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  • White House cautiously optimistic over economy in 2023: ‘Absolutely no sign’ job growth will tumble or unemployment will spike | CNN Politics

    White House cautiously optimistic over economy in 2023: ‘Absolutely no sign’ job growth will tumble or unemployment will spike | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    As Wall Street and Main Street fret about a potential recession, White House officials are projecting confidence about the economy’s ability to weather the storm in 2023.

    “We’re feeling cautiously optimistic because we are starting to see some real concrete measurable signs of progress,” Aviva Aron-Dine, deputy director of the White House National Economic Council, told CNN in a Zoom interview.

    The Biden administration economist pointed to a range of metrics showing inflation has cooled off, real wages have heated up and the job market has defied doomsday predictions.

    The White House is hoping for a soft landing, in which the Federal Reserve tames inflation without crashing the economy.

    “We remain optimistic about a transition to stable, steady growth with lower inflation – without giving up labor market gains, without a recession,” Aron-Dine said.

    So far, so good – at least from the administration’s perspective.

    For the moment, metrics suggest the economy has remained resilient and consumers are more optimistic as inflation has eased. The Conference Board’s latest consumer confidence index this month, for example, showed a significant jump from November. And after spiking to record highs in June, gas prices have plunged to 17-month lows, delivering a major boost to consumers.

    And some broader trends appear to be working in the administration’s favor, like hiring, which has slowed but has not collapsed.

    There is “absolutely no sign” that job growth will fall on a “sustained basis” below a pace of roughly 150,000 jobs a month, Aron-Dine said.

    Last month, the US economy added a surprisingly strong 263,000 jobs. That’s down sharply from 647,000 in the same period last year – but still a very healthy pace.

    Despite a series of mass layoffs in the tech and media industries, Aron-Dine added that there is “no sign of a big increase in unemployment.”

    Indeed, initial jobless claims remain very low. The Labor Department said Thursday that first-time claims for unemployment benefits rose just slightly in the latest week and remain near two-month lows. However, some economists – including ones at the Fed – warn this trend could be about to change due in large part to continued pressure from higher borrowing costs.

    After raising interest rates for a seventh meeting in a row, the Fed last week projected the unemployment rate will rise from a historically low level of 3.7% today to 4.6% by the end of next year. That implies an increase of approximately 1.6 million unemployed people.

    Some, though certainly not all, business leaders and major banks expect the US economy will slip into a downturn next year. For instance, PNC is now projecting a “mild recession” that is similar to the downturns of 1990-1991 and 2001.

    “The risk of a recession is elevated right now – certainly higher than six months or a year ago,” Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC, told CNN. “We need to be prepared for a recession sometime in the spring or summer of 2023.”

    Other economists including Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, are growing more confident a recession may be avoided.

    Although Fed officials say a soft landing is still possible, some of the Fed’s own metrics are flashing red.

    A New York Fed model that uses shifts in the bond market to forecast recession risks finds there is a 38% chance of a recession in the next 12 months. That narrowly surpasses the peak in 2019 and is the highest level since just before the Great Recession.

    There are signs that cracks are forming in consumer spending – the main engine of the US economy – due to high inflation that has forced some Americans to dip into savings and turn to credit cards. Retail sales declined in November by the most in nearly a year as shoppers pulled back on everything from furniture and cars to even e-commerce.

    Asked about the surprise retail sales slump, Aron-Dine noted this metric can experience significant volatility.

    “If you look at the data over a more extended period, you’re just not seeing any signs that would make us think that is a significant concern,” she said.

    In that effort to transition away from high inflation, Aron-Dine said, the White House continues to evaluate ongoing risks, calling the war in Ukraine “one of the most significant risks that we monitor.”

    “I think all year, we’ve seen that there are signs of real strength and opportunities for a successful transition, and that there are significant risks. And so our work, our strategy has been about trying to take advantage of the strengths and mitigates the risk,” she said, later adding, “I think we have reason for optimism, reasons to believe the US economy is well positioned, but there are global challenges and high on that list is potential downstream consequences of the war in Ukraine for food and energy as we saw this year and more generally.”

    Another hurdle Biden’s economic team will face in the new year will be achieving consensus among a newly divided Congress.

    Biden’s first two years in office were marked by the passage the administration’s proposed major spending bills aimed at bolstering the country’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, overhauling major social safety net programs, enhancing domestic supply chains and making climate investments.

    But some major provisions the Biden White House has pushed for, including the revival of the enhanced child credit have failed to move forward in Congress. The previous expansion of the child tax credit lifted 2.1 million children out of poverty in 2021, according to the Census Bureau.

    A last-ditch effort this month to pass the credit into law as part of the $1.7 trillion government spending bill failed. And with Republicans taking over the House of Representatives next year, its passage is even less likely.

    “It is a disappointment that Republicans blocked inclusion of Child Tax Credit improvements during the lame duck,” Aron-Dine said, adding, “I won’t get ahead of agenda setting our strategy for next year, but of course, this will remain a priority for us.”

    Along with broader efforts to tackle inflation and avoid a recession, the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act will also be top of mind for Biden economic officials in the coming year.

    A slate of provisions in the IRA are scheduled to roll out in January, including home energy efficiency tax credits and a $35 cap on the cost of insulin for seniors on Medicare.

    And CNN previously reported that along with deploying a messaging strategy aimed at highlighting existing accomplishments, as Biden heads into the new year, the White House is looking to highlight ways the Inflation Reduction Act will lower everyday costs.

    Aron-Dine told CNN that the enactment of the IRA “is just going to have a huge effect in shaping our work in the year ahead, with one of our biggest priorities really being just making sure that we fully realize the potential of that law.”

    And as the administration prepares to frame Biden’s agenda ahead of the State of the Union address next year, National Economic Council Director Brian Deese told the Wall Street Journal this week that officials are considering a push for policies aimed at getting Americans back to work, including childcare and eldercare benefits.

    It’s not clear whether the White House is considering using executive authority or proposals to Congress to move forward on the initiative. Aron-Dine declined to offer specifics.

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  • Opinion: Zelensky’s powerful message to Putin | CNN

    Opinion: Zelensky’s powerful message to Putin | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis, (@fridaghitis) a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    Members of the United States Congress, Republicans and Democrats, rose to their feet time and again Wednesday night, nearly drowning out Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in one emotional standing ovation after another. It was an extraordinary evening, concluding an extraordinary day during a crucial moment in history.

    The entire day was geared to three audiences – the American people and its leaders, the Ukrainian people and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Zelensky’s message resonated loudly to all of them: From the moment he landed in the US, dressed in his trademark olive green clothes, to the warm welcome he received in the White House from President Joe Biden, to the rapturous reception in the Congress, a place where few foreign leaders receive the honor of speaking to a joint meeting of the two chambers.

    The visit aimed to convince Americans to continue supporting Ukraine, to show Ukrainians that there’s reason to remain hopeful and resilient and to prove to Putin that Ukraine is not about to let up.

    The Ukrainian president is an eloquent speaker, but the images alone spoke with soaring power. Biden’s hand on Zelensky’s shoulder. The warmth exuded by so many members of Congress as they greeted him. And then there were the words.

    Imagine being Putin, who just yesterday visited one of his very few allies, the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, and seeing the politically polarized United States come together to embrace Zelensky.

    Imagine Putin hearing Biden say, as he did in a press conference at the White House after speaking with Zelensky for more than two hours, “And it was very important for him and everyone else to see that President Zelenskyy and I are united, two countries together, to make sure he cannot succeed…. “It’s important for [Putin] to know that we are going to do everything in our power – everything in our power to see that [Zelensky] succeeds”

    The Ukrainian president finally had that visit to the White House he had requested years ago from President Trump, hoping that the image would deter Putin’s aggression. The visit would have to wait until a different American president, and it would be too late to prevent Putin’s assault.

    Zelensky made his historic trip at a crucial moment in what future generations may come to view as one of the defining conflicts of our time: the battle between democracy and autocracy, in which Ukraine today is the blazing, blood-soaked, shivering front line.

    He came to tell Americans “Thank you.” And he said it over and over. “I hope my words of respect and gratitude resonate in each American heart.” But that was only the first part of his message to the country that has supplied the weapons that have helped enable Ukraine to push back against a much bigger enemy: Zelensky came to explain why this is not just Ukraine’s fight.

    “Your money is not charity,” he assured a Congress about to debate billions more in military and economic support, where skeptical Republicans will soon have more influence. “It is an investment in the global security and democracy, that we handle in the most responsible way.”

    To continue what has been a successful defense against Russia, despite appalling human suffering, Zelensky had to persuade Americans – in Congress and at home – that Ukraine’s fight is a fight for the values of the free world.

    As Zelensky pleaded for continuing and growing support, he wouldn’t be so brazen, so blunt to phrase it directly, but we should know the truth: He may be saying thank you, but it is the free world that should be thanking Ukraine. Ukrainians are fighting a battle for freedom, democracy and the very notion of national sovereignty.

    A victory by Ukraine tells dictators everywhere that the old days, when a strong country could invade and swallow its neighbors, are not coming back. Ukraine’s loss would change everyone’s world. This is clearly not just their war.

    “We really fight for our common victory against this tyranny that is real life,” Zelensky said in a press conference at the White House — “and we will win.”

    The Ukrainian president, in his gravelly voice, was trying to convince the American people and their leaders to stick with Ukraine. He invoked the battles of American soldiers against Nazis in 1944. And he noted that Ukrainians will celebrate Christmas by candlelight – not because it’s more romantic, but because Russian attacks have left much of the country without power, heat or running water. “We do not complain,” he said, nor compare who has it harder. Ukraine just wants to receive the support it needs to continue the fight until victory.

    Underscoring the point, he said the soldiers fighting in the brutal battle for Bakhmut asked him to give their battle flag – a flag of Ukraine signed by its defenders – as a gift to the U.S. Congress. Tears were shed in the House.

    Zelensky arrived in Washington 300 days after the start of Russia’s unprovoked invasion. It was his first international trip since the war began in February, and it came at a time when several factors could conspire to counter what has been the remarkable, ferocious resistance by the Ukrainian people with the massive support from the United States and its NATO allies.

    With winter bearing down and Putin’s forces using Iranian drones and other artillery to bombard crucial infrastructure, deliberately targeting civilian installations and leaving millions of Ukrainians in the cold and dark, “trying to use winter as a weapon,” in the words of President Joe Biden, “freezing people, starving people,” the suffering of Ukrainian men, women and children is worsening.

    Putin seeks to break what has been an indomitable will to resist. At the same time, the US House of Representatives, which has been reliably supportive of Biden’s campaign to support Ukraine, is about to change hands. Some Republicans, such as Kevin McCarthy, the likely new Speaker of the House, have expressed some reluctance to continue large-scale support for Kyiv, with McCarthy saying he wouldn’t automatically support the Biden administration’s requests for more aid. And that is happening just as Putin is believed to be planning a renewed offensive. Putin, who rules over a much larger, wealthier country, apparently still believes he can win.

    Zelensky revealed that he outlined a 10-point peace plan to Biden, but judging by Putin’s recent statements, Russia seems more prepared to keep up the fight than negotiate. Putin seems to be counting on the United States and NATO tiring, slackening their support for Kyiv. That’s why this speech, reminiscent of Winston Churchill’s address to Congress in December 1941, was arguably the most important one Ukraine’s leader has given since the start of the war.

    If Americans get tired of supporting Ukraine, if they listen to the ugly voices disparaging Zelensky, Russia could ultimately win, and the world as we know it would change. It would be a victory for autocracy and a grievous loss for democracy. If Zelensky was able to make that clear, his historic visit was a triumph.

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  • Exclusive: Biden task force investigating how US tech ends up in Iranian attack drones used against Ukraine | CNN Politics

    Exclusive: Biden task force investigating how US tech ends up in Iranian attack drones used against Ukraine | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The Biden administration has launched an expansive task force to investigate how US and western components, including American-made microelectronics, are ending up in Iranian-made drones Russia is launching by the hundreds into Ukraine, multiple officials familiar with the effort tell CNN. 

    The US has imposed tough export control restrictions and sanctions to prevent Iran from obtaining high-end materials, but evidence has emerged that suggests Iran is finding an abundance of commercially-available technology. 

    Last month, the UK-based investigative organization  Conflict Armament Research examined  several drones that had been downed in Ukraine and found that 82% of their components were manufactured by companies based in the US. 

    Among the components found in some of the drones are processors built by the Dallas-based technology company Texas Instruments, according to an investigation by the Ukrainian Armed Forces and a source familiar with the US inquiry, as well as an engine made by an Austrian firm owned by Canada’s Bombardier Recreational Products. Both companies have condemned any use of their technology for illicit purposes. 

    Their apparently unintentional ensnarement in Iran’s drone manufacturing industry underscores how inexpensive products intended for civilian use can be easily retrofitted for military purposes, and often fall just outside the bounds of sanctions and export control regimes.  

    Texas Instruments said in a statement to CNN that “TI is not selling any products into Russia, Belarus or Iran. TI complies with applicable laws and regulations in the countries where we operate, and partners with law enforcement organizations as necessary and appropriate. Additionally, we do not support or condone the use of our products in applications they weren’t designed for. ”

    Bombardier Recreational Products  said in a statement that it was launching an investigation into how the engines ended up in the drones.

    The investigation has intensified in recent weeks amid intelligence obtained by the US that the Kremlin is preparing to open its own factory for drone production inside Russia as part of a deal with Iran, the officials said. 

    Iran has already begun transferring blueprints and components for the drones to Russia to help with production there, CNN has reported, in a dramatic expansion of the countries’ military partnership. 

    Agencies across Washington are involved in the task force, including the departments of Defense, State, Justice, Commerce and Treasury, with one official describing the inquiry as an “all hands on deck” initiative. The effort is being overseen by the White House National Security Council as part of an even bigger, “holistic approach” to dealing with Iran, a senior administration official said, from its crackdown on protesters and its nuclear program to its deepening role in the war in Ukraine.

    But the drone issue is particularly urgent given the sheer volume of US-made components, many of them manufactured in the last couple years, that have been found in the Iranian drones Russia has been deploying across Ukraine against civilians and critical infrastructure. 

    Conflict Armament Research found that the Iranian drones they examined in Ukraine in November had “higher-end technological capabilities,” including tactical-grade sensors and semiconductors sourced outside of Iran, demonstrating that Tehran “has been able to circumvent current sanction regimes and has added more capabilities and resiliency to its weapons.”

    National Security Council official John Kirby told reporters earlier this month that the US would be sanctioning three Russian companies involved in acquiring and using the Iranian drones, and is “assessing further steps we can take in terms of export controls to restrict Iran’s access to sensitive technologies.” 

    Much of that work has fallen to the task force, officials said, and among its first tasks has been to notify all of the American companies whose components have been found in the drones. Congressional staffers briefed on the effort told CNN that they hope the task force provides lawmakers with a list of US companies whose equipment is being found in the drones in an effort to force greater accountability by urging the companies to monitor their supply chains more closely.

    The task force is also having to coordinate with foreign allies, since the components being used in the drones are not limited to those produced by American companies.  Conflict Armament Research also found that “more than 70 manufacturers based in 13 different countries and territories” produced the components in the Iranian drones they examined.

    In October, CNN obtained access to a drone that was downed in the Black Sea near Odesa and captured by Ukrainian forces. It was found to contain Japanese batteries, an Austrian engine and American processors. 

    An Iranian-made drone, the Mohajer-6.

    Iran may also be acquiring near-exact replicas of western components from China, according to a study published last month by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. “China plays a larger role than previously assessed in enabling Iran to manufacture and supply drones to Russian forces,” the report found. “It appears that Chinese companies are supplying Iran with copies of Western commodities to produce UAV combat drones.”

    The White House believes it is successfully driving home the scale of the issue with allies. The senior administration official told CNN that there was “growing broad and deep international consensus on Iran, from the EU to Canada to Australia and New Zealand, which is being led by US diplomacy.”

    There is no evidence that any of the western companies are knowingly exporting their technology to be used in the drones, and that is partly why the task force’s job has been so difficult, officials said. 

    The task force has its work cut out for it in tracing supply chains for the microelectronics industry, which relies heavily on third party distributors and resellers. The microchips and other small devices ending up in so many of the Iranian and Russian drones are not only inexpensive and widely available, they are also easily hidden. 

    Parts of a drone after Russian strike on fuel storage facilities in Kharkiv, Ukraine October 6, 2022.

    Iran also uses front companies to buy equipment from the US and EU that may have a dual use, like the Austrian engines, that Tehran can then use to build drones, according to the Treasury Department, which sanctioned several of those companies in September. 

     That makes supply chain monitoring a challenge, though experts say US and European companies could be doing a lot more to track where their products are going. 

    “American companies should be doing a lot more to track their supply chains,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, the former chief technology officer at the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. 

    Keeping better track of resellers is a first step, he said, but the task is admittedly difficult because so many of these companies’ products are so commoditized and available off-the-shelf and online for civil purposes. Ultimately, neutering some Iranian front companies with sanctions and cutting off their supply from some western companies will be akin to “a game of whack a mole,” Alperovitch said, noting that they “can easily find another supplier.”

    He added that the real “weak underbelly” of US policy when it comes to export controls is enforcement—and prosecuting the specific individuals involved in the illicit transactions. 

    “We have to beef up the resources for enforcement of our sanctions to achieve the desired effect,” Alperovitch said.

    “You can put companies on the [sanctioned] entities list,” he added, “but if you don’t actually go after the people involved, it doesn’t mean a whole lot.” 

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  • Iran and Russia were too distracted to meddle in midterm elections, US general says | CNN Politics

    Iran and Russia were too distracted to meddle in midterm elections, US general says | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Domestic unrest in Iran and Russia’s war in Ukraine may have distracted Tehran and Moscow from making more of an effort to influence or interfere in the 2022 US midterm election, a top US military cyberofficial said Monday.

    “We collectively saw much less focus from foreign adversaries, particularly the Russians” in targeting the 2022 election compared to previous elections, Maj. Gen. William J. Hartman, who leads the Cyber National Mission Force of US Cyber Command, the military’s offensive and defensive hacking unit, said at a press briefing at Fort Meade, home to Cyber Command and the National Security Agency.

    Hartman said he was “surprised” by the relative lack of activity from the Russians and Iranians during the midterm election. The US military’s cyber forces have taken a more active role in defending US elections from foreign interference since 2018 by targeting computer networks used by Russia and others to try to sow discord.

    Gen. Paul Nakasone, the head of Cyber Command, confirmed to reporters this month that the command conducted offensive and defensive cyber operations in an effort to protect the midterms from foreign interference and influence.

    Nakasone declined to go into details on the operations, but said the command focused on taking down the computer infrastructure used by foreign operatives “at key times.”

    “There was a campaign plan that we followed and it wasn’t just November 8. it covered before, during and until the elections were certified,” said Nakasone, who also leads the National Security Agency.

    Foreign governments tend to use established agencies to meddle in elections rather than create new organizations to do that on the fly, Hartman said. And the security services in Russia and Iran were preoccupied in the weeks and months before Americans went to the polls in November.

    Iranian security forces carried out a bloody crackdown on protesters this fall after a woman died in the custody of the so-called morality police. Russia’s military, meanwhile, pummeled Ukrainian cities with drone and missile strikes to try to turn the tide of the war.

    As they have since they were caught flat-footed by Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, US officials prepared for a range of foreign actors to try to influence voters or interfere with the vote in 2022.

    Asked in July whether the war in Ukraine would distract Russia from interfering in the US midterm election, FBI Director Christopher Wray said he was “quite confident the Russians can walk and chew gum” and that US officials were preparing accordingly.

    But foreign operatives from Iran and Russia generally reused old tactics and tools in their influence operations during the US midterms rather than try anything brand new, Nakasone told reporters this month.

    While there weren’t any reports of high-impact foreign interference activity during the midterm elections, there were attempts by Russian, Iranian and Chinese operatives to influence voters, according to researchers.

    Suspected Russian operatives used far-right media platforms to denigrate Democratic candidates in battleground states just days before the elections, according to Graphika, a social media analysis firm. For their part, alleged Chinese operatives showed signs of engaging in more “Russian-style influence activities” that stoke American divisions ahead of the midterm vote, according to the FBI.

    On Election Day, pro-Russia hackers took responsible for a cyberattack that knocked the website of the Mississippi secretary of state’s website offline. The incident didn’t affect the tallying of votes.

    “It is likely that a primary objective of the identified pro-Russia actors was to build the perception of influencing the elections—potentially in hopes of supporting future narratives that would undermine the credibility of the election results,” Mandiant, a cybersecurity firm owned by Google, said in an analysis published Monday.

    Mandiant said it had “moderate confidence” that whoever ran that Russian hacktivist group’s channel on the Telegram messaging app was coordinating their operations with actors sponsored by Russia’s military intelligence agency.

    “This year some [foreign groups] seemed most interested in reinforcing the notion that they still posed a threat, even if they didn’t push too hard to actually affect outcomes” of the election, John Hultquist, Mandiant’s vice president of intelligence analysis, told CNN.

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  • First on CNN: Biden administration moves to phase out compact fluorescent light bulbs and push market toward LEDs | CNN Politics

    First on CNN: Biden administration moves to phase out compact fluorescent light bulbs and push market toward LEDs | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Biden administration is unveiling a new proposed rule that, if enacted, would effectively phase out compact fluorescent light bulbs and move the US light bulb markets decisively to more energy-efficient LEDs.

    The Department of Energy is proposing the rule on Monday with the aim to finalize it by the end of President Joe Biden’s first term. The rule would more than double the current minimum light bulb efficiency level, from its current standard of 45 lumens per watt to over 120 lumens per watt for the most common bulbs. The details of the proposed rule were shared first with CNN.

    This change will accelerate what White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi said is an “increasing shift in the marketplace toward LED lighting” over the last decade. Zaidi said moving away from compact fluorescents and even less efficient incandescent bulbs will ultimately lead to savings for consumers.

    “The mandate to the Department of Energy from Congress is to find ways to save money for American consumers,” Zaidi told CNN in an interview. “LEDs are now an order of magnitude cheaper than just a decade ago.”

    The proposed rule comes on top of the Biden administration’s move to get inefficient incandescent bulbs off the shelves by the summer of 2023. The Department of Energy finalized a rule to phase out the old-fashioned bulbs in the spring, capping off a decades-long bipartisan effort started in the Bush administration to get them off the shelves.

    That was complicated by former President Donald Trump in 2019, whose administration undid a previous Obama-era light bulb rule. Trump once famously complained about the quality of the light coming from LED bulbs, telling House Republicans “I always look orange” in the energy-efficient lighting.

    Zaidi said that LED lighting technology has improved tremendously since the early days of LEDs, providing better light for a fraction of the cost.

    LED bulbs can last three to five times longer than a compact fluorescent bulb, and up to 30 times longer than an incandescent bulb, according to the Department of Energy. Unlike both incandescent and compact fluorescent bulbs, LEDs release very little heat, and thus waste less energy.

    “If a particular light fixture was costing someone $10 in a year, then it’s going to be costing much, much less,” Zaidi said.

    Even before the latest proposed rule, LED use in the US has grown significantly in recent years. Nearly 50% of US households said they used LED bulbs for most or all their indoor lighting, according to the 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey. It was a huge increase from the 2015 survey, where just 4% of households reported using LEDs for most or all indoor light use.

    That same survey showed just 12% of US households said they used compact fluorescents as their predominant source of lighting, down from 32% in 2015.

    DOE also estimates the proposed changes will help put a dent in planet-warming emissions, cutting 131 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and 903 thousand tons of methane over the next 30 years – roughly equal to the electricity that 29 million homes use in one year.

    Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement the changes would “help lower energy costs and keep money in the pockets of American families while reducing our nation’s carbon footprint.”

    The rulemaking is also part of an administration goal to take 100 actions in the past year to make energy efficiency standards stronger. The White House announced Monday it had surpassed its goal with stronger standards on gas furnaces, air conditioners and clothes dryers.

    Zaidi told CNN it is part of a broader effort by the Biden administration to move Americans’ appliances to more energy efficient and cost-effective ones that also release far less heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions into the air. For instance, Zaidi said DOE is also at work on a rule to make residential cooking products like stoves and ovens more efficient.

    Zaidi added the administration is trying to use a combination of federal standards and incentives to push consumers toward energy-efficient and cleaner products for their homes, whether it be a light bulb, an HVAC unit or a stove.

    “We’re laying the foundation for people in every year of this administration being able to lock in more ways to save money on energy bills,” Zaidi said. “One of the things we’ve heard loud and clear is how focused consumers are on not only recognizing that energy costs are front of mind now, but that there are these products that help them avoid impacts to their bottom line as energy costs fluctuate in the future.”

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  • Manchin says Biden should ask for extension of Trump-era border policy | CNN Politics

    Manchin says Biden should ask for extension of Trump-era border policy | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said Sunday that President Joe Biden should ask for an extension of Title 42, a public health authority that was invoked under former President Donald Trump and allows officials to expel migrants encountered at the US-Mexico border.

    “I understand that the president needs to use every bit of power he has as an executive to find a way or ask for an extension,” the West Virginia senator told CBS News’ Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.”

    “The president can basically, I think, ask for that extension. I think his administration is doing that or will do that. I sure hope they do. But we need an extension until we can get a viable answer for this,” Manchin said.

    Title 42 – which has been heavily criticized by public health experts and immigrant advocates – has largely barred asylum at the US-Mexico border, marking an unprecedented departure from traditional protocol.

    But while its origins were in the Trump administration, Title 42 has become a key tool for the Biden White House as it faces mass migration in the Western Hemisphere.

    A federal appeals court on Friday rejected a bid by several Republican-led states to keep Title 42 in force, after a district court struck the controversial border policy down. The Biden administration is set to stop enforcing the rule Wednesday, though the GOP-led states had previously indicated that they’d seek the intervention of the Supreme Court should the appeals court rule against them.

    The states argued in the case that allowing Title 42 to terminate would “cause an enormous disaster at the border” and that a big jump in the number of migrants “will necessarily increase the States’ law enforcement, education, and healthcare costs.”

    In an interview on ABC’s “This Week” that aired Sunday, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said migrants coming across the border untested for Covid-19 or any other illness pose a “public health risk” to the United States.

    “Whether it’s Covid or some other issue, when you have people coming from across the globe, without knowing at all what their health status is, that almost by definition – is a public health risk,” Abbott said, while speaking about the end of Title 42. “There’s every reason to keep that in place.”

    On Saturday, Mayor Oscar Leeser of El Paso, Texas, declared a state of emergency in response to the surge in migrants arriving in the community in recent days.

    “If the courts do not intervene and put a halt to the removal of title 42, it’s going to be total chaos,” Abbott said.

    Biden administration officials have been bracing for an influx of migrants when the authority lifts. The Department of Homeland Security’s six-pillar plan for the scheduled end of Title 42 includes surging resources to the border, increasing processing efficiency, imposing consequences for unlawful entry, bolstering nonprofit capacity, targeting smugglers and working with international partners.

    Keisha Lance Bottoms, the White House senior adviser for public engagement, on Sunday defended the administration’s preparedness to deal with any influx at the southern border, telling CBS News, “What we are seeing happening is that many people are taking advantage of the fact that Title 42 may go away.”

    “This week, we see many people exploiting migrants, saying, ‘Come now or you lose your ability to come at all.’ And that’s simply not the case,” she said on “Face the Nation.”

    Lance Bottoms called on Congress to act on comprehensive immigration reform – something unlikely to happen before Title 42 is lifted or in the next Congress when Republicans will control the House.

    Bottoms would not foreshadow what executive actions Biden could take, in lieu of any larger action from Congress.

    Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California said Sunday the federal government should focus on funding humanitarian assistance upon the lifting of Title 42.

    “The state of California is a prime example. More than a billion dollars of state funds going into humanity assistance for asylum seekers when they come to the United States. While they wait for their hearing, do they deserve some basic food and shelter and health screening? Absolutely. Frankly, the federal government should be investing more in that humane treatment of asylum seekers,” Padilla said on ABC’s “This Week.”

    But Manchin stressed Sunday that “we have a crisis at the border. Everyone can see that. I think everyone realizes that something has to be done. [Title] 42 needs to be extended until we can get a really, truly immigration reform.”

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  • New York City says it needs $3 billion from federal government in coming years to respond to asylum seekers | CNN

    New York City says it needs $3 billion from federal government in coming years to respond to asylum seekers | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    New York is hoping to receive $3 billion from the federal government through 2026 to handle the influx of migrants that city leaders have been grappling with for months, according to a new government report.

    The city Comptroller’s Annual State of the City’s Economy and Finances report, released on Thursday, said the federal government has not confirmed it will support New York with the annual $1 billion, but that the money is needed for services to support arriving migrants and those already in shelters who need permanent housing.

    The $1 billion includes $600 million for homeless and social services for asylum seekers and another $310 million for health and hospitals, “with the expectation that the Federal government will provide the resources to fully support these programs,” the report said.

    Since spring, thousands of asylum seekers have been bused to the city from the southern border, often at the direction of officials, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who have been critical of federal border policies. In October, New York Mayor Eric Adams declared a state of emergency to what he called a “man-made humanitarian crisis,” saying the crowds seeking asylum were arriving faster than the city could accommodate them.

    The city has seen an estimated influx of more than 30,000 asylum seekers since the last budget adoption, which has driven a “historic surge” in the number of people living in city shelters, according to the comptroller’s report.

    More than 20,000 asylum seekers remained in the city’s care as of this week.

    While the number of people arriving has slowed in recent weeks, the report added, that could soon change, as the country braces for an expected increase in migrant arrivals when a Trump-era border policy is lifted next week.

    That policy, dubbed Title 42, is a public health rule invoked at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic that allowed officials to turn away migrants encountered at the southern border. A district court struck down the program last month and a federal appeals court on Friday rejected a bid by several Republican-led states to keep it in place.

    The program is now set to end on Wednesday.

    The comptroller’s report said that “much is unknown” about the kinds of trends the city will see in the next months and years after that program is lifted.

    The mayor’s office told CNN that since the beginning of the crisis, the city has taken urgent action to assist the asylum seekers “largely on its own and at great cost.”

    “We are actively working with the federal government to secure reimbursement for all of this spending,” Fabien Levy, the mayor’s press secretary, said in a statement. “We’ll continue to monitor the level of need and take the appropriate steps to meet our legal obligations while ensuring the city’s fiscal stability.”

    Earlier this week, the mayor echoed that point and said he planned to ask for more money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency as the city prepares for a possible increase in arrivals.

    “We have spent hundreds of millions of dollars. No one has helped us. No one. We have not gotten a dime from anyone. That has to stop. We need help,” Adams said. “This is an obligation on the national level. It is an obligation on the state level.”

    Adams, who said he has spoken with the White House, said he was hopeful the federal government would come up with a strategy before Title 42 is lifted.

    ‘We should not be paying for this,” the mayor added. “We’re all in this together.”

    Among the migrant needs that the city has grappled to respond to are issues of permanent housing, a high demand for legal services and requests for winter clothes as the winter months press on, one official briefed on the city’s response to the migrant arrivals said earlier this week.

    There has been huge demand for legal services and there have also been requests for basic information and orientation about documents in the asylum process, the person said. City officials have also been getting calls from various schools asking for winter clothes for migrant families who are not used to colder weather, the person added.

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  • US intel agencies likely missed chances to investigate Covid pandemic’s origin, House Democrats’ report says | CNN Politics

    US intel agencies likely missed chances to investigate Covid pandemic’s origin, House Democrats’ report says | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Democratic investigators on the House Intelligence Committee have alleged that US intelligence agencies may have lost a critical opportunity to gather useful information on the Covid-19 pandemic’s origins by failing to pivot its collection resources earlier. In a report released on Thursday morning, the Democrats also laid out perhaps the most detailed timeline to date of the litany of warnings the intelligence community offered the Trump administration in the early days of the pandemic.

    The Democratic report comes just 24 hours after committee Republicans released their own report on the intelligence community’s examination of the pandemic’s origins in what has become an indirect battle for the narrative surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic just weeks before Republicans are poised to claim control of the House.

    The Democratic investigators’ report says that the intelligence community was slow to pivot its clandestine resources to the growing crisis – in ways that have likely undermined its efforts to understand how or where the virus emerged.

    “It’s a hypothetical – no one could say with certainty, yes or no,” said one committee investigator. “But hypothetically speaking, if you have more information from clandestine sources from the very earliest days of the virus – perhaps before Chinese authorities entirely know what’s going on – you may be better positioned to answer some of those questions [about the virus’s origins] that are I think still open questions.”

    Investigators declined to offer specifics about what resources should have been trained on the problem. But according to the report, “the first valuable piece of clandestine collection on the virus” was disseminated only in late January 2020. Analysts from the Defense Intelligence Agency unit that provided the intelligence community’s first warning of the pandemic told the House committee that by then, they had grown “frustrated at the lack of clandestine collection to inform their analysis.”

    “The lack of clandestine collection was a reflection of the Intelligence Community’s overall lack of preparedness to face an emerging pandemic,” the report found. “The first significant dissemination of intelligence this late in the development of the crisis demonstrates how the IC was underserving expert policymakers and analysts.”

    According to the Democrats’ report, the first warning the intelligence community offered to the Trump administration came from a little-known Defense Intelligence Agency unit in Fort Detrick, Maryland, which on December 31, 2019, published an open-source warning of an undiagnosed pneumonia in China, labeling it a “possible pandemic warning update.”

    By the end of January, the Office of the National Director of Intelligence had issued a memo directing the intelligence community to direct more resources at gathering information on the burgeoning crisis, calling it “the top intelligence concern in East Asia,” and warnings began to ripple out through the senior levels of government.

    On January 24, the same DIA unit warned that there was a “roughly even” chance of a global pandemic. President Donald Trump received what Democratic investigators believe was likely his first formal Presidential Daily Briefing on the virus the day before, and another on January 28.

    According to a witness who spoke to the committee about the January 28 PDB briefing, deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger “was ‘losing it’ when talking about the disease’s severity and trying to convince the President and those assembled that ‘this will be a really big thing.’”

    The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff received a warning about the virus in an intelligence briefing on January 29, 2020, and the next day, the CIA began to produce what are known as “executive updates” on the virus – “shorter intelligence products that demonstrate the CIA’s taking a potential crisis serious,” according to the report.

    Still, Democratic investigators allege, despite the drumbeat of warnings from the IC, “White House messaging” failed to effectively inform the public of the risk from the virus. Trump’s rhetoric diverged “striking[ly]” from the intelligence communities late January conclusions, they said, demonstrating “an executive branch that was informed, but failed to warn the American people.”

    The report notes that on January 30 – two days after the January 28 briefing in which Pottinger was allegedly “losing it” – Trump told an audience in Michigan that, “We think we have it very well under control.”

    CNN has reached out to the Trump campaign. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the reports.

    “There has been a lot of focus on the first warning to the President on January 28,” the committee investigator said. “There has been much less focus on the rhythm of warnings following that, and what we what we find with a pretty consistent rhythm of warnings starting in late January and then really dialing up the volume throughout February.”

    The committee did not receive access to the original PDBs given to Trump but based its conclusions on draft materials and interviews with different intelligence agencies who contributed to the final product, according to investigators.

    By February, according to the report, PDB staff “pivoted from ‘warning’ of the emerging virus to assessing what the virus would mean for the world as it continued to spread.” The report goes on to list reporting from the State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services throughout the month, as well as what appears to be two additional warnings provided on February 11 and February 13 that are completely redacted.

    “For six weeks, the President’s message – that the virus was not a significant threat – was flatly inconsistent with what the Intelligence Community was reporting,” the report found.

    On March 11, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.

    Committee Democrats say that despite some improvements, the intelligence community remains unprepared for the next pandemic. In a series of recommendations, the report calls for the intelligence community to develop the ability to pivot collection faster, better coordinate with health security agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and leverage open-source data more aggressively.

    Although House Republicans have made clear that investigations of the government’s handling of the pandemic – including the investigation into its origins – are a key target next year, it’s not clear how aggressively the Intelligence Committee specifically will move to pursue the issue when Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio takes the chairman’s gavel. Notably, the GOP report was authored by Rep. Brad Wenstrup, who will not be on the committee next year unless he receives a waiver from the incoming House speaker to serve.

    Republicans in their report, released on Wednesday night, are accusing the intelligence community of “downplay[ing] the possibility” that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, “was connected to China’s bioweapons program” – an assertion that directly challenges the intelligence community’s own declassified report, released earlier this year, that said that there was “broad agreement” that the virus was not developed as a biological weapon. The GOP report provides no details to back up its claims, citing classification concerns. CNN is unable to verify the GOP report’s claims.

    The Republican’s report also alleges that the classified version of the intelligence community’s report on the pandemic’s origins “omits additional vital information and dismisses important intelligence in a cursory manner.”

    “Although our unclassified summary cannot reveal details, we can state that the classified Updated Assessment claimed the IC lacked information regarding one key classified issue,” the report states. “However, the Committee otherwise found that very information in other intelligence reporting, and this information is particularly relevant to determining SARS-CoV-2’s potential links to China’s bioweapons program.”

    Wenstrup in a call with reporters on Thursday said that while “I can’t reveal it now because there’s a classification status… what we’re wanting to do is let America know that we have found some discrepancy between the two reports.”

    Panel Republicans also allege that the intelligence community’s unclassified report “likely skewed the public’s understanding” of the question of whether SARS-CoV-2 was created as part of a bioweapons program because it did not disclose the technical “confidence level” that it had in that assessment, as it did with some other assessments.

    When pressed by CNN to detail the discrepancies between the classified and unclassified versions of the report, Republican staff investigators noted that the classified version included the confidence level for the bioweapons assessment and suggested that this was part of why they were “making a big deal of it,” but declined to go into further detail.

    The intelligence community’s declassified report said that it has not reached a conclusion on the origins of Covid-19, instead confirming that officials were split about whether the virus originated naturally or escaped from a lab.

    The GOP report also claims, without evidence, that the unclassified report “omitted other key information that was in the classified version in a manner that likely skewed the public’s understanding of key issues” and stonewalled efforts by Congress to provide further oversight over the government’s investigation and its findings.

    Turner, in an interview with CNN earlier this week, also declined to offer any specifics about how he felt that the unclassified report did not accurately represent information in the classified record.

    “I personally do not believe that the unclassified version adequately reflects the assertions or conclusions in the classified version,” Turner said. “That discrepancy is one of great interest to us.”

    Wenstrup in the report and his remarks to reporters said that Republicans will move to subpoena the intelligence community for more information if officials do not testify voluntarily.

    “We’re not vindictive in our approach,” Wenstrup said. “We just want to get to the truth.”

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  • As House January 6 committee winds down, it is abandoning efforts to subpoena phone records | CNN Politics

    As House January 6 committee winds down, it is abandoning efforts to subpoena phone records | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The House select committee investigating the Capitol riot is dropping several of its pursuits for January 6-related phone records, according to court filings this week, as the panel winds down before it expires at the end of this year.

    The committee sent out dozens of subpoenas seeking call logs, including to major phone companies, as part of its investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election result. But several Trump allies sued, contesting the committee’s authority, and Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile agreed not to turn over any data to the House while those lawsuits were litigated in court. Few of the cases have been resolved.

    That means the House select committee will not be able to incorporate in its final report without some of the information it long sought about the communications of top witnesses around Donald Trump and the White House in late 2020 and January 2021. The panel plans to release the report next week.

    This week, the committee withdrew its phone-records subpoenas related to Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka, White House aide Stephen Miller, elections attorney Cleta Mitchell, conservative political activist Roger Stone, some January 6 Capitol riot defendants and Amy Harris, a photojournalist who spent time with top members of the Proud Boys around January 6, 2021, according to filings in seven House subpoena challenges that were pending in the DC District Court.

    “On December 12, 2022, Plaintiffs were informed by counsel for the Select Committee that the Select Committee will be withdrawing the subject subpoena issued by the Committee,” one court filing, from lawyers representing members of the Oath Keepers extremist group, wrote in one recent request to drop a lawsuit.

    Some of the subpoenas were issued a year ago.

    The committee declined to comment.

    While these witnesses and some others successfully blocked the committee from obtaining their phone records, the panel was able to access unprecedented amounts of information in their investigation, including through other phone records subpoenas, other document requests and witness interviews. Some of that information was on display in a series of public hearings over the summer.

    Even after the public hearings, the committee tried to collect more data as it wrapped up its work this year. For example, the committee won access to Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward’s phone data after she lost a challenge in court and the Supreme Court declined to get involved.

    But they never got all of the phone records they sought from former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who over the past year became one of the committee’s top pursuits.

    After turning over some 2,000 text messages to the committee, Meadows lost a court case challenging committee subpoenas for his phone records and for his testimony. Yet Meadows is still trying to challenge those subpoenas in court, leaving the House with little ability to force him to testify before the end of the Congress.

    Another subpoena target, Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander, said in a statement the committee had informed his lawyer it is withdrawing a subpoena for his phone records. He has been challenging the subpoena to Verizon for his phone logs since last December. Alexander noted that he did testify for hours before the committee and later before a federal grand jury investigating January 6 and efforts to overturn the election.

    “I did nothing wrong except to exercise my First Amendment rights to protest the fraud that occurred in the 2020 election,” Alexander said in the statement.

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  • Iran expelled from UN commission on women | CNN

    Iran expelled from UN commission on women | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    United Nations member states have removed Iran from a key UN women’s rights group just months after it joined. The unusual reversal comes as Iran is rattled by an ongoing protest movement sparked by the death of a young woman in the custody of the country’s so-called “morality police”

    Twenty-nine members of the UN’s Economic and Social Council voted Wednesday in favor of a resolution proposed by the United States to “remove with immediate effect the Islamic Republic of Iran from the Commission on the Status of Women for the remainder of its 2022-2026 term.”

    Eight member states voted against the resolution, and 16 abstained.

    Addressing the council on Wednesday, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that “women and activists have appealed to us, the United Nations, for support.”

    “They made their request to us loud and clear: remove Iran from the Commission on the Status of Women.”

    “The reason why is straightforward. The Commission is the premier UN body for promoting gender equality and empowering women. It cannot do its important work if it is being undermined from within. Iran’s membership at this moment is an ugly stain on the Commission’s credibility,” Thomas-Greenfield added.

    Iran condemned the US resolution, calling it an “illegal request” and said it weakens the rule of law in the United Nations.

    Iran’s ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations, Amir Saeed Irvani, said the resolution to remove Iran was built on “baseless claims and fabricated arguments using fake narratives,” according to state news agency IRNA on Wednesday.

    Iran had only just begun its four-year term on the 45-member Commission on the Status of Women – which was created to advocate for gender equality globally – after being elected to the body in April.

    In recent months, the country has been gripped by mass protests sparked by the September death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died after being detained in Tehran by a police unit that enforces strict dress codes for women, such as wearing the compulsory headscarf.

    Iran’s demonstrations, often led by women, have since coalesced around a range of grievances with the regime. Authorities have unleashed a deadly crackdown on demonstrators, with reports of forced detentions and physical abuse being used to target the country’s Kurdish minority group.

    Another representative from Iran’s delegation to the UN responded to the vote, saying, “My delegation condemns any politicization of women’s rights and rejects all accusations made in particular by the US and certain EU members.”

    She also described Iran’s “efforts to promote and protect women’s rights” driven by the country’s “rich culture and well-established constitution.”

    Iran is “a progressive society that takes into consideration the needs and listens to the voices of its women and girls eagerly and strives toward a better future for and with its women and girls,” she said.

    A UN report released in March 2021 described Iranian women and girls as treated like “second class citizens.” The report cited widespread child marriage involving girls between the ages of 10 and 14, weak protections against domestic violence, and lack of legal autonomy for women, among other issues.

    “Blatant discrimination exists in Iranian law and practice that must change. In several areas of their lives, including in marriage, divorce, employment, and culture, Iranian women are either restricted or need permission from their husbands or paternal guardians, depriving them of their autonomy and human dignity. These constructs are completely unacceptable and must be reformed now,” said the report’s author Javaid Rehman at the time.

    Following months of protests, Iran’s Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said in early December that the country’s parliament and judiciary were reviewing the law that requires women to wear a hijab in public, according to pro-reform outlet Entekhab.

    But there is no evidence of what, if any, changes could be forthcoming to the law, which came into effect after the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

    Reacting to news of Iran’s removal from the body, Louis Charbonneau, UN director at Human Rights Watch said it was a “welcome step,” but remained a “far cry” from true accountability.

    In a statement to CNN, Charbonneau added, “What’s needed is urgent coordinated pressure on Iran to end its campaign of violence, credible prosecutions of individuals who are directly responsible for these appalling violations of human rights, and an end to the severe discrimination against women.”

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  • Railroad workers hopeful Biden will act to give workers paid sick time | CNN Business

    Railroad workers hopeful Biden will act to give workers paid sick time | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Railroad workers could get the paid sick days that were at the heart of their threat to go on strike – if the Biden administration steps in with an executive order.

    Workers have been unsuccessful getting their demands for paid sick leave met through months of negotiations with the freight rail companies, or through congressional action.

    But on Friday, 70 Democrats in Congress signed a letter asking for President Joe Biden or some federal agency to issue an order giving rail workers the seven sick days a year they were seeking.

    The letter pointed out that both the House and Senate supported legislation to do so, with some nominal Republican support in both chambers along with nearly unanimous Democratic support. But the legislation failed because it didn’t get the 60 votes it needed in the Senate.

    The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter from the unions’ congressional allies.

    But officials with the rail unions said they have been talking to the administration about some kind of executive action to get them the sick time they’ve been seeking, and that they are hopeful action could be forthcoming.

    “I mean, the Biden administration has been helpful,” said Greg Hynes, national legislative director for the transportation department of the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail Transportation Union, (SMART-TD), the largest rail union representing about 28,000 conductors. “Of course, they want to do this. Whether they can do it, we’re going to find out.”

    The congressional letter said executive action, either by Biden himself, the Labor Department or the Federal Railroad Administration, is needed because the lack of paid sick days poses a safety hazard to the general public by having rail workers try to do their jobs when sick.

    “If a rail worker comes down with COVID, the flu, or some other illness and calls in sick, that worker will not only receive no pay, but will be penalized and, in some cases, fired. We cannot allow that to continue,” said the letter.

    The main lobbying group for the nation’s railroads, the Association of American Railroads, said it believes the question of sick days should be addressed in negotiations with the unions.

    “Following the conclusion of the latest bargaining round, the industry looks forward to using the new agreements as a springboard for further discussions on the structure of our paid leave benefits, enhancing schedule predictability, and addressing overall work-life balance interests,” said the AAR.

    “Railroads remain committed to working with their employees to address these priorities holistically and strike the right balance, be it as an industry or on a railroad-by-railroad basis with each union,” the AAR added.

    The railroads insist that the workers can use personal or vacation days if they are too sick to report to work.

    “If you wake up sick, no one wants you out on the railroad, and management does not want workers coming to work if they are sick,” said Ian Jefferies, CEO of the AAR, in an interview with CNN last month.

    The unions said that members could use their bank of paid time off when sick more easily in the past, but deep staff cuts in recent years have left the railroads so understaffed it is rare that workers can get approval to be off in those instances when they wake up not feeling well. If they do so, not only do they risk losing pay, they also risk being disciplined. And the AAR’s own statement on sick pay availability said workers can call off sick without penalty as long as “they maintain reasonable overall availability.”

    The Biden administration asked Congress to vote to block a strike by the unions that could have started this past Friday, saying a work stoppage would be too great a blow to the nation’s economy.

    The unions argued they needed the right to strike in order to win things they were seeking at the bargaining table, like sick days.

    But despite being disappointed most of the unions’ leadership have been restrained in criticizing Biden for imposing unpopular contracts on their members that did not include sick days.

    Asked if the reason that most union leaders did not criticize Biden’s decision was because they are hopeful that he will be willing to issue an executive order to get them the disputed sick days, Hynes replied, “I think you’re answering your own question.”

    The rail unions are planning rallies around the country in support of rail workers. The lack of sick days will be a major issue at the rallies.

    Among the speakers at the Washington DC rally will be Sen. Bernie Sanders, the main author of the congressional letter. That letter points out that President Barack Obama issued such a rule on federal contractors in 2015, but that it did not cover the unionized rail workers.

    “Over 115,000 rail workers in this country are looking to you to guarantee them the dignity at work they deserve and to ensure that our rail system is safe for its workers and for millions of Americans who cross rail tracks every day,” said the congressional letter. “Through executive order, agency rulemaking, and any other applicable authority, we ask that you take quick and decisive action to guarantee these workers paid sick leave.”

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  • Biden administration urges Supreme Court to narrow Big Tech’s liability shield in pivotal Google case | CNN Business

    Biden administration urges Supreme Court to narrow Big Tech’s liability shield in pivotal Google case | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN Business
     — 

    The Biden administration has told the US Supreme Court that social media platforms ought to be potentially liable for recommendations made by their AI-driven content algorithms, weighing in against Google in a pivotal case on digital speech and content moderation.

    In a filing to the Court Wednesday evening, the administration argued federal law does not immunize tech platforms from lawsuits that zero in on recommendation algorithms, even when the same law shields the companies from suits about decisions to host or remove actual user content.

    The legal brief could prove instrumental in a closely watched case about the regulation of digital platforms, and reflects longstanding calls by President Joe Biden to roll back liability protections for companies such as Facebook and Google.

    The case in question, Gonzalez v. Google, offers the Supreme Court its first opportunity to rule on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the liability shield many websites have used to nip content moderation lawsuits in the bud. Several Supreme Court justices, including most vocally the conservative Clarence Thomas, have expressed interest in hearing a case that may allow the Court to narrow Section 230’s broad protections.

    Section 230 has been called “the 26 words that created the internet,” and was passed by Congress in 1996 as a way to shield all websites, not just social media platforms, from lawsuits over third-party content. But in recent years it has come under fire from members of both parties, with Democrats arguing it has enabled platforms to escape accountability for facilitating hate speech and misinformation, and Republicans arguing it shields platforms from claims of political discrimination.

    Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The US government’s brief addresses Google-owned YouTube’s recommendation of videos produced by the terrorist group ISIS. The plaintiffs in the case — the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, who was killed in a 2015 ISIS attack in Paris — have alleged, among other things, that Google violated a US antiterrorism law with its content algorithms by recommending pro-ISIS videos to users.

    Google has argued Section 230 protects the company’s ability to organize and curate content, and that a ruling against it could hurt efforts to remove terrorist content. An earlier appellate court ruling had sided with Google.

    “Undercutting Section 230 would make it harder, not easier, to combat harmful content,” José Castañeda, a Google spokesperson, has previously said, “making the internet less safe and less helpful for all of us.”

    According to the Biden administration, Section 230 does protect Google and YouTube from lawsuits “for failing to remove third-party content, including the content it has recommended.”

    But, the government’s brief argued, those protections do not extend to Google’s algorithms because they represent the company’s own speech, not that of others.

    “The effect of YouTube’s algorithms is still to communicate a message from YouTube that is distinct from the messages conveyed by the videos themselves,” the filing said. It added: “Even if YouTube plays no role in the videos’ creation or development, it remains potentially liable for its own conduct and its own communications.”

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  • White House Security Breaches Fast Facts | CNN Politics

    White House Security Breaches Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a selected list of White House intrusions and security breaches.

    The White House grounds include 18 acres of land. That and the adjacent 52-acre Ellipse to the south belong to President’s Park, a national park.

    The Secret Service is in charge of White House security.

    According to the White House Historical Society, US President Thomas Jefferson was the first to put a fence around the White House. Over the years, the fence has been updated and fortified, with the wrought-iron fences of the 19th century having been replaced in the 1930s by a steel fence with tall bronze spears atop it. Most of the fence is currently about six feet six inches tall, and is undergoing an eight-phase replacement with an approximately 13 foot tall fence which began in July 2019.

    Security became especially tighter during World War II. After a truck-bomb attack on the US Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, low concrete walls were put up around the White House. Bollards – sturdy, vertical posts that can stop vehicles – were added a few years later.

    “Security incidents occur frequently,” according to a 2015 House of Representatives report. Data from the Secret Service included in the report show that there were 104 security breaches or attempted breaches between April 2005 and April 15, 2015.

    April 13, 1912 – On his second attempt to enter the White House to see President William Howard Taft, Michael Winter makes it several feet inside the front door before being noticed.

    September 26, 1963 – Doyle Allen Hicks rams his pickup truck through the gates and drives up to within 25 feet of the North Portico main entrance. When stopped, he tells guards that he must see the president, because communists are taking over his state, North Carolina.

    February 17, 1974 – Robert K. Preston, an Army private, steals a helicopter from Fort Meade, Maryland. He hovers over the Washington Monument and White House grounds before leading two state police helicopters on an aerial chase around Maryland and Washington, DC. After more than an hour, Preston heads back to the White House, according to a state police officer. Officers shoot at the helicopter, forcing Preston to land. He reportedly was upset about flunking out of flight school.

    February 22, 1974 – Samuel Joseph Byck tries to hijack a Delta passenger jet at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, with the plan to crash it into the White House. He forces his way on to the plane, killing an airport policeman and the copilot. Byck is killed by police before takeoff.

    December 25, 1974 – Marshall Fields crashes his automobile through the Northwest Gate and drives it close to the North Portico. He threatens to blow himself up with explosives he has strapped to his body, which later turn out to be flares. After four hours of negotiation, Fields surrenders to officials.

    November 26, 1975 – Gerald Gainous Jr. makes his way over the fence, hides for two hours on the grounds undetected and is able to get within five feet of Susan Ford, President Gerald Ford’s daughter. Gainous jumps the fence three more times within the next year.

    July 25, 1976 – Chester Plummer Jr. climbs over the White House fence carrying a metal pipe and starts running toward the White House. A guard chases him, yelling at him to stop. When he doesn’t, the guard shoots and kills him. Plummer’s motive is not discovered.

    October 1978 – A barefoot man wearing a karate uniform and carrying a Bible with a knife hidden inside, scales the White House fence. He slashes two officers before White House guards are able to subdue him. The suspect, Anthony Henry, reportedly wanted to convince President Jimmy Carter to remove the phrase “In God We Trust” from US currency.

    January 20, 1985 – Robert Latta, a meter-reader from Denver, follows the Marine Band into the White House before President Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration ceremony. Latta wanders around the mansion for about 15 minutes before being arrested in the dining room.

    September 12, 1994 – A man flying a stolen Cessna plane enters the prohibited airspace around the White House and crashes on the lawn just south of the Executive Mansion. The pilot, identified as Frank Eugene Corder, dies in the crash.

    October 29, 1994 – Francisco Martin Duran, armed with a semiautomatic rifle, fires at least 29 rounds at the White House from the sidewalk on Pennsylvania Avenue. Duran is later convicted of attempting to kill President Bill Clinton.

    May 23, 1995 – Leland W. Modjeski is shot by the Secret Service after climbing over a security fence and running toward the White House with a handgun that was later determined to be unloaded.

    February 7, 2001 – Robert Pickett, an accountant who was fired from the IRS in the 1980s, fires shots outside the White House. Secret Service agents shoot him in the leg after a standoff lasting more than 10 minutes at the White House fence. President George W. Bush was not endangered, White House officials say later.

    January 18, 2005 – Lowell Timmers, of Cedar Springs, Michigan, threatens to blow up his van in front on the White House, two days before Bush’s second inauguration, saying he has an explosive substance in the vehicle. The FBI, Secret Service and other authorities evacuate nearby buildings and shut down several blocks. Four hours pass before Timmers, who had demanded that his son-in-law be released from jail, surrenders.

    April 9, 2006 – Brian Lee Patterson from New Mexico jumps the White House fence and makes it well inside the grounds before being stopped. It is the fourth time he has jumped the fence.

    November 24, 2009 – A publicity-seeking Virginia couple, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, sneak into a White House dinner. The uninvited guests finesse their way through a security checkpoint staffed by uniformed Secret Service officers, according to congressional testimony by the agency’s director Mark Sullivan. Sullivan apologizes for the breach, saying agents violated protocol by allowing the Salahis to enter without verifying that they were on the guest list.

    November 11, 2011 – A gunman fires an assault rifle at the White House, hitting the residential wing of the building at least seven times. Secret Service supervisors fail to recognize the danger, dismissing the gunfire as a gang-related shootout rather than an attack on the White House, according to the Washington Post. Four days later, a housekeeper and a White House usher spot bullet holes in the residence. Five days after the shooting, the gunman, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez is arrested at a Pennsylvania hotel. In 2014, Ortega-Hernandez is sentenced to 25 years in federal prison.

    October 3, 2013 – An unarmed woman is shot and killed by a Secret Service agent and a Capitol police officer after she drives toward a security checkpoint near the White House, hits a barricade and speeds away. The woman is a 34-year-old mother battling postpartum depression, according to her sister. Her one-year-old daughter, seated in the back of the car during the chase, is unharmed.

    September 11, 2014 – A man wearing Pokemon gear and carrying a plush doll of the character Pikachu makes it over the White House fence and onto the north lawn, where he is apprehended. He is later identified as Jeffrey Grossman.

    September 19, 2014 – After jumping the White House fence, 42-year-old Omar Gonzalez, of Copperas Cove, Texas, gets through the North Portico doors with a three-and-a-half-inch folding knife in his pants pocket, according to the Secret Service. In early accounts of the incident, the Secret Service claims the intruder didn’t get past the portico doors. Days later, the Washington Post reveals the man had actually made his way past the front entrance, through the main hall and into the East Room, where he was apprehended.

    October 22, 2014 – Dominic Adesanya, 23, of Bel Air, Maryland, jumps the White House fence and barely makes it onto the lawn before he is subdued as he fights off two police dogs, according to the Secret Service. Adesanya, who suffers from mental health problems, had been arrested in a previous White House breach, his father later says.

    January 26, 2015 – The Secret Service locks down the White House shortly after 3 a.m. after an officer spots a drone flying above the White House grounds before crashing on the southeast side of the complex. An employee of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a government entity with mapping and national security duties, later calls the Secret Service and admits that he was operating the drone for fun.

    April 19, 2015 – Jerome R. Hunt, of Hayward, California, climbs the fence on the south side of the White House complex while carrying a suspicious package, later deemed harmless, and is cornered by security dogs.

    November 26, 2015 – The Secret Service stops a man draped in an American flag after he jumps a White House fence during a Thanksgiving celebration at the executive mansion.

    April 1, 2016 – A man tosses a backpack over the north fence and then jumps over, himself, and is immediately arrested. His name is not released to the public.

    March 10, 2017 – A man carrying a backpack with mace and a letter for President Donald Trump makes it onto the grounds and roams for more than 15 minutes before he is discovered and arrested by a Secret Service officer near the south entrance. The suspect, identified in court records as Jonathan T. Tran, 26, of California, tells the agency’s officers that he was there to see the president.

    March 21, 2017 – Marci Anderson Wahl of Everett, Washington, jumps a fence on the south side but gets stuck. Officers find her hanging by her shoelaces, which were “caught on top of the fence,” according to a police report. Wahl is arrested two more times within the next week, near the Treasury Building and in Lafayette Park.

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  • Sinema leaving the Democratic Party and registering as an independent | CNN Politics

    Sinema leaving the Democratic Party and registering as an independent | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is leaving the Democratic Party and registering as a political independent, she told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an exclusive TV interview.

    “I’ve registered as an Arizona independent. I know some people might be a little bit surprised by this, but actually, I think it makes a lot of sense,” Sinema said in a Thursday interview with Tapper in her Senate office.

    “I’ve never fit neatly into any party box. I’ve never really tried. I don’t want to,” she added. “Removing myself from the partisan structure – not only is it true to who I am and how I operate, I also think it’ll provide a place of belonging for many folks across the state and the country, who also are tired of the partisanship.”

    Sinema’s move away from the Democratic Party is unlikely to change the power balance in the next Senate. Democrats will have a narrow 51-49 majority that includes two independents who caucus with them: Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine.

    While Sanders and King formally caucus with Democrats, Sinema declined to explicitly say that she would do the same. She did note, however, that she expects to keep her committee assignments – a signal that she doesn’t plan to upend the Senate composition, since Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer controls committee rosters for Democrats.

    “When I come to work each day, it’ll be the same,” Sinema said. “I’m going to still come to work and hopefully serve on the same committees I’ve been serving on and continue to work well with my colleagues at both political parties.”

    But Sinema’s decision to become a political independent makes official what’s long been an independent streak for the Arizona senator, who began her political career as a member of the Green Party before being elected as a Democrat to the US House in 2012 and US Senate in 2018. Sinema has prided herself on being a thorn in the side of Democratic leaders, and her new nonpartisan affiliation will further free her to embrace an against-the-grain status in the Senate, though it raises new questions about how she – and Senate Democrats – will approach her reelection in 2024 with liberals already mulling a challenge.

    Sinema wrote an op-ed in the Arizona Republic released Friday explaining her decision, noting that her approach in the Senate has “upset partisans in both parties.”

    “When politicians are more focused on denying the opposition party a victory than they are on improving Americans’ lives, the people who lose are everyday Americans,” Sinema wrote.

    “That’s why I have joined the growing numbers of Arizonans who reject party politics by declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington.”

    Sinema is up for reelection in 2024 and liberals in Arizona are already floating potential challengers, including Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego, who said earlier this year that some Democratic senators have urged him to run against Sinema.

    “Unfortunately, Senator Sinema is once again putting her own interests ahead of getting things done for Arizonans,” Gallego said in a statement following Sinema’s announcement.

    Sinema declined to address questions about her reelection bid in the interview with Tapper, saying that simply isn’t her focus right now.

    She also brushed aside criticism she may face for the decision to leave the Democratic Party.

    “I’m just not worried about folks who may not like this approach,” Sinema said. “What I am worried about is continuing to do what’s right for my state. And there are folks who certainly don’t like my approach, we hear about it a lot. But the proof is in the pudding.”

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called Sinema a “key partner” following her decision and said the White House has “every reason to expect that we will continue to work successfully with her.”

    Sources familiar with the matter tell CNN that Sinema gave the White House a heads up that she was leaving the Democratic Party. Schumer said in a statement he also was aware of Sinema’s bombshell announcement ahead of Friday morning.

    “She asked me to keep her committee assignments and I agreed,” Schumer said. “Kyrsten is independent; that’s how she’s always been. I believe she’s a good and effective Senator and am looking forward to a productive session in the new Democratic majority Senate.”

    Schumer also outlined how he did not expect Sinema’s decision to impact Democrats’ plans for next year, saying in his statement, “We will maintain our new majority on committees, exercise our subpoena power, and be able to clear nominees without discharge votes.”

    The Biden White House is offering a muted reaction Friday morning and insisting that they expect to continue having a productive working relationship with the senator.

    One White House official tells CNN that the move “doesn’t change much” other than Sinema’s own reelection calculations.

    “We’ve worked with her effectively on a lot of major legislation from CHIPS to the bipartisan infrastructure law,” the official said. The White House, for now, has “every reason to expect that will continue,” they added.

    Sinema has long been the source of a complex convergence of possibility, frustration and confusion inside the White House.

    “Rubik’s cube, I guess?” was how one former senior White House official described the Arizona senator who has played a central role in President Joe Biden’s largest legislative wins and also some of his biggest agenda disappointments.

    There was no major push to get Sinema to change her mind, a White House official said, noting that it wouldn’t have made a difference.

    “Nothing about the last two years indicates a major effort would’ve made helped – the exact opposite actually,” a White House official said.

    The most urgent near-term effort was to quietly find out what it meant for their newly expanded Senate majority, officials said.

    While there were still clear details to figure out about process, “I think people exhaled when we had a better understanding of what she meant,” one source familiar with the discussion said.

    Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota told “CNN This Morning” that “Senator Sinema has always had an independent streak,” adding that “I don’t believe this is going to shake things up quite like everyone thinks.”

    She added, “Senator Sinema has been an independent in all intents and purposes.”

    Sinema and West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin have infuriated liberals at various points over the past two years, standing in the way of Biden’s agenda at a time when Democrats controlled the House, Senate and White House.

    Sinema and Manchin used their sway in the current 50-50 Senate – where any single Democrat could derail a bill – to influence a host of legislation, especially the massive $3.5 trillion Build Back Better bill that Biden proposed last year. Sinema’s objections to increasing the corporate tax rate during the initial round of negotiations over the legislation last year particularly rankled liberals.

    While Sinema was blindsided by the surprise deal that Manchin cut with Schumer in July on major health care and energy legislation, she ultimately backed the smaller spending package that Biden signed into law before the election.

    Both Manchin and Sinema also opposed changes to the Senate’s filibuster rules despite pressure from their Senate colleagues and Biden to change them. After a vote against filibuster changes in January, the Arizona Democratic Party’s executive board censured Sinema.

    Sinema has been in the middle of several significant bipartisan bills that were passed since Biden took office. She pointed to that record as evidence that her approach has been an effective one.

    “I’ve been honored to lead historic efforts, from infrastructure, to gun violence prevention, to protecting religious liberty and helping LGBT families feel secure, to the CHIPs and science bill to the work we’ve done on veterans’ issues,” she told CNN. “The list is really long. And so I think that the results speak for themselves. It’s OK if some people aren’t comfortable with that approach.”

    Sinema’s announcement comes just days after Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock won reelection in Georgia, securing Democrats a 51st Senate seat that frees them from reliance on Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote.

    Sinema declined to address questions about whether she would support Biden for president in 2024, and she also said she’s not thinking about whether a strong third party should emerge in the US.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Michael Flynn appears before Atlanta grand jury probe into Trump’s election subversion | CNN Politics

    Michael Flynn appears before Atlanta grand jury probe into Trump’s election subversion | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former national security adviser Michael Flynn is appearing Thursday before an Atlanta-area special grand jury probing efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.

    CNN spotted Flynn, who was escorted by a small entourage, walk up the stairs of the Superior Court of Fulton County shortly before 1 p.m. on Thursday.

    Last month, a judge in Florida ordered Flynn to testify, saying the former Trump administration official “is indeed material and necessary in the special grand jury proceeding in the state of Georgia.”

    Flynn’s attorneys had argued that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is overseeing the investigation, “overstepped her authority,” so he should not be required to travel to Atlanta to testify because there is an “utter lack of facts” to support that Flynn is a necessary witness.

    Fulton County prosecutors want the grand jury to hear from Flynn about a December 18, 2020, meeting he had with Trump, attorney Sidney Powell and others associated with the Trump campaign, according to a court filing.

    During the heated Oval Office meeting, Flynn and Powell floated outrageous suggestions about overturning the election, CNN previously reported. The meeting occurred just three weeks after Trump pardoned Flynn near the end of his tenure.

    Prosecutors in Georgia are also interested in hearing from Flynn about his December 2020 interview on the conservative media outlet Newsmax, where he said that Trump “could order – within the swing states, if he wanted to – he could take military capabilities, and he could place them in those states and basically re-run an election in each of those states,” according to a court filing.

    Flynn invoked his Fifth Amendment right during a deposition earlier this year before the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021.

    In 2017, Flynn lost his job as national security adviser under Trump and pleaded guilty in federal court after lying to the FBI and then-Vice President Mike Pence while serving in the Trump White House.

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  • The latest on Donald Trump’s many legal clouds | CNN Politics

    The latest on Donald Trump’s many legal clouds | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump has been campaigning in between his many different court appearances for much of the year.

    But his decision to attend the first day of his $250 million civil fraud trial in New York created another opportunity to appear on camera from inside a courtroom when the judge allowed photographers to document the moment before proceedings got underway.

    Keeping track of the dizzying array of civil and criminal cases is a full-time job.

    He is charged with crimes related to conduct:

    • Before his presidency – a hush money scheme that may have helped him win the White House in 2016.
    • During his presidency – his effort to stay in the White House by overturning the 2020 election.
    • After his presidency – his treatment of classified material and alleged attempts to hide it from the National Archives.

    Trump denies any wrongdoing and has pleaded not guilty in all of the criminal cases. He alleges a “witch hunt” against him. But each trial has its own distinct storyline to follow.

    Here’s an updated list of developments in Trump’s very complicated set of court cases, beginning with the one playing out in Manhattan this week.

    The civil fraud trial, unlike Trump’s multiple criminal indictments, does not carry the danger of a felony conviction and jail time, but it could very well cost him some of his most prized possessions, including Trump Tower.

    New York Attorney General Letitia James brought the $250 million lawsuit in September 2022, alleging that Trump and his co-defendants committed repeated fraud in inflating assets on financial statements to get better terms on commercial real estate loans and insurance policies.

    Judge Arthur Engoron has already ruled that Trump and his adult sons are liable for fraud for inflating the value of his golf courses, hotels and homes on financial statements to secure loans.

    The trial portion of the case, playing out in court in Manhattan, will assess what damages will be levied against Trump and how Engoron’s decision to strip Trump of his New York business licenses will play out.

    In May, a federal jury in Manhattan found Trump sexually abused former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in the mid-1990s and awarded her about $5 million.

    A separate civil defamation lawsuit will only need to decide how much money Trump has to pay her. That case for January 15 – the same day Iowa Republicans will hold their caucuses, the first date on the presidential primary calendar.

    In August, Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the aftermath of the 2020 election. The former president was arraigned in a Washington, DC, courtroom, where he pleaded not guilty.

    The case is based in part on a scheme to create slates of fake electors in key states won by President Joe Biden.

    In late September, Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected Trump’s request that she recuse herself from the case. Chutkan, a Barack Obama appointee, has overseen civil and criminal cases related to the January 6, 2021, insurrection and has repeatedly exceeded what prosecutors have requested for convicted rioters’ prison sentences.

    Chutkan set the trial’s start date for March 4, 2024, the day before Super Tuesday, when the largest batch of presidential primaries will occur. The trial marks the first of Trump’s criminal cases expected to proceed.

    Trump has been charged in Manhattan criminal court with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to his role in a hush money payment scheme involving adult film actress Stormy Daniels late in the 2016 presidential campaign.

    The former president pleaded not guilty at his April arraignment in Manhattan.

    Prosecutors, led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, accuse Trump of falsifying business records with the intent to conceal $130,000 in payments to Daniels made by former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen to guarantee her silence about an alleged affair.

    Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels.

    The trial was originally scheduled to begin in late March 2024, but Judge Juan Merchan has suggested the date could move. The next court date is scheduled for February.

    Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is using racketeering violations to charge a broad criminal conspiracy against Trump and 18 others in their efforts to overturn Biden’s victory in Georgia.

    The probe was launched in 2021 following Trump’s call that January with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which the president pushed the Republican official to “find” votes to overturn the election results.

    The August indictment also includes how Trump’s team allegedly misled state officials in Georgia; organized fake electors; harassed an election worker; and breached election equipment in rural Coffee County, Georgia.

    One co-defendant, bail bondsman Scott Hall, has pleaded guilty to five counts in the case.

    Fulton County prosecutors have signaled they could offer plea deals to other co-defendants.

    Willis this week issued a subpoena to former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, a Trump ally, who in turn demanded an immunity deal in exchange for testimony.

    Trial for two co-defendants is expected to begin this month and could last three to five months. A trial date has not been set for Trump, who has pleaded not guilty.

    Federal criminal court in Florida: Mishandling classified material

    Trump has pleaded not guilty to 37 federal charges brought by Smith over his alleged mishandling of classified documents. Smith added three additional counts in a superseding indictment.

    The investigation centers on sensitive documents that Trump brought to his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida after his White House term ended in January 2021.

    The National Archives, charged with collecting and sorting presidential material, has previously said that at least 15 boxes of White House records were recovered from Mar-a-Lago, including some classified records.

    Trump was also caught on tape in a 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey, where the former president discussed holding secret documents he did not declassify.

    Smith’s additional charges allege that Trump and his employees attempted to delete Mar-a-Lago security footage sought by the grand jury investigating the mishandling of the records.

    Trial is not expected until May, after most presidential primaries have concluded.

    There are other cases to note:

    Trump’s namesake business, the Trump Organization, was convicted in December by a New York jury of tax fraud, grand larceny and falsifying business records in what prosecutors say was a 15-year scheme to defraud tax authorities by failing to report and pay taxes on compensation provided to employees.

    Manhattan prosecutors told a jury the case was about “greed and cheating,” laying out a scheme within the Trump Organization to pay high-level executives in perks such as luxury cars and apartments without paying taxes on them.

    Former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg pleaded guilty to his role in the tax scheme. He was released after serving four months in jail at Rikers Island.

    Several members of the US Capitol Police and Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police are suing Trump, saying his words and actions incited the 2021 riot.

    The various cases accuse Trump of directing assault and battery; aiding and abetting assault and battery; and violating Washington laws that prohibit the incitement of riots and disorderly conduct.

    In August, Trump requested to put on hold the lawsuit related to the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, citing his various criminal trials. The estate of Sicknick, who died after responding to the attack on the Capitol, is suing two rioters involved in the attack and Trump for his alleged role in egging it on.

    Other lawsuits have been put on hold while a federal appeals court considers whether Trump had absolute immunity as the sitting president.

    Former top FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok, who was fired in 2018 after the revelation that he criticized Trump in text messages, sued the Justice Department, alleging he was terminated improperly.

    In summer 2017, former special counsel Robert Mueller removed Strzok from his team investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election after an internal investigation revealed texts with former FBI lawyer Lisa Page that could be read as exhibiting political bias.

    Strzok and Page were constant targets of verbal attacks by Trump and his allies, part of the larger ire the then-president expressed toward the FBI during the Russia investigation. Trump repeatedly and publicly called for Strzok’s ouster until he was fired in August 2018.

    Trump is set to be deposed this month as part of the case, according to Politico.

    A federal judge dismissed Trump’s lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, several ex-FBI officials and more than two dozen other people and entities that he claims conspired to undermine his 2016 campaign with fabricated information tying him to Russia.

    “What (Trump’s lawsuit) lacks in substance and legal support it seeks to substitute with length, hyperbole, and the settling of scores and grievances,” US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks wrote.

    Trump appealed the decision, but Middlebrooks also ruled that the former president and his attorneys are liable for nearly $1 million in sanctions for bringing the case.

    Trump launched a Hail Mary bid in July to revive the sprawling lawsuit, relying on a recent report from special counsel John Durham that criticized the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe.

    Trump’s former lawyer Cohen sued Trump, former Attorney General William Barr and others, alleging they put him back in jail to prevent him from promoting his upcoming book while under home confinement.

    Cohen was serving the remainder of his sentence for lying to Congress and campaign violations at home, due to Covid-19 concerns, when he started an anti-Trump social media campaign in summer 2020. Cohen said that he was sent back to prison in retaliation and that he spent 16 days in solitary confinement.

    A federal judge threw out the lawsuit in November. District Judge Lewis Liman said he was empathetic to Cohen’s position but that Supreme Court precedent bars him from allowing the case to move forward.

    Trump sued journalist Bob Woodward in January for alleged copyright violations, claiming Woodward released audio from their interviews without Trump’s consent.

    Woodward and publisher Simon & Schuster said Trump’s case is without merit and moved for its dismissal.

    Woodward conducted several interviews with Trump for his book “Rage,” published in September 2020. Woodward later released “The Trump Tapes,” an audiobook featuring eight hours of raw interviews with Trump interspersed with the author’s commentary.

    Trump-filed lawsuits: The New York Times, Mary Trump and CNN

    The former president is suing his niece and The New York Times in New York state court over the disclosure of his tax information.

    A New York judge dismissed The New York Times from Trump’s lawsuit regarding disclosure of his tax returns and ordered Trump to pay the newspaper’s legal fees. Trump is still suing his niece Mary Trump for disclosure of the tax documents. She had tried to sue him for defrauding her out of millions after the death of his father, but the suit was dismissed.

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  • Alito’s mentions of Ashley Madison and children wearing KKK costumes cap an awkward Supreme Court day | CNN Politics

    Alito’s mentions of Ashley Madison and children wearing KKK costumes cap an awkward Supreme Court day | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    As the Supreme Court gathered for more than two hours on Monday to discuss whether a graphic designer can refuse to do business with same-sex couples, the justices somehow strayed into dueling hypotheticals concerning Black and White Santas and dating websites.

    Hypotheticals are nothing new at the high court as the justices probe how cases before the court could impact different challenges down the road. But Monday’s hypothetical was unusually awkward, with a reference to children wearing a Ku Klux Klan outfit to visit Santa Claus.

    It all began when Justice Ketanji Jackson expressed some alarm about the extent of arguments put forward by the graphic designer, Lorie Smith, who wants to expand her business to celebrate marriages, but does not want to work with same-sex couples out of religious objections to same-sex marriage.

    “Can I ask you a hypothetical that just sort of helps me flesh” this out, Jackson asked a lawyer for the designer.

    Jackson wanted to know about a photography business in a hypothetical shopping mall during the holiday season that offers a product called “Scenes with Santa.” She said the photographer wants to express his own view of nostalgia about Christmases past by reproducing 1940s and 1950s Santa scenes in sepia tone.

    “Their policy is that only White children can be photographed with Santa,” Jackson said and noted that according to her hypothetical, the photographer is willing to refer families of color to the Santa at “the other end of the mall” who will take anybody, and they will photograph families of color.

    Jackson asked Kristen Waggoner, Smith’s lawyer, “why isn’t your argument that they should be able to do that?”

    Waggoner finally said that there are “difficult lines to draw” and said that the Santa hypothetical might be an “edge case.”

    That drew incredulity on the part of liberal Justice Elena Kagan.

    “It may be an ‘edge case’ meaning it could fall on either side, you’re not sure?” she asked.

    Jackson returned to her query later and expanded it. She said her hypothetical photographer is doing something akin to the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” and wants it to be “authentic” so that only White children could be customers.

    Waggoner suggested that in the case at hand the “message wins,” but never really explained what she meant.

    Artist explains why she thinks she shouldn’t have to work with same-sex couples

    When a lawyer for Colorado stood up to defend the state’s anti-discrimination law, Justice Samuel Alito chimed in.

    He wanted to know if a Black Santa at the other end of the mall doesn’t want to have his picture taken with a child who’s dressed up in a Ku Klux Klan outfit whether the Black Santa has to do it?

    Colorado Solicitor General Eric Olson replied that there is no law that protects a right to wear a KKK outfit.

    That spurred Kagan to jump in, noting that objection would be based on the outfit, not whether it was worn by a Black or a White child.

    Alito then uttered an extremely awkward aside that could have been an attempted joke gone astray. “You do see a lot of Black children in Ku Klux Klan outfits, right? All the time.”

    At another point in arguments Alito was posing a set of hypotheticals and again engaged Kagan – his seat mate – as he searched for how the case at hand could impact other cases.

    He was referring to a “friend-of-the-court” brief filed by lawyer Josh Blackman on behalf of the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty in support of Smith. The aim of the brief is to discuss problematic situations for Jewish artisans who object to speaking out about certain topics. A series of hypotheticals was included to show instances in which a Jewish artist would be compelled to betray his conscience.

    “An unmarried Jewish person asks a Jewish photographer to take a photograph for his JDate dating profile,” Alito began, referring to a hypothetical in the brief.

    He paused. “It’s a dating service, I gather, for Jewish people,” Alito said.

    Kagan, who is Jewish, chimed in to laughter, “It is.”

    Alito decided to plow awkwardly forward with another hypothetical from Blackman’s brief .

    “All right. Maybe Justice Kagan will also be familiar with the next website I’m going to mention,” he said. “A Jewish person asks a Jewish photographer to take a photograph for his Ashleymadison.com dating profile.”

    The audience laughed as Ashleymadison.com appears to refer to an online dating service and social networking services marketed to people who are married or already in relationships.

    It was another awkward moment with Alito adding: “I’m not suggesting that – she knows a lot of things. I’m not suggesting – okay … Does he have to do it?”

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  • Trump’s slow 2024 start worries allies | CNN Politics

    Trump’s slow 2024 start worries allies | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Back in 2015, Donald Trump’s first campaign rally in Iowa as a contender for the Republican presidential nomination came just 10 hours after he declared his candidacy in New York. The following day, he was across the country in New Hampshire, with plans to visit South Carolina before the end of his first week.

    But seven years later – and nearly three weeks into his 2024 presidential campaign – Trump has yet to leave his home state or hold a public campaign event in an early voting state.

    Trump’s disengaged posture has baffled former and current allies, many of whom experienced firsthand the frenetic pace of his two previous White House bids, and who now say he’s missed the window to make a splash with his 2024 rollout. The uninspiring launch of his supposed political comeback comes as his campaign appears to be operating on auto pilot, with few signs of momentum or enthusiastic support from donors or party heavyweights.

    “I don’t know why he rushed this. It doesn’t make sense,” one Trump adviser said of his lackluster announcement speech last month, which came one week after Republicans delivered an underwhelming performance in the midterm elections and as the rest of the party turned its attention to the Senate runoff contest in Georgia.

    Trump’s announcement was roundly panned for lacking zest, so much so that some audience members attempted an early exit, and his recent hosting of Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and embattled rapper Kanye “Ye” West at Mar-a-Lago only further galvanized GOP opposition against him. A person familiar with the matter said Trump spent the Sunday after Thanksgiving asking people around him if they thought the backlash to his private dinner with Ye and Fuentes was truly damaging.

    “So far, he has gone down from his bedroom, made an announcement, gone back up to his bedroom and hasn’t been seen since except to have dinner with a White supremacist,” said a 2020 Trump campaign adviser.

    “It’s 1000% a ho-hum campaign,” the adviser added.

    The only other notable event to occur since Trump announced he was running again was both unintended and dreaded for weeks by the former president’s attorneys. Just three days after Trump launched his campaign, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to oversee two ongoing criminal investigations into the 45th president and his associates.

    While some Republicans long speculated that Trump entered the presidential race early to inoculate himself from further legal peril, his candidate status instead appeared to serve as the catalyst for Garland’s announcement.

    A Trump campaign spokesman said the former president has held “multiple events since he announced,” noting his remote appearance at the annual Republican Jewish Coalition summit last month, video remarks to a conference for conservative activists in Mexico, a Patriots Freedom Fund event, his remarks at two separate political events held at Mar-a-Lago, and a tele-rally Monday night for Georgia Republican Senate hopeful Herschel Walker. None of these events were billed as campaign events.

    Trump’s current campaign trajectory has left both allies and Republican opponents wondering if he will flip a switch in 2023 or fail to adapt to a different political environment. Even as the GOP’s undisputed 2024 frontrunner, some of his closest allies say he simply cannot afford to take his position for granted at a moment when influential Republicans appear exceedingly interested in dislodging him from his influential perch.

    “If Trump was working in a lush jungle environment in 2016, he is in a desert today,” said a Republican close to the former president. “The political landscape has totally changed. He was irresistible because no one understood him but now everybody knows how to deal with him, so the question is, can he recalibrate?”

    Some sources said Trump’s first-out-of-the-gate strategy, which was said to be partly aimed at clearing the GOP primary field, already looks poised to fail.

    “You know what it’s done to dissuade people from getting in? Nothing. He hasn’t hired anyone. He hasn’t been to the early states,” said the 2020 campaign adviser.

    Trump’s lack of impact was on display a week after his announcement, as other 2024 Republican hopefuls took the stage in Las Vegas for the annual RJC summit. Some attacked the former President, while others, once allies of Trump, indicated they were ready to take him on in 2024.

    Just days before the event, Trump’s team announced plans for him to address the group remotely. Two people familiar with the matter said his virtual address was organized by aides at the last minute after he grew agitated upon realizing the event was a cattle call for Republican presidential prospects and he was not on its original list of speakers. The Trump campaign spokesman disputed this account, saying Trump’s remote remarks were planned “many weeks prior to the event.”

    Other sources who for months harbored concerns that Trump wasn’t as enthusiastic about running as he was letting on in public appearances now say his inactivity has increased their worry. Apart from a planned fundraising appearance for a classical education group in Naples last weekend, the former president has yet to announce any events before the end of the year. A person familiar with the matter said Trump’s team is toying with a pre-Christmas event of some kind, though his campaign has not yet finalized any travel. In a statement last week panning a move by Democratic officials to put South Carolina first on the party’s primary calendar, Trump appeared to tease a visit to Iowa, currently the first state to cast votes in both parties’ presidential nominating contests, “in the very near future.”

    “I can’t wait to be back in Iowa,” he said.

    Inside Trump’s campaign, sources said his current approach is entirely intentional, dismissing concerns that he has forfeited the spotlight at a critical time but acknowledging that Trump is currently working with a bare-bones staff.

    The campaign “is doing exactly what everyone always accuses [them] of not doing – taking a breather, planning and forming a strategy for the next two years,” said one source familiar with Trump’s operation said.

    Senior staff are holed up working on a plan,” this person added, noting that Trump’s campaign travel is expected to begin early in the new year, right as possible rivals who have taken the holidays to mull their own political futures may start launching their own campaigns or exploratory committees.

    And while some Trump allies have been surprised by his lack of a hiring spree right out of the gate, his campaign has been content to maintain a lean operation while he’s the only candidate in the field. The former president is not expected to tap a formal campaign manager, instead elevating three trusted advisers – Susie Wiles, Brian Jack and Chris LaCivita – to senior roles, but allies said he will likely need to build out his on-the-ground staff in early voting states in the months to come, as well as a robust communications operation if he finds himself in a competitive primary.

    While those hires don’t need to happen immediately, people close to Trump said his early entry into the 2024 race does raise questions about how he will sustain campaign-related costs over a longer period than other candidates who declare later, including chief potential rival Ron DeSantis. CNN has previously reported that the Florida governor, should he decide to take on Trump, would announce next May or June, after the conclusion of his state’s legislative session and just months before the Republican party could host its first primary debate, according to a party official involved in debate planning.

    “The question a lot of us have is can Trump sustain a campaign for two years. That’s the real difficulty here. The pacing we’re seeing right now is designed to do that,” said a person close to Trump.

    In addition to planning rallies and events and building momentum around the former President, the campaign staff is also looking at how to best insulate Trump after many were caught off guard learning of Trump’s dinner with Fuentes and West. The event, and the days of fallout and negative coverage, has expedited some of the campaign’s long-term plans, including ensuring a senior campaign staffer is always with the former president, a source familiar with the campaign said.

    Trump’s White House staff worked with resort staff during his presidency in a similar fashion to protect Trump from potentially “unsavory” guests of members, the source said. Those close to Trump blamed “low level staffers” for allowing Fuentes to slip into the resort without any flags being raised.

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  • Biden congratulates Kennedy Center honorees at White House | CNN Politics

    Biden congratulates Kennedy Center honorees at White House | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden congratulated the class of the 45th Kennedy Center Honors Sunday evening, welcoming them to the White House ahead of the star-studded event celebrating the American arts.

    “Tonight, we celebrate a truly exceptional, and this is not exaggeration, a truly exceptional group of artists – group of artists who embody the very spirit of ‘we the people.’ This year’s Kennedy Center honorees – they’re all an incredible group of people,” Biden said.

    The president ticked through all the honorees, their accomplishments and contributions to the arts. Those being honored at the Kennedy Center Sunday night include George Clooney, Amy Grant, Gladys Knight, Tania León and all four members of the Irish rock band U2.

    The honorees, selected for their contributions to American culture by the Kennedy Center’s Executive Committee of its Board of Trustees, are being saluted Sunday night at the Kennedy Center Opera House in front of their peers, according to the Center. The event will be broadcast December 28.

    The Bidens’ attendance will mark the second year that the first family continues the longstanding tradition that was interrupted during the Trump administration.

    In 2017, then-President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump declined to attend the Kennedy Center Honors after two of the honorees that year – television writer and producer Norman Lear and dancer Carmen de Lavallade – said they would skip the Trump-hosted reception at the White House, citing political beliefs.

    At the time, the White House said Trump’s decision would allow the artists “to celebrate without any political distraction.”

    Addressing the honorees Sunday, Biden wrapped his remarks with a message about unity.

    “In the midst of the great division, that was President Lincoln’s plea. That we would do well to remember today at a moment when there’s too much hate, too much anger, too much division here in America and quite frankly around the world. We have to remember today as their song goes – we are one, but we are not the same. We get to carry each other,” Biden said, slightly misquoting the U2 lyrics, which go: “One life, but we’re not the same.”

    Some of the notable attendees at the White House included Sacha Baron Cohen, Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood, Sean Penn, Julia Roberts, Amal Clooney, Matt Damon and former Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone, who was at the US Capitol during the January 6, 2021, insurrection. Also in attendance were Vice President Kamala Harris, second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

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  • Anita Hill says Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade is indicator of what could happen to individuals’ civil rights | CNN Politics

    Anita Hill says Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade is indicator of what could happen to individuals’ civil rights | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Americans should not just consider how the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade impacts women’s rights, but also how it affects individuals’ civil rights, Anita Hill said in an interview with CNN’s Chris Wallace.

    Asked by Wallace if the decision by Justice Clarence Thomas to vote in the 5-4 majority in favor of overturning the landmark ruling makes it harder for her to reconcile his time on the high court, Hill said the decision was about a “shrinking of rights.”

    Hill accused Thomas of sexual harassment in testimony during his 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Thomas has denied the allegations.

    She told Wallace that the conservative Thomas is not the only one on the bench who wants to assess access to contraception and protections for gender identity, adding that “the votes are there to move us in that direction.”

    “I believe that’s why we should – how we should be looking at Dobbs, not just as an indicator of what is going to happen on reproductive rights, but also what will happen to us as a country in terms of how much we value the civil rights of individuals and especially marginalized people,” she said on “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” which is set to air on CNN on Sunday night.

    Since June – when the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, holding that there is no longer a federal constitutional right to an abortion – several states have moved to enshrine abortion protections in their constitutions. And after Thomas’ concurring opinion on the decision where he called for rulings on contraception, same-sex marriage and other rights to be revisited, President Joe Biden signed an executive order aiming to safeguard access to abortion care and contraceptives.

    The Senate on Tuesday passed legislation to protect same-sex and interracial marriage, called the Respect for Marriage Act, in a landmark bipartisan vote amid concern the Supreme Court might overturn its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized same-sex marriage. The House would need to approve the legislation before sending it to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law.

    Hill also told Wallace she was “shocked” to get a call from Thomas’ wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, who she said in 2010 left a voicemail message requesting an apology from the law professor.

    “I had really no idea what to make of it. But I knew this, I knew that I did not want to entertain that kind of call either on the voicemail or face to face, that it was not something that clearly, I was not going to apologize for 1991,” Hill said. “And I didn’t in fact believe that the call was a sincere attempt to reconcile anything, and that I was going to do what I needed to do to stop it from happening.”

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