearing Thursday, according to an excerpt of her prepared opening remarks provided to CNN by a source familiar with the nomination process, telling committee members that she has “seen first-hand the strength and creativity of American workers and business owners.”
“While I was growing up, my family also saw opportunity and their shot at the middle class in the form of small businesses. They owned a dry cleaning and laundromat business, and then a franchise pizza restaurant,” Su is expected to say. “For years, my dad would work his day job and then head right to the pizza shop, returning home after 10 pm, often with leftover pizza for our school lunches the next day. I know small business owners are the engines of our economy, because I watched it every day.”
The high-stakes nomination has pushed outside groups to lodge broad public efforts to lobby for and against Su’s leadership.
One outside group called “Stand Against Su” has launched a public ad campaign lobbying against the nominee, calling her a “fiery critic of capitalism” and citing her past actions in California. Provisions she has supported, they argue, have made it more difficult for independent contractors and franchisees to operate in California.
The AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, is leading a new campaign in support of Su, Director of Public Affairs Ray Zaccaro confirmed to CNN. The campaign, led by AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, will include a six-figure digital ad buy targeting Arizona and other states, as well as Washington, DC. The federation is also committing resources and mobilizing the 60 affiliate unions nationally as part of the effort. Punchbowl News first reported on the federation’s campaign launch.
The White House continues to stand by Su, pointing to Senate Democrats’ past unanimous support during her last confirmation proceedings.
A White House official told CNN Su was part of the efforts to avert a rail shutdown last year, and that she has met with senators from both sides of the aisle during the nomination process. They further pointed out that she’s offered to meet with every member of the Senate HELP Committee.
“We’re looking forward to the hearing coming up on Thursday and feel confident … about Julie’s confirmation process. … She has a proven track record she can stand on proudly,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Tuesday. “The president is proud to have nominated her.”
This story has been updated with additional developments.
The Justice Department on Wednesday filed a complaint challenging a recently enacted Tennessee bill that prohibits gender-affirming care for minors, saying it “denies necessary medical care to youth based solely on who they are.”
DOJ argues in its complaint that the legislationviolates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause by discriminating on the basis of both sex and transgender status and asks the court to issue an immediate order to block the law from taking effect on July 1.
“SB 1 makes it unlawful to provide or offer to provide certain types of medical care for transgender minors with diagnosed gender dysphoria. SB 1’s blanket ban prohibits potential treatment options that have been recommended by major medical associations for consideration in limited circumstances in accordance with established and comprehensive guidelines and standards of care,” a news release from the department states. “By denying only transgender youth access to these forms of medically necessary care while allowing non-transgender minors access to the same or similar procedures, SB 1 discriminates against transgender youth.”
In a statement to CNN, Gov. Bill Lee said, “Tennessee is committed to protecting children from permanent, life-altering decisions. This is federal overreach at its worst, and we will work with Attorney General Skrmetti to push back in court and stand up for children.”
Senate Bill 0001, signed into law by the Republican governor last month, prohibits health care providers “from performing on a minor or administering to a minor a medical procedure if the performance or administration of the procedure is for the purpose of enabling a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex.”
The legislation specifies that minors who receive care cannot be held liable but lawsuits could be brought against their parents “if the parent of the minor consented to the conduct that constituted the violation on behalf of the minor.” It also grants the attorney general the authority to fine health care professionals who provide the care with a civil penalty of $25,000 per violation.
Gender-affirming care that began prior to July 1 is not considered a violation “provided that the treating physician must make a written certification that ending the medical procedure would be harmful to the minor,” though access to such care must conclude by March 31, 2024. The legislation expresses concern over long-term outcomes and questions whether minors are capable of making such consequential decisions.
Major medical associations agree that gender-affirming care is clinically appropriate for children and adults with gender dysphoria, which, according to the American Psychiatric Association, is psychological distress that may result when a person’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth do not align.
Though the care is highly individualized, some children may decide to use reversible puberty suppression therapy. This part of the process may also include hormone therapy that can lead to gender-affirming physical change. Surgical interventions, however, are not typically done on children and many health care providers do not offer them to minors.
US Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Henry Leventis said in a statement that SB 1 violates the constitutional rights of the state’s “most vulnerable victims.”
“Left unchallenged, it would prohibit transgender children from receiving health care that their medical providers and their parents have determined to be medically necessary. In doing so, the law seeks to substitute the judgment of trained medical professionals and parents with that of elected officials and codifies discrimination against children who already face far too many obstacles,” Leventis said.
Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in the news release that “no person should be denied access to necessary medical care just because of their transgender status.”
“The right to consider your health and medically-approved treatment options with your family and doctors is a right that everyone should have, including transgender children, who are especially vulnerable to serious risks of depression, anxiety and suicide,” Clarke said.
Former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, once again refused to concede that he lost the 2020 election and repeated false claims about it being stolen at a CNN town hall in New Hampshire on Wednesday.
Taking questions from GOP primary voters at the town hall moderated by “CNN This Morning” anchor Kaitlan Collins, Trump remained defiant about the 2020 election as well as the myriad investigations into him – making clear that he’s sticking to the script he’s delivered over the past two years on conservative media.
The town hall at Saint Anselm College – his first appearance on CNN since 2016 – came as unprecedented legal clouds hang over him as he seeks to become only the second commander in chief ever elected to two nonconsecutive terms. New Hampshire, home to the first-in-the-nation GOP primary, is also home to many swing voters and is a state he lost in both 2016 and 2020 after winning the primaries.
The audience of Republicans and undeclared voters who plan to vote in the GOP primary cheered Trump throughout the evening, including when he attacked Tuesday’s jury verdict that found he sexually abused former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll. Trump mocked Carroll on Wednesday while downplaying the significance of the $5 million the jury awarded her for battery and defamation.
The former president said he would pardon “a large portion” of the rioters at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and even pulled out a printout of his own tweets from that day in an attempt to deflect blame as Collins pressed him on why he waited three hours before telling the rioters to leave the Capitol.
“I am inclined to pardon many of them,” Trump said Wednesday night.
When Collins pressed Trump on the Manhattan federal jury finding Trump sexually abused Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in 1996, Trump suggested it was helping his poll numbers.
When asked if the jury’s decision would deter women from voting for him, the former president said, “No, I don’t think so.”
Trump insulted Carroll, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and even Collins when she pressed him on a question about why he hadn’t returned classified documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago.
“It’s very simple – you’re a nasty person, I’ll tell you,” Trump said on stage.
Trump also took questions from New Hampshire voters on the economy and policy issues, such as abortion. The former president, who solidified the conservative majority on the Supreme Court that struck down Roe v. Wade, repeatedly declined to say whether he would sign a federal abortion ban if he won a second term.
Trump suggested Republicans should refuse to raise the debt limit if the White House does not agree to spending cuts.
“I say to the Republicans out there – congressmen, senators – if they don’t give you massive cuts, you’re going to have to do a default, and I don’t believe they’re going to do a default because I think the Democrats will absolutely cave, will absolutely cave because you don’t want to have that happen, but it’s better than what we’re doing right now because we’re spending money like drunken sailors,” Trump said.
When Collins asked him to clarify whether the US should default if the White House doesn’t agree to cuts, Trump said, “We might as well do it now than do it later.”
Trump pleaded not guilty last month to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Trump also faces potential legal peril in both Washington, DC – where a special counsel is leading a pair of investigations – and in Georgia, where the Fulton County district attorney plans to announce charges this summer from the investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the Peach State.
Still, the twice-impeached former president has repeatedly said that any charges will not stop him from running for president, dismissing all of the investigations as politically motivated witch hunts. That’s a view many GOP voters share, according to recent surveys. Nearly 70% of Republican primary voters in a recent NBC News poll said investigations into the former president “are politically motivated” and that “no other candidate is like him, we must support him.”
Trump was pressed on the investigation into his handling of classified documents and why he didn’t return all of the documents in his possession after receiving a subpoena. He responded by pointing out the classified documents found at the homes of others – including President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence. But they both returned the documents once they discovered they had them in their possession.
The FBI obtained a search warrant and retrieved more than 100 classified documents from Trump’s Florida resort in August 2022, which came after he had received a subpoena to return documents in June 2022 and after his attorney had asserted that all classified material in his possession had been returned.
Asked during the town hall whether he showed the classified documents to anyone at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said, “Not really.”
The former president would not say whether he wants Russia or Ukraine to win the war during Wednesday’s town hall, instead saying that he wants the war to end.
“I don’t think in terms of winning and losing. I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people,” he said.
When asked again whether or not the former president wants Ukraine to win, Trump did not answer directly, but instead claimed that he would be able to end the war in 24 hours.
“Russians and Ukrainians, I want them to stop dying,” Trump said. “And I’ll have that done in 24 hours.”
Trump said he thinks that “(Russian President Vladimir) Putin made a mistake” by invading Ukraine, but he stopped short of saying that Putin is a war criminal.
That’s something that “should be discussed later,” Trump said.
“If you say he’s a war criminal, it’s going to be a lot tougher to make a deal to make this thing stopped,” he said.
While a handful of rivals have entered the Republican presidential primary – and Trump’s biggest potential rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has not yet officially launched a bid – Trump has maintained a healthy lead in early GOP primary polling. In a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Sunday, 43% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents named Trump unprompted when asked who they would like to see the party nominate in 2024, compared with 20% naming DeSantis, and 2% or less naming any other candidate.
Trump’s participation in the town hall was indicative of a broader campaign strategy to try to expand his appeal beyond conservative media viewers, CNN’s Kristen Holmes reported earlier Wednesday. He’s surrounded himself with a more organized team and has been making smaller retail politics stops while scaling back larger rallies – signs of a more traditional campaign than his 2016 and 2020 operations. He lost that 2020 race by about 7 million votes, although he continues to falsely claim it was stolen from him – claims he stuck to on Wednesday night.
There have been warning signs for the GOP that the obsession with the 2020 election isn’t palatable beyond the base. Many of Trump’s handpicked candidates who embraced his election lies in swing states lost in last year’s midterm elections. And his advisers acknowledge he still has work to do to engage with Republican voters outside of his loyal base of supporters, multiple sources told CNN.
But that didn’t mean Trump was ready to acknowledge the reality that he lost the 2020 election. And if he becomes the GOP nominee in 2024, Trump said Wednesday he would not commit to accepting the results regardless of the outcome, saying that he would do so if he believes “it’s an honest election.”
“If I think it’s an honest election, I would be honored to,” he said.
This story has been updated with additional details from the town hall.
The United States does “not yet know the motive for the attack” on a US convoy in Nigeria Tuesday, but has “no indications at this time that it was targeted against our Mission,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday.
According to the top US diplomat, “the convoy was carrying nine Nigerian nationals: five employees of the US Mission to Nigeria and four members of the Nigeria Police Force.”
“They were traveling in advance of a planned visit by US Mission personnel to a US-funded flood response project in Anambra,” he said in a statement.
At least four people were killed in the attack by “unknown assailants” on the two vehicle convoy, Blinken said, and the other five remain unaccounted for.
Local police told CNN on Tuesday that two of the people killed were US Mission workers and two were police officers.
Blinken extended his condolences “to the families of those killed in the attack,” as well as vowed “to do everything possible to safely recover those who remain missing.”
“US Mission personnel are working urgently with Nigerian counterparts to ascertain the location and condition of the members of the convoy who are unaccounted for,” he said, adding: “We condemn in the strongest terms this attack. We will work closely with our Nigerian law enforcement colleagues in seeking to bring those responsible to justice.”
Hours before the attack on the US convoy Tuesday, Blinken spoke with Nigerian President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu about the US’ “continued commitment to further strengthening the US-Nigeria relationship with the incoming administration,” according to a State Department readout.
“The Secretary noted that the US-Nigeria partnership is built on shared interests and strong people-to-people ties and that those links should continue to strengthen under President-elect Tinubu’s tenure,” the readout said.
The leaders, according to the readout, “discussed the importance of inclusive leadership that represents all Nigerians, continued comprehensive security cooperation, and reforms to support economic growth.”
Ukraine has cultivated a network of agents and sympathizers inside Russia working to carry out acts of sabotage against Russian targets and has begun providing them with drones to stage attacks, multiple people familiar with US intelligence on the matter told CNN.
US officials believe these pro-Ukrainian agents inside Russia carried out a drone attack that targeted the Kremlin in early May by launching drones from within Russia rather than flying them from Ukraine into Moscow.
It is not clear whether other drone attacks carried out in recent days – including one targeting a residential neighborhood near Moscow and another strike on oil refineries in southern Russia – were also launched from inside Russia or conducted by this network of pro-Ukrainian operatives.
But US officials believe that Ukraine has developed sabotage cells inside Russia made up of a mix of pro-Ukrainian sympathizers and operatives well-trained in this kind of warfare. Ukraine is believed to have provided them with Ukrainian-made drones, and two US officials told CNN there is no evidence that any of the drone strikes have been conducted using US-provided drones.
Officials could not say conclusively how Ukraine has managed to get the drones behind enemy lines, but two of the sources told CNN that it has established well-practiced smuggling routes that could be used to send drones or drone components into Russia where they could then be assembled.
A European intelligence official noted that the Russian-Ukrainian border is vast and very difficult to control, making it ripe for smuggling – something the official said the Ukrainians have been doing for the better part of the decade that they’ve been at war with pro-Russian forces.
“You also have to consider that this is a peripheral area of Russia,” the official said. “Survival is everyone’s problem, so cash works wonders.”
Who exactly is controlling these assets is also murky, the sources told CNN, though US officials believe that elements within Ukraine’s intelligence community are involved. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has set general parameters for what his intelligence and security services are allowed to do, two of the sources said, but not every operation requires his sign-off.
Asked for comment, a spokesperson for the head of the Ukrainian Security Service suggested to CNN that the mysterious explosions and drone strikes inside Russia would continue.
“We will comment on instances of ‘cotton’ only after our victory,” he said. Quoting the head of the Security Service, Vasyl Malyuk, the spokesperson added that regardless, “‘cotton’ has been burning, is burning, and will continue burning.”
“Cotton” is a slang-word that Ukrainians use to mean explosions, usually in Russia or Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine. Its origins date back to the early weeks of the war and stem from the fact that the Russian word for a “pop” is very similar to the Ukrainian word for cotton.
There has been a steady drumbeat of mysterious fires and explosions inside Russia over the last year, targeting oil and fuel depots, railways, military enlistment offices, warehouses and pipelines. But officials have noticed an uptick in these attacks on Russian soil in recent weeks, beginning with the attack on the Kremlin building. It appears to be “a culmination of months of effort” by the Ukrainians to set up the infrastructure for such sabotage, said one of the sources familiar with the intelligence.
“There has been for months now a pretty consistent push by some in Ukraine to be more aggressive,” this person said, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of US intelligence. “And there has certainly been some willingness at senior levels. The challenge has always been their ability to do it.”
Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, has consistently proposed some of the most brazen plans for operations against Russia and values symbolic acts, US officials told CNN.
Classified Pentagon documents leaked online earlier this year revealed that the CIA urged Budanov to “postpone” attacks on Russia on the anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine, according to the Washington Post. Budanov agreed to the CIA’s request, the classified documents reportedly said. But drones were spotted near Moscow on February 28, just days after the one-year anniversary of the war.
Another leaked US intelligence report obtained by CNN, which is sourced to signals intelligence, says that Zelensky in late February “suggested striking Russian deployment locations in Russia’s Rostov Oblast” using drones, since Ukraine does not have long-range weapons capable of reaching that far.
It is not clear whether that plan moved forward, but oil facilities in Rostov Oblast have caught on fire after being hit by suspected drones several times over the last year – attacks Russia is now investigating and has blamed on “criminal actions by the Armed formations of Ukraine.”
“All I will comment on is that we’ve been killing Russians,” Budanov told Yahoo News last month when asked about the car bomb attack that killed the daughter of a prominent Russian political figure in Moscow’s suburbs last year. The US intelligence community assessed that that operation was authorized by elements within the Ukrainian government.
“And we will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine,” Budanov added.
Publicly, senior US officials have condemned the strikes inside Russia, warning of the potential for an escalation of the war. But speaking privately to CNN, US and western officials said that they believe the cross-border attacks are a smart military strategy that could divert Russian resources to protecting its own territory, as Ukraine gears up for a major counteroffensive.
On Tuesday, the UK’s Foreign Secretary told reporters that Ukraine has “the right to project force beyond its borders to undermine Russia’s ability to project force into Ukraine itself. Legitimate military targets beyond its own borders are internationally recognized as being part of a nation’s self-defense…We should recognize that.”
French Vice Admiral Nicolas Vaujour, chief of operations of the Joint Staff, told CNN on Friday that the attacks inside Russia are merely “part of war” and offer an opportunity to send a message to Russia’s population.
“There is a war there and it could concern you [the Russian public] in the future,” Vaujour said of the attacks. “And so it’s a good way for Ukrainians to address a message not only to Vladimir Putin, but to the Russian population,” he added.
Regarding the attacks, he said that it wasn’t “forbidden” for Ukraine to think about that.
Ukrainian officials, moreover, have said privately that they plan to continue the attacks inside Russia because it is a good distraction tactic that is forcing Russia to be concerned with its own security at home, according to a US source who has spoken to Ukrainian officials in recent days.
In an intelligence update, the UK Ministry of Defense said that attacks by pro-Ukrainian partisan groups and drone strikes in the border region of Belgorod have forced Russia to deploy “the full range of military firepower on its own territory.”
“Russian commanders now face an acute dilemma,” the update said, “of whether to strength defences in Russia’s border regions or reinforce their lines in occupied Ukraine.”
An Amazon worker and union organizer has been given her job back after she appealed her firing by the e-commerce giant earlier this month.
Amazon on Thursday confirmed that it had reinstated Jennifer Bates — who became the face of the effort to unionize an Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama — following its appeals process. Bates had received notice of her termination from Amazon in early June.
“Amazon was wrong, they tried to fire me and stifle a movement, but the movement pushed back, and I’m incredibly humbled by the global outpouring of support for my unjust termination,” Bates said in a statement Thursday about Amazon’s decision to reverse her firing.
Bates will be reinstated with back pay per Amazon’s standard process, according to the company.
At the time of her firing, Amazon had said that company records indicated “that Ms. Bates failed to show up to work for a period of time and didn’t respond or provide documentation to excuse her absences.” The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), which spearheaded the so-far unsuccessful effort to unionize the Bessemer facility, said at the time that Bates was fired by Amazon after returning from medical leave following injuries sustained on the job.
During its appeals review process, Amazon says it determined that Bates had failed to respond to requests for additional information regarding her leave, but that the company could have been more clear about what information was needed.
Amazon spokesperson Mary Kate Paradis said in a statement to CNN that “as is our standard process for this type of situation, Ms. Bates had the opportunity to, and did, appeal her termination. After a full review of her case, the decision was made to reinstate her.”
Bates’ firing had threatened to renew tensions between Amazon
(AMZN) and workers who were spurred to organize earlier in the pandemic amid frustrations with the company’s response to the health crisis and a broader spotlight on racial inequities in the United States. In 2021, Bates testified before lawmakers about her “grueling” experience working at one of the company’s warehouses.
Amazon workers at a New York warehouse voted to form the company’s first US union last year, although Amazon has since refused to recognize the union or come to the bargaining table. Other efforts to unionize Amazon facilities, including one across the street from the New York warehouse, have failed.
The closely watched union election at the Bessemer facility ended with the results too close to call due to hundreds of challenged ballots. The National Labor Relations Board is still reviewing challenges brought against Amazon by the union accusing the company of illegal activity during the campaign. (Amazon has previously filed its own objections to the RWDSU’s conduct.)
–CNN’s Catherine Thorbecke contributed to this report.
The law, known as SEA 480, which Indiana’s Republican-controlled legislature passed earlier this year, prohibits physicians from providing minors with treatments such as puberty blocking medication, hormone therapy and surgery intended to help transition genders.
But US District Court Judge James Patrick Hanlon, who was appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump in 2018, issued a preliminary injunction Friday that blocks the ban on most of those treatments. His order does, however, allow the prohibition on gender reassignment surgeries for minors to take effect on July 1, as planned.
“Because Plaintiffs have some likelihood of success on the merits of constitutional claims, a preliminary injunction is in the public interest,” Hanlon said in a 34-page opinion. “While the State has a strong interest in enforcing democratically enacted laws, that interest decreases as Plaintiffs’ likelihood of success on the merits of their constitutional claims increases.”
“And for the reasons above, Plaintiffs risk suffering irreparable harm absent an injunction,” Hanlon continued.
The decision comes after the American Civil Liberties Union sued to stop the law from going into effect on behalf of four transgender youth and their families, a physician and a health care clinic, shortly after Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb signed the measure in early April.
“Today’s victory is a testament to the trans youth of Indiana, their families, and their allies, who never gave up the fight to protect access to gender- affirming care and who will continue to defend the right of all trans people to be their authentic selves, free from discrimination,” Kevin Falk, the legal director for the ACLU of Indiana, said in a statement following the preliminary injunction. “We won’t rest until this unconstitutional law is struck down for good.”
The governor’s office declined to comment on the judge’s decision.
Transgender youths’ access to gender-affirming care – medically necessary, evidence-based care that uses a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from the gender they were designated at birth to the gender by which they want to be known – has become a flashpoint in red states across the country.
Some Republicans have expressed concern over long-term outcomes and whether children should be able to make such consequential decisions, even with parental consent. In contrast, major medical associations say such care is clinically appropriate for children and adults with gender dysphoria – a psychological distress that may result when a person’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth do not align, according to the American Psychiatric Association.
A bill that would legally protect doctors who prescribe and send abortion pills to patients in states where abortion services are outlawed or restricted is now headed to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk after the state legislature passed the legislation on Tuesday.
The bill ensures that doctors, medical providers and facilitators in the state will be able to provide telehealth services to patients out of state, according to anews release from the New York State Assembly.
The new legislation also protects New York health providers from out-of-state litigation, meaning the state will not cooperate with cases prosecuting doctors in New York who provide telehealth abortion or reproductive services to people in other states.
“This bill expands protections for telehealth providers by providing them the same protections afforded to doctors in other states with strong reproductive healthcare shield laws,” according to the news release.
The bill also ensures that New York medical providers, complying with their practice, who offer telehealth services are not subject to professional discipline, “solely for providing reproductive health services to patients residing in states where such services are illegal.”
CNN has reached out to the governor’s office to see if she will sign the legislation.
CNN previously reported Hochul has indicated support for a shield law protecting medical providers of out of state abortion and reproductive services.
Assemblymember Karines Reyes, a registered nurse who sponsored the bill, said she was “proud to sponsor this critical piece of legislation to fully protect abortion providers using telemedicine.”
According to the state assembly’s news release, the bill recognizes the common use of medication abortion drugs, stating that 54% of abortions across the country are now medication abortions.
Speaker of the New York State Assembly Carl Heastie said, “It is our moral obligation to help women across the country with their bodily autonomy by protecting New York doctors from litigation efforts from anti-choice extremists. Telehealth is the future of healthcare, and this bill is simply the next step in making sure our doctors are protected.”
Many have raised alarms about the potential for artificial intelligence to displace jobs in the years ahead, but it’s already causing upheaval in one industry where workers once seemed invincible: tech.
A small but growing number of tech firms have cited AI as a reason for laying off workers and rethinking new hires in recent months, as Silicon Valley races to adapt to rapid advances in the technology being developed in its own backyard.
Chegg, an education technology company, disclosed in a regulatory filing last month that it was cutting 4% of its workforce, or about 80 employees, “to better position the Company to execute against its AI strategy and to create long-term, sustainable value for its students and investors.”
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said in an interview with Bloomberg in May that the company expects to pause hiring for roles it thinks could be replaced with AI in the coming years. (In a subsequent interview with Barrons, however, Krishna said that he felt his earlier comments were taken out of context and stressed that “AI is going to create more jobs than it takes away.”)
And in late April, file-storage service Dropbox said that it was cutting about 16% of its workforce, or about 500 people, also citing AI.
In its most-recent layoffs report, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said 3,900 people were laid off in May due to AI, marking its first time breaking out job cuts based on that factor. All of those cuts occurred in the tech sector, according to the firm.
With these moves, Silicon Valley may not only be leading the charge in developing AI but also offering an early glimpse into how businesses may adapt to those tools. Rather than render entire skill sets obsolete overnight, as some might fear, the more immediate impact of a new crop of AI tools appears to be forcing companies to shift resources to better take advantage of the technology — and placing a premium on workers with AI expertise.
“Over the last few months, AI has captured the world’s collective imagination, expanding the potential market for our next generation of AI-powered products more rapidly than any of us could have anticipated,” Dropbox CEO Drew Houston wrote in a note to staff announcing the job cuts. “Our next stage of growth requires a different mix of skill sets, particularly in AI and early-stage product development.”
In response to a request for comment on how its realignment around AI is playing out, Dropbox directed CNN to its careers page, where it is currently hiring for multiple roles focused on “New AI Initiatives.”
Dan Wang, a professor at Columbia Business School, told CNN that AI “will cause organizations to restructure,” but also doesn’t see it playing out as machines replacing humans just yet.
“AI, as far as I see it, doesn’t necessarily replace humans, but rather enhances the work of humans,” Wang said. “I think that the kind of competition that we all should be thinking more about is that human specialists will be replaced by human specialists who can take advantage of AI tools.”
The AI-driven tech layoffs come amid broader cuts in the industry. Many tech companies have been readjusting to an uncertain economic environment and waning levels of demand for digital services more than three years into the pandemic.
Some 212,294 workers in the tech industry have been laid off in 2023 alone, according to data tracked by Layoffs.fyi, already surpassing the 164,709 recorded in 2022.
But in the shadow of those mass layoffs, the tech industry has also been gripped by an AI fervor and invested heavily in AI talent and tech.
In January, just days after Microsoft announced plans to lay off 10,000 employees as part of broader cost-cutting measures, the company also confirmed it was making a “multibillion dollar” investment into OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. And in March, in the same letter to staff Mark Zuckerberg used to announce plans to lay off another 10,000 workers (after cutting 11,000 positions last November), the Meta CEO also outlined plans for investing heavily in AI.
Even software engineers in Silicon Valley who once seemed uniquely in demand now appear to be at risk of losing their jobs, or losing out on salary gains to those with more AI expertise.
Roger Lee, a startup founder who has been tracking tech industry layoffs via his website Layoffs.fyi, also runsComprehensive.io, which examines job listings and compensation data across some 3,000 tech companies.
Lee told CNN that a recent analysis of data from Comprehensive.io shows the average salary for a senior software engineer specializing in artificial intelligence or machine learning is 12% higherthan for those who don’t specialize in that area, a data point he dubs “the AI premium.” The average salary for a senior software engineer specializing in AI or machine learning has also increased by some 4% since the beginning of the year, whereas the average salary for senior software engineers as a whole has stayed flat, he said.
Lee noted Dropbox as an example of a company offering notably high pay for AI roles, citing a base salary listing of $276,300 to $373,800 for a Principal Machine Learning Engineer role. (By comparison, Comprehensive.io’s data puts the current average salary for a senior software engineer at $171,895.)
Those looking to thrive in the tech industry and beyond may need to brush up on their AI skills.
Wang, the professor at Columbia Business School, told CNN that starting this past spring semester, he began requiring his students to familiarize themselves with the new crop of generative AI tools on the market. “That type of exposure I think is absolutely critical for setting themselves up for success and once they graduate,” Wang said.
It’s not that everyone needs to become AI specialists, Wang added, but rather that workers should know how to use AI tools to become more efficient at whatever they’re doing.
“That’s where the kind of a battleground for talent is really shifting,” Wang said, “as differentiation in terms of talent comes from creative and effective ways to integrate AI into daily tasks.”
Top House Democrats are rebuking Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal’s comments from earlier this weekend that “Israel is a racist state,” which she sought to walk back on Sunday.
“Israel is not a racist state,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Whip Katherine Clark, Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar and Vice Chair Ted Lieu said in a statement that did not mention the progressive leader by name.
A draft statement signed by a handful of other House Democrats and circulating among lawmakers’ offices on Sunday expresses “deep concern” over what it calls Jayapal’s “unacceptable” comments, adding, “We will never allow anti-Zionist voices that embolden antisemitism to hijack the Democratic Party and country.”
Their pushback comes ahead of Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s address to a joint meeting of Congress later this week, which some progressives have said they’ll skip, citing concerns about human rights. House progressives have been vocal about their opposition to Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the US sponsorship of Israel’s Iron Dome defense system.
Jayapal, a Washington State Democrat, said “Israel is a racist state” on Saturday while addressing pro-Palestine protesters who interrupted a panel discussion at the Netroots Nation conference in Chicago.
“As somebody who’s been in the streets and participated in a lot of demonstrations, I want you to know that we have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state, that the Palestinian people deserve self-determination and autonomy, that the dream of a two-state solution is slipping away from us, that it does not even feel possible,” she told protesters chanting “Free Palestine.”
Jayapal sought to clarify her remarks in a Sunday afternoon statement, saying that she does “not believe the idea of Israel as a nation is racist,” while offering an apology “to those who I have hurt with my words.”
She went on to call out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “extreme right-wing government,” which she said she believes “has engaged in discriminatory and outright racist policies.”
But her initial remark – made after protesters yelled “Israel is a racist state” during a panel she was participating in with Illinois progressive Reps. Jan Schakowsky and Jesús “Chuy” García – struck a nerve with some members of her own party.
Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has signed the statement circulating among Democratic lawmakers, told CNN’s Jim Acosta on Sunday that not only was Jayapal’s statement “hurtful and harmful, it was wholly inaccurate and insensitive. I’m thankful that she retracted it.”
The Florida Democrat added that Jayapal had spoken to a number of Jewish members of Congress on Sunday “and that is in part, I think, what resulted in the retraction and apology.”
“We need to make sure we continue to work together,” Wasserman Schultz said. “But we all have to be careful about what we say in the heat of the moment, and I think she learned that the hard way.”
CNN reached out to Jayapal earlier Sunday before she released her statement.
In her statement, the congressman reiterated her commitment to “a two-state solution that allows both Israelis and Palestinians to live freely, safely, and with self-determination alongside each other.”
And she explained her earlier comment by saying, in part, “On a very human level, I was also responding to the deep pain and hopelessness that exists for Palestinians and their diaspora communities when it comes to this debate, but I in no way intended to deny the deep pain and hurt of Israelis and their Jewish diaspora community that still reels from the trauma of pogroms and persecution, the Holocaust, and continuing anti-semitism and hate violence that is rampant today.”
The draft statement from some Democrats nodded to antisemitism and also invoked American national security.
“Israel is the legitimate homeland of the Jewish people and efforts to delegitimize and demonize it are not only dangerous and antisemitic, but they also undermine Americas’s national security,” the lawmakers write.
House Democratic leadership also touted Israel as “an invaluable partner.”
“Our commitment to a safe and secure Israel as an invaluable partner, ally and beacon of democracy in the Middle East is ironclad,” the leaders wrote in their own statement. “We look forward to welcoming Israeli President Isaac Herzog to the United States House of Representatives this week.”
Jayapal said Friday she doesn’t believe she will attend Herzog’s speech Wednesday on Capitol Hill. “I don’t think I am. I haven’t fully decided.”
“I think this is not a good time for that to happen,” Jayapal told CNN’s Manu Raju when asked if Speaker Kevin McCarthy had made a mistake in inviting Herzog.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri have all said they will not attend.
Democratic leadership has been supportive of Herzog’s visit, with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York extending the invitation last year. “I look forward to welcoming him with open arms,” Jeffries, a New York Democrat, said at a news conference last week, calling Herzog “a force for good in Israeli society.”
Herzog will visit the White House on Tuesday. “As Israel celebrates its 75th anniversary, the visit will highlight our enduring partnership and friendship. President (Joe) Biden will reaffirm the ironclad commitment of the United States to Israel’s security,” the White House said in a statement.
“President Biden will stress the importance of our shared democratic values, and discuss ways to advance equal measures of freedom, prosperity, and security for Palestinians and Israelis,” the statement continued.
Netanyahu has not been invited to Washington by the Biden administration since taking office again in December last year, amid a raft of policy differences between the two governments.
This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.
Criminals, volunteer fighters and arms traffickers in Ukraine stole some Western-provided weapons and equipment intended for Ukrainian troops last year before it was recovered, according to a Defense Department inspector general report obtained by CNN.
The plots to steal the weaponry and equipment were disrupted by Ukraine’s intelligence services and it was ultimately recovered, according to the report, titled “DoD’s Accountability of Equipment Provided to Ukraine.” CNN obtained the report via a Freedom of Information Act request. Military.com first reported the news.
But the inspector general report noted that after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, the Defense Department’s ability to track and monitor all of the US equipment pouring into Ukraine, as required by law under the Arms Export Control Act, faced “challenges” because of the limited US presence in the country.
According to the report, which examined the period of February-September 2022, the Office of Defense Cooperation-Kyiv “was unable to conduct required [end-use monitoring] of military equipment that the United States provided to Ukraine in FY 2022.”
“The inability of DoD personnel to visit areas where equipment provided to Ukraine was being used or stored significantly hampered ODC-Kyiv’s ability to execute” the monitoring, the report added.
The report is dated October 6, 2022. In late October, the US resumed on-site inspections of Ukrainian weapons depots as a way to better track where the equipment was going. The department has also provided the Ukrainians with tracking systems, including scanners and software, the Pentagon’s former under secretary of defense for policy, Colin Kahl, told lawmakers in February.
But the report underscores how difficult it was in the early days of the war for the US to track the billions of dollars worth of weapons and equipment it was sending to Ukraine.
Republicans have criticized the Biden administration over what they view as a lack of accountability over the billions of dollars of aid going to Ukraine. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said earlier this year that he supports Ukraine but doesn’t “support a blank check.” The same sentiment has been shared by Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
CNN reported in April 2022 that the Biden administration was willing to take the risk of losing track of weapons supplied to Ukraine despite a lack of visibility, as they saw it as critical to Ukraine’s defeat of Russian forces.
“We have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero,” a source briefed on US intelligence told CNN at the time. “It drops into a big black hole, and you have almost no sense of it at all after a short period of time.”
US European Command tried to alleviate the issue last year by requesting and maintaining hand receipts from the Ukrainians, which the Ukrainians made a “good faith effort” to provide, the report says, citing EUCOM personnel. The personnel did not provide the IG with corroborating paperwork by the time the investigation concluded, however, the report notes.
The Office of Defense Cooperation-Kyiv also asked the Ukrainian government for expenditure, loss, and damage reports for US-provided equipment, the report says, and they “made efforts to prevent illicit proliferation of defense material provided by the United States.”
Still, criminal organizations managed to steal some weaponry and equipment provided by the US and its allies, the report says.
In late June 2022, an organized crime group overseen by an unnamed Russian official joined a volunteer battalion using forged documents and stole weapons, including a grenade launcher and machine gun, and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition, the report says. Ukraine’s intelligence service disrupted the plot, according to the report.
That same month, Ukraine’s intelligence services also disrupted a plot by arms traffickers working to sell weapons and ammunition they stole from the frontlines in southern Ukraine, as well as a separate plot by Ukrainian criminals posing as aid workers who stole $17,000 worth of bulletproof vests, the report says.
And in August 2022, Ukraine’s intelligence services discovered a group of volunteer battalion members who stole 60 rifles and almost 1,000 rounds of ammunition and stored them in a warehouse, “presumably for sale on the black market.”
The report does not specify whether the weapons and equipment were American, but the anecdotes are outlined in a highly redacted section that deals with Ukrainian tracking of US-provided weaponry.
The Pentagon inspector general wrote that some larger items like missiles and helicopters were easier to track through intelligence mechanisms. Smaller items, like night-vision devices, however, were harder to monitor.
The report ultimately does not make any recommendations, noting that the Defense Department “has made some efforts to mitigate the inability to conduct in-person” monitoring.
Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas was handcuffed and placed on the ground face-first by local law enforcement while he was trying to assist a teenage girl in medical distress at a rodeo over the weekend, according to a witness who spoke to CNN.
In a Facebook post, Linda Dianne Shouse, a home healthcare and traveling nurse, said her 15-year-old relative was “seizing due to possible hypoglycemia” Saturday night at the White Deer rodeo, about 45 miles northeast of Amarillo, Texas. Jackson represents the Amarillo area and was an attendee at the rodeo.
Shouse said she and another family member, who is also a nurse, were attending to the girl when Jackson, who is an ER physician, stepped in to assist. Shouse said she didn’t know Jackson was a congressman at the time but told CNN they were all working together to help the teen girl.
“We were just waiting for EMS to get there. The police came up, the deputies, highway patrol, and everyone was just screaming, ‘Get back, get back, get back,’” she said during an interview.
Shouse said she was pushed back and then punched in the chest by a woman and said she saw a law enforcement official screaming in Jackson’s face, telling him to “Get the f**k back.”
“He was trying to tell them that he was a doctor and probably trying to tell him who he was, to be honest. And they were screaming that they did not effing care who he was,” she said. “And the next thing I knew, they had him on the ground, grabbed him by the shirt, threw him on the ground, face first into the concrete and had him in cuffs.”
Shouse said once they realized Jackson was a congressman and doctor, they uncuffed him and started apologizing.
“We had the scene under control. We were just ready to give a report to EMS and get the patient out of there. And that’s not what happened,” Shouse said, recalling what she described as a “loud, chaotic” situation. “She wound up going eventually, but whenever you have someone laying there – when it could be neurological – time is on your hands.”
In a statement provided to CNN, a spokesperson for Jackson said the congressman was “briefly detained” while trying to help the teenager. When Jackson approached the scene, a relative of the girl, who is a nurse, was assisting the 15-year-old. Jackson asked if the relative needed any help, and she said she did, according to the statement.
“While assessing the patient in a very loud and chaotic environment, confusion developed with law enforcement on the scene and Dr. Jackson was briefly detained and was actually prevented from further assisting the patient,” the spokesperson said.
His office believes he was detained for a matter of minutes. Jackson was released immediately when officers realized that he was tending to the medical emergency, the spokesperson said. Jackson’s office did not deny he was handcuffed during the incident.
According to the Texas Tribune, Carson County Sheriff Tam Terry said in a statement that one person was “temporarily detained” at the rodeo on Saturday night and his department was “reviewing the incident.”
CNN has reached out to Sheriff Tam Terry of Carson County for further comment. CNN has also reached out to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Jackson previously served as the White House physician for Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump. He retired from the US Navy as a rear admiral in 2019 and was elected in 2020 to represent the 13th Congressional District in Texas.
Shouse said the girl is back in her hometown and undergoing further evaluation.
Ellen Min doesn’t go to the grocery store anymore. She avoids bars and going out to eat with her friends; festivals and community events are out, too. This year, she opted not to take her kids to the local St. Patrick’s Day parade.
Min isn’t a shut-in. She’s just a Korean American from central Pennsylvania.
Ever since the US government shot down a Chinese spy balloon last month, Min has withdrawn from her normal routine out of a concern she or her family may become targeted in one of the hundreds of anti-Asian hate crimes the FBI now says are occurring every year. The wave of anti-Asian hate that surged with the pandemic may only get worse, Min worries, as both political parties have amplified fears about China and the threat it poses to US economic and national security.
“You can’t avoid paying attention to the rhetoric, because it has a direct impact on our lives,” Min said.
That rhetoric surged again this week as a hostile House committee grilled TikTok CEO Shou Chew for more than five hours on Thursday about the app’s ties to China through its parent company, ByteDance. After lawmakers repeatedly accused Chew, who is Singaporean, of working for the Chinese government and tried to associate him with the Chinese Communist Party, Vanessa Pappas, a top TikTok executive, condemned the hearing as “rooted in xenophobia.”
Chew had taken pains to distance TikTok from China, going so far as to anglicize his name for American audiences and to play up his academic credentials — he holds degrees from University College London and Harvard Business School. But it was not enough to prevent lawmakers from blasting TikTok as “a weapon of the Chinese Communist Party” and as “the spy in Americans’ pockets,” all while mangling pronunciations of Chew’s name and the names of other officials at its parent company, ByteDance. After Chew’s testimony, Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton said the CEO should be “deported immediately” and banned from the United States, saying his defense of TikTok was “beneath contempt.”
There are good reasons to be mistrustful of ByteDance given that it is subject to China’s extremely broad surveillance laws. (TikTok has failed to assuage concerns the Chinese government could pressure ByteDance to improperly access the data, despite a plan by TikTok to “firewall” the information.) And the Chinese government’s authoritarian approach to numerous other issues clashes with important American values, said many Asian Americans interviewed for this article.
But they also warned that policymakers’ choice to use inflammatory speech — in some cases, language tinged with 1950s-era, Red Scare-style McCarthyism — endangers countless innocent Americans by association. Moreover, politicians’ increasingly strident tone is creating conditions for new discriminatory policies at home and the potential for even more anti-Asian violence, civil rights leaders said.
“We are afraid that, more and more, the actions and the language of the government is premised on the assumption that just because we are Chinese or have cultural ties to China that we could be disloyal, or be spies, or be under the influence of a foreign government,” said Zhengyu Huang, president of the Committee of 100, an organization co-founded by the late architect IM Pei, the musician Yo-Yo Ma and other prominent Chinese Americans. “We want to deliver the message: Not only are we not a national security liability — we are a national security asset.”
But as the country wrestles with China’s influence as a competitive global power, caught in the middle are tens of millions of Americans like Min who, thanks to their appearance, may now face greater suspicion or hostility than they experienced even during the pandemic, according to Asian American lawmakers, civil society groups and ordinary citizens.
The heated rhetoric surrounding China has undergone a shift from the pandemic’s early days, when xenophobia linked to Covid-19 was unambiguous.
At the time, Asian Americans feared an uptick in violence inspired by derogatory phrases such as “Kung-flu” and “China virus.” That language had emerged amid then-President Donald Trump’s wider criticisms of China, which had led to a damaging trade war with the country. It was against that backdrop that Trump first threatened to ban TikTok, a move some critics said was an attempt to stoke xenophobia.
In recent years, criticism of China has significantly expanded to encompass even more aspects of the US-China relationship. Concerns about China have gone mainstream as US national security officials and lawmakers have publicly grappled with state-backed ransomware attacks and other hacking attempts. The Biden administration has sought to confront China on how the internet should be governed, and like the Trump administration, it’s now taking aim at TikTok, again.
As that shift has occurred, criticism of China has stylistically evolved from blatant name-calling to the more clinical vocabulary of national security, allowing an undercurrent of xenophobia to lurk beneath the respectable veneer of geopolitics, civil rights leaders said.
In January, House lawmakers stood up a new select committee specifically focused on the “strategic competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.” At its first hearing, the panel’s chairman, Wisconsin Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, said: “This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century — and the most fundamental freedoms are at stake.”
A week later, US intelligence officials warned that the Chinese Communist Party represents the “most consequential threat” to US global leadership. An unclassified intelligence community report released the same day said China views competition with the United States as an “epochal geopolitical shift.” (Even so, the report maintained that the “most lethal threat to US persons and interests” continues to be racially motivated extremism and violence, particularly by White supremacy groups.)
While some policymakers have added that their issue is with the Chinese government, not the Chinese people or Asians in general, leaders of Asian descent say the caveat has too often been a footnote in debates about China and not emphasized nearly enough. Leaving it unsaid or merely implied creates room for listeners to draw bigoted conclusions, critics said.
“That can’t be a footnote; it can’t be an afterthought,” said Charles Jung, a California employment attorney and the national coordinator for Always With Us, a nationwide memorial event to remember the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings that killed six Asian women. “I’m speaking specifically, directly to both GOP and Democratic politicians: Be mindful of the words that you use. Because the words you use can have real world impacts on the bodies of Asian American people on the streets.”
The current climate has led to at least one US lawmaker directly questioning the loyalty of a fellow member of Congress.
California Democratic Rep. Judy Chu, who was born in Los Angeles and is the first Chinese American elected to Congress, last month confronted baseless claims of her disloyalty from Texas Republican Rep. Lance Gooden. Gooden’s remarks were swiftly condemned by his congressional colleagues. But to Chu, the incident was an example of the way politics surrounding China, technology and national security have fueled anti-Asian sentiment.
“Rising tensions with China have clearly led to an increase in anti-Asian xenophobia that has real consequences for our communities,” Chu told CNN.
Concerns about xenophobia are bipartisan. Rep. Young Kim, a California Republican, told CNN there is “no question” that anti-Asian hate crimes have risen since the pandemic.
“This is unacceptable,” said Kim. “Asian American issues are American issues, and all Americans deserve to be treated with respect. We can treat all Americans with respect and still be wary of threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party.”
But even in discussing the Chinese government’s real, demonstrated risks to US security, the way that some Americans describe those dangers is counterproductive, needlessly provocative and historically inaccurate, said Rep. Andy Kim, a New York Democrat and a member of the House select committee. Even the name “Chinese Communist Party” can itself prime listeners to adopt a Cold War mentality — a framework whose analytical value is dubious, Kim argued.
“A lot of my colleagues, especially on the select committee, use rhetoric like, ‘This is a new Cold War,’” said Kim. “First of all, it’s not true: The Soviet Union was a very different competitor than China. And it’s framed in a very zero-sum way … It’s very much being talked about as if their entire way of life is incompatible with ours and cannot coexist with ours, and that heightens the tension.”
In a November op-ed, Gallagher and Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio directly linked that rhetoric to TikTok, calling for the app to be banned due to the United States being “locked in a new Cold War with the Chinese Communist Party, one that senior military advisers warn could turn hot over Taiwan at any time.”
Just because China may view its dynamic with the United States as an epic struggle does not mean Americans must be goaded into doing the same, Kim argued. Beyond the violence it could trigger domestically, a stark confrontational framing could cause the United States to blunder into poor policy choices.
For example, he said, the right mindset could mean the difference between legally fraught “whack-a-mole” attempts to ban Chinese-affiliated social media companies versus passing a historic national privacy law that safeguards Americans’ data from all prying eyes, no matter what tech company may be collecting it.
Security researchers who have examined TikTok’s app say that the company’s invasive collection of user data is more of an indictment of lax government policies on privacy, rather than a reflection of any TikTok-specific wrongdoing or national security risk.
“TikTok is only a product of the entire surveillance capitalism economy,” said Pellaeon Lin, a Taiwan-based researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab. “Governments should try to better protect user information, instead of focusing on one particular app without good evidence.”
Asked how he would advise policymakers to look at TikTok, Lin said: “What I would call for is more evidence-based policy.” Instead, some policymakers appear to have run in the opposite direction.
Anti-China sentiment has already led to policies that risk violating Asian-Americans’ constitutional rights, several civil society groups said.
John Yang, president of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, pointed to the Justice Department’s now-shuttered “China Initiative,” a Trump-era program intended to hunt down Chinese spies but that produced a string of discrimination complaints and case dismissals involving innocent Americans swept up in the dragnet. The Biden administration shut down the program last year.
More recently, Yang said, proposed laws in Texas and Virginia aimed at keeping US land out of the hands of those with foreign ties would create impossible-to-satisfy tests for Asian-Americans, showing how anti-China fervor threatens to infringe on the rights of many US citizens.
“National security has often been used as a pretext specifically against Asian-Americans,” Yang said, referring to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II and the racial profiling of Muslim-Americans following Sept. 11. “We should remember that many Chinese-Americans came to this country to escape the authoritarian regime of China.”
Though he fears the situation for Asian-Americans will get worse before it gets better, Yang and other advocates called for US policymakers to stress from the outset that their quarrel lies with the Chinese government and not with people of Chinese descent.
“We know from experience in the United States that once you demonize Chinese people, all Asian people living in this country face the brunt of that rhetoric,” said Jung. “And you see it not just in spy balloons and the reactions surrounding it and TikTok and Huawei, but also in modern-day racist alien land laws.”
Growing up in Pennsylvania, Min was no stranger to racially motivated violence: Her home was regularly vandalized with eggs, tomatoes and epithet-laden graffiti (“Go home, gooks”); her father once discovered a crude homemade explosive stuffed in his car.
But fears of racism stoked by modern US political rhetoric has forced Min to change how her family lives in ways they never had to during her childhood.
Last year, amid another spate of assaults targeting elderly Asian-Americans, Min said her mother sold the family dry-cleaning business and moved to Korea, following Min’s father who had moved the year before.
“It was a sad reality to say that as much as we want our family close to us and their grandchildren, they will be safer in Korea,” Min said.
Millions of Americans are at risk of losing their Medicaid coverage in coming months, but residents in Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, New Hampshire and South Dakota will be the first to bear the brunt of the terminations.
States have been barred by Congress from winnowing their Medicaid rolls since the Covid-19 pandemic began. That prohibition ends on Saturday, and some states are moving much more swiftly than others to kick off those deemed ineligible for the public health insurance program for low-income Americans.
That worries advocates, who say speed will result in eligible residents being incorrectly terminated. Also, it could hamper shifting those who no longer qualify to other types of coverage.
“This is the fable of the tortoise and the hare,” said Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown UniversityCenter for Children and Families. “Taking time is absolutely going to result in a better outcome for eligible children and families to remain covered. So speed is a big concern.”
The five states will start cutting off coverage in April, followed by 14 more states in May and 20 additional states plus the District of Columbia in June. All states must complete their redeterminations over the next 14 months.
Around 15 million people could be dropped from Medicaid, according to various estimates, though several million folks could find coverage elsewhere. Others may still be eligible but could be terminated for procedural reasons, such as not completing renewal forms. Those at risk include at least 6.7 million children, according to a Georgetown analysis.
Medicaid enrollment has ballooned since March 2020, when lawmakers passed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which prevented states from involuntarily removing anyone from coverage. In exchange, Congress boosted states’ federal Medicaid match rates by 6.2 percentage points.
The provision was initially tied to the national public health emergency, but lawmakers changed that as part of the federal spending bill that passed in December. In addition to being able to start conducting terminations in April, states will receive an enhanced federal match through the rest of this year, though it will phase downover time.
More than 92 million Americans were enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program in December, up 31% since February 2020, according to the most recent data available from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Reviewing the eligibility of all those enrollees will be a monumental task for state Medicaid agencies, many of which are also contending with slim staffing. To gear up, they are hiring new employees, temporary workers or contractors or bringing back retirees, according to a recent survey conducted by Georgetown and the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Most states can automatically renew coverage for at least some of their enrollees using other data, such as state wage information. But agencies must get in touch with others in their Medicaid programs, which proved challenging even prior to the pandemic. Most states are using multiple methods to update enrollees’ contact information, including working with insurers that provide Medicaid coverage to residents.
If notices sent by mail are returned, states must make good faith attempts to contact enrollees through at least two other methods before cutting them off. And states have to adhere to additional requirements to continue to qualify for the enhanced match. If they don’t, CMS also could suspend their terminations, require they take corrective action or impose monetary penalties.
Of the roughly 15 million people who could lose Medicaid coverage, about 8.2 million will no longer qualify, according to a Department of Health and Human Services analysis released in August. Some 2.7 million of these folks would qualify for enhanced federal subsidies for Affordable Care Act policies that could bring their monthly premiums to as low as $0.
Some 6.8 million people, however, will be disenrolled even though they remain eligible.
Though the federal government has given states more than a year to conduct the eligibility reviews and terminations, some plan to move much more quickly.
Idaho, which has been monitoring enrollees’ eligibility throughout the pandemic, plans to complete its reevaluations by September, which it touts as one of the fastest timelines in the country.
Of the nearly 450,000 Idahoans in the program, about 150,000 of them either don’t qualify or haven’t been in touch with the state in the past three years. The state began sending notices in February to those who face termination. People have 60 days to respond before they are removed.
Those that are not eligible have 60 days from their termination date to enroll in Idaho’s state-based Obamacare exchange, Your Health Idaho. The exchange receives information nightly from the state Medicaid agency about residents who no longer qualify for public coverage but may be eligible for federal subsidies for Affordable Care Act policies.
The exchange is reaching out to those folks weekly while they still have Medicaid and then every 15 days during the two-month special enrollment period via various methods, including mail, email and text messages, said Pat Kelly, Your Health Idaho’s executive director.
The exchange works with 900 agents, brokers and enrollment counselors who can help folks sign up for policies. And it plans to start an advertising campaign this monthhighlighting the hefty subsidies.
“We have to really help Idahoans know and understand that low-cost options are available, and most importantly, that it’s comprehensive health insurance that they can get for $0 a month,” Kelly said.
Still, advocates in Idaho are concerned that the state’s push to unwind quickly will result in eligible residents losing coverage.
Many people are not aware that they once again need to prove that they qualify, and the state agency is understaffed and underfunded, said Hillarie Hagen, health policy associate at Idaho Voices for Children. Renewal letters may not make it to enrollees, and those who need help may not be able to get through to customer service.
“We are very concerned about families, and particularly children, losing health coverage without their knowledge – that they will find out when they show up to the doctor,” Hagen said.
Aware that many people don’t know they’ll have to renew their eligibility, Arizona’s Medicaid agency last summer sent text messages and letters and made robocalls to enrollees, asking them to update their contact information. It is also working with community partners, health care providers, pharmacies and insurers. And it’s ramping up another text campaign since the prior one was so successful, said Heidi Capriotti, public information officer for the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System.
While the state can automatically redetermine the eligibility of about 75% of its Medicaid participants, it still has to connect with about 670,000 residents who could lose coverage because they are no longer eligible or they haven’t responded to the agency’s requests. The state plans to take 12 months to assess whether its enrollees still qualify.
South Dakota will start terminating Medicaid enrollees in April, though some low-income adults may become eligible again in July, when the state’s Medicaid expansion program begins.
Voters approved the broadening of Medicaid to low-income adults at the ballot box in November, over the objections of the Republican governor and legislature.
Nearly 152,000 residents were enrolled in Medicaid in January, an increase of more than 30% from March 2020, according to the state’s Department of Social Services. But more than 22,000 people appear to be ineligible currently.
The agency said in an FAQ that it will prioritize reviewing folks who are most likely to be ineligible because they no longer meet a coverage group or their income has increased, among other reasons.
Those who are not eligible will be disenrolled with 10-days’ notice. If they appear eligible for expansion in July, they’ll receive a notice about it when they are terminated and sent a reminder in June.The agency is encouraging any enrollees who are determined to be ineligible to reapply after Medicaid expansion takes effect.
But that three-month gap can wreak havoc on low-income residents’ health, said Jen Dreiske, deputy director of South Dakota Voices for Peace, which is working with the state’s immigrants and refugees to inform them of the unwinding. These folks may have to go without their heart medication or their cancer treatment. They may also be afraid to go to the doctor because of the cost.
“Why can’t we just wait until July 1?” Dreiske said. “Our concern is that people are going to get sick or die because they’re not going to be able to access the health care that they so desperately need.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke Sunday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and called for the “immediate release” of detained Americans Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, according to the US State Department.
“Secretary Blinken conveyed the United States’ grave concern over Russia’s unacceptable detention of a U.S. citizen journalist,” a readout from the department said.
“Secretary Blinken further urged the Kremlin to immediately release wrongfully detained U.S. citizen Paul Whelan,” the readout continued, adding that the secretary and Lavrov “also discussed the importance of creating an environment that permits diplomatic missions to carry out their work.”
Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter based in Russia, was detained last week on charges of espionage – the first time an American journalist has been detained on such accusations by Moscow since the Cold War. US officials in Moscow had not yet been granted consular access to Gershkovich as of Sunday.
The Journal’s editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, said Sunday that the call between Blinken and Lavrov was “hugely reassuring.”
“We know that the US government is taking the case very seriously right up to the top,” she told CBS News.
Whelan, meanwhile, is serving out a 16-year prison sentence for the same charges, which he strongly denies. His brother David Whelan said in an email to the press Thursday that his family was sorry to hear “that another American family will have to experience the same trauma that we have had to endure for the past 1,553 days.”
Whelan has been designated as wrongfully detained by the US State Department, and Gershkovich is expected to receive the same designation but had not yet as of Sunday morning. Tucker said she hopes the US government will act swiftly to label Gershkovich as wrongfully detained, saying it will be anofficial recognition that the charges against the reporter are “entirely bogus.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Sunday’s phone call was initiated by the US and that Lavrov told Blinken that Gershkovich’s fate would be determined by a Russian court.
Lavrov also blamed Washington and the Western press for politicizing the arrest.
“It was emphasized that it is unacceptable for officials in Washington and Western media to hype up [the issue] with the clear intention of giving this case a political coloring,” the statement said.
Gershkovich is currently being held in the notorious Lefortovo pre-detention center until May 29. He faces up to 20 years in prison on espionage charges.
Sunday’s call was only the third time that Blinken has spoken with his Russian counterpart since the war in Ukraine began, and all of those conversations have discussed detained US citizens. The two spoke in person for the first time since the war broke out on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers meeting in India last month, and Blinken said he raised the issues of the war, Russia’s suspension of its participation in the New START nuclear agreement, and Whelan’s ongoing detention.
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee on Sunday expressed support for the Biden administration’s efforts to negotiate with Russia for Gershkovich’s release.
“Certainly the Biden administration should continue its efforts to negotiate and to try to get the release of this journalist, but overall, people should be very cautious about staying in Russia,” Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”
Turner noted that the US government “gave people notice that they should get out of Russia” and said he would continued to encourage people to do so. The Biden administration has echoed those assessments. While the Kremlin has asserted that Russia is safe for accredited journalists, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told CNN on Friday, “Russia is not safe for Americans.”
Turner appeared on “State of the Union” on Sunday from southern Poland, where he said he is “meeting with those who are active in intelligence and meeting with our servicemembers who are active in the support of Ukraine.”
Pressed by Bash on remarks by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley that the war in Ukraine will likely not be won this year, the Ohio lawmaker appeared to agree.
“One thing I can tell you is that Russia is not going to win either,” he said. “This is a war that Russia is not winning, and they’re not winning it because Ukraine realizes that they’re standing up for democracy, they’re fighting for their country. And as they continue to do so, the United States’ assistance and certainly the assistance of our NATO allies and partners are making a huge turnout for the battlefield.”
This story has been updated with additional reaction.
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden capped South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s official state visit with a glamorous state dinner at the White House Wednesday night to celebrate the two nations’ 70-year alliance.
“This visit is about reaffirming all that unites our two nations. It’s about a commitment to bear one another’s concerns and listen to each other’s dreams. It allows us to overcome every difficulty with great determination. That allows us to move further and faster in space, cyber, technology and all areas that matter most to our future,” Biden said in remarks at the beginning of the dinner.
Biden wrapped his short speech with a toast: “To our partnership, to our people, to possibilities, and to the of the Republic of Korea and the United States will create together. May we do it together for another 170 years.”
But Biden wasn’t the only leader who took the mic. Following a round of musical performances, his South Korean counterpart joined him on stage to give his own – a karaoke rendition of Don McLean’s “American Pie” – which received a standing ovation from the crowd.
The US president and the first lady, who wore a mauve, long sheath evening gown by Reem Acra, had welcomed guests to a White House adorned with a photo-ready hand-painted silk screen with Korean and American symbolism – a magpie, a tiger and a hibiscus for South Korea, a bald eagle, bison, and roses for the US.
Angelina Jolie and her son Maddox Jolie-Pitt, home design stars Chip and Joanna Gaines (who did not have any tips for the White House), Notre Dame football coach Marcus Freeman, and Olympic gold medalist snowboarder Chloe Kim were some of the noteworthy guests attending Wednesday’s fete.
Also in attendance was Samantha Cohen, who was previously misidentified as the daughter of former Trump fixer Michael Cohen.
The elaborate dinner is the result of weeks of careful diplomatic preparations, with each detail meticulously planned by a team of White House chefs, social staff, and protocol experts. Ties between the countries were front and center in the décor and on the menu, with guests dining under towering cherry blossom branches on food prepared by Korean American celebrity chef Edward Lee. The menu included crab cakes with a gochujang vinaigrette, braised beef short ribs, and a deconstructed banana split with lemon bar ice cream and a doenjang caramel.
Top Biden officials arrived decked out in their formal wear for the occasion, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his wife, cabinet secretary Evan Ryan; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who was followed closely by what appeared to be the “nuclear football”; US Trade Representative Katherine Tai; US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield; Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines; and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who offered a twirl in her gown. Other key Biden advisers Bruce Reed, Steve Ricchetti, Jen O’Malley Dillon, and Liz Sherwood-Randall were also in attendance.
Only one GOP official was spotted at the dinner: Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, who told reporters he would “absolutely” support House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s debt limit bill and that it is “time for the White House to negotiate.” He didn’t answer a question on whether he’d bring it up Wednesday night.
Other state and local officials were on hand, including Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Wilmington Mayor Michael Purzycki, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, and San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, plus Democratic lawmakers including Reps. Ami Bera, Judy Chu, and Ted Lieu and Sen. Mazie Hirono in a traditional hanbok dress.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who is a co-chair of Biden’s reelection campaign, told reporters she was “very honored” to serve in that capacity and found out when the president personally called her “earlier in the week and asked.”
There were also key family members in attendance, including Biden’s brother Frank Biden, second gentleman Doug Emhoff’s brother Andrew Emhoff, and Vice President Kamala Harris’ niece Meena Harris.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer arrived to the black-tie event in a suit. “This is as tux-y as I get,” he said, shrugging.
CORRECTION: This report has been updated to correctly identify Samantha Cohen, a guest at the state dinner.
The leaders of the House Intelligence Committee, who are on a congressional trip to the Middle East, say countries in the region are seeking an increased role for the United States to counter the growing influence of China.
House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican, and ranking Democrat Jim Himes of Connecticut spoke to CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” in a joint interview that aired Sunday as the pair were in Israel, as part of a visit that also took them to Jordan and Egypt.
“They did all cite … China’s increased influence in the area as a need for the United States to step up its influence,” Turner said. “So everyone is watching this very closely and seeing this as an opportunity for the United States to not only play a greater role for security but also a greater role in keeping China at bay.”
Himes concurred, saying the three countries “view the US alliance as indispensable.”
China’s growing role in the Middle East of late has alarmed Washington. In March, Beijing mediated a landmark agreement between archfoes Iran and Saudi Arabia that could help significantly ease regional tensions. Saudi Arabia’s relationship with the US has become strained in recent years, while China’s standing has risen.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy cautioned Israel in a speech before the Knesset last week to be wary of Chinese investment in the country.
“While the [Chinese Communist Party] may disguise itself as promoters of innovation, and, true, they act like seeds, we must not allow them to steal our technology,” the California Republican said.
Analysts, however, have said that the Middle East is unlikely to become an arena for the US-Chinese rivalry, given Beijing’s economy-oriented focus and its aversion to playing regional politics.
Washington and Beijing have had tumultuous relations over the past year. Tensions soared following a visit to Taiwan last summer by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, and after a Chinese surveillance balloon traversed the US, leading US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to call off a planned visit to China.
US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said last week that the United States was “ready to talk” to China and expressed hope that Beijing would “meet us halfway on this.”
In his interview with Tapper, Turner declined to comment on the domestic turmoil over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed judicial overhaul, saying, “Our focus, largely, being from the Intelligence Committee, were on the relations between the United States and Israel and how we can help strengthen the security situation in the area.”
Iran remains a concern for Netanyahu, both Intelligence leaders said.
“With Iran so brutally abusing its own people, I think the prospect for negotiation is arguably further away than ever before,” Himes said when asked about Iran’s nuclear program. “We’re in a little bit of a fix right now because we don’t have a lot of leverage.”
Turner said Netanyahu had made clear in their meeting that he thinks Iran can be deterred.
“If they do believe that there will be military action against them, a surgical-type strike that would diminish their ability to pursue nuclear weapons, that that could have a chilling effect and could stall their programming. And he doesn’t want that opportunity to be missed,” the Ohio Republican said.
Efforts to try to restore the Iran nuclear agreement remain halted, and Tehran continues to breach the restrictions set out by the deal.
A top US Defense official warned earlier this year that Iran’s ability to build a nuclear bomb was accelerating. The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has reported that uranium particles enriched to near bomb-grade levels were found in January at an Iranian nuclear facility.
Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a bill Wednesday banning TikTok in the state.
Gianforte tweeted that he has banned TikTok in Montana “to protect Montanans’ personal and private data from the Chinese Communist Party,” officially making it the first state to ban the social media application.
The controversial law marks the furthest step yet by a state government to restrict TikTok over perceived security concerns and comes as some federal lawmakers have called for a national ban of TikTok. But it is expected to be challenged in court.
The bill, which will take effect in January, specifically names TikTok as its target, prohibiting the app from operating within state lines. The law also outlines potential fines of $10,000 per day for violators, including app stores found to host the social media application.
Last month, lawmakers in Montana’s House of Representatives voted 54-43 to pass the bill, known as SB419, sending it to Gianforte’s desk.
In a statement to CNN, TikTok said it would push to defend the rights of users in Montana.
“Governor Gianforte has signed a bill that infringes on the First Amendment rights of the people of Montana by unlawfully banning TikTok, a platform that empowers hundreds of thousands of people across the state. We want to reassure Montanans that they can continue using TikTok to express themselves, earn a living, and find community as we continue working to defend the rights of our users inside and outside of Montana.”
The law comes as TikTok faces growing criticism for its ties to China. TikTok is owned by China-based ByteDance. Many US officials have expressed fears that the Chinese government could potentially access US data via TikTok for spying purposes, though there is so far no evidence that the Chinese government has ever accessed personal information of US-based TikTok users.
NetChoice, a technology trade group that includes TikTok as a member, called the Montana bill unconstitutional.
“The government may not block our ability to access constitutionally protected speech – whether it is in a newspaper, on a website or via an app. In implementing this law, Montana ignores the U.S. Constitution, due process and free speech by denying access to a website and apps their citizens want to use,” said Carl Szabo, NetChoice’s general counsel.
The ACLU also pushed back on the bill, releasing a statement saying that “with this ban, Governor Gianforte and the Montana legislature have trampled on the free speech of hundreds of thousands of Montanans who use the app to express themselves, gather information, and run their small business in the name of anti-Chinese sentiment.”
On Wednesday, Gianforte signed an additional bill that prohibits the use of any social media application “tied to foreign adversaries” on government devices, including ByteDance-owned CapCut and Lemon8, and Telegram Messenger, which was founded in Russia.
On a recent Sunday morning, I found myself in a pair of ill-fitting scrubs, lying flat on my back in the claustrophobic confines of an fMRI machine at a research facility in Austin, Texas. “The things I do for television,” I thought.
Anyone who has had an MRI or fMRI scan will tell you how noisy it is — electric currents swirl creating a powerful magnetic field that produces detailed scans of your brain. On this occasion, however, I could barely hear the loud cranking of the mechanical magnets, I was given a pair of specialized earphones that began playing segments from The Wizard of Oz audiobook.
Why?
Neuroscientists at the University of Texas in Austin have figured out a way to translate scans of brain activity into words using the very same artificial intelligence technology that powers the groundbreaking chatbot ChatGPT.
The breakthrough could revolutionize how people who have lost the ability to speak can communicate. It’s just one pioneering application of AI developed in recent months as the technology continues to advance and looks set to touch every part of our lives and our society.
“So, we don’t like to use the term mind reading,” Alexander Huth, assistant professor of neuroscience and computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, told me. “We think it conjures up things that we’re actually not capable of.”
Huth volunteered to be a research subject for this study, spending upward of 20 hours in the confines of an fMRI machine listening to audio clips while the machine snapped detailed pictures of his brain.
An artificial intelligence model analyzed his brain and the audio he was listening to and, over time, was eventually able to predict the words he was hearing just by watching his brain.
The researchers used the San Francisco-based startup OpenAI’s first language model, GPT-1, that was developed with a massive database of books and websites. By analyzing all this data, the model learned how sentences are constructed — essentially how humans talk and think.
The researchers trained the AI to analyze the activity of Huth and other volunteers’ brains while they listened to specific words. Eventually the AI learned enough that it could predict what Huth and others were listening to or watching just by monitoring their brain activity.
I spent less than a half-hour in the machine and, as expected, the AI wasn’t able to decode that I had been listening to a portion of The Wizard of Oz audiobook that described Dorothy making her way along the yellow brick road.
Huth listened to the same audio but because the AI model had been trained on his brain it was accurately able to predict parts of the audio he was listening to.
While the technology is still in its infancy and shows great promise, the limitations might be a source of relief to some. AI can’t easily read our minds, yet.
“The real potential application of this is in helping people who are unable to communicate,” Huth explained.
He and other researchers at UT Austin believe the innovative technology could be used in the future by people with “locked-in” syndrome, stroke victims and others whose brains are functioning but are unable to speak.
“Ours is the first demonstration that we can get this level of accuracy without brain surgery. So we think that this is kind of step one along this road to actually helping people who are unable to speak without them needing to get neurosurgery,” he said.
While breakthrough medical advances are no doubt good news and potentially life-changing for patients struggling with debilitating ailments, it also raises questions about how the technology could be applied in controversial settings.
Could it be used to extract a confession from a prisoner? Or to expose our deepest, darkest secrets?
The short answer, Huth and his colleagues say, is no — not at the moment.
For starters, brain scans need to occur in an fMRI machine, the AI technology needs to be trained on an individual’s brain for many hours, and, according to the Texas researchers, subjects need to give their consent. If a person actively resists listening to audio or thinks about something else the brain scans will not be a success.
“We think that everyone’s brain data should be kept private,” said Jerry Tang, the lead author on a paper published earlier this month detailing his team’s findings. “Our brains are kind of one of the final frontiers of our privacy.”
Tang explained, “obviously there are concerns that brain decoding technology could be used in dangerous ways.” Brain decoding is the term the researchers prefer to use instead of mind reading.
“I feel like mind reading conjures up this idea of getting at the little thoughts that you don’t want to let slip, little like reactions to things. And I don’t think there’s any suggestion that we can really do that with this kind of approach,” Huth explained. “What we can get is the big ideas that you’re thinking about. The story that somebody is telling you, if you’re trying to tell a story inside your head, we can kind of get at that as well.”
Last week, the makers of generative AI systems, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, descended on Capitol Hill to testify before a Senate committee over lawmakers’ concerns of the risks posed by the powerful technology. Altman warned that the development of AI without guardrails could “cause significant harm to the world” and urged lawmakers to implement regulations to address concerns.
Echoing the AI warning, Tang told CNN that lawmakers need to take “mental privacy” seriously to protect “brain data” — our thoughts — two of the more dystopian terms I’ve heard in the era of AI.
While the technology at the moment only works in very limited cases, that might not always be the case.
“It’s important not to get a false sense of security and think that things will be this way forever,” Tang warned. “Technology can improve and that could change how well we can decode and change whether decoders require a person’s cooperation.”
