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  • Fallen colossus: USSR’s terror, triumphs began 100 years ago

    Fallen colossus: USSR’s terror, triumphs began 100 years ago

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    MOSCOW — With its brutality, technological accomplishments and rigid ideology, the Soviet Union loomed over the world like an immortal colossus.

    It led humankind into outer space, exploded the most powerful nuclear weapon ever, and inflicted bloody purges and cruel labor camps on its own citizens while portraying itself as the vanguard of enlightened revolution.

    But its lifespan was less than the average human’s; born 100 years ago, it died days short of its 69th birthday.

    The Soviet Union both inspired loyalty and provoked dismay among its 285 million citizens. The dichotomy was summarized by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who served in its notorious KGB security agency.

    “Anyone who doesn’t regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart,” he said. “Anyone who wants it restored has no brains.”

    On the centenary of the treaty that formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, The Associated Press reviews the events of its rise and fall.

    ESTABLISHMENT

    Five years after the overthrow of Russia’s czarist government, four of the socialist republics that had formed in the aftermath signed a treaty on Dec. 30, 1922 to create the USSR: Ukraine; Byelorussia; Transcaucasia, which spread over Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan; and Russia, including the old empire’s holdings in Central Asia. The USSR, which later expanded to include Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, left the republics with their own governments and national languages, but all subordinate to Moscow.

    LENIN DIES

    Vladimir Lenin, the first Soviet leader, was already in poor health when the USSR was formed and died little more than a year later. Josef Stalin outmaneuvered rivals in the ensuing power battle.

    COLLECTIVIZATION

    Stalin incorporated private landholdings into state and collective farms. Resistance to collectivization and the policy’s inefficiencies aggravated famines; Ukraine’s 1932-33 “Holodomor” killed an estimated 4 million people, and many term it an outright genocide.

    GREAT PURGE

    Driven by Stalin’s fear of rivals, Soviet authorities in the 1930s launched show trials of prominent figures alleged to be enemies of the state and conducted widespread arrests and executions often based on little more than denunciation by neighbors. Estimates say as many as 1.2 million people died in 1937-38, the purge’s most intense period.

    WWII

    World War II inflicted colossal suffering on the Soviet Union, but cemented its superpower status and swelled citizens’ hearts with the conviction that theirs was a virtuous and indomitable nation.

    An estimated 27 million Soviets died. The Battle of Stalingrad was among the bloodiest in history; Nazi and affiliated forces besieged Leningrad for more than two years. The Red Army doggedly pushed back and slowly advanced until reaching Berlin, ending the war’s European theater.

    The war left Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia incorporated into the Soviet Union, as well as what later became Moldova. Stalin used wartime conferences to demand a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, eventually drawing Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and East Germany behind the “Iron Curtain.”

    STALIN DIES

    Stalin’s death in 1953 was traumatic for Soviets who venerated him. Huge crowds gathered to pay their respects and more than 100 people reportedly died in the crush. He left no designated successor, and the country’s leadership became embroiled in jockeying for power. Nikita Khrushchev cemented his position at the top in 1955.

    KHRUSHCHEV THAW

    Formerly a loyal functionary, Khrushchev turned on his predecessor once firmly in power. In a speech to a Communist Party congress, he railed for hours against Stalin’s brutality and the “cult of personality” he engendered. He later had Stalin’s body removed from the Red Square mausoleum where Lenin’s body also lay.

    The speech was a key point in what became known as the Khrushchev Thaw, a period of relaxed repression and censorship.

    Khrushchev was ousted in 1964 in a vote by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, which was led by Leonid Brezhnev. He became the USSR’s leader.

    SPACE RACE

    The 1957 launch of Sputnik-1, the first artificial satellite, sparked enormous concern in the United States that the Soviets were speeding ahead technologically. The U.S. accelerated its space program, but the USSR sent the first human into outer space, Yuri Gagarin, four years later. American Alan Shepard’s 15-minute suborbital flight the next month only emphasized the space gap.

    CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

    Perhaps the closest the world ever came to full nuclear war was the 1962 confrontation between the U.S. and the USSR over the presence in Cuba of Soviet nuclear missiles, which Khrushchev sent in response to U.S. nuclear-capable missiles placed in Turkey. The U.S. ordered a naval blockade of the island and tensions soared, but the Soviets agreed to pull back the missiles in return for the removal of U.S. missiles from Turkey. The positive offshoot was the establishment of a U.S.-USSR hotline to facilitate crisis communications.

    DETENTE

    In the Brezhnev years, Washington and Moscow engaged in the so-called “detente” period that saw several arms treaties signed, improved trade relations and the Apollo-Soyuz spacecraft docking, the first joint mission in outer space. That ended after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Brezhnev died in 1982, and relations withered under successors Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, who were in ill health and died after less than 15 months in office.

    AFGHANISTAN WAR

    Despite Afghanistan’s reputation as “the graveyard of empires,” the Soviets sent in troops in 1979, assassinating the country’s leader and installing a compliant successor. Fighting dragged on for nearly a decade. Soviet troops — 115,000 at the war’s height — were battered by resistance fighters used to the rough terrain. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev began a withdrawal in 1987 and completed it in 1989. More than 14,000 Red Army troops died in the conflict that eroded the image of Soviet military superiority.

    STAGNATION

    “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.” This sarcastic line became popular in the Brezhnev era as the economy staggered through low and even negative growth. The rigidity of central planning was seen as a major cause along with high defense spending.

    GORBACHEV RISES

    The dour torpor that set in during the late ‘70s lifted when Gorbachev was chosen Communist Party leader after Chernenko’s death. Personable, a relative youngster at 54 and accompanied by his fashionable wife, Raisa, Gorbachev brought a strongly human touch to a grim and opaque government, sparking enthusiasm dubbed “Gorbymania” in the West. Within months, he was campaigning to end economic and political stagnation, using “glasnost,” or openness, to pursue the goal of “perestroika” — restructuring.

    He signed two landmark arms agreements with the U.S., freed political prisoners, allowed open debate, multi-candidate elections and freedom to travel, and halted religious oppression.

    But the forces he unleashed quickly escaped his control. Long-suppressed ethnic tensions flared into strife in areas such as the southern Caucasus. Strikes and labor unrest followed price increases and consumer good shortages so severe that even showpiece Moscow stores were bare.

    CHERNOBYL

    Gorbachev’s standing in the West was undermined when a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded in 1986, spewing radioactive fallout over much of Europe for a week. Despite Gorbachev’s vaunted glasnost, the Soviets did not inform the outside world, or even their own citizens, of the disaster for two days. They allowed a large May Day event in Kyiv despite elevated radiation levels.

    BERLIN WALL FALLS

    Although the USSR had sent troops to put down uprisings in the satellite states of Hungary and Czechoslovakia in 1956 and 1968, it did not intervene when democratization and waves of dissent spread through East Bloc countries in 1989. The most vivid consequence of standing back came when East Germany opened passage to West Germany: Jubilant demonstrators swarmed the Berlin Wall that had blocked off the city’s Soviet sector since 1961, and hammered chunks off it.

    COUP ATTEMPT

    The Soviet prime minister, defense minister, KGB head and other top officials, alarmed at growing separatism and economic troubles, on August 19, 1991, put Gorbachev under house arrest at his vacation dacha and ordered a halt to all political activities. Tanks and troops ground through the streets of Moscow, but crowds gathered to defy them. Russian President Boris Yeltsin clambered onto a tank outside the parliament building to denounce the coup plotters. The attempt collapsed in three days and Gorbachev returned to Moscow, albeit with his power severely weakened.

    COLLAPSE

    Over the next four months, the USSR disintegrated with the slow drama of a calving glacier, as several republics, including Ukraine, declared independence. Yeltsin banned Communist Party activities in Russia.

    The leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus in early December signed an accord stating the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. On Dec. 25, Gorbachev resigned and the USSR’s flag was lowered from the Kremlin.

    Debate persists on what felled the colossus: its repressive ways, poor decisions by ailing leaders, adherence to an arguably unviable ideology — all could have played a part.

    Thirty years later, analyst Dmitri Trenin, then-director of the Moscow Carnegie Center, told The Associated Press: “The collapse of the Soviet Union was one of those occasions in history that are believed to be unthinkable until they become inevitable.”

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  • Asian shares extend losses after Wall Street decline

    Asian shares extend losses after Wall Street decline

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    BANGKOK — Shares slipped in Asia on Thursday after benchmarks fell more than 1% on Wall Street in the middle of a mostly quiet and holiday-shortened week.

    U.S. futures were mixed and oil prices declined.

    Investors are watching to see how China‘s relaxation of its stringent COVID-19 policies, and the outbreaks of infections that have followed, will affect business activity and travel.

    One concern is that the massive outbreaks could generate new, potentially vaccine resistant variants of the virus, “leading to knock-on virus surges across the globe, China’s reopening could still mark a positive step over the long run in light of past global attempts in bringing virus cases under control,” Yean Jun Rong of IG said in a commentary.

    The Hang Seng in Hong Kong shed 1.0% to 19,691.33, while the Shanghai Composite index was down 0.3% at 3,078.81.

    Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index lost 0.9% to 26,093.67.

    The Kospi in Seoul sank 1.9% to 2,236.40 after the government reported South Korea’s industrial production fell 3.7% from a year earlier in November, worse than forecast and a bigger drop than the 1.2% decline in October. Retail sales were down 1.8% from the month before.

    Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gave up 0.9% to 7,020.10. Bangkok’s SET index gained 0.3% and Mumbai’s Sensex was flat.

    The worst year since 2008 for the S&P 500 has been winding down with little in the way of data to drive trading. But later Thursday, the U.S. government was due to release jobless claims, a measure of employment that could provide insight into how the economy is faring as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates to quash inflation.

    The Fed has already raised its key interest rate seven times this year and is expected to continue raising rates in 2023. The key lending rate, the federal funds rate, stands at a range of 4.25% to 4.5%, and Fed policymakers forecast that the rate will reach a range of 5% to 5.25% by the end of 2023. Their forecast doesn’t call for a rate cut before 2024.

    On Wednesday, the S&P 500 fell 1.2%, with technology, energy and industrial stocks among the biggest weights on the benchmark index. It finished at 3,783.22.

    The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1.1% to 32,875.71. The Nasdaq slid 1.4% to 10,213.29. The Russell 2000 gave up 1.6%, ending at 1,722.02.

    Bond yields were mixed. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which influences mortgage rates, rose to 3.88% from 3.85% Tuesday. The yield on the two-year Treasury fell to 4.34% from 4.38% late Tuesday.

    With two more days of trading left in 2022, the S&P 500 is headed for a roughly 20% drop for the year, even as profits and margins for companies in the index have hit record heights this year. The Dow is on pace for a 9.5% drop, while the Nasdaq is doing much worse, on pace to plunge 34.7%.

    Southwest Airlines slid 5.2% as the carrier grappled with the fallout after cancelling thousands of flight cancellations. The airline’s CEO said it could be next week before the flight schedule returns to normal. Shares in other airlines also fell. Delta Air Lines dropped 2.8% and United Airlines fell 2.4%.

    Tesla rose 3.3% as it stabilized from steep losses it suffered after reports Tuesday that it temporarily suspended production at a factory in Shanghai.

    U.S. crude oil prices settled 0.7% lower and natural gas prices plunged 10.8%. That hurt energy stocks. Exxon Mobil fell 1.6%.

    Early Thursday, U.S. benchmark crude was down 54 cents at $78.42 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

    Brent crude, the pricing basis for international trading, gave up 57 cents to $83.42 per barrel in London.

    The U.S. dollar fell to 133.77 Japanese yen from 134.39 yen late Wednesday. The euro rose to $1.0617 from $1.0613.

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  • Biden arrives in US Virgin Islands to relax between holidays

    Biden arrives in US Virgin Islands to relax between holidays

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    KINGSHILL, U.S. Virgin Islands — President Joe Biden on Tuesday traveled to a place very familiar to him — the U.S. Virgin Islands — to enjoy some downtime and warmer weather and to ring in a new year with family.

    The president and his wife, first lady Jill Biden, flew from Washington on Tuesday to St. Croix, one of three islands that make up the U.S. territory in the Caribbean. St. John and St. Thomas are the other two islands. The Bidens were joined by their daughter Ashley and her husband, Howard Krein, as well as grandchildren Natalie and Hunter, whose father was the president’s late son, Beau.

    St. Croix is a tropical getaway that Biden has been getting away to at least since he was vice president, from 2009 to 2017.

    “We’ve missed him the last couple of years,” Beth Moss Mahar, a retired attorney and island resident for nearly three decades, said in a telephone interview.

    Biden spent the holidays at his home in Delaware in 2020 and 2021, mostly because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This week’s visit to St. Croix will be his first as president to the U.S. Virgin Islands.

    “We’re tremendously honored,” Del. Stacey Plaskett, a Democrat who represents the Virgin Islands in Congress, said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

    “In the past, when he and his family have come, of course sightings of President Biden were almost a thing of legend,” she said.

    Any sightings will now be altered by the fact that Biden is regarded as one of the world’s most powerful men. As such, he now travels with a significantly bigger footprint than when he was vice president, including a large contingent of U.S. Secret Service agents, White House staff and journalists covering the trip.

    Biden and his wife enjoy spending the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day in a warmer climate, and Jill Biden likes a beach, aides said.

    “We always look forward to his coming and we really understand that this is a place of relaxation for him and Jill and whatever other family he may bring with him and so we leave him alone and let him just relax,” said Donna Christensen, who was Plaskett’s predecessor in Congress.

    “He usually says, ‘In my next life, I’m living in St. Croix,’” she said in a telephone interview.

    Both Plaskett and Christensen expressed hope that attention paid to where Biden spends his year-end vacation will amplify challenges facing the U.S. Virgin Islands and other U.S. territories, such as threats from climate change, including more powerful hurricanes and rising sea levels, as well as problems these governments have coping with aging infrastructure.

    Biden was scheduled to return to Washington on Jan. 2. That’s the day before the president’s Democratic Party cedes control of the House of Representatives to the Republican Party following the November midterm elections, potentially complicating Biden’s legislative agenda for the remaining two years of his term.

    Democrats will continue to control the Senate in the Congress that will be seated on Jan. 3.

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  • Supreme Court keeps immigration limits in place indefinitely

    Supreme Court keeps immigration limits in place indefinitely

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    WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is keeping pandemic-era limits on immigration in place indefinitely, dashing hopes of immigration advocates who had been anticipating their end this week.

    In a ruling Tuesday, the Supreme Court extended a temporary stay that Chief Justice John Roberts issued last week. Under the court’s order, the case will be argued in February and the stay will be maintained until the justices decide the case.

    The limits, often referred to as Title 42 in reference to a 1944 public health law, were put in place under then-President Donald Trump at the beginning of the pandemic. Under the restrictions, officials have expelled asylum-seekers inside the United States 2.5 million times and turned away most people who requested asylum at the border on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.

    Immigration advocates sued to end the policy, saying it goes against American and international obligations to people fleeing to the U.S. to escape persecution. They’ve also argued that the policy is outdated as coronavirus treatments improve.

    The Supreme Court’s decision comes as thousands of migrants have gathered on the Mexican side of the border, filling shelters and worrying advocates who are scrambling to figure out how to care for them.

    “We are deeply disappointed for all the desperate asylum seekers who will continue to suffer because of Title 42, but we will continue fighting to eventually end the policy,” said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which had been arguing to end Title 42′s use.

    The ruling Tuesday said specifically that the Supreme Court will review the issue of whether the states have the right to intervene in the legal fight over Title 42. Both the federal government and the immigration advocates have argued that the states waited too long to intervene and even if they hadn’t waited so long, that they don’t have sufficient standing to intervene.

    In a dissent, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Ketanji Brown Jackson said that even if the court were to find the states have the right to intervene and Title 42 was lawfully adopted “…. the emergency on which those orders were premised has long since lapsed.”

    The judges said the “current border crisis is not a COVID crisis.”

    “And courts should not be in the business of perpetuating administrative edicts designed for one emergency only because elected officials have failed to address a different emergency. We are a court of law, not policymakers of last resort,” the justices wrote.

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday that the Biden administration “will, of course, comply with the order and prepare for the Court’s review.”

    “At the same time, we are advancing our preparations to manage the border in a secure, orderly, and humane way when Title 42 eventually lifts and will continue expanding legal pathways for immigration,” Jean-Pierre added. “Title 42 is a public health measure, not an immigration enforcement measure, and it should not be extended indefinitely.”

    In in November, a federal judge sided with advocates and set a Dec. 21 deadline to end the policy. Conservative-leaning states appealed to the Supreme Court, warning that an increase in migration would take a toll on public services and cause an “unprecedented calamity” that they said the federal government had no plan to deal with.

    Roberts, who handles emergency matters that come from federal courts in the nation’s capital, issued a stay to give the court time to more fully consider both sides’ arguments.

    The federal government asked the Supreme Court to reject the states’ effort while also acknowledging that ending the restrictions abruptly would likely lead to “disruption and a temporary increase in unlawful border crossings.”

    The precise issue before the court is a complicated, largely procedural question of whether the states should be allowed to intervene in the lawsuit. A similar group of states won a lower court order in a different court district preventing the end of the restrictions after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in April that it was ending use of the policy.

    Until the judge’s November order in the advocates’ lawsuit, the states had not sought to take part in that case. But they say that the administration has essentially abandoned its defense of the Title 42 policy and they should be able to step in. The administration has appealed the ruling, though it has not tried to keep Title 42 in place while the legal case plays out.

    ———

    Spagat contributed from San Diego.

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  • Editorial Roundup: United States

    Editorial Roundup: United States

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    Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

    Dec. 21

    The Washington Post on Trump’s tax records

    In 2020, President Donald Trump and Melania Trump paid no federal income taxes by claiming millions in dubious deductions and carrying over losses from previous years.

    Somehow, that’s not the most scandalous detail to emerge following the House’s four-year legal brawl to obtain Mr. Trump’s tax returns. It turns out the Internal Revenue Service did not conduct — let alone complete — mandatory examinations of Mr. Trump’s returns while he was president, despite its own internal policy from 1977 requiring such reviews and the White House’s claims that they were happening. A report by the House Ways and Means Committee, released after members voted Tuesday to make Mr. Trump’s filings public, proposes codifying into law the norm that every president since Richard M. Nixon had observed, until Mr. Trump: the routine release of presidential tax returns.

    In April 2019, on the very day the committee inquired about the status of mandatory presidential audits, the IRS notified Mr. Trump that his 2015 return would be examined. But the audit was assigned mainly to one agent, and Mr. Trump threw sand in the gears. The lone IRS employee had to review a return that included over 400 pass-through entities, numerous schedules, foreign tax credits and millions in carried-over losses from previous years.

    An accompanying report from the Joint Committee on Taxation, summarizing Mr. Trump’s returns, raises questions about several deductions he’s claimed. For example, he took a $21.1 million deduction in 2015 for donating 158 acres of real estate but had no qualified appraisal for the land. He also reported making cash donations of more than $500,000 in 2018 and 2019 without substantiation, according to the report.

    An internal IRS memo said Mr. Trump’s taxes were so complicated that “it is not possible to obtain the resources available to examine all potential issues.” In other words, even if the agency wanted, it lacked the resources for a thorough review. The congressional report recommends that the IRS assign two senior agents, as well as specialists on partnerships, foreign transactions and financial products, to ensure all presidential audits are complete and timely. This is a no-brainer.

    Alas, this problem is bigger than Mr. Trump. Former IRS commissioner Charles Rettig has testified the agency lacks the resources to closely scrutinize the filings of many people in Mr. Trump’s stratum. “We get outgunned routinely,” he said. No American should be too big to audit.

    Fortunately, the Inflation Reduction Act provided $79 billion for IRS modernization, including expanded resources to wade through complex returns from high-income taxpayers. Paying taxes is a responsibility of citizenship. Taking steps to ensure presidents pay what they owe, by requiring mandatory audits and returning to the norm of releasing presidential returns, would help restore public confidence that tax laws are administered fairly and applied equally.

    ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/21/trump-tax-records-irs-scandals/

    ———

    Dec. 24

    The New York Times on taking on extremism in the U.S.

    Whoever shot the small steel ball through the front window of the Brewmaster’s Taproom in Renton, Wash., this month wasn’t taking chances. The person wore a mask and removed the front and rear license plates of a silver Chevrolet Cruze. The police still have no leads.

    The bar’s owner, Marley Rall, thought the motivation seemed clear: The attack followed social media posts from conservatives angry about the bar’s Drag Queen Storytime and Bingo, slated for the following weekend.

    The Taproom sits in a two-story office park a 15-minute drive from downtown Seattle. It has a little outside patio and about two dozen local craft beers on tap. Dogs are welcome. A sign on the door reads: “I don’t drink beer with racists. #blacklivesmatter.” Now there’s also a note with an arrow pointing to the hole in the window reading: “What intolerance looks like.”

    Over the past two years, criticism of the bar’s long-running monthly Drag Queen Storytime had been limited to nasty voice mail messages and emails. But talk on right-wing message boards has turned much darker, Ms. Rall said. One post this month about the Taproom event read: “Drag Queen Storytime Protest. STOP Grooming Kids! Bring signs, bullhorns, noisemakers.”

    Ms. Rall knew how protests like this could escalate. There was an incident in 2019 at a library drag queen story hour about 10 minutes from the bar, where members of the Proud Boys and other paramilitary groups got into a shouting match with supporters of the event.

    Was the shot at the Taproom a warning? She had no way to know, so she kept the event on the calendar.

    Sitting in a corner of the Taproom a few hours before her story time was set to begin, Sylvia O’Stayformore said she didn’t care if the Proud Boys showed up to an event that was aimed at teaching children empathy. Protesters or not, she had a show to put on. “I’d never be intimidated by all this,” she said.

    Far-right activists have been waging a nationwide campaign of harassment against L.G.B.T.Q. people and events in which they participate. Drag queen story events are similar to other public readings for children, except that readers dress in a highly stylized and gender-fluid manner and often read books that focus on acceptance and tolerance. This month alone, drag queen events were the target of protests in Grand Prairie, Texas; San Antonio; Fall River, Mass.; Columbus, Ohio; Southern Pines, N.C.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Lakeland, Fla.; Chicago; Long Island; and Staten Island.

    On Monday, protesters vandalized the home of a gay New York City councilor with homophobic graffiti and attacked one of his neighbors in protest of drag queen story hours held at libraries.

    The protests use the language of right-wing media, where demonizing gay and transgender people is profitable and popular. Tucker Carlson, a Fox News host who rails against transgender people and the medical facilities that serve them, has the highest-rated prime-time cable news program in the country. Twitter personalities with millions of followers flag drag events and spread anti-trans rhetoric that can result in in-person demonstrations or threats. Facebook pages of activist groups can mobilize demonstrators with ease.

    Some Republican lawmakers are using the power of the state in service of the same cause. Several states are trying to restrict or ban public drag shows altogether, amid a record number of anti-L.G.B.T.Q. bills introduced this year. Republican politicians also used a barrage of lies about trans people in their campaign ads during the midterm elections, funded to the tune of at least $50 million, according to a report released in October from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.

    This campaign isn’t happening in a vacuum. Levels of political violence are on the rise across the country, and while some of it comes from the left, a majority comes from the right, where violent rhetoric that spurs actual violence is routine and escalating. At anti-L.G.B.T.Q. events, sign-waving protesters are increasingly joined by members of the street-fighting Proud Boys and other right-wing paramilitary groups. Their presence increases the risk of such encounters turning violent.

    In a series of editorials, this board has argued for a concerted national effort against political violence. It would require cracking down on paramilitary groups, tracking extremists in law enforcement, creating a healthier culture around guns and urging the Republican Party to push fringe ideas to the fringes. Every American citizen has a part to play, and the most important thing we all can do is to demand that in every community, we treat our neighbors — and their civil liberties and human rights — with respect.

    One way to do that is to call out and reject the dehumanizing language that has become so pervasive in online discussions, and in real life, about particular groups of people. Calling L.G.B.T.Q. people pedophiles is an old tactic, and it makes ignoring or excusing any violence that may come their way easier. While direct calls for violence are beyond the pale for most Republican politicians, and the causes of specific violent acts are not easily traced, calling transgender people pedophiles or “groomers” is increasingly common and usually goes unchallenged.

    Marco Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida, released a TV ad recently in which he said: “The radical left will destroy America if we don’t stop them. They indoctrinate children and try to turn boys into girls.” A conservative activist group recently ran ads in several states, including one that said, “Transgenderism is killing kids.” This year, as Florida lawmakers debated the so-called Don’t Say Gay bill, a spokeswoman for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida posted on Twitter: “If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children. Silence is complicity.”

    The silence from a great majority of Republicans on the demonization of, and lies about, trans people has indeed meant complicity — complicity in what experts call stochastic terrorism, in which vicious rhetoric increases the likelihood of random violence against the people who are the subject of the abusive language and threats.

    Drag queen story hours aren’t the only current target for right-wing extremists. On Aug. 30, an operator at Boston Children’s Hospital, a pioneer in providing gender-affirming care, answered the telephone at about 7:45 p.m. and received a disturbing threat. “There is a bomb on the way to the hospital,” the caller said. “You better evacuate everyone, you sickos.” It was the first of seven bomb threats the hospital received over several months. The most recent came on Dec. 14.

    After extremists posted online the address of a physician who works with trans children at the hospital, the doctor had to flee the home. “These have been some of the hardest months of my life,” the doctor said.

    Around the country, at least 24 hospitals or medical facilities in 21 states have been harassed or threatened in the wake of right-wing media attacks, according to a tally this month by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. To protect their employees, some hospitals are stripping information about the transgender services they provide from their websites. The messages that appear to trigger these attacks are often outlandish lies about what care these medical facilities actually provide. As a result, many hospitals feel they have no choice but to protect their staff, even if it means making the care they provide less visible. Removal of official information creates a risk that more disinformation could fill the void.

    Given the transnational nature of extremism, these threats can come from anywhere. The F.B.I. arrested three people in connection with the various threats against Boston doctors. One person lived in Massachusetts, another in Texas and the third in Canada.

    Data collected by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, which tracks political violence, puts the harassment of hospitals into a wider, troubling context. Acts of political violence against the entire L.G.B.T.Q. community have more than tripled since 2021; anti-L.G.B.T.Q. demonstrations have more than doubled in the same period. And the nature of the intimidation is changing: Protesters dressed as civilians have been replaced by men in body armor and fatigues; signs have been replaced by semiautomatic rifles.

    Even dictionary publishers have become targets. This year, a California man was arrested for threatening to shoot up and bomb the offices of Merriam-Webster because he was angry about its definitions related to gender identity.

    ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/24/opinion/anti-trans-violence.html

    ———

    Dec. 23

    The Wall Street Journal on Congress on proxy voting:

    The House of Representatives spent Friday passing the $1.65 trillion omnibus spending blowout, and the bill is loaded with earmarks and pet priorities from healthcare to public lands that few Members have bothered to read. This is no way to run a government, and compounding the embarrassment is that half of the lawmakers had already ditched Washington for the holidays.

    The House had roughly 230 “active proxy letters” on Friday. Speaker Nancy Pelosi through a rule change allowed Members to vote by proxy in 2020, a putatively temporary measure to mitigate the risks of Covid-19. But the reprieve has been renewed every 45 days for more than two years and is now an all-purpose excuse to go AWOL.

    Members sign a letter, available on the House clerk’s website, that says they are “unable to physically attend proceedings in the House Chamber due to the ongoing public health emergency,” and designate a colleague to cast their vote. But no one even bothers anymore to fake a cough or pretend the absence has anything to do with Covid-19. Mrs. Pelosi told a CNN reporter on Friday that the mass sick day is “related to the weather more than anything else.”

    Members sometimes missed votes pre-Covid, and voters can judge for themselves whether a snowstorm is a fair reason for their Representative to leave Washington early. But it should give Americans more pause that so many Members of Congress are so cavalier about misrepresenting the reason they won’t be at roll call.

    The abuse is bipartisan, and Members from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene availed themselves of proxy letters this week. Business Insider reports that Ms. Greene is vacationing in Costa Rica.

    An October CQ Roll Call analysis found that a dozen House Democrats cast more than half their votes by proxy. Retiring members are particular offenders, and a joke in the press is that they are “quiet quitting.” The Roll Call report noted that voting by proxy is more common on days Members are showing up or leaving town. Is it easier to get Covid on a Friday?

    GOP leader Kevin McCarthy said on Friday that the Republican House in January would repeal “proxy voting once and for all,” though it may not be easy to herd his colleagues back into the chamber now that they’ve grown accustomed to weighing in from afar.

    But the $1.65 trillion spending bill touches every corner of policy from education to national defense. The least elected officials could do is show up to debate the merits.

    ONLINE: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-house-pretends-to-calls-in-sick-congress-proxy-voting-nancy-pelosi-omnibus-bill-11671833628

    ———

    Dec. 22

    The Los Angeles Times on the U.S. Postal Service:

    It’s the time of year when we see a lot more mail trucks trundling through neighborhoods as letter carriers work hard to deliver everyone’s holiday cards and packages on time.

    But this season we have something new to celebrate: The U.S. Postal Service’s announcement this week that it will spend billions of dollars to buy tens of thousands of electric delivery vehicles over the next few years. It’s a victory in the fight against climate change and a welcome shift by an agency that until recently had intended to update its huge, aging fleet with another generation of gas guzzlers. It’s also a win for public health, as a growing number of zero-emission mail trucks will soon start to deliver not only letters and packages, but cleaner air to every corner of the nation.

    The Postal Service will buy 106,000 delivery vehicles by 2028, of which 66,000 will be electric, and plans to purchase zero-emission delivery trucks exclusively by 2026. The $9.6-billion plan is a dramatic change from earlier this year, when Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who was appointed during the Trump administration, planned to make only 10% of the next-generation fleet electric and add as many as 165,000 new gas-guzzling delivery trucks over the next decade that get less than 9 miles per gallon. That would have been a huge mistake considering these vehicles last 30 years and could be on the roads polluting the air and warming the climate into the 2060s.

    The Biden administration, which does not have direct control over the Postal Service, pushed back nonetheless. California, New York and more than a dozen other states filed suit in April to halt the purchase of gas-powered trucks, joining environmental groups in demanding investments in clean, zero-emission vehicles instead.

    California’s intervention “played a big part in stopping USPS from committing to decades of air pollution around the nation,” said Liane Randolph, who chairs the state Air Resources Board.

    While the Postal Service will need to do more to fully electrify its aging fleet of more than 220,000 vehicles, this move helps put us closer to achieving President Biden’s climate goals, including an order he issued last year for the federal government to purchase only zero-emission vehicles by 2035, and to do so by 2027 for light-duty vehicles. The nation’s largest vehicle fleet now has the potential to become its largest electric one too. Instead of lagging behind private-sector companies such as Amazon and FedEx, the Postal Service can help lead the way toward a zero-emission future.

    Mail delivery trucks are especially well-suited for electrification because they run defined, local routes with low daily mileage and have hours of operation that allow them to be easily recharged. Because these vehicles serve virtually every community, electrifying them will bring widespread benefits, curbing air pollution while reducing fuel and maintenance costs and our dependence on oil.

    It seems especially significant that something as ordinary and ubiquitous as the white mail truck will now help the nation blaze a trail toward a fossil-free future through every neighborhood in the country. And we won’t have to wait for years either. The new vehicles are expected to go into service on postal routes in late 2023.

    That’s a gift we should all welcome this holiday season and enjoy for years to come.

    ONLINE: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-12-22/postal-service-electric-vehicles

    ———

    Dec. 22

    The Guardian on Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington:

    President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s highly choreographed visit to Washington was a significant international moment. Not long ago, Mr. Zelenskyy had been adamant that his place was always on the frontline with his people. This week, however, he made a lightning trip in person, via Poland, to Washington itself, meeting President Joe Biden at the White House and delivering a primetime address to the U.S. Congress before heading back into his suffering country less than 24 hours later.

    The visit was much more than a Christmas celebration of Ukraine’s defiance and of Mr. Zelenskyy’s immense role in it. Instead, it was a political event with important future implications for Ukraine, the United States and Russia, and for the conflict more generally. It was clearly focused on what should happen in 2023 rather than what has happened already.

    Mr. Zelenskyy had three principal objectives. The first was to rally American and, by extension, global support. The second was to intervene at a pivotal moment in the war and in U.S. politics to advance that effort. The third was to make an ambitious pitch for even more financial and military support from the only state that is in a position to supply it, and thus to strengthen Ukraine’s resistance during a bitter winter, with the prospect of fresh fighting in the spring.

    In public, Mr. Zelenskyy produced another media-savvy performance, especially in his address to Congress. He spent every hour in Washington in his iconic olive-green fatigues, and emphasized the immediacy of his cause by presenting Congress with a battlefield Ukrainian flag that he had collected from soldiers on the frontline in Bakhmut on Tuesday. He skillfully mixed gratitude with fresh requests for support. U.S. aid and support was not charity, he insisted, but an investment in the “global security and democracy” for which the U.S. and its allies stand.

    It is clear that the Biden administration agrees with that. The deeper questions of the visit, however, are how urgently Washington wants that investment to bear fruit and what price it is willing to pay. Weapons and money are the twin keys to the answer. Mr. Biden and his aides will have assured Mr. Zelenskyy that the U.S. wants Russia to be defeated in Ukraine. But they will also have told him that they do not want a wider conflict and that they may have a different definition of what defeat could look like.

    The toughest arguments behind closed doors will have focused on Ukraine’s demands for more and better weaponry, and on the terms to be set for ending the conflict. At home, though, finance is an even bigger political issue for Mr. Biden. The U.S. has already spent more than $48bn on humanitarian, financial and military support; another $2bn in military aid was announced during the visit. The administration also aims to get another aid package, worth almost $45bn, through Congress before the Republicans take over the House of Representatives in January.

    The US domestic political question is whether bipartisan support continues in January. Mr. Zelenskyy’s visit was in large part directed towards ensuring that it does. But the real issues this week will have been military and strategic. Russia is preparing a fresh ground assault, perhaps during winter. Another Ukrainian counterattack is expected too. Mr. Zelenskyy is the hero of the hour. But Washington is increasingly looking towards an endgame in 2023. The end of the conflict is increasingly in the US’s hands, not just those of Russia and Ukraine.

    Some on both sides of the Atlantic made the comparison between Mr. Zelenskyy’s wartime flight from Kyiv this week and Winston Churchill’s visit to Washington after Pearl Harbor in 1941. For that comparison to be intellectually useful rather than merely sentimental, it is important to remember that Churchill’s visit marked the moment in the second world war when the U.S. began to take charge of the allied cause in Europe. The same thing may be true this time over Ukraine.

    ONLINE: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/22/the-guardian-view-on-zelenskiy-in-washington-a-pivotal-moment

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  • Taiwan extends compulsory military service to 1 year

    Taiwan extends compulsory military service to 1 year

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    TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan will extend its compulsory military service from four months to a year starting in 2024, President Tsai Ing-wen said Tuesday, as the self-ruled island faces China‘s military, diplomatic and trade pressure.

    Taiwan, which split from the mainland in 1949 during a civil war, is claimed by China. The decades-old threat of invasion by China has sharpened since Beijing cut off communications with Taiwan‘s government after the 2016 election of Tsai, who is seen as pro-independence.

    China’s People’s Liberation Army in particular has stepped up its military harassment, sending fighter planes and navy vessels toward Taiwan on a near-daily basis in recent years. In response, the island’s military actively tracks those movements, which often serves as training for its own military personnel.

    The longer military service applies to men born after 2005, and will start Jan. 1, 2024. Those born before 2005 will continue to serve four months, but under a revamped training curriculum aimed at strengthening the island’s reserves forces.

    “No one wants war,” Tsai said. “This is true of Taiwan’s government and people, and the global community, but peace does not come from the sky, and Taiwan is at the front lines of the expansion of authoritarianism.”

    The White House welcomed the announcement on conscription reform, saying it underscores Taiwan’s commitment to self-defense and strengthens deterrence.

    “We will continue to assist Taiwan in maintaining a sufficient self-defense capability in line with our commitments under the Taiwan Relations Act and our one-China policy,” the White House said, adding it continues to oppose any unilateral changes in the status quo by either China or Taiwan.

    Beijing has often used military exercises to respond to moves it views as challenging its claims to sovereignty.

    In August, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, and China responded with the largest-scale military exercises it’s held in decades, because it saw Pelosi’s visit as an official diplomatic exchange. Although the U.S. is the island’s largest unofficial ally, the two governments technically do not have diplomatic relations, as Washington does not formally recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state.

    The plan sets Taiwan up for increasing its defense capabilities but what remains to be seen is how well the Defense Ministry will carry out the reforms, said Arthur Zhin-Sheng Wang, a defense expert at Taiwan’s Central Police University.

    Taiwan’s current 4-month-long military conscription requirement was widely panned by the public as being too short and not providing the training that professional soldiers actually need. The government had slashed it down from a year to four months in 2017 as it was transitioning the army into an all-volunteer corps.

    Of Taiwan’s 188,000-person military, 90% are volunteers and 10% are men doing their required four months of service.

    A poll from the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation in December found that among Taiwanese adults, 73.2% said they would support a one-year military service. That support was across party lines, the survey found, spanning the Democratic Progressive Party and the more China-friendly Nationalist Party.

    “This is one of the basic steps that should have been done a long time ago,” said Paul Huang, a research fellow at the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation. Huang said the implementation period in 2024, when Taiwan will elect a new president, meant that Tsai was “passing the buck” to her successor.

    Among the youngest demographic group of 20-24, however, 37.2% said they opposed extending the military service, and only 35.6% said they would support an extension.

    ———

    AP White House Correspondent Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.

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  • The AP Interview: Ukraine FM aims for February peace summit

    The AP Interview: Ukraine FM aims for February peace summit

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s foreign minister said Monday that his nation wants a summit to end the war but he doesn’t anticipate Russia taking part, a statement making it hard to foresee the devastating invasion ending soon.

    Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told The Associated Press that his government wants a “peace” summit within two months at the United Nations with Secretary-General António Guterres as mediator.

    The U.N. gave a very cautious response.

    “As the secretary-general has said many times in the past, he can only mediate if all parties want him to mediate,” U.N. associate spokesperson Florencia Soto Nino-Martinez said Monday.

    Kuleba said Russia must face a war-crimes tribunal before his country directly talks with Moscow. He said, however, that other nations should feel free to engage with Russians, as happened before a grain agreement between Turkey and Russia.

    The AP interview offered a glimpse at Ukraine‘s vision of how the war with Russia could one day end, although any peace talks would be months away and highly contingent on complex international negotiations.

    Kuleba also said he was “absolutely satisfied” with the results of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the U.S. last week, and he revealed that the U.S. government had made a special plan to get the Patriot missile battery ready to be operational in the country in less than six months. Usually, the training takes up to a year.

    Kuleba said during the interview at the Foreign Ministry that Ukraine will do whatever it can to win the war in 2023.

    “Every war ends in a diplomatic way,” he said. “Every war ends as a result of the actions taken on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.”

    Commenting on Kuleba’s proposal, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the state RIA Novosti news agency that Russia “never followed conditions set by others. Only our own and common sense.”

    A Kremlin spokesman said last week that no Ukrainian peace plan can succeed without taking into account “the realities of today that can’t be ignored” — a reference to Moscow’s demand that Ukraine recognize Russia’s sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula, which was annexed in 2014, as well as other territorial gains.

    Kuleba said the Ukrainian government would like to have the “peace” summit by the end of February.

    “The United Nations could be the best venue for holding this summit, because this is not about making a favor to a certain country,” he said. “This is really about bringing everyone on board.”

    At the Group of 20 summit in Bali in November, Zelenskyy made a long-distance presentation of a 10-point peace formula that includes the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the withdrawal of Russian troops, the release of all prisoners, a tribunal for those responsible for the aggression and security guarantees for Ukraine.

    Asked about whether Ukraine would invite Russia to the summit, he said that Moscow would first need to face prosecution for war crimes at an international court.

    “They can only be invited to this step in this way,” Kuleba said.

    About the U.N. Secretary-General’s role, Kuleba said: “He has proven himself to be an efficient mediator and an efficient negotiator, and most importantly, as a man of principle and integrity. So we would welcome his active participation.”

    The U.N. spokesman’s office had no immediate comment.

    Other world leaders have also offered to mediate, such as those in Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

    The foreign minister again downplayed comments by Russian authorities that they are ready for talks.

    “They (Russians) regularly say that they are ready for negotiations, which is not true, because everything they do on the battlefield proves the opposite,” he said.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed few days ago that his country is ready for talks to end the war in Ukraine, but suggested that the Ukrainians are the ones refusing to take that step. Despite Putin’s comments, Moscow’s forces have kept attacking Ukraine — a sign that peace isn’t imminent.

    Zelenskyy’s visit to the U.S. was his first foreign trip since the war started on Feb. 24. Kuleba praised Washington’s efforts and underlined the significance of the visit.

    Ukraine secured a new $1.8 billion military aid package, including a Patriot missile battery, during the trip.

    Kuleba said that the move “opens the door for other countries to do the same.”

    He said that the U.S. government developed a program for Ukrainian troops to complete training faster than usual “without any damage to the quality of the use of this weapon on the battlefield.”

    While Kuleba didn’t mention a specific time frame, he said only that it will be “very much less than six months.” And he added that the training will be done “outside” Ukraine.

    During Russia’s ground and air war in Ukraine, Kuleba has been second only to Zelenskyy in carrying Ukraine’s message and needs to an international audience, whether through Twitter posts or meetings with friendly foreign officials.

    On Monday, Ukraine called on U.N. member states to deprive Russia of its status as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council and to exclude it from the world body. Kuleba said they have long “prepared for this step to uncover the fraud and deprive Russia of its status.”

    The Foreign Ministry says that Russia never went through the legal procedure for acquiring membership and taking the place of the USSR at the U.N. Security Council after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

    “This is the beginning of an uphill battle, but we will fight, because nothing is impossible,” he told the AP.

    ———

    Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • The AP Interview: Ukraine FM aims for February peace summit

    The AP Interview: Ukraine FM aims for February peace summit

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s foreign minister on Monday said that his government is aiming to have a peace summit by the end of February, preferably at the United Nations with Secretary-General António Guterres as a possible mediator, around the time of the anniversary of Russia’s war.

    Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told The Associated Press that he was “absolutely satisfied” with the results of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the U.S. last week, and he revealed that the U.S. government has made a special plan to get the Patriot missile battery ready to be operational in the country in less than six months. Usually, the training takes up to a year.

    Kuleba said during the interview at the Foreign Ministry that Ukraine will do whatever it can to win the war in 2023, adding that diplomacy always plays an important role.

    “Every war ends in a diplomatic way,” he said. “Every war ends as a result of the actions taken on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.”

    Kuleba said the Ukrainian government would like to have a peace summit by the end of February.

    “The United Nations could be the best venue for holding this summit, because this is not about making a favor to a certain country,” he said. “This is really about bringing everyone on board.”

    Asked about whether they would invite Russia to the summit, he said that first that country would need to be seated to be prosecuted for war crimes at an international court, for example.

    “They can only be invited to this step in this way,” Kuleba said.

    About Guterres’ role, Kuleba said: “He has proven himself to be an efficient mediator and an efficient negotiator, and most importantly, as a man of principle and integrity. So we would welcome his active participation.”

    The foreign minister again downplayed comments by Russian authorities that they are ready for negotiations.

    “They regularly say that they are ready for negotiations, which is not true, because everything they do on the battlefield proves the opposite,” he said.

    ———

    Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • Migrants dropped near VP Harris home on frigid Christmas Eve

    Migrants dropped near VP Harris home on frigid Christmas Eve

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    WASHINGTON — Three buses of recent migrant families arrived from Texas near the home of Vice President Kamala Harris in record-setting cold on Christmas Eve.

    Texas authorities have not confirmed their involvement, but the bus drop-offs are in line with previous actions by border-state governors calling attention to the Biden administration’s immigration policies.

    The buses that arrived late Saturday outside the vice president’s residence were carrying around 110 to 130 people, according to Tatiana Laborde, managing director of SAMU First Response, a relief agency working with the city of Washington to serve thousands of migrants who have been dropped off in recent months.

    Local organizers had expected the buses to arrive Sunday but found out Saturday that the group would get to Washington early, Laborde said. The people on board included young children.

    Some were wearing T-shirts despite temperatures hovering around 15 degrees Fahrenheit (-9 degrees Celsius). It was the coldest Christmas Eve on record for Washington, according to the Washington Post.

    Laborde said employees had blankets ready for the people who arrived on Christmas Eve and moved them quickly onto waiting buses for a ride to an area church. A local restaurant chain donated dinner and breakfast.

    Most of the arrivals were headed to other destinations and expected to remain in Washington only briefly.

    Gov. Greg Abbott’s office did not respond to a request for comment Sunday morning. His office said last week that Texas has given bus rides to more than 15,000 people since April to Washington, New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

    Abbott and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, both Republicans, are strong critics of President Joe Biden on his handling of the U.S.-Mexico border, where thousands of people are trying to cross daily, many to seek asylum. Officials on both sides of the border are seeking emergency help in setting up shelters and services for migrants, some of whom are sleeping on streets.

    Republicans argue Biden and Harris, designated the administration’s point person on the root causes of migration, have relaxed restrictions that induced many people to leave their countries of origin. Biden has ended some policies but kept others enacted by former President Donald Trump, whose administration also grappled with spikes in border crossings and at one point separated immigrant families and children as a deterrence initiative.

    White House spokesperson Abdullah Hasan called the bus drop-offs a “cruel, dangerous, and shameful stunt.”

    “As we have repeatedly said, we are willing to work with anyone – Republican or Democrat alike – on real solutions, like the comprehensive immigration reform and border security measures President Biden sent to Congress on his first day in office, but these political games accomplish nothing and only put lives in danger,” Hasan said in a statement Sunday.

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  • Biden, first lady thank service members in Christmas calls

    Biden, first lady thank service members in Christmas calls

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    WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden celebrated a quiet Christmas with his family at the White House and spoke with service members stationed around the world.

    “They’re away from their families to protect us,” Biden said in a tweet. “And they have the thanks of a grateful, indebted president.”

    The White House said Biden and the first lady, Jill, called members of the Army stationed at Panama City, Panama; the Navy aboard the USS The Sullivans in the Arabian Sea; the Marine Corps at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego; the Air Force at Okinawa, Japan; the Space Force in Europe; and the Coast Guard aboard the cutter Bertholf in Alameda, California.

    This is Biden’s second Christmas as president. On Saturday, Biden and his family joined a Mass on Christmas Eve at the White House and continued their holiday tradition of an Italian dinner.

    The president and first lady on Friday also carried on another tradition with their second holiday visit to Children’s National Hospital. Biden was the first sitting president to join his wife when they visited hospitalized children and their families before Christmas last year, according to the White House.

    Surrounded by Christmas trees and holiday decorations, the first lady read “The Snowy Day” with the president’s help holding up the book.

    Biden last week encouraged national unity in a recorded address, calling out the nation’s political divisions and saying he hoped “this holiday season will drain the poison that has infected our politics and set us against one another.”

    “So, this Christmas, let’s spread a little kindness,” he said.

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  • US warns of possible attack in Islamabad amid security fears

    US warns of possible attack in Islamabad amid security fears

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    ISLAMABAD — The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad on Sunday warned its staff of a possible attack on Americans at a top hotel in Pakistan’s capital as the city was already on high alert following a suicide bombing earlier in the week.

    The U.S. government is aware of information that “unknown individuals are possibly plotting to attack Americans at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad sometime during the holidays,” the embassy said in a security alert. The advisory banned its American personnel from visiting the popular hotel over the holidays.

    The U.S. mission also urged all personnel to refrain from non-essential travel in Islamabad during the holiday season.

    The embassy directive came two days after a suicide bombing in a residential area of the capital killed a police officer and wounded ten others. The explosion happened when police stopped a taxi for inspection during a patrol. According to the police, a rear seat passenger detonated explosives he was carrying, blowing up the vehicle.

    Militants with the Pakistani Taliban, who are separate from but allied with Afghanistan’s rulers, later claimed the attack.

    Islamabad’s administration has since put the city on high alert, banning public gatherings and processions, even as campaigns are ongoing for upcoming local elections. Police have stepped up patrols and established snap checkpoints to inspect vehicles across the city.

    A suicide bombing targeted the capital’s Marriott Hotel in September 2008, in one of the deadliest such incidents in the capital. Attackers drove a dump truck up to the hotel’s gates before detonating it, killing 63 people and wounding over 250 others.

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  • China’s foreign minister signals deeper ties with Russia

    China’s foreign minister signals deeper ties with Russia

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    BEIJING — Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi defended his country’s position on the war in Ukraine on Sunday and signaled that China would deepen ties with Russia in the coming year.

    Wang, speaking by video to a conference in the Chinese capital, also blamed America for the deterioration in relations between the world’s two largest economies, saying that China has “firmly rejected the United States’ erroneous China policy.”

    China has pushed back against Western pressure on trade, technology, human rights and its claims to a broad swath of the western Pacific, accusing the U.S. of bullying. Its refusal to condemn the invasion of Ukraine and join others in imposing sanctions on Russia has further frayed ties and fueled an emerging divide with much of Europe.

    Wang said that China would “deepen strategic mutual trust and mutually beneficial cooperation” with Russia.

    “With regard to the Ukraine crisis, we have consistently upheld the fundamental principles of objectivity and impartiality, without favoring one side or the other, or adding fuel to the fire, still less seeking selfish gains from the situation,” he said, according to an official text of his remarks.

    Even as China has found common ground with Russia as both come under Western pressure, its economic future remains tied to American and European markets and technology. Leader Xi Jinping is pushing Chinese industry to become more self-sufficient, but Wang acknowledged that experience has shown “that China and the United States cannot decouple or sever supply chains.”

    He said that China would strive to bring relations with the U.S. back on course, saying they had plunged because “the United States has stubbornly continued to see China as its primary competitor and engage in blatant blockade, suppression and provocation against China.”

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  • Taliban ban women from working for domestic, foreign NGOs

    Taliban ban women from working for domestic, foreign NGOs

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    KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban government in Afghanistan on Saturday ordered all foreign and domestic non-governmental groups to suspend employing women, the latest restrictive move by the country’s new rulers against women’s rights and freedoms.

    The order came in a letter from Economy Minister Qari Din Mohammed Hanif, which said that any NGO found not complying with the order will have their operating license revoked in Afghanistan.

    The contents of the letter were confirmed to The Associated Press on Saturday by ministry spokesman, Abdul Rahman Habib.

    The ministry said it had received “serious complaints” about female staff working for NGOs not wearing the “correct” headscarf, or hijab. It was not immediately clear if the order applies to all women or only Afghan women at the NGOs.

    THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

    KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Taliban security forces used a water cannon to disperse women protesting the ban on university education for women on Saturday, eyewitnesses said, as the decision from the Taliban-led government continues to cause outrage and opposition in Afghanistan and beyond.

    The development came after Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers on Tuesday banned female students from attending universities effective immediately. Afghan women have since demonstrated in major cities against the ban, a rare sign of domestic protest since the Taliban seized power last year.

    According to eyewitnesses in the western city of Herat, about two dozen women on Saturday were heading to the provincial governor’s house to protest the ban, chanting: “Education is our right,” when they were pushed back by security forces firing the water cannon.

    Video shared with The Associated Press shows the women screaming and hiding in a side street to escape the water cannon. They then resume their protest, with chants of “Disgraceful!”

    One of the protest organizers, Maryam, said between 100 and 150 women took part in the protest, moving in small groups from different parts of the city toward a central meeting point. She did not give her last name for fear of reprisals.

    “There was security on every street, every square, armored vehicles and armed men,” she said. “When we started our protest, in Tariqi Park, the Taliban took branches from the trees and beat us. But we continued our protest. They increased their security presence. Around 11 a.m. they brought out the water cannon.”

    A spokesman for the provincial governor, Hamidullah Mutawakil, claimed there were only four-five protesters. “They had no agenda, they just came here to make a film,” he said, without mentioning the violence against the women or the use of the water cannon.

    There has been widespread international condemnation of the university ban, including from Muslim-majority countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, as well as warnings from the United States and the G-7 group of major industrial nations that the policy will have consequences for the Taliban.

    An official in the Taliban government, Minister of Higher Education Nida Mohammad Nadim, spoke about the ban for the first time on Thursday in an interview with the Afghan state television. He said the ban was necessary to prevent the mixing of genders in universities and because he believes some subjects being taught violated the principles of Islam.

    He said the ban would be in place until further notice.

    Despite initially promising a more moderate rule respecting rights for women and minorities, the Taliban have widely implemented their interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, since they seized power in August 2021.

    They have banned girls from middle school and high school, barred women from most fields of employment and ordered them to wear head-to-toe clothing in public. Women are also banned from parks and gyms. At the same time Afghan society, while largely traditional, has increasingly embraced the education of girls and women over the past two decades.

    Also Saturday, in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, dozens of Afghan refugee students protested against the ban on female higher education in their homeland and demanded the immediate reopening of campuses for women.

    One of them, Bibi Haseena, read a poem depicting the grim situation for Afghan girls seeking an education. She said was unhappy about graduating outside her country when hundreds of thousands of her Afghan sisters were being deprived of an education.

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  • Tunisia’s political experiment threatens economic collapse

    Tunisia’s political experiment threatens economic collapse

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    NICE, France — Tunisia’s increasingly authoritarian president appears determined to upend the country’s political system. The strategy is not only threatening a democracy once seen as a model for the Arab world, experts say it is also sending the economy toward a tailspin.

    The International Monetary Fund has frozen an agreement meant to help the government get loans to pay public sector salaries and fill budget gaps aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine.

    Foreign investors are pulling out of Tunisia, and ratings agencies are on alert. Inflation and joblessness are on the rise, and many Tunisians, once proud of their country’s relative prosperity, now struggle to make ends meet.

    An election debacle a week ago has made matters worse: Just 11% of voters took part in a first-round vote for a new parliament meant to replace a legislature disbanded last year by President Kais Saied. Opposition figures, including from the popular Islamist movement Ennahdha, are demanding that he step down, and unions are threatening a general strike.

    Saied himself designed the elections to replace and reshape the parliament, as part of broad reforms that bolster his powers and that he says will solve Tunisia’s multiple crises. But voter disillusionment with the ruling class amid dire economic troubles contributed to a near-boycott of the election.

    Tunisia’s Western allies, like the United States and France, have expressed concern and urged the president to forge an inclusive political dialogue that would benefit the sluggish economy. Tunisia was the birthplace of Arab Spring democratic uprisings 12 years ago.

    Saied rejected criticism over the low voter turnout, saying what really matters is the second round of voting Jan. 19. He says his reforms are needed to rid the country of the corrupt political class and Tunisia’s foreign enemies. He lashed out at his political foes in the Ennahdha party, which had the largest number of lawmakers in the previous parliament, and ordered the arrest this week of its vice-president and former Prime Minister Ali Larayedeh on terrorism-related charges.

    “Saied seems impervious to criticism and intent on bulldozing his way to a new political system no matter how few Tunisians are engaged in the process,” said Monica Marks, a Tunisia expert and professor of Middle East politics at the New York University in Abu Dhabi.

    “No Tunisian asked Saied to reinvent the wheel of Tunisian politics, to write a new constitution and revamp the election law,” Marks said. “What Tunisians have been asking for is a more respectful government that meets their bread-and-butter needs and gives them economic dignity.”

    Saied’s promises to stabilize the economy helped ensure his landslide victory in the 2019 presidential election.

    But he has yet to present an economic recovery plan or strategy for his deeply indebted government to secure funds to pay for food and energy subsidies. The president has sidelined economists in state institutions, stalling the country’s budget and souring the environment for foreign investors.

    Tunisians have been hit with soaring food prices and shortages of fuel and basic staples like sugar, vegetable oil and rice in recent months. Inflation has reached 9.1%, the highest in three decades, according to the National Institute of Statistics, and unemployment is at 18% percent, according to the World Bank.

    “President Saied naively seems to think that if only he can complete his political roadmap, the economy will fix itself,” said Geoff Porter, a New York City-based North Africa risk assessment analyst, in a recent brief.

    Tunisia reached a preliminary agreement with the IMF on a $1.9 billion loan in October. It would enable the heavily indebted Tunisian government to access loans from other donors over a four-year period in return for sweeping economic reforms that include shrinking the public administration sector — one of the world’s largest — and a gradual lifting of subsidies.

    The agreement was subject to the IMF executive board’s approval, scheduled for Dec. 19. The state news agency TAP reported that “the government and the IMF have agreed to postpone” the final decision on the loan to give Tunisian officials “more time to present a new reform plan for the country’s sluggish economy.”

    Tunisia desperately needs access to the special drawing rights in order to avoid defaulting on external debt and to stabilize the economy, Porter said. He added: “Without the IMF funds, Tunisia’s economic freefall will accelerate.”

    Foreign investors operating in Tunisia are worried.

    Pharmaceutical manufacturers Novartis, Bayer and GlaxoSmithKline are leaving the country because they are not getting paid by the insufficiently funded state pharmaceutical distributor.

    Royal Dutch Shell, which operates two gas fields that accounted for 40% of Tunisia’s domestic production, announced in November it will exit Tunisia by year’s end. Despite hype over the country’s hydrogen sector, nothing has been done to attract investors as the country’s regulatory institutions are paralyzed by Saied’s political moves, Porter said.

    The president has also lost the tentative support of the country’s powerful trade union, the UGTT, for the IMF-prescribed reform plan in exchange for a bailout.

    UGTT leader Noureddine Taboubi agreed with the government in August to discuss a new “social contract” to help Tunisians in financial distress, the state TAP news agency reported. But Taboubi, whose influential union represents 67% of Tunisia’s work force, mainly employed in the public sector, recently pulled back on his commitment. He renewed his opposition to the IMF’s main demands to receive a loan program: a public sector wage freeze and restructuring of state-owned enterprises.

    ———

    Bouazza ben Bouazza contributed from Tunis, Tunisia.

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  • Tunisia’s political experiment threatens economic collapse

    Tunisia’s political experiment threatens economic collapse

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    NICE, France — Tunisia’s increasingly authoritarian president appears determined to upend the country’s political system. The strategy is not only threatening a democracy once seen as a model for the Arab world, experts say it is also sending the economy toward a tailspin.

    The International Monetary Fund has frozen an agreement meant to help the government get loans to pay public sector salaries and fill budget gaps aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine.

    Foreign investors are pulling out of Tunisia, and ratings agencies are on alert. Inflation and joblessness are on the rise, and many Tunisians, once proud of their country’s relative prosperity, now struggle to make ends meet.

    An election debacle a week ago has made matters worse: Just 11% of voters took part in a first-round vote for a new parliament meant to replace a legislature disbanded last year by President Kais Saied. Opposition figures, including from the popular Islamist movement Ennahdha, are demanding that he step down, and unions are threatening a general strike.

    Saied himself designed the elections to replace and reshape the parliament, as part of broad reforms that bolster his powers and that he says will solve Tunisia’s multiple crises. But voter disillusionment with the ruling class amid dire economic troubles contributed to a near-boycott of the election.

    Tunisia’s Western allies, like the United States and France, have expressed concern and urged the president to forge an inclusive political dialogue that would benefit the sluggish economy. Tunisia was the birthplace of Arab Spring democratic uprisings 12 years ago.

    Saied rejected criticism over the low voter turnout, saying what really matters is the second round of voting Jan. 19. He says his reforms are needed to rid the country of the corrupt political class and Tunisia’s foreign enemies. He lashed out at his political foes in the Ennahdha party, which had the largest number of lawmakers in the previous parliament, and ordered the arrest this week of its vice-president and former Prime Minister Ali Larayedeh on terrorism-related charges.

    “Saied seems impervious to criticism and intent on bulldozing his way to a new political system no matter how few Tunisians are engaged in the process,” said Monica Marks, a Tunisia expert and professor of Middle East politics at the New York University in Abu Dhabi.

    “No Tunisian asked Saied to reinvent the wheel of Tunisian politics, to write a new constitution and revamp the election law,” Marks said. “What Tunisians have been asking for is a more respectful government that meets their bread-and-butter needs and gives them economic dignity.”

    Saied’s promises to stabilize the economy helped ensure his landslide victory in the 2019 presidential election.

    But he has yet to present an economic recovery plan or strategy for his deeply indebted government to secure funds to pay for food and energy subsidies. The president has sidelined economists in state institutions, stalling the country’s budget and souring the environment for foreign investors.

    Tunisians have been hit with soaring food prices and shortages of fuel and basic staples like sugar, vegetable oil and rice in recent months. Inflation has reached 9.1%, the highest in three decades, according to the National Institute of Statistics, and unemployment is at 18% percent, according to the World Bank.

    “President Saied naively seems to think that if only he can complete his political roadmap, the economy will fix itself,” said Geoff Porter, a New York City-based North Africa risk assessment analyst, in a recent brief.

    Tunisia reached a preliminary agreement with the IMF on a $1.9 billion loan in October. It would enable the heavily indebted Tunisian government to access loans from other donors over a four-year period in return for sweeping economic reforms that include shrinking the public administration sector — one of the world’s largest — and a gradual lifting of subsidies.

    The agreement was subject to the IMF executive board’s approval, scheduled for Dec. 19. The state news agency TAP reported that “the government and the IMF have agreed to postpone” the final decision on the loan to give Tunisian officials “more time to present a new reform plan for the country’s sluggish economy.”

    Tunisia desperately needs access to the special drawing rights in order to avoid defaulting on external debt and to stabilize the economy, Porter said. He added: “Without the IMF funds, Tunisia’s economic freefall will accelerate.”

    Foreign investors operating in Tunisia are worried.

    Pharmaceutical manufacturers Novartis and Bayer are leaving the country because they are not getting paid by the insufficiently funded state pharmaceutical distributor.

    Royal Dutch Shell, which operates two gas fields that accounted for 40% of Tunisia’s domestic production, announced in November it will exit Tunisia by year’s end. Despite hype over the country’s hydrogen sector, nothing has been done to attract investors as the country’s regulatory institutions are paralyzed by Saied’s political moves, Porter said.

    The president has also lost the tentative support of the country’s powerful trade union, the UGTT, for the IMF-prescribed reform plan in exchange for a bailout.

    UGTT leader Noureddine Taboubi agreed in August to discuss a new “social contract” to help Tunisians in financial distress, the state TAP news agency reported. But Taboubi, whose influential union represents 67% of Tunisia’s work force, mainly employed in the public sector, recently pulled back on his commitment. He renewed his opposition to the IMF’s main demands to receive a loan program: a public sector wage freeze and restructuring of state-owned enterprises.

    ———

    Bouazza ben Bouazza contributed from Tunis, Tunisia.

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  • China blasts US defense bill while Taiwan welcomes it

    China blasts US defense bill while Taiwan welcomes it

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    China has blasted an annual U.S. defense spending bill for hyping up the “China threat” while Taiwan welcomed the legislation, saying it shows U.S. support for the self-governing island that China says must come under its rule

    BEIJING — China blasted an annual U.S. defense spending bill for hyping up the “China threat” while Taiwan welcomed the legislation, saying it demonstrated U.S. support for the self-governing island that China says must come under its rule.

    “China deplores and firmly opposes this U.S. move,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement posted online Saturday, calling the new law a serious political provocation that blatantly interferes in China’s internal affairs.

    President Joe Biden signed the $858 billion defense bill into law in Washington on Friday. It includes about $45 billion more than Biden had requested as lawmakers look to offset inflation and boost the nation’s military competitiveness with China and Russia.

    The bill also repealed a COVID-19 vaccination requirement for U.S. troops.

    In the Indo-Pacific region, the legislation authorizes increased security cooperation with Taiwan and requires expanded cooperation with India on emerging defense technologies, readiness and logistics.

    A Taiwan Foreign Ministry statement thanked the U.S. Congress “for showing the great importance it attaches to Taiwan-U.S. relations and strengthening Taiwan’s security.”

    China objects to U.S. support for Taiwan, an island of 23 million people off its east coast. The two split during the civil war that brought the communists to power in China in 1949.

    The Chinese Foreign Ministry statement said the U.S. defense bill “severely affects peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”

    China staged major military exercises around Taiwan in August after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island. The Chinese military sent 39 planes and three ships toward Taiwan earlier this week in a relatively large show of force.

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  • Facebook parent Meta will pay $725M to settle user data case

    Facebook parent Meta will pay $725M to settle user data case

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    SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook’s corporate parent has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a lawsuit alleging the world’s largest social media platform allowed millions of its users’ personal information to be fed to Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump’s victorious presidential campaign in 2016.

    Terms of the settlement reached by Meta Platforms, the holding company for Facebook and Instagram, were disclosed in court documents filed late Thursday. It will still need to be approved by a judge in a San Francisco federal court hearing set for March.

    The case sprang from 2018 revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a firm with ties to Trump political strategist Steve Bannon, had paid a Facebook app developer for access to the personal information of about 87 million users of the platform. That data was then used to target U.S. voters during the 2016 campaign that culminated in Trump’s election as the 45th president.

    Uproar over the revelations led to a contrite Zuckerberg being grilled by U.S. lawmakers during a high-profile congressional hearing and spurred calls for people to delete their Facebook accounts. Even though Facebook’s growth has stalled as more people connect and entertain themselves on rival services such as TikTok, the social network still boasts about 2 billion users worldwide, including nearly 200 million in the U.S. and Canada.

    The lawsuit, which had been seeking to be certified as a class action representing Facebook users, had asserted the privacy breach proved Facebook is a “data broker and surveillance firm,” as well as a social network.

    The two sides reached a temporary settlement agreement in August, just a few weeks before a Sept. 20 deadline for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his long-time chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, to submit to depositions.

    The company based in Menlo Park, California, said in statement Friday it pursued a settlement because it was in the best interest of its community and shareholders.

    “Over the last three years we revamped our approach to privacy and implemented a comprehensive privacy program,” said spokesperson Dina El-Kassaby Luce. “We look forward to continuing to build services people love and trust with privacy at the forefront.”

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  • US judge rejects Maduro ally’s claim of diplomatic immunity

    US judge rejects Maduro ally’s claim of diplomatic immunity

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    MIAMI — A federal judge in Miami on Friday rejected attempts by a close ally of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to shield himself from criminal charges, ruling Alex Saab isn’t entitled to diplomatic immunity in the U.S. and must stand trial on accusations of money laundering.

    The l egal fight over Saab’s purported diplomatic status was being closely watched by Maduro’s socialist government, which has demanded the release of the Colombian-born businessman as part of furtive negotiations with the Biden administration.

    The U.S. in 2019 stopped recognizing Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate leader, and Judge Robert Scola cited that determination as a basis for rejecting Saab’s motion to dismiss the criminal charges.

    He also sided with prosecutors who raised doubts about the legitimacy of several official Venezuelan credentials that Saab relied on to bolster his claim to diplomatic status — and questioned why he never mentioned his purported diplomatic status in several secret meetings with U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents.

    “The evidence suggests that the Maduro regime and its accomplices have fabricated documents to cloak Saab Moran in a diplomatic dress that does not befit him, all in an effort to exploit the law of diplomatic immunities and prevent his extradition to the United States,” the judge wrote.

    For more than two years, almost since the time of his arrest in Africa on a U.S. warrant, Saab has insisted he is a Venezuelan diplomat targeted for his work helping his adopted homeland circumvent American economic sanctions.

    Saab, 51, was pulled from a private jet in the summer of 2020 during a stop in Cape Verde en route to Iran, where he was heading to negotiate oil deals on behalf of Maduro’s government.

    He is charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering tied to a bribery scheme that allegedly siphoned off $350 million through state contracts to build affordable housing for Venezuela’s government.

    At a hearing Tuesday, Scola pressed Saab’s legal team of seven attorneys to explain why he should depart from the position taken by the U.S. State Department, which said Saab isn’t entitled to diplomatic immunity in the U.S.

    The U.S. since 2019 has recognized opposition lawmaker Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate leader — a position repeatedly affirmed by U.S. federal courts in numerous lawsuits brought by unpaid creditors seeking to seize the country’s overseas oil assets.

    Scola likened Saab’s situation to a hypothetical situation in which former President Donald Trump — who hasn’t recognized his loss in the 2020 election — were to issue passports with the supposed imprimatur of the U.S. government.

    “It is clear that the United States does not recognize the Maduro regime to represent the official government of Venezuela,” Scola wrote. “Accordingly, any claim to diplomatic immunity asserted by a representative of the Maduro regime must also be considered illegitimate.”

    Saab’s attorney’s presented as evidence what they claim are diplomatic notes exchanged between Iran and Venezuela discussing what was to be Saab’s third trip to Iran. At the time of his arrest, Saab was also purportedly carrying a sealed letter from Maduro to Iran’s supreme leader seeking his full support for a planned deal to import fuel at a time of long gas lines in Venezuela.

    “It’s like if you were to kidnap someone, bring them to your home and then charge them with trespassing,” Lee Casey, one of Saab’s attorney, said at this week’s hearing.

    But prosecutors presented evidence that some of the documents bolstering Saab’s claim — among them a Venezuelan diplomatic passport and a presidential decree published in Venezuela’s Official Gazette — were possibly falsified.

    “At best he was a courier,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Alex Kramer said during proceedings. “But being a courier of diplomatic letters does not make one a diplomat.”

    Scola seemed to agree. He also found that even if Saab was a properly appointed special envoy, he would not be entitled to in-transit immunity under international treaties and conventions that protect only members of permanent diplomatic missions. Doing so would make a defendant automatically “untouchable” in the U.S. so long as he had a free pass from another country making him the head of a temporary mission, he said.

    “To immunize heads of temporary missions in the way Saab Moran suggests would open the door to the abuse of diplomatic immunities in a way that could seriously frustrate cross-border law enforcement activities,” Scola wrote.

    Saab was initially held up as a trophy by the Trump administration, which made no secret of its efforts to oust Maduro, who himself is wanted on U.S. drug trafficking charges.

    But the criminal case has become a major sticking point as the Biden administration seeks to improve relations with Venezuela and tap new oil supplies to make up for a loss of exports from Russia following sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine

    The tug of war has been further complicated by the revelation that Saab, prior to his arrest, had been signed up as an informant by the DEA and had been providing it with information about corruption in Maduro’s inner circle.

    For months, speculation had been swirling that Saab could walk free as part of some sort of prisoner swap for several Americans detained in Caracas. A similar deal for two nephews of Maduro convicted in New York on drug charges secured the release in October of seven other Americans detained in Venezuela. The Biden administration has insisted that no such negotiations are taking place.

    ———

    Joshua Goodman on Twitter: @APJoshGoodman

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  • Alaska lawmaker with Oath Keepers ties eligible for office

    Alaska lawmaker with Oath Keepers ties eligible for office

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    ANCHORAGE, Alaska — An Alaska lawmaker with ties to the far-right Oath Keepers group is eligible to hold office, a state judge ruled Friday.

    Superior Court Judge Jack McKenna issued the ruling after overseeing a trial this month in the case against Republican state Rep. David Eastman. The decision can be appealed.

    The ruling found that Eastman is a member of the Oath Keepers, but that he “does not and did not possess a specific intent to further the Oath Keeper’s words or actions aimed at overthrowing the United States government.”

    Eastman was sued by Randall Kowalke, who was among those who earlier this year filed challenges to Eastman’s candidacy for the Alaska House with the state Division of Elections. The division determined Eastman was eligible to run for reelection, but Kowalke’s attorneys argued the division failed to investigate Eastman’s eligibility under the so-called disloyalty clause of the state constitution.

    That provision states that no one who “advocates, or who aids or belongs to any party or organization or association which advocates, the overthrow by force or violence of the government of the United States or of the State shall be qualified to hold” public office.

    Eastman won reelection last month but McKenna had previously ordered certification of the election results be delayed pending trial and further order from the court. The new legislative session begins Jan. 17.

    Nationally, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and a Florida chapter leader have been convicted of seditious conspiracy related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. A trial against four other Oath Keepers is ongoing.

    Eastman has acknowledged his membership in the Oath Keepers but said during the trial that he sees the group as dormant. Eastman said he was in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 for a speech by then-President Donald Trump but did not participate in the riot. Eastman has not been accused of any crimes. He has not disavowed the Oath Keepers.

    The judge found that his membership in the far-right group doesn’t disqualify him from public office.

    The judge’s order is on hold pending a possible appeal. A hearing is scheduled for Jan. 4 to discuss whether an appeal has been filed.

    “We’re obviously disappointed with the outcome, but we’re proud of the case we put on,” Kowalke’s attorney, Goriune Dudukgian, said in an email. “We will make a final decision on an appeal at some point next week.”

    Eastman’s attorney, Joe Miller, said in a text message that they’re pleased with the ruling.

    “We are especially glad to see the rejection of Plaintiff’s argument that those who simply attended a speech given by the President somehow participated in an insurrection,” Miller said.

    Rhodes, who is awaiting sentencing, testified on Eastman’s behalf, including providing at-times difficult-to-understand testimony from inside his cell. He said he did not direct anyone to go into the Capitol and said a decision by some to go inside was “stupid,” in part, because it “exposed us to persecution” by “political enemies.”

    Miller in court documents said “none of the plea agreements, and none of the indictments, and none of the convictions that have heretofore been obtained, reference any conduct that qualifies as an attempt to overthrow the government.”

    Sam Jackson, who has studied the Oath Keepers, is an assistant professor at the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity at the University of Albany. He said Eastman is the first person he is aware of facing a challenge to his eligibility to hold office specifically due to ties to the Oath Keepers.

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  • US maritime liability rules changed after 2019 boat fire

    US maritime liability rules changed after 2019 boat fire

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    LOS ANGELES — Federal lawmakers have changed 19th-century maritime liability rules for accident victims and their families in response to the 2019 boat fire off the coast of Southern California that killed 34 people.

    The Small Passenger Vessel Liability Fairness Act was included in the $858 billion defense spending bill that President Joe Biden signed Friday.

    It updates the Limitation of Liability Act of 1851, under which boat owners were able to limit their liability to the value of the remains of the vessel. In the case of the Conception, the scuba diving boat where an inferno trapped 33 passengers and one crew member in the bunkroom below deck off Santa Barbara three years ago, the boat was a total loss.

    Now owners of small passenger vessels can be held legally responsible for damages in accidents and incidents, regardless of the boat’s value afterward.

    The final version of the law, sponsored last year by California Democrats Rep. Salud Carbajal and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, is not retroactive and will not apply in the case of the Conception, one of the deadliest maritime tragedies in recent U.S. history.

    “This is an important change, inspired by the families of the 34 precious lives lost on the Conception in 2019, that will ensure families of future maritime disasters do not face the same antiquated laws when seeking the support they deserve,” Carbajal, who represents the area where the disaster occurred, said in a news release.

    The 1851 law is a time-tested legal maneuver that has been successfully employed by owners of vessels from the Titanic to countless others, some as small as Jet Skis. It has its origins in 18th-century England and was meant to promote the shipping business.

    A suit filed by the Conception’s owners to limit their liability remains ongoing in federal court.

    The Passenger Vessel Association, a trade group, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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