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Tag: United States government

  • GOP lawmakers accuse Fed of being lax before bank failure

    GOP lawmakers accuse Fed of being lax before bank failure

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican lawmakers accused top bank regulators Wednesday of dawdling as Silicon Valley Bank hurtled toward the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history and questioned whether tougher regulations would have made a difference.

    Regulators closed the bank March 10, shaking the U.S. financial system and triggering fears of a broader banking crisis. But Federal Reserve supervisors had first raised questions about Silicon Valley’s risky practices far earlier — in 2021 — and had warned the bank’s management about them in the fall of that year.

    “That doesn’t sound like a very urgent supervisory process,” Rep. French Hill, an Arkansas Republican, said at Wednesday’s hearing of the House Financial Services Committee into the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and of New York-based Signature Bank on March 12. Signature Bank’s collapse was the third-biggest in the nation’s history.

    In response to the crisis, some Democrats are calling for stricter bank regulations. Specifically, they want to undo a law, championed by the Trump administration five years ago, that rolled back the strictest regulations on all but the very biggest banks — those with assets of more than $250 billion.

    The 2018 law allowed the Fed to apply tougher oversight only on a case-by-case basis of banks with assets between $100 billion and $250 billion, a category that included both Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. The Fed official who oversees bank regulation, Michael Barr, agreed Wednesday that the Fed had had ”substantial discretion″ to deal with Silicon Valley Bank.

    The Fed is conducting its own review of its supervision of Silicon Valley Bank, due May 1. Barr said the review would, among other things, look into why Fed officials couldn’t compel the bank’s management to fix the problems.

    Before enacting tough new regulations on banks, said Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, a Missouri Republican, “How about enforcing the existing ones first?″

    Rep. Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat, also questioned Barr about the apparent lack of follow-up by Fed regulators once they had rated Silicon Valley Bank’s management “deficient” in July 2022. Himes suggested that Congress consider requiring banks to respond to concerns raised by supervisors in a timely manner.

    “We need to tighten up the process,” Himes said. “We need to think about automatic mechanisms that when a finding of deficiency is made… kick in.”

    Regulators have said that Silicon Valley Bank, the go-to institution for California tech startups, was an “idiosyncratic″ case and that the overall U.S. banking system remains sound. Silicon Valley had made a high-risk bet that interest rates would fall. When they instead rose as the Fed aggressively increased its benchmark rate to fight inflation, the value of the bank’s vast bond portfolio plummeted.

    News of its financial distress led panicked large depositors to yank money out of the bank — a stunning $42 billion on March 9. Depositors were expected to withdraw an additional $100 billion the next day. In response, regulators intervened to take control of the bank and stop the bank run.

    The vast majority of Silicon Valley Bank’s deposits exceeded the federal deposit insurance limit of $250,000. Worried that its failure would shake public faith in American banks, the federal government decided to protect all deposits at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, even those exceeding $250,000.

    ___

    AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this report.

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  • Vice President Harris’ trip aims to deepen US ties in Africa

    Vice President Harris’ trip aims to deepen US ties in Africa

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris will try to deepen and reframe U.S. relationships in Africa during a weeklong trip that is the latest and highest profile outreach by the Biden administration as it moves to counter China’s growing influence.

    Harris plans to visit Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia, focusing on economic development, climate change, food security and a rising youth population. She is scheduled to arrive in Accra, Ghana’s capital, on Sunday. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, is traveling with her.

    “For too long, the U.S. foreign policy establishment has treated Africa like some kind of extra credit project and not part of the core curriculum,” said Michelle Gavin, an Africa expect at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former U.S. ambassador to Botswana. “I see a big effort to change that thinking now. But it takes time.”

    In Africa, Harris will be closely watched as the first person of color and first woman to serve as America’s vice president. Her mother was born in India and her father was born in Jamaica; Harris was raised in California.

    “Everybody is excited about Kamala Harris,” said Idayat Hassan, director of the Centre for Democracy and Development in Abuja, Nigeria. “You can be anything that you can think of — that’s what she represents to many of us.”

    A centerpiece of Harris’ trip will be a speech in Accra and a visit to Cape Coast Castle, where enslaved Africans were once loaded onto ships for America. Harris also plans to meet with leaders of each country she visits and lay a wreath to commemorate the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania.

    Her itinerary also includes several less traditional stops intended to highlight the dynamic future of a continent where the median age is just 19.

    Harris plans to visit a recording studio and meet with female entrepreneurs in Accra and stop by a tech incubator in Dar es Salaam. In Lusaka, Zambia’s capital, Harris is expected to meet with business and philanthropic leaders to talk about expanding access to digital and financial systems.

    Emhoff has a similar focus for his events. While in Ghana, he plans a town hall meeting with actors from a local television show, will attend a girls basketball clinic and tour a chocolate company owned by women.

    The hope, administration officials said, is to portray Africa as a place for investment, not just aid packages, a theme that Harris emphasized in December during a U.S.-Africa summit in Washington.

    “I am an optimist about what lies ahead for Africa and, by extension, for the world because of you — because of your energy, your ambition, and your ability to transform seemingly intractable problems into opportunities,” she said. “Simply put: your ability to see what can be, unburdened by what has been.”

    The trip includes three nights in Ghana, two nights in Tanzania and one in Zambia, before Harris returns to Washington on April 2.

    “It’s a trip about supporting reformers,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, co-director of the Africa Security Initiative at the Brookings Institution. “All three countries have been going through significant challenges and significant changes.”

    Ghana faces a debt crisis and high inflation, dragging down an economy that was once among the region’s strongest. It’s also wary about instability from Islamist militants and Russian mercenaries who operate in nations north of Ghana.

    Tanzania has its first female president, and she’s lifted bans on opposition parties and rallies. Zambia has made its own changes, such as decriminalizing defamation of the president. However, democratic progress is believed to be fragile in both places.

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and first lady Jill Biden have already been to Africa on their own trips. President Joe Biden is expected to go later this year.

    Harris will be returning to Zambia for the first time since she visited as a young girl when her maternal grandfather worked there. He was an Indian civil servant who helped with refugee resettlement after Zambia achieved independence from Britain.

    Harris writes in her book that “grandpa was one of my favorite people in the world and one of the earliest and most lasting influences in my life.”

    The U.S.-Africa summit held in December was the only one since 2014, which was hosted by President Barack Obama. Although Washington’s approach to Africa has featured some historic success — for example, President George W. Bush’s initiative to fight HIV/AIDS has saved millions of lives — there’s also been periods of neglect.

    “There’s huge doubt and skepticism about American staying power,” said Daniel Russel, a former State Department official who is now at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “They’re very familiar with American promises that peter out and don’t amount to much.”

    It’s a sharp contrast with China, which has led far-reaching infrastructure projects and expanded telecommunications operations there as well.

    John Kirby, a White House national security spokesman, said this past week that African leaders are “beginning to realize that China is not really their friend.”

    “China’s interests in the region are purely selfish, as opposed to the United States,” he said. “We are truly committed to trying to help our African friends deal with a spate of challenges.”

    Senior administration officials have been careful not to portray Harris’ trip as another move in a geopolitical rivalry, an approach that could alienate African leaders who are wary of taking sides between global superpowers.

    Now they wait to see what Harris and the United States can offer over the next week.

    “She has a very good reputation in Africa, because of her profile,” said Rama Yade, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. “But beyond that, very quickly, the public opinion in the three countries will have expectations.”

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  • TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew: 3 things to know

    TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew: 3 things to know

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    TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified Thursday at a congressional hearing over concerns about user data collected by the popular video-sharing app and potential Chinese spying.

    Under his helm, TikTok reached 150 million users in the U.S., the majority of them teens and young adults who are attracted to the app’s simple interface and addictive algorithm that serves up short videos on just about any imaginable topic.

    Lawmakers have said they’re worried about American data falling into the hands of the Chinese government and claim it threatens national security and user privacy and could be used to promote pro-Beijing propaganda and misinformation.

    Chew attempted to persuade lawmakers not to pursue a ban on the app or force Chinese parent company ByteDance to give up its ownership stake, testifying that TikTok prioritizes the safety of young users. He says the company plans to store all U.S. user data on servers maintained and owned by the software giant Oracle.

    Here’s a closer look at Chew:

    WHAT IS HIS BACKGROUND?

    Chew, 40, is a native of Singapore, where he lives with his wife, Vivian Kao, and their two children. He graduated in 2006 from University College London and worked for two years at Goldman Sachs before moving to the U.S. to pursue a master’s degree at Harvard Business School. Chew had a two-year internship with Facebook.

    After earning his MBA, he became a partner at venture capital firm DST Global, where he worked for five years and helped facilitate investment in the company that became ByteDance. He then worked for five years at Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone company, before being appointed TikTok CEO in 2021, replacing Kevin Mayer, a former Disney executive. Chew reports to ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo.

    WHAT’S HIS REPUTATION?

    The U.S. public knows relatively little about Chew compared with Silicon Valley social media giants such as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, said Brooke Erin Duffy, who studies social media platforms as an associate professor of communications at Cornell University.

    “Chew has been in the background on public discourse until now, so he doesn’t have the same reputation we would associate with the Silicon Valley set, especially Zuckerberg,” Duffy said.

    Most Americans likely first heard of Chew when he released a video this week speaking directly to TikTok’s U.S. users, she said, “so he doesn’t have the same reputation as someone we know, and (we) don’t have sense of who he is.”

    But Chew is well-respected within the U.S. and China tech communities, and was considered a good fit for TikTok because of his background in investment banking and his time at Facebook and DST Global, said Dan Ives, managing director of New York-based Wedbush Securities.

    “He gained a lot of respect just by taking that high risk, in-the-hot seat role at TikTok,” Ives said, adding that the company likely thought he was the right person to ease tensions with U.S. lawmakers.

    HOW DID HE DO IN HIS TESTIMONY?

    Chew’s decision to emphasize TikTok’s reach in the U.S. might have backfired, and “actually strengthened U.S. lawmakers’ argument that TikTok poses a threat to both national security and young people,” said Jasmine Enberg, a social media analyst at Insider Intelligence.

    Enberg said there was little Chew could say to convince lawmakers that TikTok is not monitored or influenced in some way by the Chinese government.

    Ives said Chew’s testimony was always going to be fraught, but his lack of concrete answers about data access and security was “a disaster” and likely set the stage for a ban.

    “It was a perfect storm and lawmakers were ready,” Ives said.

    But Shelly Palmer, a professor of advanced media at Syracuse University who studies social network business models, said Chew did the best he could given the grilling he received from lawmakers who “in my opinion were not actually listening” but instead were grandstanding.

    “I don’t think he has the ability, because of who he is and what he does, to be satisfying to this audience,” said Palmer, adding that he believed Chew’s answers were not unlike those given by CEOs from U.S.-based social media companies who have been questioned in the past about privacy.

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    Webber reported from Fenton, Michigan. Associated Press writer Barbara Ortutay in Oakland, California, contributed to this story.

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  • France bans TikTok, Twitter from government staff phones

    France bans TikTok, Twitter from government staff phones

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    PARIS (AP) — France announced Friday it is banning the “recreational” use of TikTok, Twitter, Instagram and other apps on government employees’ phones because of concern about insufficient data security measures.

    The move follows similar restrictions on TikTok in democratic countries amid fears about the popular video-sharing app’s Chinese connections. But the French decision also encompassed other platforms widely used by government officials, lawmakers and President Emmanuel Macron himself.

    The French Minister for Transformation and Public Administration, Stanislas Guerini, said in a statement that ’’recreational″ apps aren’t secure enough to be used in state administrative services and ”could present a risk for the protection of data.”

    The ban will be monitored by France’s cybersecurity agency. The statement did not specify which apps are banned but noted that the decision came after other governments took measures targeting TikTok.

    Guerini’s office said in a message to The Associated Press that the ban also will include Twitter, Instagram, Netflix, gaming apps like Candy Crush and dating apps.

    Exceptions will be allowed. If an official wants to use a banned app for professional purposes, like public communication, they can request permission to do so.

    Case in point: Guerini posted the announcement of the ban on Twitter.

    The U.S., Britain, the European Union and others have banned TikTok on government phones. Western governments worry Chinese authorities could force TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance Ltd., to hand over data on international users or push pro-Beijing narratives.

    The company’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, pushed back on assertions that TikTok or ByteDance are tools of the Chinese government during questioning by U.S. lawmakers Thursday. The company has been reiterating that 60% of ByteDance is owned by global institutional investors.

    A law China implemented in 2017 requires companies to give the government any personal data relevant to the country’s national security. There’s no evidence that TikTok has turned over such data, but fears abound due to the vast amount of user data it collects.

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  • Why does US see Chinese-owned TikTok as a security threat?

    Why does US see Chinese-owned TikTok as a security threat?

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    BEIJING (AP) — U.S. lawmakers have grilled TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew about data security and harmful content, with some pushing to ban the popular short-video app nationwide.

    Chew, a native of Singapore, told the lawmakers that TikTok prioritizes user safety as he sought to avert a U.S. ban on the app by downplaying its ties to China.

    Both Republican and Democratic representatives aggressively questioned Chew on topics including TikTok’s content moderation practices, its data security plans, and past spying on journalists.

    Here’s a look at some of the concerns about TikTok and its ownership.

    WHY DOES WASHINGTON SAY TIKTOK IS A THREAT?

    TikTok, which has over 150 million American users, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Chinese technology firm ByteDance Ltd., which appoints its executives.

    ByteDance is based in Beijing but registered in the Cayman Islands, as is common for privately owned Chinese companies. Its headquarters is in Beijing’s northwestern Haidian district, home to key universities and a hub for tech startups. TikTok has dual headquarters in Singapore and Los Angeles.

    Founded by Chinese entrepreneur Zhang Yiming in 2012, ByteDance is said to be valued at around $220 billion — nearly half of its 2021 valuation of $400 billion. Publicly traded Chinese tech companies and privately held ones like ByteDance have plunged in value since the ruling Communist Party tightened control over the industry with anti-monopoly and data security crackdowns.

    Western governments worry Chinese authorities could force ByteDance to hand over TikTok data on American users, exposing sensitive information. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said Friday that China’s government has never and will not ask companies to “collect or provide data, information or intelligence” held in foreign countries, adding the U.S. “has not provided any evidence so far to prove that TikTok threatens U.S. national security.”

    ByteDance says 60% of its shares are owned by non-Chinese investors such as U.S investment firms Carlyle Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Japan’s SoftBank Group. Employees own 20% and its founders the remaining 20%.

    Some details of the relationship between TikTok and ByteDance remain unclear to outsiders.

    WHAT CHINESE RULES WORRY WESTERN GOVERNMENTS?

    China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law states that “any organization” must assist or cooperate with state intelligence work while a separate 2014 Counter-Espionage Law says “relevant organizations … may not refuse” to collect evidence for an investigation.

    Since ByteDance, which owns TikTok, is a Chinese company, it would likely have to abide by these rules if Chinese authorities asked it to turn over data.

    Laws and regulations are only one aspect of the Communist Party’s pervasive control. There are no legal limits on the party’s powers. The authorities also can threaten to cancel licenses, conduct regulatory or tax investigations and use other penalties to compel compliance by Chinese and foreign companies operating in China.

    The party sometimes conveys orders using “window guidance,” or informal communication in private. It has used crackdowns to tighten control over technology companies and force them to align with its goals.

    The Chinese government has also sought more direct control over companies by getting seats on boards of directors.

    MUST TIKTOK TURN OVER DATA IF THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT SAYS SO, EVEN WITH “ PROJECT TEXAS?”

    TikTok has promised to protect data on American users by storing it on servers operated by an outside contractor, Oracle Corp., in what’s known as “Project Texas.” Chew, the TikTok CEO, said all new U.S. user data is stored in the United States and the company should finish deleting older U.S. data from non-Oracle servers this year.

    The fear is that ByteDance would have to hand over information it obtained from TikTok if ordered to do so by Chinese authorities, but Chew has said Project Texas will put U.S. data out of China’s reach.

    ByteDance disclosed in December that four employees gained access to data about reporters and people connected to them while looking for how information about the company was leaked. Chew told the lawmakers China-based ByteDance employees may still have access to some U.S. data but that won’t be the case once Project Texas is complete.

    In November, TikTok’s head of privacy for Europe said some employees in China had access to information about users in Britain and the European Union.

    DOES THE COMMUNIST PARTY HAVE ANY INFLUENCE ON BYTEDANCE?

    In Thursday’s hearing, lawmakers repeatedly tried to pin down Chew on whether ByteDance had links to China’s communist rulers.

    He deflected questions about whether staff and top executives are Communist Party members.

    “I do know that the founder himself is not a member of the Communist Party, but we don’t know the political affiliation of our employees because that’s not something we ask,” Chew said.

    When questioned whether ByteDance was effectively controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, Chew said he disagreed.

    After a lawmaker said the Communist Party holds a “golden share” in ByteDance that allows it to control one ByteDance board seat, Chew said, “That’s not correct.”

    In China, so-called golden shares held by official investment funds are one way for Beijing to gain more oversight over business by giving them a 1% stake in companies.

    Chew pushed back when lawmakers claimed that the Communist Party owns shares in ByteDance that give it a vote in how the company is run. “The Communist Party doesn’t have voting rights in ByteDance,” Chew said.

    ByteDance’s main Chinese subsidiary is the license-holder for some of its video and information platforms that only serve the China market.

    WHAT IS DOUYIN AND WHAT IS TIKTOK’S RELATIONSHIP WITH IT?

    Douyin is ByteDance’s short-video platform for the China market. It’s similar to TikTok, but its content is restricted by Chinese censorship rules that prohibit material deemed subversive or pornographic – a point emphasized by U.S. lawmakers worried about harmful content viewed by young people.

    The Communist Party’s extensive internet filters block most users in China from seeing TikTok. ByteDance has said TikTok has “no affiliation” with Beijing ByteDance Technology Co., the subsidiary that operates Douyin; Toutiao, a news and short-video platform, and other services.

    HOW DID CHINA REACT TO THE TIKTOK CEO’S WASHINGTON TESTIMONY?

    Most of the social media reaction in China was sympathetic to Chew, with praise for how he handled the hostile questions lobbed at him.

    Comments on Douyin and microblogging platform Weibo were critical of U.S. lawmakers for asking Chew leading or “trap” questions. Many commenters used a Chinese saying that means “If you want to accuse someone, there’s always a way.”

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    Associated Press Business Writer Kelvin Chan in London contributed to this report.

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  • Biden’s moves on Alaska drilling, TikTok test young voters

    Biden’s moves on Alaska drilling, TikTok test young voters

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    TEMPE, Ariz. (AP) — Recent moves by President Joe Biden to pressure TikTok over its Chinese ownership and approve oil drilling in an untapped area of Alaska are testing the loyalty of young voters, a group that’s largely been in his corner.

    Youth turnout surged in the three elections since Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, helping Biden eke out victories in swing states in 2020, pick up a Democratic Senate seat in the 2022 election and stem potential losses in the House.

    But the 80-year-old president has never been the favorite candidate of young liberals itching for a new generation of American leadership. As Biden gears up for an expected reelection campaign, a potential TikTok ban and the Alaska drilling could weigh him down.

    Meanwhile, his plan to wipe out billions of dollars in student loan debt is in jeopardy at the Supreme Court. The effort, announced shortly before last year’s midterms, was an attempt by Biden to keep a promise he made after defeating progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary campaign in 2020.

    The risk for Biden is less that young left-of-center voters will vote Republican and more that they would sit out an uninspiring election altogether.

    “I’m a Democrat, but I’m not voting for Biden,” said Mark Buehlmann, a 20-year-old Arizona State University student who said he likely would abstain if Biden is the Democratic nominee, as expected. “He’s maybe capable of doing a good job, but he’s not capable of gathering the troops, rallying the people. Especially the Democratic voter base. I don’t think he’s a strong candidate.”

    TikTok allows users, 150 million of whom are in the United States, to post short, creative videos for friends and strangers. Its algorithm has an uncanny ability to figure out what interests its users and serve up videos they’ll enjoy. It’s become a supremely popular — some say addictive — place for young people to find entertainment and community.

    Western governments are growing increasingly worried that TikTok’s owner, Beijing-based ByteDance, might give browsing history or other data about users to China’s government or promote propaganda and disinformation. The U.S. and other nations have banned TikTok from government-owned devices, as have several states.

    The U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment, part of Biden’s Treasury Department, has threatened to ban TikTok if ByteDance doesn’t sell its stake in the app, according to a Wall Street Journal report this month.

    Trump tried to ban TikTok in 2020, but the move was blocked in court and later rescinded when Biden took office and ordered an in-depth study of the issue.

    ByteDance says it’s working to address security concerns and has plans to route traffic through servers owned by Oracle, a Silicon Valley-based tech company.

    Biden administration officials insist that political concerns aren’t weighing into the national security review underway, but they’re also not blind to it.

    Both political parties have reoriented around staking out tougher economic and security positions on China’s rise, and Biden has come under increasing pressure from GOP lawmakers to take action against TikTok.

    In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo offered hyperbolically, “The politician in me thinks you’re going to literally lose every voter under 35, forever.”

    But it’s clear that the Biden White House and his likely reelection campaign are keenly aware of the app’s massive domestic reach and demographic skew toward Democratic-leaning younger voters.

    Highlighting Biden’s balancing act, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a progressive New York Democrat popular on the left, held a news conference this past week with TikTok creators who have built popular and profitable channels on the social network “in support of free expression.”

    Lawmakers grilled TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew for nearly six hours Thursday over data security and harmful content. They responded skeptically during a tense House committee hearing to his assurances that the app prioritizes user safety and should not be banned due to its Chinese connections.

    “Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country,” Chew said.

    In interviews at Arizona State, one of the largest college campuses in the U.S. and a contributor to Biden’s narrow 10,000-vote win in the swing state, young people described a TikTok ban as somewhere between an annoyance and an inevitability — but not something that would change their views of the president.

    “Most people don’t really think about those kinds of things,” Lucas Vittor, a 19-year-old business administration student from Houston, said of a TikTok ban. “I think that they’ll probably just see it as, ‘He’s an oppressive leader, an old dude, he doesn’t know about social media.’”

    If TikTok disappears, another app will emerge to capture the attention of young people, Vittor predicted. Other social media platforms, including YouTube and Instagram, have incorporated similar algorithm-driven video features, though some find them clunky compared with TikTok.

    “It’s not really Biden’s issue,” said Ginny Xu, a 20-year-old chemical engineering student from Goodyear, Arizona. “It’s more of a bipartisan thing — ‘safety’ from China.”

    Losing access to TikTok would be disappointing, Xu said, but it wouldn’t dissuade her from voting for Biden if there’s no better Democratic choice.

    Her friend, 20-year-old chemical engineering student Maddie Bruce, agreed.

    “I just am not a big Joe Biden fan,” Bruce said. She would prefer to see another Democrat run, but she would still vote for Biden, she said.

    Forcing TikTok’s Chinese parent to sell its stake in the U.S. company could provide a convenient middle ground: minimizing the national security threat while avoiding having access to the app cut off for tens of millions of users.

    The young have never voted at the same rates as their parents and grandparents, but their participation has ticked up markedly since the start of the Trump presidency.

    The 2018 and 2022 midterms brought the highest levels of youth turnout of the past three decades, according to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, which studies young voters.

    And when they do vote, young people vote overwhelmingly for Democrats.

    Biden won 63% of voters age 18 to 24, compared with 34% for Trump, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of the electorate. Republican House candidates did better with young voters in last year’s midterms, but Democrats still had a 14-percentage point advantage, winning voters 24 and younger 54% to 40%.

    “If Democrats are looking for their secret weapon, young voters are it,” said Jack Lobel, spokesperson for Voters of Tomorrow, which organizes young voters online and in person. “For Democrats especially, who already have young voters basically on their side, we are the untapped potential that campaigns are looking for.”

    A TikTok ban might irritate a lot of young voters, but Biden can point to a strong record of standing up for young people’s interests, Lobel said.

    Biden has tried to offer relief from student loan debt and has advocated for abortion rights. He signed a massive climate spending bill along with the most sweeping gun violence bill in decades.

    Marisol Ortega, a 21-year-old journalism student from Glendale, Arizona, said many of her peers are looking for someone younger and more exciting, even if they’ll likely hold their nose and vote for him.

    “Joe Biden has been a name in American politics for a very, very long time,” Ortega said. “I think people are just kind of ready for something new.”

    Still, the Biden administration irked environmentalists and young people by approving the huge Willow oil drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope.

    Young activists have been particularly active in pushing to drastically reduce oil drilling and move away from reliance fossil fuels. Before the president’s decision, a #StopWillow campaign garnered millions of views on TikTok urging Biden to block the project.

    “He has delivered a lot for young people, and that’s why our advice to the administration was, ‘This is not the right direction to head on this issue,’” said Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president of NextGen America, a youth organizing group.

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

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    This story was first published on March 25, 2023. It was updated on March 27, 2023, to correct that the 2018 and 2022 midterms, not 2020, brought the highest levels of youth turnout of the past three decades.

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  • Biden approval dips near lowest point: AP-NORC poll

    Biden approval dips near lowest point: AP-NORC poll

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Approval of President Joe Biden has dipped slightly since a month ago, nearing the lowest point of his presidency as his administration tries to project a sense of stability while confronting a pair of bank failures and inflation that remains stubbornly high.

    That’s according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, which shows there have been modest fluctuations in support for Biden over the past several months. The president notched an approval rating of 38% in the new poll, after 45% said they approved in February and 41% in January. His ratings hit their lowest point of his presidency last July, at 36%, as the full weight of rising gasoline, food and other costs began to hit U.S. households.

    In recent months, approval of Biden had been hovering above 40%.

    Interviews with poll respondents suggest the public has mixed feelings about Biden, who is expected to announce a reelection bid by this summer. When it comes to the president, people generally do not swing between the extremes of absolute loyalty and aggressive loathing that have been a feature of this era’s divided politics.

    “Neutral towards approve,” Andrew Dwyer, 30, said of Biden. “I don’t think he’s the best at representing my position and issues. But I know being president involves compromises.”

    Dwyer, a data analyst in Milwaukee, said he voted for the president in 2020 and considers himself to be liberal. He acknowledged the recent failures of the Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, but he said that the economy is adjusting to higher interest rates set by the Federal Reserve to combat inflation.

    “We all got so used to cheap debt and the ability to throw money around,” Dwyer said. He said there were “pain points” caused by higher borrowing costs but that he thinks the process will “ultimately” lead to a healthier economy.

    The president has taken ambitious steps to boost the U.S. economy, with his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package from 2021, infrastructure investments, support for computer chip plants and taxes on corporations and the wealthy to help fund health care and a shift away from fossil fuels.

    But those efforts involve multiyear investments that have yet to provide much optimism to a public dealing with annual inflation at 6%. The president and other administration officials have toured the country to promote their achievements. But to many, the economy feels as though it could be on a knife’s edge after the recent bank failures, as well as the debt limit showdown with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., that could put the U.S. government at risk of defaulting.

    Just 31% approve of Biden’s stewardship of the national economy, about where it’s been over the course of the last year. His handling of the nation’s economic fortunes has been a weak point at least since late 2021, when the inflation that the administration had suggested was transitory became a bigger pain point for businesses and families.

    Michael McComas, 51, voted Republican in 2020 and described Biden as “not great — average, I guess.” A resident of Westland, Michigan, he noted that it will take years to determine whether federal infrastructure spending fulfills the promises made by Biden.

    McComas said he believes inflation is the direct result of government spending to counter the pandemic, a claim that Biden has personally rejected when asked by reporters.

    “We poured so much money into the system — that’s a little frustrating that we were shocked that we got hit by inflation when a lot of our policies were inflationary,” McComas said.

    The difference between Biden’s approval overall and his approval on the economy is driven largely by Democrats, 76% of whom say they approve of how he’s handling his job as president while 63% approve of his handling of the economy. Few Republicans approve of Biden on either count.

    Democrats under the age of 45 feel less positive about Biden, causing a drag on his approval ratings. Just 54% approve of the president’s economic leadership, compared to 72% of Democrats older than 45. Similarly, just 66% of Democrats under 45 approve of Biden overall, compared to 85% of older Democrats.

    Only about a quarter of Americans say the national economy is good or that the country is headed in the right direction, the poll shows. Those numbers have also fluctuated only slightly over the last few months.

    Ratings of Biden’s handling of foreign policy (39%) and climate change (41%) are about on par with his overall approval ratings. Seventy-four percent of Democrats and 9% of Republicans approve of Biden on foreign policy, while 67% of Democrats and 17% of Republicans approve of his handling of climate change.

    Theresa Ojuro, a 29-year-old doctoral student in Rochester, New York, said she “expected more” from Biden — “just a little bit more stability with the economy.” Ojuro, who voted for Biden in 2020, also noted that the bank failures are dragging down her sentiment, but she worries about how high taxes are in New York state relative to the benefits provided.

    “If Biden is doing his job, why in a state like this can you see people really suffering?” Ojuro said.

    ___

    The poll of 1,081 adults was conducted Mar. 16-20 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.

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  • Biden signs measure nullifying DC criminal code revisions

    Biden signs measure nullifying DC criminal code revisions

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Monday signed into law legislation nullifying the recent overhaul of the District of Columbia criminal code, but the fight between Congress and local lawmakers is continuing.

    The signature merely marks the end of a raucous first chapter in a saga that has left district lawmakers bitterly nursing their political bruises, harboring fresh resentments against national Democrats and bracing to play defense against an activist Republican-controlled House for at least the next two years.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy hailed the move in a statement, calling it the end of what he labeled a “soft-on-crime criminal code rewrite that treated violent criminals like victims and discarded the views of law enforcement.”

    But even before the bill was formally sent to sent to Biden, House Republicans were promising a season of direct congressional intervention in local D.C. affairs.

    “This is just the beginning,” McCarthy, R-Calif., said earlier this month in a celebratory signing ceremony after the vote to cancel the new criminal code passed the Senate with significant Democratic support. “It is a message for the entire nation.”

    D.C. Council members sound like they fully believe those promises.

    “I’m afraid that we’re going to see more of this for the remainder of this Congress,” D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said. “Does this raise a concern that there are going to be other issues? Yes.”

    When congressional passage of the measure appeared inevitable and Biden indicated he would sign it, the D.C. Council withdrew the measure. But the move did not spare Biden a politically charged decision on whether to endorse the congressional action.

    Biden did not issue a statement accompanying the signing Monday. But he tweeted earlier this month that while he supported statehood for D.C., “I don’t support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the mayor’s objections — such as lowering penalties for carjackings.”

    Under terms of Washington’s Home Rule authority, t he House Committee on Oversight and Accountability essentially vets all new D.C. laws and frequently alters or limits them through budget riders. But the criminal code rewrite is the first law to be completely overturned since 1991.

    House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., has pledged that his committee “stands ready to conduct robust oversight of America’s capital city.”

    That robust oversight has already begun. Even before Biden signed the bill, the Oversight Committee sent letters summoning Mendelson, D.C. Councilmember Charles Allen and D.C. Chief Financial Officer Glen Lee to testify at a March 29 hearing. The topic of that hearing, according to the letter, is the ominously vague “general oversight of the District of Columbia, including crime, safety, and city management.”

    Other House Republicans have already identified areas of interest to target. Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia has introduced a resolution to block a police accountability law known as the Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act.

    Most aspects of that law were passed by the D.C. Council on an emergency basis in 2020, amid the protests against police brutality following George Floyd’s murder; it was made permanent in December 2022. It bans the use of chokeholds by police officers, makes police disciplinary files available to the public, weakens the bargaining power of the police union and limits the use of tear gas to disperse protestors.

    “Now that Congress has effectively used its constitutional authority to strike down the D.C. Council’s dangerous Revised Criminal Code Act, we must now move to swiftly block this anti-police measure to ensure our nation’s capital city is safe for all Americans,” Clyde said in a statement.

    Clyde is a longtime nemesis of D.C. loyalists, having publicly stated that his ultimate goal is to completely end Washington’s Home Rule authority. That sentiment, once a long-shot fringe position, has edged closer to being a mainstream Republican talking point. Former President Donald Trump publicly stated earlier this month that the “federal government should take over control and management of Washington D.C.”

    Meanwhile, Oversight Committee member Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has targeted the D.C. Jail for congressional scrutiny. Greene has demanded access to the jail to visit some two dozen detainees from the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. She’s also seeking a complete overview of the jail’s conditions.

    Other aspects of D.C. legislation remain ripe targets for activist Republicans, such as the District’s strict gun control laws or the decision to essentially decriminalize most psychedelics — a move that was approved by D.C. voters in a referendum.

    This congressional onslaught of oversight was widely predicted when Republicans took back control of the House in last year’s midterm elections. But most local politicians and activists hoped they could count on Democratic control of both the Senate and the White House as a shield. Those hopes rapidly melted away in a storm of political dynamics that amounted to a humiliating setback for the D.C. Council and the larger hopes of Washington ever achieving statehood.

    House Republicans were able to put Biden and Senate Democrats in a political bind. By defending D.C.’s right to self-governance, they would open themselves to charges of being soft on criminals at a time of rising crime both in the nation’s capital and across the U.S.

    In the end, Biden signaled before the Senate vote that he would not veto the rejection of the criminal code and 33 Democratic senators voted to overturn it. The moves were regarded by statehood activists as a betrayal that they say exposed the hollowness of Democratic support for D.C. statehood.

    For now, the D.C. Council maintains that the city’s criminal code is dangerously obsolete and desperately in need of reform. But after seeing the initial law turned into a national political issue, there appears to be little appetite to try again in the short term.

    Mendelson said that changing the aspects that drew criticism, such as the lowering of maximum penalties for crimes like carjacking, would simply lead to other objections from a Republican House that he said is openly looking for a fight.

    “I don’t plan on installing a hotline to Republican leadership in the House and the Senate and calling them every week and asking them for permission to move forward,” Mendelson said.

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  • US: No reason for China to react to Taiwan leader stopover

    US: No reason for China to react to Taiwan leader stopover

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is putting out the word that planned stopovers in the United States by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen in the coming weeks fall in line with recent precedent and should not be used as a pretext by China to step up aggressive activity in the Taiwan Strait.

    Taiwan’s office of the president confirmed on Tuesday that Tsai is tentatively scheduled to transit through New York on March 30 before heading to Guatemala and Belize. She’s expected to stop in Los Angeles on April 5 on her way back to Taiwan. The office did not provide details of her itinerary while in the U.S.

    Ahead of Taiwan’s announcement, senior U.S. officials in Washington and Beijing have underscored to their Chinese counterparts in recent weeks that transit visits through the United States during broader international travel by the Taiwanese president have been routine over the years, according to a senior administration official. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

    In such unofficial visits in recent years, Tsai has met with members of Congress and the Taiwanese diaspora and has been welcomed by the chairperson of the American Institute in Taiwan, the U.S. government-run nonprofit that carries out unofficial relations with Taiwan. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the planned stopovers—administration officials stress they are not official visits—are “business as usual” and consistent with longstanding U.S. policy.

    “There’s no reason for China to overreact,” Kirby said about the expected unofficial visit. “Heck, there’s no reason for China to react.”

    Tsai transited through the United States six times between 2016 and 2019 before slowing international travel with the coronavirus pandemic. In reaction to those visits, China rhetorically lashed out against the U.S. and Taiwan.

    State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said “the unofficial nature of our relations with Taiwan remains unchanged.”

    The Biden administration is trying to avoid a replay of the heavy-handed response by China that came after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan last year.

    Following Pelosi’s August visit, Beijing launched missiles over Taiwan, deployed warships across the median line of the Taiwan Strait and carried out military exercises near the island. Beijing also suspended climate talks with the U.S. and restricted military-to-military communication with the Pentagon.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, has said he would meet with Tsai when she is in the U.S. and has not ruled out the possibility of traveling to Taiwan in a show of support.

    Beijing sees official American contact with Taiwan as encouragement to make the island’s decades-old de facto independence permanent, a step U.S. leaders say they don’t support. Pelosi, D-Calif., was the highest-ranking elected American official to visit the island since Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1997. Under the “one China” policy, the U.S. recognizes Beijing as the government of China and doesn’t have diplomatic relations with Taiwan but has maintained that Taipei is an important partner in the Indo-Pacific.

    U.S. officials are increasingly worried about China’s long-stated goals of unifying Taiwan with the mainland and the possibility of war over Taiwan. The self-ruled island democracy is claimed by Beijing as part of its territory. The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which has governed U.S. relations with the island, does not require the U.S. to step in militarily if China invades but makes it American policy to ensure Taiwan has the resources to defend itself and to prevent any unilateral change of status by Beijing.

    The difficult U.S.-China relationship has only become more complicated since Pelosi’s visit.

    Last month, President Joe Biden ordered a Chinese spy balloon shot out of the sky after it traversed the continental United States. And the Biden administration in recent weeks has said that U.S. intelligence findings show that China is weighing sending arms to Russia for its ongoing war in Ukraine, but it does not have evidence that suggests Beijing has decided to follow through on supplying Moscow.

    The Biden administration postponed a planned visit to Beijing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken following the balloon controversy but has signaled it would like to get such a visit back on track.

    The White House on Monday also said officials are in talks with China about possible visits by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo focused on economic matters. Biden has also said he expects to soon hold a call with China’s Xi Jinping.

    Kirby said “keeping those lines of communication open” is still valuable.

    Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi met in Moscow on Tuesday for a second day of talks, the first face-to-face meeting between the allies since before Russia launched its Ukraine invasion more than a year ago.

    The Taiwanese government earlier this month said that Tsai planned stops in New York and Southern California during an upcoming broader international trip.

    ___

    AP journalists Johnson Lai in Taipei and Josh Boak and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed reporting.

    ___

    This story has been corrected to show China lashed out against the U.S., not against China.

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  • Army of lobbyists helped water down banking regulations

    Army of lobbyists helped water down banking regulations

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — It seemed like a good idea at the time: Red-state Democrats facing grim reelection prospects would join forces with Republicans to slash bank regulations — demonstrating a willingness to work with President Donald Trump while bucking many in their party.

    That unlikely coalition voted in 2018 to roll back portions of a far-reaching 2010 law intended to prevent a future financial crisis. But those changes are now being blamed for contributing to the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank that prompted a federal rescue and has stoked anxiety about a broader banking contagion.

    The rollback was leveraged with a lobbying campaign that cost tens of millions of dollars that drew an army of hundreds of lobbyists and it was seeded with ample campaign contributions.

    The episode offers a fresh reminder of the power that bankers wield in Washington, where the industry spends prodigiously to fight regulation and often hires former members of Congress and their staff to make the case that they are not a source of risk to the economy

    “The bottom line is that these banks would have faced a tougher supervisory framework under the original … law, but Congress and the Trump regulators took an ax to it,” said Carter Dougherty, a spokesman for Americans for Financial Reform, a left-leaning financial sector watchdog group. “We can draw a direct line between the deregulation of the Trump period, driven by the bank lobby, and the chaos of the last few weeks.”

    President Joe Biden has asked Congress for the authority to impose tougher penalties on failed banks. The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission have started investigations. And congressional Democrats are calling for new restrictions on financial institutions.

    But so far there is no indication that another bipartisan coalition will form in Congress to put tougher regulations back in place, underscoring the banking industry’s continued clout.

    That influence was on full display when the banking lobby worked for two years to water down aspects of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law that had placed weighty regulations on banks designed to reduce consumer risk and force the institutions to adopt safer lending and investing practices.

    Republicans had long looked to blunt the impact of Dodd-Frank. But rather than push for sweeping deregulation, Sen. Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republican who led the Senate banking committee, hoped a narrowed focus could draw enough support from moderate Democrats to clear the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold.

    Crapo broached the idea with Democratic Sens. Jon Tester of Montana, Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota — all on the ballot in 2018 — as well as Mark Warner of Virginia. By the fall of that year, the bipartisan group met regularly, according to a copy of Tester’s office schedule posted to his Senate website.

    A lobbying strategy also emerged, with companies and trade groups that specifically mention Crapo’s legislation spending more than $400 million in 2017 and 2018, according to an Associated Press analysis of the public lobbying disclosures.

    The bill was sold to the public as a form of regulatory relief for overburdened community banks, which serviced farmers and smaller businesses. Community bankers from across the U.S. flew in to Washington to meet repeatedly with lawmakers, including Tester, who had 32 meetings with Montana bank officials. Local bank leaders pushed members of their congressional delegation when they returned home.

    But the measure also included provisions sought by midsize banks that drastically curtailed oversight once the Trump Fed finished writing new regulations necessitated by the bill’s passage.

    Specifically, the legislation lifted the threshold for banks that faced a strict regimen of oversight, including mandatory financial stress testing.

    That component, which effectively carved large midsize banks out of more stringent regulation, has come under new scrutiny in light of the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, whose executives lobbied on behalf of the 2018 rollback.

    “The lobbyists were everywhere. You couldn’t throw an elbow without running into one,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who vehemently opposed the bill, told reporters last week.

    Campaign checks were written. Ads were cut. Mailers went out.

    As a reward for their work, Heitkamp ($357,953), Tester ($302,770) and Donnelly ($265,349) became the top Senate recipients of money from the banking industry during the 2018 campaign season, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan group tracking money in politics.

    Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer freed members to vote for the bill, a move intended to bolster the standing of vulnerable moderate incumbents. But the move also bitterly divided the Democratic caucus, with Warren singling out the moderates as doing Wall Street’s bidding.

    In the hours before the bill passed the Senate with 17 Democratic votes, Heitkamp took to the chamber floor to inveigh against the “diatribe,” “hyperbole” and “overstatement” from opponents of the bill.

    Tester, meanwhile, huddled with executives from Bank of America, Citigroup, Discover and Wells Fargo, who were there on behalf of the American Bankers Association, according to his publicly available office schedule.

    The American Bankers Association, which helped lead the push, later paid $125,000 for an ad campaign thanking Tester for his role in the bill’s passage, records show.

    Less than a month after the bill was passed out of the Senate, Tester met Greg Becker, the CEO for the now-collapsed Silicon Valley Bank, according to his schedule. Becker specifically lobbied Congress and the Federal Reserve to take a light regulatory approach with banks of his size. Lobbyists with the firm the Franklin Square Group, which had been retained by Silicon Valley Bank, donated $10,800 to Tester’s campaign, record show.

    Heitkamp was the only member of the group invited to the bill signing ceremony, beaming alongside Trump. Later, Americans for Prosperity, the grassroots conservative group funded by the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers, ran an online ad commending Heitkamp for taking a stand against her party.

    In an interview, Heitkamp pushed back against suggestions that the legislation was directly responsible for the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. She acknowledged, however, that there was an open question about whether new rules put in place by the Fed after the measure was signed into law could have played a role.

    “I’m willing to look at the argument that this had something to do with it,” Heitkamp said, adding: “I think you will find that (the Fed) was engaged in some level of some supervision. Why that didn’t work? That’s the question that needs to be resolved.”

    In a statement issued last week, Tester did not directly address his role in the legislation, but he pledged to “take on anyone in Washington to ensure that the executives at these banks and regulators are held accountable.”

    Cam Fine, who led the Independent Community Bankers of America trade group during the legislative push, said the overall the bill was a good piece of legislation that offered much needed relief to struggling community banks.

    But like any major piece of legislation that moves through Congress, final passage hinged on support from a broad coalition of interests — including those of Wall Street and midsize banks.

    “Was it a perfect piece of legislation? No. But there’s an old saying in Washington: You can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” said Fine.

    Many of the moderate Democrats who supported the measure did not fare as well.

    Of the core group who wrote the bill, only Tester won reelection. Others from red states who supported it, including Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Bill Nelson of Florida, lost.

    Tester will be on the ballot again in 2024. Last week he was in Silicon Valley for a fundraiser.

    One of the event’s sponsors was a partner at a law firm for Silicon Valley Bank.

    ___

    Sweet reported from New York. Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

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  • Biden creates national monuments in Nevada, Texas mountains

    Biden creates national monuments in Nevada, Texas mountains

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Tuesday he is establishing national monuments on more than half a million acres in Nevada and Texas and creating a marine sanctuary in U.S. waters near the Pacific Remote Islands southwest of Hawaii. The conservation measures are “protecting the heart and soul of our national pride,″ Biden said.

    Speaking at a White House summit on conservation action, Biden said the new monuments are among the “natural treasures” that “define our identity as a nation. They’re a birthright we have to pass down to generation after generation.″

    Biden designated Avi Kwa Ame, a desert mountain in southern Nevada that Native Americans consider sacred, as a national monument, along with the Castner Range in El Paso, Texas. He also moved to create a national marine sanctuary in U.S. waters around the Pacific Remote Islands.

    Conservation and tribal groups praised Biden’s actions, but Nevada’s new Republican governor slammed the monument designation as “federal confiscation” of Nevada land and “a historic mistake that will cost Nevadans for generations to come.”

    Gov. Joe Lombardo, who unseated the state’s Democratic governor in November, said the White House did not consult with his administration before moving to block clean-energy projects and other development in his state. “This kind of ‘Washington Knows Best’ policy might win plaudits from unaccountable special interests, but it’s going to cost our state jobs and economic opportunity,” Lombardo said in a statement.

    “Our national wonders are literally the envy of the world,″ Biden said in a speech at the Interior Department. “They’ve always been and always will be central to our heritage as a people and essential to our identity as a nation.″

    The Nevada site spans more than 500,000 acres (200,000 hectares) and includes Spirit Mountain, a peak northwest of Laughlin called Avi Kwa Ame (ah-VEE’ kwa-meh) by the Fort Mojave Tribe and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The rugged landscape near the Arizona and California state lines is home to bighorn sheep, desert tortoises and a large concentration of Joshua trees, some of which are more than 900 years old.

    In Texas, the Castner Range designation will protect cultural, scientific and historic objects, honor U.S. veterans and tribal nations, and expand access to outdoor recreation on public lands, Biden said. Located on Fort Bliss, Castner Range served as a training and testing site for the U.S. Army during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. The Army ceased training at the site and closed Castner Range in 1966.

    Together, the two new national monuments protect nearly 514,000 acres (208,000 hectares) of public lands. The Avi Kwa Ame landscape is sacred to 12 tribes and is home to rare wildlife and plants, while Castner Range is the ancestral homeland of the Comanche and Apache people, and its cultural ecology is considered sacred to several Indigenous communities.

    “To the native people who point to Avi Kwa Ame as their spiritual birthplace, and every Nevadan who knows the value of our cherished public lands: Today is for you,″ tweeted Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nevada, who sponsored a bill to protect the rugged region near the Mojave National Preserve from development, including solar farms and a proposed wind farm.

    “Spirit Mountain will now be protected for future generations,″ Titus said.

    Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said Avi Kwa Ame “holds deep spiritual, sacred and historic significance to the Native people who have lived on these lands for generations,″ adding that she was grateful to Biden “for taking this important step in recognition of the decades of advocacy from tribes and the scientific community.″

    In the Pacific, Biden directed the Commerce Department to initiate a marine sanctuary designation to protect 777,000 square miles around the Pacific Remote Islands. If completed, the new sanctuary would help ensure the U.S. reaches Biden’s goal to conserve at least 30% of ocean waters under U.S. jurisdiction by 2030, the White House said.

    The area to be protected is “larger than Alaska and Colorado put together,″ Biden said.

    Biden’s actions come as he faces sharp criticism from environmental groups and youth activists over his approval of the huge Willow oil drilling project in Alaska.

    Biden has made fighting global warming a central part of his agenda and has pledged to cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. But the decision on Willow has alienated supporters, particularly young activists skeptical about political compromise at the same time Biden is planning to announce his reelection campaign.

    Climate activists gathered outside the Interior Department on Tuesday to condemn what they call Biden’s “climate hypocrisy” and demand the administration change course on Willow. Protesters hung a large yellow banner that said, “Stop the Willow oil project” and chanted “no more drilling, no more drilling, no more drilling on federal land.”

    In Texas, the Castner Range monument “will preserve fragile lands already surrounded on three sides by development,″ help ensure access to clean water and protect rare and endangered species, said Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar.

    Fort Mojave Tribe Chairman Timothy Williams, who attended the conservation summit, said tribes throughout the Southwest consider Avi Kwa Ame to be sacred land. Biden’s creation of a new monument demonstrated his “commitment to respect tribal nations and our nation-to-nation relationship.″

    Under the leadership of Biden and Haaland, the first Native American Cabinet member, “We have a seat at the table and we have seen an unprecedented era and opportunity for our tribal communities,″ Williams said.

    The Honor Avi Kwa Ame coalition, which includes tribes, local residents, state lawmakers and conservation groups, said its members were “overjoyed” at the new monument.

    Biden designated his first national monument, in Colorado, last year. In 2021, he restored the boundaries for Bears Ears National Monument in Utah after they were significantly narrowed by President Donald Trump, a Republican.

    Biden announced other steps Tuesday to conserve, restore and expand access to public lands and waters, promote tribal conservation and reduce wildfire risk. The proposals seek to modernize management of America’s public lands, better harness the ocean to help fight climate change and better conserve wildlife corridors, the White House said.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Darlene Superville in Washington and Ken Ritter and Rio Yamat in Las Vegas contributed to this story.

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  • Biden issues first veto, taking on new Republican House

    Biden issues first veto, taking on new Republican House

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden issued the first veto of his presidency Monday in an early sign of shifting White House relations with the new Congress since Republicans took control of the House in January — a move that serves as a prelude to bigger battles with GOP lawmakers on government spending and the nation’s debt limit.

    Biden sought to kill a Republican-authored measure that would ban the government from considering environmental impacts or potential lawsuits when making investment decisions for people’s retirement plans. In a video released by the White House, Biden said he vetoed the measure because it “put at risk the retirement savings of individuals across the country.”

    His first veto represents a more confrontational approach at the midway of Biden’s term in office, as he faces a GOP-controlled House that is eager to undo parts of his policy legacy and investigate his administration and his family. Complicating matters for Biden, several Democratic senators are up for re-election next year in conservative states, giving them political incentive to put some distance between them and the White House.

    The measure vetoed by Biden would have effectively reinstated a Trump-era ban on federal managers of retirement plans considering factors such as climate change, social impacts or pending lawsuits when making investment choices.

    The veto could also help calm some anger from environmentalists who have been upset with the Biden administration for its recent decision to greenlight the Willow oil project, a massive and contentious drilling project in Alaska.

    “The president vetoed the bill because it jeopardizes the hard-earned life savings of cops, firefighters, teachers, and other workers,” White House spokesperson Robyn Patterson said.

    But critics say so-called environmental, social and governance investments allocate money based on political agendas, such as a drive against climate change, rather than on earning the best returns for savers. Republicans in Congress who pushed the measure said environmental or social considerations in investments by the government are just another example of being “woke.”

    “In his first veto, Biden just sided with woke Wall Street over workers,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., tweeted on Monday. “Tells you exactly where his priorities lie.” He said “it’s clear Biden wants Wall Street to use your retirement savings to fund his far-left political causes.”

    Biden’s veto is likely to prevail. Just three Democrats in Congress — one in the House, and two in the Senate — supported Republicans in the matter, making it unlikely a two-thirds majority in both chambers could be assembled to overcome Biden’s veto.

    Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, was the sole Democrat to back the resolution in the House, while Sens. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., supported it in the Senate. Golden is a perennial target of Republicans seeking to oust him from his conservative district, while Tester and Manchin are both up for re-election next year.

    “This administration continues to prioritize their radical policy agenda over the economic, energy and national security needs of our country, and it is absolutely infuriating,” Manchin said in a statement.

    Though Biden swiftly vetoed the investment resolution, other measures coming from Capitol Hill in the weeks and months ahead could be a tougher call for the White House.

    The administration initially signaled that Biden would reject a Republican-authored measure that would override a crime measure passed by the District of Columbia Council, but the president later said he would sign it and did so Monday. He also signed a bill directing the federal government to declassify intelligence related to the origins of COVID-19.

    Biden’s immediate predecessor, Donald Trump, vetoed 10 bills during his term in office, while Barack Obama vetoed 12, according to the the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Both had one of their vetoes overridden by Congress.

    The president with the most vetoes was Franklin Delano Roosevelt — who was elected to four terms before a constitutional amendment limited all presidents to two — with 635 vetoes. Six U.S. presidents never vetoed any legislation in office.

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  • Yellen declares bank system sound, as new rescues ordered

    Yellen declares bank system sound, as new rescues ordered

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen offered firm, upbeat reassurances to rattled bank depositors and investors Thursday, even as American financial institutions and European agencies ordered fresh rescue efforts following the second-largest bank collapse in U.S. history.

    Questioned closely, sometimes aggressively, Yellen told senators at a Capitol hearing that the U.S. banking system “remains sound” and Americans “can feel confident” about the safety of their deposits.

    Her remarks, against the backdrop of deepening concerns about the health of the global financial system, were an effort to signal to markets that there would be no broader contagion from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in California and Signature Bank in New York.

    By the time her testimony was over, another major institution, First Republic Bank, received an emergency infusion of $30 billion in deposits from 11 banks, according to Treasury. And in Europe hours earlier, Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second-largest lender, got a promise from the Swiss central bank of a loan of up to 50 billion francs ($54 billion).

    Wall Street rallied on the rescue news.

    Republican senators laid a big part of the blame for the problems on Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration.

    “The reckless tax and spend agenda that was forced through Congress” contributed to record high inflation that the Federal Reserve is having to compensate for through increasing interest rates, said Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho. And those surging rates have caused banks — as well as regular citizens — problems.

    The Republicans also questioned Biden’s assurances that taxpayers won’t bear the brunt of the commitment to make depositors whole.

    Yellen resisted that scenario, though she said, “We certainly need to analyze carefully what happened to trigger these bank failures and examine our rules and supervision” to prevent them from happening again. She defended the government’s argument that taxpayers will not end up paying the cost of protecting uninsured money at Silicon Valley and Signature.

    The Treasury secretary was the first administration official to face lawmakers over the decision to protect uninsured money at the two failed regional banks, a move some have criticized as a bank “bailout.”

    “The government took decisive and forceful actions to strengthen public confidence” in the U.S. banking system, Yellen testified. “I can reassure the members of the committee that our banking system remains sound, and that Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be there when they need them.”

    The week has been a whirlwind for markets globally on worries about banks that may be bending under the weight of the fastest hikes to interest rates in decades, increasures intended to quell rising inflation on consumer goods.

    In less than a week, Silicon Valley Bank, based in Santa Clara, California, failed after depositors rushed to withdraw money amid anxiety over the bank’s health. Then, regulators convened over the weekend and announced that New York-based Signature Bank also failed. They said that all depositors, including those holding uninsured funds exceeding $250,000, would be protected by federal deposit insurance.

    The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission have since launched investigations into the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, and President Joe Biden has called on Congress to strengthen rules on regional banks.

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday, “There are things that we can do in the administration, but in order to really deal with this issue we have to act. Congress needs to act.”

    Thursday’s hearing, originally scheduled to address Biden’s budget proposa for the fiscal year beginning next October, came after the sudden collapse of Silicon Valley, the nation’s 16th-biggest bank and a go-to financial institution for tech entrepreneurs. While lawmakers questioned Yellen on the federal deficit and upcoming debt ceiling negotiations, many focused instead on the bank failures and who was to blame.

    The Biden administration’s “handling of the economy contributed to this,” insisted Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C. “I plan to hold the regulators accountable.”

    Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., asked, “Where were the regulators in all of this?”

    “Nerves are certainly frayed at this moment,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who chairs the committee. “One of the most important steps the Congress can take now is make sure there are no questions about the full faith and credit of the United States,” he said, referring to raising the federal debt ceiling.

    Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, the committee’s top Republican, said, “I’m concerned about the precedent of guaranteeing all deposits,” calling the federal rescue action a “moral hazard.”

    Yellen said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” last Sunday that a banks bailout was not on the table.

    “We’re not going to do that again,” she said, referring to the government’s response to the 2008 financial crisis, which led to massive government rescues for large U.S. banks.

    Yellen, a former Federal Reserve chair and past president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve during the 2008 financial crisis, was a leading figure in the resolution this past weekend, which was engineered to prevent a wider systemic banking problem.

    “This week’s actions demonstrate our resolute commitment to ensure that depositors’ savings remain safe,” she said.

    Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, compared the banks’ collapse to rail industry deregulation lobbying that Democrats say contributed to the East Palestine train derailment that rocked an Ohio community. “We see aggressive lobbying like this from banks as well,” he said.

    In Europe, troubles at Credit Suisse deepened concerns about the global financial system.

    The Swiss giant was having issues long before the U.S. banks collapsed, but the news Wednesday that the bank’s biggest shareholder would not inject more money led shares of European banks to plunge. On Thursday, they rose after the Swiss Central Bank’s action.

    Regulators in the U.S. and abroad are trying to reassure depositors that their money is safe. They “don’t want anybody to be the person who sits in a darkened room or darkened cinema and shouts fire, because that’s what prompts a rush for the exits,” said Russ Mould, investment director at the online investment platform AJ Bell.

    Despite the banking turmoil, the European Central Bank hiked interest rates by a half percentage point in its latest effort to curb stubbornly high inflation, saying Europe’s banking sector is “resilient,” with strong finances and plenty of available cash.

    ECB President Christine Lagarde said the central bank would provide additional support to the banking system if necessary. She said banks “are in a completely different position from 2008” because of safeguards added after the financial crisis.

    ECB Vice President Luis de Guindos also said Europe’s exposure to Credit Suisse, which is outside the European Union’s banking supervision structure, was “quite limited.”

    The Swiss bank, which has seen its stock decline for years, has been pushing to raise money from investors and roll out a new strategy to overcome an array of troubles, including bad bets on hedge funds, repeated shake-ups of its top management and a spying scandal involving Zurich rival UBS.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Dave McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.

    ___

    Follow the AP’s coverage of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen at https://apnews.com/hub/janet-yellen.

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  • UK cybersecurity center looking into risks posed by TikTok

    UK cybersecurity center looking into risks posed by TikTok

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    LONDON (AP) — Britain’s security minister said Tuesday he has asked the country’s National Cyber Security Center to review threats posed by TikTok amid calls for the U.K. to impose a ban on the Chinese-owned social media app.

    Security Minister Tom Tugendhat said he was waiting for a review from the government’s cybersecurity experts before deciding on the “hugely important question.”

    Prime Minister Rishi Sunak hinted a day earlier that the U.K. could follow the U.S. and the European Union in banning the app from government-issued mobile phones and devices.

    “We take security of devices seriously … and we look also at what our allies are doing,” Sunak said during his visit to the U.S. on Monday.

    “We want to make sure that we protect the integrity and security of sensitive information,” Sunak told ITV News. “And we will always do that and take whatever steps are necessary to make sure that happens.”

    The U.S. government said last month that employees of federal agencies have to delete TikTok from all government-issued mobile devices. Congress, the White House, U.S. armed forces and more than half of U.S. states had already banned TikTok, while the European Commission also temporarily banned the app from employee phones.

    The moves were prompted by growing concerns that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, would give user data such as browsing history and location to the Chinese government, or push propaganda and misinformation on its behalf.

    Last year, Britain’s Parliament shut down its TikTok account — meant to reach younger audiences with Parliament content — just days after its launch following concerns from lawmakers.

    “What certainly is clear is for many young people TikTok is now a news source and, just as it’s quite right we know who owns the news sources in the UK … it’s important we know who owns the news sources that are feeding into our phones,” Tugendhat told Sky News on Tuesday.

    In a statement, TikTok said bans by other governments were “based on misplaced fears and seemingly driven by wider geopolitics.” It said it would be “disappointed” if the U.K. imposes a ban, and that it was committed to working with British authorities to address any concerns.

    “We have begun implementing a comprehensive plan to further protect our European user data, which includes storing UK user data in our European data centres and tightening data access controls, including third-party independent oversight of our approach,” its statement said.

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  • Biden in San Diego to announce Australia submarine deal

    Biden in San Diego to announce Australia submarine deal

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    SAN DIEGO (AP) — President Joe Biden is set to meet Monday with two of America’s closest allies to announce that Australia will purchase nuclear-powered attack submarines from the U.S. to modernize its fleet as concerns grow about China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific region.

    Biden flew to San Diego for talks with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on an 18-month-old nuclear partnership given the acronym AUKUS.

    The partnership, announced in 2021, enabled Australia to access nuclear-powered submarines, which are stealthier and more capable than conventionally powered vessels, as a counterweight to China’s military buildup.

    San Diego is Biden’s first stop on a three-day trip to California and Nevada. He will discuss gun violence prevention in the community of Monterey Park, California, and his plans to lower prescription drug costs in Las Vegas. The trip will include fundraising stops as Biden steps up his political activities before an expected announcement next month that he will seek reelection in 2024.

    Australia is buying up to five Virginia-class boats as part of AUKUS, said Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, who accompanied Biden to California. A future generation of submarines will be built in the U.K. and in Australia with U.S. technology and support.

    The U.S. would also step up its port visits in Australia to provide the country with more familiarity with the nuclear-powered technology before it has such subs of its own.

    Biden will also meet individually with Albanese and Sunak, an opportunity to coordinate strategy on Russia’s war in Ukraine, the global economy and more.

    The secretly brokered AUKUS deal included the Australian government’s cancellation of a $66 billion contract for a French-built fleet of conventional submarines, which sparked a diplomatic row within the Western alliance that took months to mend.

    China has argued that the AUKUS deal violates the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It contends that the transfer of nuclear weapons materials from a nuclear-weapon state to a non-nuclear-weapon state is a “blatant” violation of the spirit of the pact. Australian officials have pushed back against the criticism, arguing that it they are working to acquire nuclear-powered, not nuclear-armed, submarines.

    “The question is really how does China choose to respond because Australia is not backing away from what it — what it sees to be doing in its own interests here,” said Charles Edel, a senior adviser and Australia chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “I think that probably from Beijing’s perspective they’ve already counted out Australia as a wooable mid country. It seemed to have fully gone into the U.S. camp.”

    Before he departed for California, Biden spoke about steps the administration is taking to safeguard depositors and protect against broader economic hardship after the second- and third-largest bank failures in U.S. history.

    Biden said the nation’s financial systems are safe. He said he’d seek to hold accountable those responsible for the bank failures, called for better oversight and regulation of larger banks and promised that taxpayers would not pay the bill for any losses.

    The president’s daughter Ashley Biden and granddaughter Natalie Biden also traveled with him to San Diego.

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  • Is DeSantis darkening Florida’s sunny open-records laws?

    Is DeSantis darkening Florida’s sunny open-records laws?

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    Florida has long been known for sunshine — not only the warm rays that brighten its beaches but also the light of public scrutiny afforded by some of the nation’s strongest meetings and records laws.

    Although years of rollbacks have gradually clouded the impact, advocates are ringing alarms that this year presents the greatest threat to transparency yet in the state that coined the name “Sunshine Law” for its open-government rules.

    Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, weighing a presidential bid, is pursuing a home-state agenda that could make it harder for people to learn what public officials are doing or to speak out against them. In an unprecedented move for the Sunshine State, DeSantis has claimed an executive right to keep key government records secret. He’s also seeking to weaken a nearly 60-year-old national legal precedent protecting journalists and others who publish critical comments about public figures.

    Florida’s Republican-led Legislature appears eager to carry out his vision. As their annual session began last week, lawmakers filed dozens of bills that would add to the state’s lengthy list of open-government exceptions.

    “The state of sunshine is in peril,” warned Barbara Petersen, executive director of the Florida Center for Government Accountability, who has been tracking the state’s public access laws for three decades.

    DeSantis, who is expected to launch a presidential bid following the session, has thrilled conservative activists nationwide by leaning into fights against the GOP’s perceived political adversaries: public health officials, so-called “woke” leaders in business and public education — and the press.

    Former President Donald Trump, a potential rival and fellow Floridian, also is well-known for lambasting the press — describing the U.S. media as “the enemy of the people.” Such criticism often plays well within the modern-day Republican Party, where mainstream media are perceived to side with the interests of Democrats and liberals.

    But it runs contrary to Florida’s historic reputation as a place where reporters — and curious members of the public — can unearth government data and documents that shed light on the decisions made by elected officials.

    Florida’s law making government records open to public inspection dates to 1909, long before similar measures emerged in many other states. It added a Sunshine Law requiring public meetings in 1967. Then, in 1992, Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing a public right to access records and meetings. A decade later, as lawmakers were adding exemptions, voters approved another a constitutional amendment making it harder for legislators to approve future exceptions.

    Florida newspapers launched the first “Sunshine Sunday” in 2002 to highlight the importance of public access to government information. That one-day event has since grown to an annual Sunshine Week observed nationally by media and First Amendment advocates.

    As this year’s Sunshine Week began Sunday, lawmakers in state capitols were pursuing a mixture of proposals — some excluding more government records from public inspection; others increasing the ability of people to keep an eye on their government. But nowhere, perhaps, have Sunshine Week issues garnered as much attention as in Florida — due largely to DeSantis’ powerful platform to voice his complaints about the media.

    Last month, DeSantis hosted a livestreamed “panel discussion on defamation” while attempting to build support for his plan to make it easier to bring defamation lawsuits against the media or people who post things on the internet about public officials and employees.

    “You smear somebody, it’s false, and you didn’t do your homework, you’re going to have to be held accountable for that,” DeSantis said while concluding the event. “Hopefully, you’ll see more and more of that across the country.”

    DeSantis is seeking to undercut a 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision that shielded news outlets from libel judgments unless proven that they were published with “actual malice” — knowing that something was false or acting with “reckless disregard” to whether it was true. Florida legislation to carry out DeSantis’ plan would make it unnecessary to prove “actual malice” when the allegedly defamatory statements don’t relate to the reason why someone is a public figure.

    Other provisions of the legislation would presume anonymous statements in news stories are false for the purposes defamation lawsuits and would treat accusations of racial, sexual or gender discrimination as intrinsically defamatory.

    Petersen said such provisions appear to be a first nationally and could have a freezing effect on free speech.

    But Republican state Rep. Alex Andrade, who is sponsoring the bill, said it is “a sincere attempt to try and fix the problems that exist in this type of law.”

    “This bill would make it easier for someone who’s actually been harmed by a defamatory statement to pursue justice in Florida courts,” Andrade said.

    The defamation legislation is just one of several DeSantis administration policies prompting concern among media organizations.

    Earlier this year, a Florida trial judge upheld DeSantis’ assertion of “executive privilege” in refusing to turn over information requested under the state’s public-records law about his screening of potential state Supreme Court nominees. That case is being watched by national media organizations as it’s being appealed.

    The Florida Constitution contains no specific mention of “executive privilege.” Neither does the U.S. Constitution, though courts have upheld the president’s prerogative to withhold documents to protect the confidentiality of advice received in the decision-making process. Governors in Oklahoma, Tennessee and Washington also have previously asserted the privilege.

    Another DeSantis administration policy has slowed access to some public records. Television station WKMG reported last month that public records requests to some state agencies were being routed for review to the governor’s office, sometimes delaying their release by weeks or months.

    Public protests at the Capitol also have been limited. Under a DeSantis administration rule that took effect March 1, demonstrations at the Capitol Complex are only permitted outdoors. Requests to use space in the Capitol Complex must come from state agencies, the Legislature or judiciary, must be “consistent with the agency’s official purpose” and cannot include displays with “gratuitous violence or gore” that are “patently offensive to prevailing standards in the community.”

    Florida’s open-government reputation already was fading before DeSantis took office in 2019, but that trend has gained steam. In his first year, lawmakers expanded the list of personal details forbidden to be disclosed about various public officials. Last year, DeSantis signed a law shielding information about candidates for college and university presidencies.

    This year, roughly five-dozen bills already have been filed proposing more open-government exemptions, Petersen said. Some of those would prohibit the agency that provides security for DeSantis from disclosing the governor’s travel arrangements — even after the fact.

    Though DeSantis said he doesn’t support it, another bill filed this year would require bloggers to file periodic reports with the state if they are paid for posts about the governor, lieutenant governor, cabinet members or legislative officials.

    The cumulative effect is that “open government and public records laws are very much under the gun right now,” said Bobby Block, executive director of the First Amendment Foundation, a Florida nonprofit that advocates for the public’s right to open government.

    “Every year, we’re seeing the vast sweep of the original intention chiseled away – sometimes bit by bit, other times chuck by chuck,” Block said, “and it’s definitely not the way it used to be.”

    ___

    Associated Press writers Anthony Izaguirre and Steve Peoples contributed to this report.

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  • What do race and ethnicity mean? The US government is asking

    What do race and ethnicity mean? The US government is asking

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    Nyhiem Way is weary of people conflating African American and Black. Shalini Parekh wants a way for South Asian people to identify themselves differently than East Asians with roots in places like China or Japan. And Byron Haskins wants the U.S. to toss racial and ethnic labels altogether.

    “When you set up categories that are used to place people in boxes, sometime you miss the truth of them,” said Haskins, who describes himself as African American.

    Way, Parekh and Haskins’ voices are among more than 4,600 comments pending before the Biden administration as it contemplates updating the nation’s racial and ethnic categories for the first time since 1997.

    There’s a lot to consider.

    Some Black Americans want their ancestors’ enslavement recognized in how they are identified. Some Jewish people believe their identity should be seen as its own ethnic category and not only a religion. The idea of revising categories for ethnic and racial identities, both in the census and in gathering demographic information between head counts, have fueled editorials and think-tank essays as well as thousands of written comments by individuals in what is almost a Rorschach test for how Americans identify themselves.

    The White House’s Office of Management and Budget is set to decide on new classifications next year and is hosting three virtual town halls on the subject this week.

    Some conservatives question the process itself, saying the overarching premise that Americans need more ethnic categories will only accelerate Balkanization.

    “By creating and deepening sub-national identities, the government further contributes to the decline of one national American identity,” wrote Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, in his personal comment posted on the OMB web page seeking public input.

    That view contrasts sharply with those who say previous categories have overlooked nuances.

    “This is certainly a singular moment and opportunity to greatly improve and enhance the accuracy and completeness of the data,” Mario Beovides, director of policy and legislative affairs for the NALEO Educational Fund, said during a recent forum.

    The proposed changes would create a new category for people of Middle Eastern and North African descent, also known by the acronym MENA, who are now classified as white but say they have been routinely undercounted.

    The process also would combine the race and ethnic origin questions into a single query, because some advocates say the current method of asking about race and separately about ethnic origin often confuses Hispanic respondents. With the revisions, the government would try to get more detailed answers on race and ethnicity by asking about country of origin.

    Another proposal recommends striking from federal government forms the words “Negro” and “Far East,” now widely regarded as pejorative. The terms “majority” and “minority” would also be dropped because some officials say they fail to reflect the nation’s complex racial and ethnic diversity.

    Several Black Americans, like Way, whose ancestors were enslaved, said in public comments to the OMB that they would like to be identified in a category such as American Freedmen, Foundational Black Americans or American Descendants of Slavery to distinguish themselves from Black immigrants, or even white individuals born in Africa, as well as reflecting their ancestors’ history in the U.S.

    Way, who is president of United Sons & Daughters of Freedmen, which describes itself as dedicated to restoring the broken promises from Reconstruction, also recommended substituting the word “population group” for “race.”

    Conflating “African American” with “Black” has “blurred what it means to be an African American in this country,” Way, who works for a pharmaceutical company in Athens, Georgia, said in a telephone interview.

    Haskins, a retired government worker from Lansing, Michigan, suggested eliminating race categories like “white” and “Black” since they perpetuate “deeply rooted unjust socio-political constructs.”

    Instead, he said people should be able to self-identify as they wish. When his sociologist daughter points out the difficulty of aggregating such data into something useful to address inequalities in housing or voting, or tailoring health or education programs to the needs of communities, he tells her, “Go crazy at it. That’s what you’re being paid for.”

    “You need to search for the truth and not just stay with the old categories because someone decided, ‘That is what we decided,’” Haskins said.

    Parekh is asking the government to distinguish South Asians from East Asians.

    “When these groups are assessed together, one loses a lot of important granularity that can help differentiate issues that are specific to one group and not another,” Parekh said.

    The MENA community appears to be having a related problem, based on several comments to OMB. Without its own category, the group’s political power is diluted. People could benefit from cohesive representation, especially if identities were taken into account in drawing political districts, advocates said.

    It comes down to something even more personal for Houda Meroueh, who described herself to the Biden administration as a 73-year-old Arab American woman.

    “When I go to the doctor’s office I do not feel they have the information necessary to understand my medical history or my culture,” she said. “For all these reasons I want to be counted as who I am. Not as white.”

    Jordan Steiner said ethnic categories should be expanded to include not only MENA, but other groups like Jews who often regard themselves not only as members of a religious group but an ethnic one too.

    Jessica Aksoy commended the proposals to expand the categories, saying she often felt limited about which boxes to check as someone of Turkish, European and Jewish heritage.

    “Recognizing our differences is honoring and celebrating the rich melting pot of America,” Aksoy said. “The face of America is changing, and this initiative is for progress in recognizing that.” ___

    Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at @MikeSchneiderAP

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  • COVID test requirement lifted for travelers from China to US

    COVID test requirement lifted for travelers from China to US

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — A requirement that travelers to the U.S. from China present a negative COVID-19 test before boarding their flights expired Friday after more than two months as cases in China have fallen.

    The restrictions were put in place Dec. 28 and took effect Jan. 5 amid a surge in infections in China after the nation sharply eased pandemic restrictions and as U.S. health officials expressed concerns that their Chinese counterparts were not being truthful to the world about the true number of infections and deaths. The requirement from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expired for flights leaving after 3 p.m. Eastern time Friday.

    When the restriction was imposed, U.S. officials also said it was necessary to protect U.S. citizens and communities because there was a lack of transparency from the Chinese government about the size of the surge or the variants that were circulating within China.

    The rules imposed in January require travelers to the U.S. from China, Hong Kong and Macau to take a COVID-19 test no more than two days before travel and provide a negative test before boarding their flight. The testing applies to anyone 2 years and older, including U.S. citizens.

    China saw infections and deaths surge after it eased back from its “zero COVID” strategy in early December after rare public protests against a policy that confined millions of people to their homes and sparked protests and demands for President Xi Jinping to resign.

    But as China eased its strict rules, infections and deaths surged, and parts of the country for weeks saw their hospitals overwhelmed by infected patients looking for help. Still, the Chinese government has been slow to release data on the number of deaths and infections.

    The U.S. decision to lift restrictions comes at a moment when U.S.-China relations are strained. Biden ordered a Chinese spy balloon shot down last month after it traversed the continental United States. The Biden administration has also publicized U.S. intelligence findings that raise concern Beijing is weighing providing Russia weaponry for its ongoing war on Ukraine.

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  • US says intelligence shows Russia stirring unrest in Moldova

    US says intelligence shows Russia stirring unrest in Moldova

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. intelligence officials have determined that people with ties to Russian intelligence are planning to stage protests in hopes of toppling the Moldovan government, according to the White House.

    White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the intelligence shows that actors, some connected with Russian intelligence, are seeking to stage and use protests in Moldova as a basis to foment an insurrection against Moldova’s new pro-Western government.

    Kirby said the intelligence shows that another set of Russian actors would provide training and help manufacture demonstrations in Moldova, which was granted European Union candidate status in June, on the same day as Ukraine, its war-torn neighbor.

    The publicizing of the alleged malign operation by Moscow in Moldova is just the latest example of the Biden administration loosening restrictions on and making public intelligence findings over the course of the grinding war in Ukraine. The administration has said it wants to highlight plans for Russian misinformation and other activity so allies remain clear-eyed about Moscow’s intent and Russia thinks twice before carrying out an operation.

    “As Moldova continues to integrate with Europe, we believe Russia is pursuing options to weaken the Moldovan government probably with the eventual goal of seeing a more Russian- friendly administration in the capital,” Kirby said.

    Kirby also pointed to recent efforts by Russia he said are intended to sow disinformation about Moldova’s overall stability. He pointed specifically to the Russian Ministry of Defense’s claim last month that Ukraine has been planning to invade Transnistria, Moldova’s Moscow-backed separatist region. He called that action “unfounded, false,” and said such claims “create baseless alarm.”

    The White House released the intelligence shortly before Biden was set to meet with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

    In recent weeks, several anti-government protests have been held in the capital, Chisinau, organized by a group calling itself Movement for the People and supported by members of Moldova’s Russia-friendly Shor Party, which holds six seats in the country’s 101-seat legislature. A protest is also planned by the group Sunday.

    The Shor Party’s leader, Ilan Shor, is a Moldovan oligarch currently in exile in Israel. Shor is named on a U.S. State Department sanctions list as working for Russian interests. Britain also added Shor to a sanctions list in December.

    On Thursday, Moldova’s national anti-corruption agency said officers carried out car searches of “couriers” for the Shor Party, and seized more than 150,000 euros ($160,000) in a case of alleged illegal party financing by an organized criminal group.

    The money, which was stuffed into envelopes and bags in at least two different currencies, was earmarked to “pay for the transport and remunerate people who come to the protests organized by the party,” the agency said. Three people were detained.

    The Shor Party also organized a series of anti-government protests last fall, which rocked Moldova as it struggled to manage a severe energy crisis after Moscow slashed natural gas supplies. Around the same time, Moldova’s government asked the country’s Constitutional Court to declare the Shor Party illegal, while anti-corruption prosecutors alleged that the protests were partly financed with Russian money.

    Meanwhile, Transnistria, which has close ties to Moscow and hosts Russian troops, claimed Thursday it had thwarted an assassination attempt on its president allegedly organized by Ukraine’s national security service. Officials alleged that Ukraine’s SBU security service ordered the assassination attempt, but did not provide evidence. The SBU rejected the allegation, saying it “should be considered exclusively as a provocation orchestrated by the Kremlin.”

    Sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania, Moldova has often been at the center of a struggle between Moscow and the West. Once part of the Soviet Union, Moldova declared its independence in 1991. One of Europe’s poorest countries with a population of about 2.6 million people, it has historic ties to Russia but wants to join the 27-nation EU.

    The push-and-pull has only intensified since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.

    Sandu met with President Joe Biden last month while the U.S. president was visiting Poland for the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    The U.S. has provided $265 million in emergency support to Moldova since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to help it deal with economic, energy and humanitarian crises caused by the war. The administration has asked Congress to approve an additional $300 million for Moldova.

    U.S. intelligence officials see no immediate military threat to Moldova, but the White House is publicizing the finding in hopes of deterring Russia before it moves forward with its plans, Kirby said.

    ___

    McGrath reported from Sighisoara, Romania.

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  • In rift with Biden, Manchin vows to block oil, gas nominee

    In rift with Biden, Manchin vows to block oil, gas nominee

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — In a sign of a deepening rift among Democrats on energy issues, conservative Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin says he will not move forward on President Joe Biden’s nominee to oversee oil and gas leasing at the Interior Department.

    Manchin, of West Virginia, chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and has great influence on energy and environmental issues in the closely divided Senate. In an op-ed Friday, he cited a leaked memo signed by nominee Laura Daniel-Davis that proposed charging oil companies higher rates for drilling off the Alaska coast.

    Manchin said the higher rates backed by Daniel-Davis for the proposed drilling project in Alaska’s Cook Inlet “were explicitly designed to decrease fossil energy production at the expense of our energy security.″

    Even though he had supported Daniel-Davis in the past, “I cannot, in good conscience, support her or anyone else who will play partisan politics and agree with this misguided and dangerous manipulation of the law,″ Manchin wrote in the Houston Chronicle.

    The dispute over Daniel-Davis’s nomination comes as the Biden administration nears a decision on a major oil project in Alaska that many environmental groups say would be a blight on Biden’s climate legacy.

    Climate activists are outraged that Biden appears open to the huge Willow project on Alaska’s North Slope, which they call a “carbon bomb” that would break his campaign pledge to curtail oil drilling on public lands and waters.

    Approval of the project would risk alienating young voters who have urged stronger climate action by the White House as Biden approaches a 2024 reelection campaign.

    At the same time, Alaska Native leaders with ties to the petroleum-rich North Slope support ConocoPhillips Alaska’s proposal. They say the Willow Project would bring much-needed jobs and billions of dollars in taxes and mitigation funds to the vast, snow- and ice-covered region nearly 600 miles (965 kilometers) from Anchorage.

    Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation, Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy and state lawmakers also support the project.

    Daniel-Davis, who currently serves as Interior’s principal deputy assistant secretary for lands and minerals management, would not directly decide the fate of the Willow project, but Manchin and Alaska’s two Republican senators have criticized what they consider her lukewarm support for oil drilling on public lands and water. Daniel-Davis oversees Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement.

    She was first nominated for the assistant secretary position nearly two years ago, but her bid has stalled because of the concerns of Manchin and Senate Republicans. Biden renominated her for the post in January.

    In a statement Friday, the White House said Biden “nominated Laura Daniel-Davis because she has worked to conserve public lands, protect wildlife and address climate change for three decades, while prioritizing a collaborative and partnership-based approach. She is well-qualified for this position and we look forward to her moving forward in the confirmation process.″

    Melissa Schwartz, a spokeswoman for Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, said Interior was “very disappointed” to learn of Manchin’s opposition to Daniel-Davis after he supported her during two committee hearings and votes over the past two years.

    “Laura Daniel-Davis has served this administration, as she has two others, with a dedication that we should aspire to see in every public servant,″ Schwartz said in an email. “She will continue to lead this portfolio at Interior and implement President Biden’s direction, stated consistently and clearly since Day One, with respect to carefully balancing the role that public lands and waters play as we face the climate crisis.”

    Daniel-Davis is one of several Biden nominees whom Manchin has opposed. Another is Gigi Sohn, who withdrew her nomination to the Federal Communications Commission after Manchin opposed her.

    Manchin also voted against Daniel Werfel’s nomination to lead the Internal Revenue Service. Werfel was confirmed Thursday with support from several Republicans.

    Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the top Republican on the energy panel, hailed Manchin’s latest announcement. “Laura Daniel-Davis has done everything she can to undermine American energy production. As I have said before, her nomination should be withdrawn,″ Barrasso tweeted.

    But Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the liberal Center for Western Priorities, called Manchin’s “flip-flop” on Daniel-Davis “baffling, hypocritical and short-sighted.″ Daniel-Davis will continue to oversee oil and gas leasing in her current role, “with or without Manchin’s support for a promotion,″ Rokala said. “But now the White House and Interior Department have no reason to keep catering to Manchin’s whims.″

    In his op-ed, Manchin sharply criticized the Biden administration’s implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, a key climate, tax and health care bill that Manchin helped craft.

    “While the Biden administration has continued to play political games and incorrectly frame the IRA as a climate change legislation, the truth is that the IRA is about securing America’s energy independence for the coming century,″ Manchin wrote.

    “The Biden administration continues to ignore congressional intent on critical components of the IRA … to illogically advance a partisan climate agenda and appease radical activists,″ Manchin added. He said the Interior and Treasury departments “have explicitly and unabashedly violated the letter of the law … in an effort to elevate climate goals above the energy and national security of this nation.”

    Manchin has repeatedly slammed Treasury for issuing guidelines that allow car makers in Europe and Asia to bypass requirements that significant portions of electric-vehicle batteries be produced in North America.

    “This is wrong and it must stop,″ Manchin wrote.

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