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Biden 2024 Campaign Announcement Expected Next Week

President Joe Biden will formally announce his 2024 reelection campaign as soon as next week, three people briefed on the discussions said Thursday.

The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said they were not aware that a final decision on timing had been made, but that Biden had been eyeing Tuesday, April 25, four years to the day since the Democrat entered the 2020 race. The upcoming announcement is expected to be in the form of a video released to supporters.

Biden, 80, has repeatedly said he intends to run for a second term, but advisers say he has felt little need to jump into campaigning because he faces no significant opposition to his party’s nomination.

It’ll be a markedly different experience from four years ago, when Biden was written off by much of the political establishment until he consolidated support as the candidate Democrats believed was best positioned to defeat then-President Donald Trump while the coronavirus pandemic raged. This time around, he will have to juggle the challenge of running for reelection while also running the country.

Biden in recent months has been focused on implementing the massive infrastructure, technology investment and climate laws passed during his first two years in office and drawing a sharp contrast with Republicans as Washington gears up for a fight over raising the nation’s borrowing limit. Aides believe those priorities will burnish his image ahead of his reelection campaign.

The president will also need to contend with voter concerns about his fitness for the job. He has brushed aside those concerns, telling voters to “watch me,” and aides say he plans to mount a robust campaign ahead of what they expect to be a close general election owing to the country’s polarization, no matter who emerges as the GOP standard-bearer.

Biden has summoned top Democratic donors to Washington next week for what was expected to be a dinner with him and a strategy session with his chief political advisers.

The Washington Post first reported on the expected timing of the announcement.
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Fox Settles Dominion Defamation Lawsuit for $787.5 Million, Avoiding Trial

Fox Corp. and Fox News on Tuesday settled a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million, averting a high-profile trial that would have put one of the world’s top media companies in the crosshairs over its coverage of false vote-rigging claims in the 2020 U.S. election.

The settlement was announced by Fox, Dominion and the judge in the case at the 11th hour, with a 12-person jury selected on Tuesday morning and the case poised to kick off with opening statements on Tuesday afternoon. Dominion had sought $1.6 billion in damages in the lawsuit filed in 2021, with Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis presiding over the case in Wilmington.

Dominion disclosed the settlement figure, and its CEO John Poulos said Fox had admitted to telling lies about his company. Dominion attorney Justin Nelson said the settlement “represents vindication and accountability” and that “lies have consequences.” Dominion lawyers declined to answer questions about whether Fox News would apologize publicly or make reforms.

“We acknowledge the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false. This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards. We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues,” Fox said in a statement.

At issue in the lawsuit was whether Fox was liable for airing the false claims that Denver-based Dominion’s ballot-counting machines were used to manipulate the 2020 U.S. election in favor of Democrat Joe Biden over Republican then-President Donald Trump. Dominion had argued that these on-air claims caused the company “enormous and irreparable economic harm.”

Davis had ordered a one-day trial postponement on Monday before another delay on Tuesday, as the two sides reached a deal in private.

The deal spared Fox the peril of having some of its best-known figures called to the witness stand and subjected to potentially withering questioning, including executives such as Rupert Murdoch, the 92-year-old media mogul who serves as Fox Corp chairman, and Fox CEO Suzanne Scott as well as on-air hosts including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro.

The decision to settle also followed a ruling by the judge last month that Fox could not invoke free speech protections under the U.S. Constitution in its defense.

Fox News is the most-watched U.S. cable news network, according to Nielsen.

The primary question for jurors was to be whether Fox knowingly spread false information or recklessly disregarded the truth, the standard of “actual malice” that Dominion must show to prevail in a defamation case.

In February court filings, Dominion cited a trove of internal communications in which Murdoch and other Fox figures privately acknowledged that the vote-rigging claims made about Dominion on-air were false.

Dominion said Fox amplified the untrue claims to boost its ratings and prevent its viewers from migrating to other media competitors on the right including One America News Network, which Dominion is suing separately.

Adding to the legal risks for Fox, another U.S. voting technology company, Smartmatic, is pursuing its own defamation lawsuit seeking $2.7 billion in damages in a New York state court. Fox Corp reported nearly $14 billion in annual revenue last year.

Fox had argued that claims by Trump and his lawyers about the election were inherently newsworthy and protected by the Constitution’s First Amendment.

Davis ruled in March that Fox could not use those arguments, finding its coverage was false, defamatory and not protected by the First Amendment.

Dominion in 2021 sued Fox Corp and Fox News, contending that its business was ruined by the false vote-rigging claims that were aired by the influential American cable news outlet known for its roster of conservative commentators.

The trial was to have been a test of whether Fox’s coverage crossed the line between ethical journalism and the pursuit of ratings, as Dominion alleged, and Fox denied. Fox had portrayed itself in the pretrial skirmishing as a defender of press freedom.

The complaints referenced instances in which Trump allies including his former lawyers Rudolph Giuliani and Sidney Powell appeared on Fox News to advance the false allegations about Dominion.

Dominion obtained internal communications and testimony from Murdoch and other Fox News executives and commentators. Murdoch internally described the election-rigging claims as “really crazy” and “damaging” but declined to wield his editorial power to stop them and conceded under oath that some Fox hosts nonetheless “endorsed” the baseless claims, Dominion told the court in a filing.

When Murdoch watched Giuliani and Powell make their claims about Dominion on November 19, he characterized them to Fox News Chief Executive Suzanne Scott as “terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear,” according to the filing.

Under questioning from a Dominion lawyer, Murdoch testified that he thought everything about the election was on the “up-and-up” and doubted the rigging claims from the very beginning, according to Dominion’s filing.

Asked if he could have intervened to stop Giuliani from continuing to spread falsehoods on air, Murdoch responded, “I could have. But I didn’t,” the filing said.
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How Election Lies, Libel Law Are Key to Fox Defamation Suit

A major defamation lawsuit against Fox News goes to trial Tuesday, carrying the potential to shed additional light on former President Donald Trump’s election lies, reveal more about how the right-leaning network operates and even redefine libel law in the U.S. Here are some things to know about the case. 

The case 

Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox for $1.6 billion, claiming the news outlet repeatedly aired allegations that the company’s voting machines were rigged to doom Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign while knowing they were untrue. Fox contends that it was reporting newsworthy charges made by supporters of the Republican then-president and is supported legally by libel standards. After a one-day delay that raised the possibility of a last-minute settlement between the litigants, seating of the jury is scheduled to start Tuesday, followed immediately by opening statements.

Election disconnect 

Denver-based Dominion has produced evidence that prominent people at Fox didn’t believe the fraud allegations, even as the network gave Trump’s allies airtime to repeat them. Multiple staffers texted and emailed in disbelief as Trump latched onto increasingly tenuous claims of being robbed by voter fraud. Fox’s Sean Hannity said in a deposition that he did not believe the fraud claims “for one second” but wanted to give accusers the chance to produce evidence. Fox founder Rupert Murdoch, questioned under oath, agreed the 2020 election, won by Democrat Joe Biden, was free and fair: “The election was not stolen,” he said. Murdoch even wrote on Jan. 5, 2021, to a top executive urging that prominent Fox personalities issue a statement acknowledging Biden’s legitimate win. At the same time, Murdoch acknowledged that Fox hosts such as Lou Dobbs and Jeanine Pirro at times endorsed false claims of election fraud.

Fox’s fear 

The court papers have laid out a profound concern at Fox over the impact of its election night call that Biden had beaten Trump in the battleground state of Arizona — a call that was accurate. Fox scooped its rivals on the call, but it infuriated Trump and many Fox viewers, who expressed their anger and began tuning in to rival conservative media outlets such as Newsmax. Emails and memos released in the case show Fox executives were highly aware of a drop-off in their network’s viewership at the same time that Newsmax was gaining viewers, and the executives viewed that dynamic as a potential threat. 

Libel law 

In its defense, Fox has relied on a doctrine of libel law, in place since a 1964 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, that has made it difficult for some plaintiffs to prove defamation by news outlets. Public figures, and Dominion fits that standard in this case, have to prove not only that the information reported was incorrect but that the news organization acted with “reckless disregard” about whether it was true or not. Fox says Dominion can’t prove its case, but some First Amendment advocates suggest the voting machine company has a strong argument. Their worry is that a prolonged legal battle would give the Supreme Court a chance to change libel laws that would weaken protection for all the media. 

Judge’s ire 

The runup to the trial has been rocky for Fox, and not just because the public got a look at such private chatter as primetime host Tucker Carlson saying he “passionately” hated Trump. The trial judge has scolded the network for 11th-hour disclosures about Murdoch’s role at Fox News and about some evidence involving Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, including recordings of her talking off-camera with Trump’s lawyers. (Fox lawyers later apologized to the judge about the Murdoch matter, saying it was a misunderstanding not intended to deceive.) Fox, meanwhile, won some legal fights over limiting what jurors can hear, including a ruling that bars testimony about the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. 

Trump’s interest 

Trump has taken a keen interest in the case, judging by his social media posts. Always concerned about loyalty, and nursing a grudge about the Arizona call, he has expressed anger at revelations in the case that many people at Fox not only did not support his fraud allegations but privately disdained them. Trump had stepped up his criticism of Fox as the 2024 Republican presidential primary gained steam, but he recently has given interviews to Carlson and Hannity. 

The election 

Federal and state election officials, exhaustive reviews in multiple battleground states where Trump challenged his loss, and Trump’s attorney general found no widespread fraud that could have changed the outcome of the 2020 election. Nor did they uncover any credible evidence that the vote was tainted. Trump’s allegations of fraud also have been roundly rejected by dozens of courts, including by judges he appointed. 
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Abortion Bans Raise Fears Inside Republican Party About Backlash in 2024

As a new election season begins, the Republican Party is struggling to navigate the politics of abortion.

Allies for leading presidential candidates concede that their hardline anti-abortion policies may be popular with the conservatives who decide primary elections, but they could ultimately alienate the broader set of voters they need to win the presidency.

The conflict is unfolding across the United States this week, but nowhere more than in Florida, where Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law one of the nation’s toughest abortion bans on Thursday. If the courts ultimately allow the new measure to take effect, it will soon be illegal for Florida women to obtain an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, which is before most realize they’re pregnant.

Even before he signed the law, DeSantis’ team was eager to highlight his willingness to fight for, and enact, aggressive abortion restrictions. The Florida governor’s position stands in sharp contrast, they say, with some Republican White House hopefuls — most notably former President Donald Trump — who are downplaying their support for anti-abortion policies for fear they may ultimately alienate women or other swing voters in the 2024 general election.

“Unlike Trump, Governor DeSantis doesn’t back down from defending the lives of innocent unborn babies,” said Erin Perrine, a spokesperson for DeSantis’ super political action committee, when asked about Florida’s six-week ban.

‘An electoral disaster’

DeSantis’ latest policy victory in the nation’s third-most populous state offers a new window into the Republican Party’s sustained political challenges on the explosive social issue. In recent days alone, Republican leaders across Iowa, New Hampshire and Washington have struggled to answer nagging questions about their opposition to the controversial medical procedure as Republican-controlled state legislatures rush to enact a wave of new abortion restrictions.

Republicans have suffered painful losses in recent weeks and months across Michigan, New Hampshire, Nevada and even deep-red Kansas in elections that focused, at least in part, on abortion. Last week in Wisconsin, an anti-abortion candidate for the state Supreme Court was trounced by 11 points in a state President Joe Biden carried by less than 1 point.

“Any conversation about banning abortion or limiting it nationwide is an electoral disaster for the Republicans,” said New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, a Republican who describes himself as “pro-choice” but also signed a law banning abortions in the state after 24 weeks.

Privately, at least, strategists involved with Republican presidential campaigns concede that the Republican Party is on the wrong side of the debate as it currently stands. While popular with Republican primary voters, public polling consistently shows that the broader collection of voters who decide general elections believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Anti-abortion activists have been particularly vocal in warning Republican presidential candidates that the party’s base will not tolerate any weakness on abortion given that Republican leaders have been vowing for decades to ban abortion rights if given the chance.

Praise for DeSantis

Before this week, Kristan Hawkins, the president of the anti-abortion group, Students for Life of America, was unwilling to describe DeSantis as a leader in the abortion fight.

“This is his opportunity to show himself as a leader on this issue. That’s what’s exciting about this moment,” Hawkins said of DeSantis’ six-week ban. “He has done a lot, but we really needed to see action at the legislative level. I think this ‘heartbeat law’ fully cements his pro-life street cred.”

Such pressure ensures that the issue will remain central to the 2024 campaign as Republican presidential prospects begin to fan out across America to court primary voters. At the very same time, an escalating court battle over access to an FDA-approved abortion pill is forcing Republican leaders to answer more questions.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, long a vocal abortion opponent, condemned the abortion pill during an interview this week with Newsmax while vowing to “champion the right to life.”

“We’re going to continue to champion the interests of women born and unborn and pushing back against the abortion pill,” Pence declared.

Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley told Iowa voters this week that abortion is “a personal issue” that should be left to the states, although she left open the possibility of a federal ban without getting into specifics.

And in New Hampshire, just a day after launching a presidential exploratory committee, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott outlined his support for a federal law that would ban abortions nationwide after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

He tried repeatedly to refocus the conversation on Democrats’ “radical position” on the issue because they generally oppose any abortion restrictions whatsoever.

Sununu, the New Hampshire governor, said he counts Scott as a friend, but was surprised that he would openly discuss his support for a federal abortion ban in New Hampshire, a state long known for supporting abortion rights.

“Of all places to talk about a federal ban of abortion, New Hampshire ain’t it,” Sununu said. “He’s a good candidate and does a great job in the Senate. But know your audience here, man.”

Republican officials in Washington are still looking for answers as well.

Republican strategist Alice Stewart said Republicans must find a way to keep the focus on the failings of the Biden administration, the economy, crime and education in the 2024 campaign.

“Abortion poses a challenge for Republicans. There’s no denying it,” said Stewart, who initially cheered the Supreme Court’s Roe reversal. “Politically, it has become problematic.”
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After Calls to Resign, Feinstein Seeks Judiciary Replacement

Recuperating U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California asked Wednesday to be temporarily replaced on the Judiciary Committee, shortly after two House Democrats called on her to resign after her extended absence from Washington.

In a statement, the long-serving Democratic senator said her recovery from a case of shingles, disclosed in early March, had been delayed because of complications. She provided no date for her return to the Senate and said she had asked Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to ask the Senate to allow another Democratic senator to serve in her committee seat until she was able to return.

“I intend to return as soon as possible once my medical team advises that it’s safe for me to travel,” Feinstein said. “In the meantime, I remain committed to the job and will continue to work from home in San Francisco.”

Feinstein’s decision to seek a committee stand-in during her recovery comes amid increasing anxiety within her party that her lengthy absence has damaged Democratic efforts to confirm President Joe Biden’s nominees for federal courts in a narrowly divided chamber.

She is the oldest member of Congress, at 89.

California Rep. Ro Khanna, one of two Democratic House members who called Wednesday for Feinstein to resign, said in a statement Wednesday: “This is a moment of crisis for women’s rights and voting rights. It’s unacceptable to have Sen. Feinstein miss vote after vote to confirm judges who will uphold reproductive rights.”

Khanna, a California progressive, wrote on Twitter that Feinstein should step aside. She announced in February that she would not seek reelection in 2024, opening up her seat for the first time in more than 30 years.

“We need to put the country ahead of personal loyalty,” wrote Khanna, who has endorsed the Senate campaign of Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee. “While she has had a lifetime of public service, it is obvious she can no longer fulfill her duties.”

Not long afterward, Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota tweeted that he agreed with Khanna.

Feinstein, he wrote, “is a remarkable American whose contributions to our country are immeasurable. But I believe it’s now a dereliction of duty to remain in the Senate and a dereliction of duty for those who agree to remain quiet.”

The senator, who turns 90 in June, has faced questions in recent years about her cognitive health and memory, though she has defended her effectiveness representing a state that is home to nearly 40 million people.

If Feinstein decides to step down during her term, it would be up to Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill the vacancy, potentially reordering the highly competitive race.

Newsom declined through a spokesperson to comment on Khanna’s statement.

Before the calls for her resignation, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, acknowledged in remarks to CNN that Feinstein’s absence has slowed down their push to confirm nominees in the closely divided panel.

“I can’t consider nominees in these circumstances because a tie vote is a losing vote in committee,” Durbin said.

Feinstein has had a groundbreaking political career and shattered gender barriers from San Francisco’s City Hall to the corridors of Capitol Hill.

She was the first woman to serve as president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in the 1970s and the first female mayor of San Francisco. She ascended to that post after the November 1978 assassinations of then-Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk by a former supervisor, Dan White.

In the Senate, she was the first woman to head the Senate Intelligence Committee and the first woman to serve as the Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat. She gained a reputation as a pragmatic centrist who left a mark on political battles over issues ranging from reproductive rights to environmental protection.

 
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Second Expelled Black Lawmaker to Return to Tennessee House

The second of two Black Democrats expelled from the Republican-led Tennessee House will return to the Legislature after a Memphis commission voted to reinstate him Wednesday, nearly a week after his banishment for supporting gun control protesters propelled him into the national spotlight.

Hundreds of supporters chanted and cheered as they marched Representative Justin Pearson through Memphis to the Shelby County Board of Commissioners meeting, where officials quickly voted 7-0 to restore his position.

“The message for all the people in Nashville who decided to expel us: ‘You can’t expel hope. You can’t expel justice,” Pearson said at the meeting, his voice rising as he spoke. “You can’t expel our voice. And you sure can’t expel our fight.”

Pearson is expected to return to the Capitol on Thursday, when the House holds its next floor session.

Republicans expelled Pearson and Representative Justin Jones last week over their role in a gun control protest on the House floor after a Nashville school shooting that left three children and three adults dead.

The Nashville Metropolitan Council took only a few minutes Monday to unanimously restore Jones to office. He was quickly reinstated to his House seat.

The appointments are interim, and special elections for the seats will take place in the coming months. Jones and Pearson have said they plan to run in the special elections.

Accusations of racism

The House’s vote to remove Pearson and Jones but keep white Representative Gloria Johnson drew accusations of racism. Johnson survived by one vote. Republican leadership denied that race was a factor, however.

The expulsions last Thursday made Tennessee a new front in the battle for the future of American democracy. In the span of a few days, the two politicians had raised thousands of campaign dollars, and the Tennessee Democratic Party had received a new jolt of support from across the U.S.

Political tensions rose when Pearson, Johnson and Jones on the House floor joined hundreds of demonstrators who packed the Capitol last month to call for passage of gun control measures.

As protesters filled galleries, the lawmakers approached the front of the House chamber with a bullhorn and participated in a chant. The scene unfolded days after the shooting at the Covenant School, a private Christian school in Tennessee. Their participation from the front of the chamber broke House rules because the three did not have permission from the House speaker.

Support for Pearson has come from across the country, including Memphis. During a Monday rally in support of Tyre Nichols, who died in January after he was beaten by police during an arrest, backers of Pearson said the commission was “on the clock.”

“You’ve got one job — to reinstate Justin Pearson,” activist LJ Abraham said.

Pearson grew up in the same House district he was chosen to represent after longtime state Representative Barbara Cooper, a Black Democrat, died in office. It winds along the neighborhoods, forests and wetlands of south Memphis, through the city’s downtown area and into north Shelby County.

Before he was elected, Pearson helped lead a successful campaign against a planned oil pipeline that would have run through neighborhoods and wetlands, and near wells that pump water from the Memphis Sand Aquifer, which provides drinking water to 1 million people.

He gained a quick reputation as a skilled community activist and gifted public speaker.

Political divisions deep

Should Pearson join Jones in returning to the Tennessee Capitol, they’ll do so when political divisions between the state’s few Democratic strongholds and the Republican supermajority were already reaching a boiling point before the expulsions.

Republican members this year introduced a wave of punishing proposals to strip away Nashville’s autonomy. Others have pushed to abolish the state’s few community oversight boards that investigate police misconduct and instead replace them with advisory panels that would be blocked from investigating complaints.

Lawmakers are also nearing passage of a bill that would move control of the board that oversees Nashville’s airport from local appointments to selections by Republican state government leaders.

Particularly on addressing gun violence, Republicans have so far refused to consider placing any new restrictions on firearms in the wake of the Nashville school shooting. Instead, lawmakers have advanced legislation designed to add more armed guards in public and private schools and are considering a proposal that would allow teachers to carry guns.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s office confirmed this week that a Republican lawmaker was stripped of a top committee assignment more than a month after he asked during a hearing if “hanging by a tree” could be added to the state’s execution methods. The speaker’s office declined to specify the reason for removing him from the committee.

Representative Paul Sherrell was taken off the Criminal Justice Committee and transferred to another, and was “very agreeable” to the change, Sexton spokesperson Doug Kufner said.

Sherrell, who is white, later apologized for what he said amid outcry from Black lawmakers, who pointed to the state’s dark history of lynching. Sherrell said his comments were “exaggerated” to show “support of families who often wait decades for justice.”
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Ouster of State Lawmakers Draws Nation’s Eyes to Tennessee 

In an episode that fuses simmering conflicts in the United States over race, gun control, and the country’s deep political divide, Republican legislators in Tennessee have come under widespread criticism following a vote Thursday to expel two Democratic members from the state’s House of Representatives.

The expulsion votes came just days after the two lawmakers, Representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, interrupted a House session to demand that lawmakers implement stronger gun control laws. Jones and Pearson are both Black men.

A motion to expel Representative Gloria Johnson, who participated in the protest with Jones and Pearson, failed by one vote. Johnson is white.

The eyes of the nation are especially focused on Tennessee’s Legislature because of the House Republicans’ exercise of raw political power in ousting Jones and Pearson, the race of the expelled lawmakers, and, the topic of their protest — gun control.

Intense emotions

The expulsion vote took place amid already intense emotions in Nashville, Tennessee’s state capital. On March 27, a person armed with several semi-automatic weapons stormed The Covenant School, a small private Christian elementary school a little more than 5 miles from the Capitol building. The shooter killed three 9-year-old children and three adults before being shot to death by police.

Officials said the killer at Covenant had legally purchased the weapons used in the attack.

The killings prompted a flood of calls for tighter restrictions on firearms ownership. However, in largely rural and gun-friendly Tennessee, where the state government is dominated by Republicans, gun-control legislation is not likely to pass.

After the shooting, Republicans in the Legislature and Tennessee Governor Bill Lee focused instead on laws that would “harden” schools against attacks like the one at Covenant by, for example, mandating that doors be locked and requiring security measures at points of entry.

Competing narratives

On March 30, thousands of people converged on the Tennessee Capitol, where the Legislature was meeting, to demand action on gun control in response to the Covenant shootings. Many protesters entered an open gallery area above the House floor and began chanting.

With the House in session, Jones, Pearson and Johnson moved to the front of the chamber and joined the protesters. Using a megaphone, they at times led the crowd in chants.

Afterward, House Speaker Cameron Sexton compared the lawmakers’ actions to the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of supporters of former President Donald Trump. He also accused them of taking attention away from those killed at the Covenant School.

“What they did was try to hold up the people’s business on the House floor instead of doing it the way that they should have done it, which they have the means to do,” Sexton said. “They actually thought that they would be arrested, and so they decided that them being a victim was more important than focusing on the six victims from Monday. And that’s appalling.”

On Thursday, Sexton called votes on three separate bills to expel Jones, Pearson, and Johnson.

In remarks to the House as it debated the expulsion vote, Jones called the process “a farce of democracy.”

“What is happening here today is a situation in which the jury has already publicly announced the verdict,” he said. “What we see today is just a spectacle. What we see today is a lynch mob assembled to not lynch me, but our democratic process.”

Suggestion of racism

The votes fell largely along party lines. Republicans hold a supermajority in the 99-seat Tennessee House, and in the case of Jones and Pearson, were able to secure 72 and 69 votes in favor, respectively, clearing the requirement for a two-thirds majority for expulsion.

Only 65 lawmakers voted in favor of expelling Johnson, one shy of the necessary 66.

The fact that two Black men were expelled while a white woman was allowed to retain her seat sparked charges that the expulsions were racially motivated, including from Johnson herself.

Immediately after the votes, when asked why she thought lawmakers expelled her colleagues but not her, Johnson told a reporter, “It might have to do with the color of our skin.”

Such expulsions have been rare in the Tennessee House. It happened once in 2016, when a member was under investigation for serial sexual harassment, and once in 1980, when a member was found to have solicited a bribe. Beyond that, the most recent expulsions occurred in 1866, the year after the end of the Civil War.

Experts surprised

Experts told VOA that they were surprised by the severity of the penalty levied on Jones and Pearson.

“There are certainly lesser sanctions, which legislators use to penalize members who behave inappropriately either in decorum or in ethical [matters],” said Bruce Oppenheimer, professor emeritus in political science at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

“The simplest one is a reprimand, which is saying, ‘You did wrong. You shouldn’t do that again,’” said Oppenheimer. “Stronger would be a censure, where you would have to stand and be admonished on the floor of the chamber by the presiding officer. … But it’s very rare for somebody to be expelled.”

Disproportionate penalty

Ken Paulson, the director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, told VOA that while it is not unusual for a governmental body to have rules to punish members when they deviate from its internal regulations, the penalty in Jones’ and Pearson’s case appeared excessive.

“The penalty is so disproportionate to the alleged crime that it really raises questions about motivation,” Paulson said.

He said that he did not expect the Tennessee expulsions to lead to other legislators in other states suddenly losing their seats. However, he said, it does send a worrying message.

“It does raise the question, ‘How low does the bar go?’” he said. “If a legislator does anything that involves action — not just speech — with which a state legislature is uncomfortable, what keeps them from removing those voices from the legislature? The real concern is that it gives some other supermajority legislatures ideas on how to deal with the other side.”

Practical effect limited

The practical effect of the expulsion may be limited by Tennessee laws that allow local governments to appoint individuals to vacant seats in the Legislature.

Officials in Nashville, which Jones represented before his expulsion, and in Memphis, where Pearson was elected, have signaled that they plan to simply appoint both men to their former positions, returning them to the Legislature.

Both would then be free to run in a special election, which the law requires be held to fill the empty seats.

“It’s likely that each of these people will be reelected,” Oppenheimer said.
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Trump Is Indicted — Now What?

The Manhattan district attorney’s indictment of Donald Trump on 34 felony charges and the prospect of more charges to come have injected more uncertainty into the November 2024 race for the White House.

Trump, who has declared himself a candidate for next year’s Republican presidential nomination, was formally charged this week with falsifying New York business records to conceal his role in paying hush money to an adult film actress before the 2016 election. He is also facing potential charges in at least three other cases.

Never before in American history have criminal charges been brought against a former president, much less one who is attempting another run. According to the most recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, even with the indictment Trump is leading the Republican primary field.

Should Trump become the nominee, he will likely face President Joe Biden. Biden won over Trump in 2020.

In the short term, Trump may be benefiting from the controversy. One of the first polls done after the indictment showed Trump surging to his largest-ever lead over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, 57% to 31% among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. As recently as February, DeSantis was narrowly ahead of Trump by 45% to 41%.

Trump is also leveraging his grievance over the case to rake in funds, $12 million in just one week since the indictment’s announcement, according to his campaign.

Watch related video by Mike O’Sullivan:

However, pollsters say the indictment is unlikely to sway the crucial independent voters that Trump will need in the general election.

“All the polling basically shows [is] a very divided America. You have one America that is very much in favor of the indictment, believes that Trump has been lawless, has not followed the rules,” said Clifford Young, president for U.S. public affairs at Ipsos. “On the flip side, there’s another America, red America, Republican America, that thinks it’s completely, utterly, politically motivated.”

Impact on Republican primary

Since the indictment, Trump has widened his lead over other Republican contenders. According to the Reuters/Ipsos poll, 48% of self-described Republicans said they wanted Trump to be their party’s presidential nominee, up from 44% in a March 14-20 poll.

DeSantis, Trump’s closest rival, was backed by 19%, down from 30% last month. Other likely rivals, including former Vice President Mike Pence and Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina and former ambassador to the United Nations, polled in the single digits.

Aside from former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, those eyeing the Republican nomination have been rushing to defend Trump from the indictment.

“They can’t be critical of the former president because they clearly want his supporters to go with them in the event that Donald Trump can’t or will not run,” political consultant Julie Roginsky told VOA.

Roginsky noted the risk for Republican challengers who voice support while silently hoping Trump will bow out.

“Then essentially they’re anointing him as the next nominee, if they don’t all get together and try to take him down based on these issues,” she said.

Should Trump become bogged down by more legal woes, including those related to allegations of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state of Georgia, and mishandling classified documents at his Florida home after leaving office, more Republican candidates would likely run, said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

But if he survives them, his opponents will push for a smaller field, Sabato told VOA. “It’s the only way you could stop him, if you consolidate support behind one or two candidates.”

Trump vs. Biden

If Trump becomes the Republican nominee, that’s good news for Biden’s reelection prospects because it would galvanize the Democratic base and most independent voters, Sabato said.

“He’s going to generate those votes because they can’t stand the alternative.”

Even if he is not the nominee, Trump’s influence over the Republican base will force other potential nominees to embrace him, possibly making it easier for Biden to beat him or her, Sabato added.

Trump could also split the Republican vote by refusing to support the nominee. In a February radio interview, Trump said that if he were not the party’s pick, his support “would have to depend on who the nominee was.”

Biden has not officially announced that he is running for reelection and will likely do so at a time when he does not have to share the political spotlight with Trump, whom he beat in 2020.

“It’s not like anybody’s gearing up, anybody of consequence is gearing up to run against him. So, he can take his time and doesn’t have to start incurring any expenses of an official campaign at the moment,” Roginsky said.

What if Trump wins?

Trump can be found guilty and still win the election, in which case the country would have a convicted felon as its commander in chief.

“There’s nothing in the Constitution that precludes someone who has been convicted of a crime from being elected president,” said Richard Pierce, a law professor at George Washington University.

There are only three constitutional requirements for the presidency: he or she must be at least 35 years of age, be a natural-born citizen and have lived in the U.S. for at least 14 years.

Experts say if convicted on the New York charges, Trump is unlikely to spend any time behind bars as judges rarely sentence first-time offenders to jail for falsifying business records.

However, other criminal investigations, including the one on his role in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election result, may lead to more serious charges and potential imprisonment.

That would be a “truly unprecedented situation,” Pierce told VOA.

“I don’t know how one could be effective as president of the United States while being in a jail cell,” he said. “But there is nothing in the Constitution that would keep somebody from being president of the United States and being incarcerated at the same time.”

But a conviction could bar Trump from voting for himself. Florida, where he is registered to vote, is one of 11 states with the most restrictive laws regarding voting while incarcerated.
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DeSantis Clarifies Position on Ukraine War, Calls Putin ‘War Criminal’

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis this week called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” and condemned his invasion of Ukraine, a week after coming under criticism for remarks that seemed to advocate a reduction in U.S. support for Ukrainian forces.

DeSantis, widely expected to announce his candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination later this year, had previously described the war in Ukraine as a “territorial dispute” that did not represent a “vital national interest” of the United States.

The remarks earned him immediate condemnation from many, including multiple long-serving Republicans in Congress, even though support for continued U.S. aid to Ukraine is waning among a significant portion of the Republican electorate.

Claims he was mischaracterized

In an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan scheduled to stream Thursday evening on Fox Nation, DeSantis said his comments — particularly those that seemed to dismiss the war as a territorial dispute — were “mischaracterized.”

Morgan, who previewed the interview in a New York Post column on Wednesday, quoted the Florida governor’s explanation for his comment at length.

“When I asked him specifically if he regretted using the phrase ‘territorial dispute,’ DeSantis replied, ‘Well, I think it’s been mischaracterized. Obviously, Russia invaded [last year] — that was wrong. They invaded Crimea and took that in 2014 — that was wrong.

“ ‘What I’m referring to is where the fighting is going on now, which is that eastern border region Donbas, and then Crimea, and you have a situation where Russia has had that. I don’t think legitimately, but they had. There’s a lot of ethnic Russians there.’”

According to Morgan, DeSantis went on to say why he thinks Russia is not the threat that the Biden administration has portrayed: “I think the larger point is, OK, Russia is not showing the ability to take over Ukraine, to topple the government or certainly to threaten NATO. That’s a good thing.”

The Biden administration has characterized support for Ukraine as forestalling deeper U.S. involvement in a broader conflict.

DeSantis told Morgan he sees it differently: “I just don’t think that’s a sufficient interest for us to escalate more involvement. I would not want to see American troops involved there. But the idea that I think somehow Russia was justified [in invading] — that’s nonsense.”

‘A gas station’ with nuclear weapons

Also in the interview, DeSantis ridiculed Russia’s high dependence on fossil fuel exports and said the country does not have the capacity to act on Putin’s seeming plan to reconstitute the former Soviet Union’s sphere of influence.

“I think he’s got grand ambitions,” DeSantis said of Putin. “I think he’s hostile to the United States, but I think the thing that we’ve seen is he doesn’t have the conventional capability to realize his ambitions. And so, he’s basically a gas station with a bunch of nuclear weapons, and one of the things we could be doing better is utilizing our own energy resources in the U.S.”

DeSantis’ comments were reminiscent of those of the late John McCain, who was a Republican senator and presidential candidate. Famously hawkish on Russia, he once derided the nation as “a gas station masquerading as a country.”

Zelenskyy responds

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in an interview with the editors of The Atlantic magazine, replied to DeSantis last week with an argument that America’s investment in his country’s defense is preventing a broader conflict that could pull in the U.S. and its NATO allies.

“If we will not have enough weapons, that means we will be weak. If we will be weak, they will occupy us,” Zelenskyy said. “If they occupy us, they will be on the borders of Moldova and they will occupy Moldova. When they have occupied Moldova, they will [travel through] Belarus and they will occupy Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

“That’s three Baltic countries which are members of NATO,” he added. “They will occupy them. Of course [the Balts] are brave people, and they will fight. But they are small. And they don’t have nuclear weapons. So they will be attacked by Russians because that is the policy of Russia, to take back all the countries which have been previously part of the Soviet Union.”

Zelenskyy’s assertions aside, many foreign policy experts are dubious about the likelihood of Russia choosing to invade any countries that are under the protection of NATO’s mutual defense agreement.

Difficult politics

DeSantis’ move to clarify his position on Ukraine highlights a difficulty that any Republican presidential candidate is likely to face on the issue because of a deepening divide within the party.

For Republicans, said William A. Galston, a senior fellow in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies Program, “finding a tenable path on Ukraine is very difficult, because the party is divided between a traditionalist wing and a populist wing on this issue.”

“The traditionalist view is that the United States, for reasons having to do with both its interests and values, is required to stand up to aggression, such as what Russia has unleashed on Ukraine, and to support indirectly, and in some cases directly, the military effort to oppose it,” Galston told VOA.

“The populist wing of the party is taking the position that this fight is none of our business, and more generally, that the interests of the United States are best served by staying out of foreign entanglements, particularly military entanglements, to the greatest extent possible,” he said.

At the moment, the divide is most visible when comparing the positions of the party’s two leading presidential candidates with those of its foreign policy veterans in Congress.

Both former President Donald Trump and DeSantis have expressed doubts about whether it is in U.S. interests to continue supporting Ukraine. In a recent Monmouth University poll, the two men received 80% of support — 44% for Trump and 36% for DeSantis — when prospective GOP voters were asked whom they support for the party’s presidential nomination.

In Congress, though, prominent Republican voices have offered unwavering support for Ukraine.

“I think the majority opinion among Senate Republicans is that the United States has a vital national security interest there in stopping Russian aggression,” John Thune, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, told reporters last week.
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House Republicans Demand Documents About US Exit From Afghanistan

Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul is demanding that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken provide documents on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. McCaul said the ‘catastrophic’ exit from Afghanistan emboldened Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine. Cindy Saine reports.
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Prosecutor Rejects Republicans’ Demand He Hand Over Documents in Trump Investigation

The New York City prosecutor on Thursday rejected a demand by congressional Republican lawmakers that he hand over documents linked to his investigation of former President Donald Trump’s $130,000 hush money payment to a porn star ahead of the 2016 election to buy her silence about an affair she claims to have had with Trump.

The office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg assailed the request earlier this week by three committee chairmen in the House of Representatives as “an unlawful incursion into New York’s sovereignty.” The three lawmakers — Jim Jordan, James Comer and Bryan Steil — had called Bragg’s investigation of Trump an “unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority.”

Bragg’s general counsel, Leslie Dubeck, told the lawmakers that their letter “only came after Donald Trump created a false expectation that he would be arrested [Tuesday] and his lawyers reportedly urged you to intervene. Neither fact is a legitimate basis for congressional inquiry.”

“If a grand jury brings charges against Donald Trump, the DA’s Office will have an obligation, as in every case, to provide a significant amount of discovery from its files to the defendant so that he may prepare a defense,” Dubeck wrote.

The Republican committee chairmen had told Bragg, “You are reportedly about to engage in an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority: the indictment of a former president of the United States. This indictment comes after years of your office searching for a basis — any basis — on which to bring charges.”

Lawmakers refer to case as ‘zombie’

On Thursday, Jordan, an Ohio congressman, demanded testimony and documents from Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, two former New York prosecutors who had been leading the Trump case before quitting last year when Bragg appeared to have abandoned the Trump investigation.

“Last year, you resigned from the office over Bragg’s initial reluctance to move forward with charges, shaming Bragg in your resignation letter — which was subsequently leaked — into bringing charges,” Jordan wrote in the letter to Pomerantz. “It now appears that your efforts to shame Bragg have worked as he is reportedly resurrecting a so-called ‘zombie’ case against President Trump using a tenuous and untested legal theory.”

Trump has not been charged in the case, although the grand jury investigation is continuing.

Bragg has been bringing witnesses before the 23-member grand jury to testify about the payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, hush money to silence her for what she alleges was a one-night affair with Trump in 2006 at a hotel where Trump was attending a golf tournament. Trump has long denied the affair.

Probe focuses on payment 

The investigation centers in part on details of the payment made to Daniels and whether the transaction amounts to a criminal offense. If charged, Trump would be the first-ever U.S. president indicted in a criminal case.

Trump’s one-time lawyer and political fixer Michael Cohen wrote her a check out of his personal funds and then was reimbursed by Trump, who recorded it as a business expense for legal fees to Cohen on the ledgers of the Trump Organization, his real estate business, rather than recorded as a campaign expense related to his successful 2016 run for the presidency.

Cohen served more than a year in prison for his role in the payment and other offenses. He since has turned into a sharp Trump critic and grand jury witness against him.

Trump announced his intention to seek the 2024 Republican presidential nomination months ago and says he would keep campaigning even if he is charged with a criminal offense. Numerous national polls show him as the front-runner for the Republican nomination, although several other Republicans have either announced their own candidacies or said they are seriously considering a race against Trump.

Trump had regularly lambasted the New York investigation as a political witch-hunt and called Bragg, who is Black, a “racist.”

Trump was impeached twice during his presidency, once in 2019 over his conduct demanding Ukraine investigate then candidate Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential election, and again in 2021 over the attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. He was acquitted by the Senate both times.

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press.
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Court Orders Trump Lawyer to Provide Documents in Mar-a-Lago Case

A federal appeals court in a sealed order Wednesday directed a lawyer for Donald Trump to turn over to prosecutors documents in the investigation into the former president’s retention of classified records at his Florida estate.

The ruling is a significant win for the U.S. Justice Department, which has focused for months not only on the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago but also on why Trump and his representatives resisted demands to return them to the government. It suggests the court has sided with prosecutors who have argued behind closed doors that Trump was using his legal representation to further a crime.

The order was reflected in a brief online notice by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The case is sealed, and none of the parties in the dispute is mentioned by name.

But the details appear to correspond with a secret fight before a lower court judge over whether Trump lawyer M. Evan Corcoran could be forced to provide documents or give grand jury testimony in the Justice Department special counsel probe into whether Trump mishandled top-secret information at Mar-a-Lago.

Corcoran is regarded as relevant to the investigation in part because last year he drafted a statement to the Justice Department asserting that a “diligent search” for classified documents had been conducted at Mar-a-Lago in response to a subpoena. Weeks later, FBI agents searched the home with a warrant and found roughly 100 additional documents with classified markings.

Another Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, told investigators last fall that Corcoran had drafted the letter and had asked her to sign it in her role as a designated custodian of Trump’s records.

A Justice Department investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors is examining whether Trump or anyone in his orbit obstructed its efforts to recover all the classified documents — which included top-secret material — from his home. No charges have been filed.

Other legal threats

The inquiry is one of multiple legal threats Trump faces, including probes in Atlanta, Georgia, and Washington over his efforts to undo the election result and a grand jury investigation in New York over hush money payments. The New York case appears to be nearing completion and building toward an indictment.

Last week, Beryl Howell, the outgoing chief judge of the U.S. District Court, directed Corcoran to answer additional questions before the grand jury. He had appeared weeks earlier before the federal grand jury investigating the Mar-a-Lago matter but had invoked attorney-client privilege in declining to answer certain questions.

Though attorney-client privilege shields lawyers from being forced to share details of their conversations with clients before prosecutors, the Justice Department can get around that if it can convince a judge that a lawyer’s services were used in furtherance of a crime — a principle known in the law as the crime-fraud exception.

Howell ruled in the Justice Department’s favor shortly before stepping aside as chief judge Friday, according to a person familiar with the matter, who was not authorized to discuss a sealed proceeding and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. That ruling was subsequently appealed, and the court records show the dispute before the federal appeals panel concerned an order that was issued last Friday by Howell.

The three-judge panel that issued the decision included Cornelia Pillard, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, and J. Michelle Childs and Florence Pan, both appointees of President Joe Biden. The order came just hours after the court imposed tight deadlines on both sides to file written briefs making their case.

A lawyer for Corcoran did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment Wednesday, and a lawyer for Trump declined to comment on the sealed order.
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Republicans Assail New York Prosecutor Investigating Trump

Republican lawmakers on Monday assailed the New York Democratic prosecutor investigating former President Donald Trump in connection with his alleged $130,000 hush money payment to a porn star ahead of the 2016 election.

Three committee chairmen in the House of Representatives accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of prosecutorial misconduct and demanded that he provide them information and documents related to his investigation of Trump.

The former president said over the weekend that he expects to be arrested in the case on Tuesday, although the prosecutor has made no public announcement indicating whether Trump would be indicted or when. Trump called for protests if he is indicted, and New York officials have been coordinating with federal security agencies to handle any unrest near the courthouse in New York.

Trump would be the first former U.S. president ever charged with a criminal offense.

He also faces wide-ranging investigations by a Justice Department special counsel and a state prosecutor in the southern state of Georgia for his role in trying to upend his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden to stay in power.

Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith is also probing Trump’s role in fomenting the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers met to certify Biden’s victory and how Trump kept classified documents at his Florida estate after leaving office, rather than turning them over to the National Archives as he was required by law to do.

The New York probe stems from the $130,000 paid to adult star Stormy Daniels by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to guarantee her silence just ahead of the 2016 election about the one-night sexual encounter she claims to have had with Trump, an allegation he has long denied. Cohen has said that Trump approved the payment and then reimbursed him, saying it was for legal expenses.

“You are reportedly about to engage in an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority: the indictment of a former president of the United States,” the Republican committee chairmen said in their letter to Bragg.

“This indictment comes after years of your office searching for a basis — any basis — on which to bring charges,” they added.

The letter was signed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil.

Democrats rebuffed the criticism of the Trump investigation, with Representative Daniel Goldman saying on Twitter, “Defending Trump is not a legitimate legislative purpose for Congress to investigate a state district attorney.”

“Congress has no jurisdiction to investigate the Manhattan DA, which receives no federal funding nor has any other federal nexus,” said Goldman, who was lead counsel in a 2019 House impeachment of Trump.

Trump announced his intention to seek the 2024 Republican presidential nomination months ago and says he would keep campaigning even if he is charged with a criminal offense. Numerous national polls show him as the front-runner for the Republican nomination, although several other Republicans have either announced their own candidacies or said they are seriously considering a race against Trump.

Trump was impeached twice during his presidency, once in 2019 over his conduct demanding Ukraine investigate Biden, and again in 2021 over the attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. He was acquitted by the Senate both times.
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Pro-Moscow Voices Tried to Steer Ohio Train Disaster Debate

Soon after a train derailed and spilled toxic chemicals in Ohio last month, anonymous pro-Russian accounts started spreading misleading claims and anti-American propaganda about it on Twitter, using Elon Musk’s new verification system to expand their reach while creating the illusion of credibility.

The accounts, which parroted Kremlin talking points on myriad topics, claimed without evidence that authorities in Ohio were lying about the true impact of the chemical spill. The accounts spread fearmongering posts that preyed on legitimate concerns about pollution and health effects and compared the response to the derailment with America’s support for Ukraine following its invasion by Russia.

Some of the claims pushed by the pro-Russian accounts were verifiably false, such as the suggestion that the news media had covered up the disaster or that environmental scientists traveling to the site had been killed in a plane crash. But most were more speculative, seemingly designed to stoke fear or distrust. Examples include unverified maps showing widespread pollution, posts predicting an increase in fatal cancers, and others about unconfirmed mass animal die-offs.

“Biden offers food, water, medicine, shelter, payouts of pension and social services to Ukraine! Ohio first! Offer and deliver to Ohio!” posted one of the pro-Moscow accounts, which boasts 25,000 followers and features an anonymous location and a profile photo of a dog. Twitter awarded the account a blue check mark in January.

Social accounts spread propaganda

Regularly spewing anti-U.S. propaganda, the accounts show how easily authoritarian states and Americans willing to spread their propaganda can exploit social media platforms like Twitter to steer domestic discourse.

The accounts were identified by Reset, a London-based nonprofit that studies social media’s impact on democracy and shared with The Associated Press. Felix Kartte, a senior advisor at Reset, said the report’s findings indicate Twitter is allowing Russia to use its platform like a bullhorn.

“With no one at home in Twitter’s product safety department, Russia will continue to meddle in U.S. elections and in democracies around the world,” Kartte said.

Twitter did not respond to messages seeking comment for this story.

The 38-car derailment near East Palestine, Ohio, released toxic chemicals into the atmosphere, leading to a national debate over rail safety and environmental regulations while raising fears of poisoned drinking water and air.

The disaster was a major topic on social media, with millions of mentions on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, according to an analysis by San Francisco-based media intelligence firm Zignal Labs, which conducted a study on behalf of the AP.

Online comments try to affect opinions

At first, the derailment received little attention online but mentions grew steadily, peaking two weeks after the incident, Zignal found, a time lag that gave pro-Russia voices time to try to shape the conversation.

The accounts identified by Reset’s researchers received an extra boost from Twitter itself, in the form of a blue check mark. Before Musk purchased Twitter last year, its check marks denoted accounts run by verified users, often public figures, celebrities or journalists. It was seen as a mark of authenticity on a platform known for bots and spam accounts.

Musk ended that system and replaced it with Twitter Blue, which is given to users who pay $8 per month and supply a phone number. Twitter Blue users agree not to engage in deception and are required to post a profile picture and name. But there’s no rule that they use their own.

Under the program, Twitter Blue users can write and send longer tweets and videos. Their replies are also given higher priority in other posts.

The AP reached out to several of the accounts listed in Reset’s report. In response, one of the accounts sent a two-word message before blocking the AP reporter on Twitter: “Shut up.”

While researchers spotted clues suggesting some of the accounts are linked to coordinated efforts by Russian disinformation agencies, others were Americans, showing the Kremlin doesn’t always have to pay to get its message out.

One account, known as Truth Puke, is connected to a website of the same name geared toward conservatives in the United States. Truth Puke regularly reposts Russian state media; RT, formerly known as Russia Today, is one of its favorite groups to repost, Reset found. One video posted by the account features ex-President Donald Trump’s remarks about the train derailment, complete with Russian subtitles.

In a response to questions from the AP, Truth Puke said it aims to provide a “wide spectrum of views” and was surprised to be labeled a spreader of Russian propaganda, despite the account’s heavy use of such material. Asked about the video with Russian subtitles, Truth Puke said it used the Russian language version of the Trump video for the sake of expediency.

“We can assure you that it was not done with any Russian propagandist intent in mind, we just like to put out things as quickly as we find them,” the company said.

Other accounts brag of their love for Russia. One account on Thursday reposted a bizarre claim that the U.S. was stealing humanitarian earthquake relief supplies donated to Syria by China. The account has 60,000 followers and is known as Donbass Devushka, after the region of Ukraine.

Another pro-Russian account recently tried to pick an online argument with Ukraine’s defense department, posting photos of documents that it claimed came from the Wagner Group, a private military company owned by a Yevgeny Prigozhin, a key Putin ally. Prigozhin operates troll farms that have targeted U.S. social media users in the past. Last fall he boasted of his efforts to meddle with American democracy.

A separate Twitter account claiming to represent Wagner actively uses the site to recruit fighters.

“Gentlemen, we have interfered, are interfering and will interfere,” Prigozhin said last fall on the eve of the 2022 midterm elections in the U.S. “Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know how to do.” 
…

Defamation Case Against Fox News Proceeds Toward Trial

A $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed against Fox News, the most-watched cable television network in the United States, and its parent company, Fox Corp., will go to trial next month in a case that has enormous implications for the media conglomerate and journalism in general.

In the days and weeks that followed the 2020 presidential election, conservative news organizations, including Fox News, repeatedly aired claims that the election results were fraudulent. Several conservative and far-right networks, including Fox News and One America News Network (OANN), gave significant airtime to numerous supporters of then-President Donald Trump, who spun elaborate conspiracy theories claiming that electronic voting machines manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems had been programmed to rig the vote count in favor of Democratic candidate Joe Biden.

Those claims were systematically proven false in court proceedings and hand recounts of the election results in multiple U.S. states. But Dominion was condemned by members of the public and politicians who believed what they heard on Fox News. One Dominion executive was forced into hiding after receiving death threats.

In response, Dominion pursued several defamation lawsuits targeting high-profile Trump supporters who had pushed the false claims of election fraud in national media. Among those sued were Rudy Giuliani, a former mayor of New York and a onetime personal attorney to Trump; Mike Lindell, CEO of My Pillow; attorney Sidney Powell; and Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne.

Dominion also sued OANN and far-right cable news network Newsmax.

Internal Fox communications

While some news organizations responded to Dominion’s lawsuits by retracting their stories, Fox News and Fox Corp. elected to fight.

As part of the lawsuit, Dominion demanded and received access to the internal communications of Fox executives. A wide range of text messages and emails from senior Fox executives and well-known on-air personalities that have been made public strongly suggest they knew the claims about Dominion were likely false, but continued to spread them anyway.

In one representative exchange from November 2020, Tucker Carlson, the network’s highest-rated host, wrote to fellow anchor Laura Ingraham, “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane.”

Ingraham responded. “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”

Other Fox employees connected to its various programs also expressed their belief in text and emails that the claims raised by Powell, Giuliani and others were false or unsupported by evidence. Hosts of popular Fox prime-time programs criticized on-air Fox journalists who reported that the claims against Dominion were false.

A number of emails from the network’s senior executives suggest they were concerned that if they stopped broadcasting claims of election fraud, or actively debunked the ones being made by their on-air guests, they would lose audience share to outlets that pushed the false claims.

Libel law

Experts say the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News is remarkable in several ways, most notably that it is going to trial at all given the strong press protections guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

“These major defamation cases against major media companies are almost never brought in the United States, because the constitutional standard is so strict, and the hurdle that has to be cleared is so high,” RonNell Andersen Jones, a professor of law at the University of Utah, told VOA.

In the U.S., public figures who sue for defamation must prove that the news organization who published the false information acted with “actual malice.”

“It’s a state-of-mind standard that climbs inside the head of the people who were responsible for the creation of the broadcast and requires the demonstration that they had subjective awareness of the probable falsity of what they said,” said Andersen Jones, who is also an affiliated fellow with Yale Law School’s Information Society Project.

“It’s really, really hard to do,” she added. “This is the rare case in which they have compiled this body of evidence from inside the organization, internally recognizing the falsity of the assertion, at the very time that these statements were being broadcast. And you just don’t get that.”

Senior management aware

The internal Fox communications, as well as depositions by senior executives, also bolster Dominion’s case that claims about the company were broadly understood to be false within the Fox organization.

Former Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who is on the board of directors of Fox Corporation, testified that in the weeks following the election, he repeatedly told corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch and Fox Corporation founder and chairman Rupert Murdoch that Fox News needed to “move on from Donald Trump and stop spouting election lies.”

In a deposition, Rupert Murdoch appeared to acknowledge that top on-air personalities Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro had gone beyond simply reporting on allegations about Dominion and had “endorsed” them.

“I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight,” Murdoch said.

Asked if he could have issued an order directing that programming at Fox News cease repeating falsehoods about Dominion, Murdoch said, “I could have. But I didn’t.”

The court documents that were released to the public are heavily redacted in some parts, apparently at the request of Fox. Often, the context surrounding the redactions suggests that the material blacked out is helpful to Dominion and harmful to the network. The New York Times, The Associated Press and National Public Radio have filed suit, demanding fuller access to the contents of the court filings.

Fox defense

In its defense, Fox has claimed that in mentioning the false allegations against Dominion, it was reporting on newsworthy events, particularly the statements of Trump, who frequently voiced the claims in the weeks following the election.

The “press has a right to cover and comment on newsworthy allegations of newsworthy figures,” the network argued in a brief seeking to have the case dismissed.

Its attorneys focused on the instances in which Fox News hosts treated the allegations with caution or doubt.

“Far from reporting the allegations as true, hosts informed their audiences at every turn that the allegations were just allegations that would need to be proven in court in short order if they were going to impact the outcome of the election,” the brief filed on the network’s behalf said. “And to the extent some hosts commented on the allegations, that commentary is independently protected opinion.”

Fox News has also attacked the Dominion complaint as incomplete and misleading.

“Dominion has mischaracterized the record, cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law,” the network said in a statement.

Ethical questions raised

Journalism experts said they were particularly troubled by the evidence presented in the case suggesting that senior executives at Fox News and on-air hosts appeared to argue that the network should avoid reporting facts about the election because doing so would lead to a decline in viewership.

“It certainly raises questions about how the value of an audience is driving this particular outlet’s — and possibly other outlets’ — editorial decision making,” Kathleen Bartzen Culver, a professor and director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told VOA.

“Some of these texts really think about the audience in a monetized way, and if that is influencing what we will cover, that is far afield from journalism in the public interest,” she added.

Ethics aside, Culver said she was stunned at the openness with which Fox executives and personalities discussed their concerns about the veracity of their news coverage in emails and texts.

“No one at Fox News thinks that their communications would be discoverable?” she said. “I find that either wildly naive or wildly arrogant. I’m not sure which.”

Ironic coincidence

There is considerable irony at play in the fact that Fox News, the dominant conservative news outlet in the U.S., is the target of a libel suit that experts say has a plausible path to success.

For years, prominent Republicans, most notably Trump, have railed against the severity of the actual malice standard, arguing that the bar it sets is so high that it effectively leaves people who are victims of inaccurate coverage with no recourse to the courts.

Many conservatives, who generally believe the mainstream media have a liberal bias and direct more negative coverage at them, have called for a relaxation of the standard that would make it easier to successfully sue media organizations. Two conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court — Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch — have called on the court to revisit New York Times v. Sullivan, the 1964 case that established the standard.

Protection for actual malice

Kevin M. Lerner, chair of the Department of Communication at Marist College, told VOA that he has been surprised to see other news organizations lining up in support of Dominion, and believes it might be because many see the case as potentially drawing a red line between what the First Amendment allows and what it does not.

“In the past in defamation suits, most news organizations would support the news organization, even if it was a rival or someone they didn’t agree with,” he said. “It’s a sort of, ‘There but for the grace of God go we’ kind of argument.”

Now, Lerner said, “I think there may really be something different here, seeing that media organizations are saying, ‘No, this is actually going to help protect the First Amendment, by saying you can’t deliberately spread falsehoods. That’s not what the First Amendment is for.'”

He said there appears to be some hope among news organizations that a successful high-profile defamation suit might cause activists to “back off” on efforts to loosen the actual malice standard.
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Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell Hospitalized After Fall

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has been hospitalized after tripping at a local hotel on Wednesday evening, a spokesman for the senator said. 

The Kentucky senator, 81, was attending a private dinner in Washington when he tripped. He was admitted to a hospital for treatment, spokesman Doug Andres said. 

McConnell’s office did not provide additional detail on his condition or how long he may be absent from the Senate.  

In 2019, the GOP leader tripped and fell at his home in Kentucky, suffering a shoulder fracture. At the time, he underwent surgery to repair the fracture in his shoulder. The Senate had just started a summer recess and he worked from home for some weeks as he recovered. 

First elected in 1984, McConnell in January became the longest-serving Senate leader when the new Congress convened, breaking the previous record of 16 years. 

The taciturn McConnell is often reluctant to discuss his private life. But at the start of the COVID-19 crisis he opened up about his early childhood experience fighting polio. He described how his mother insisted that he stay off his feet as a toddler and worked with him through a determined physical therapy regime. He has acknowledged some difficulty in adulthood climbing stairs. 

The Senate, where the average age is 65, has been without several members recently due to illness. 

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., 53, who suffered a stroke during his campaign last year, was expected to remain out for some weeks as he received care for clinical depression.  

And Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., 89, said last week that she had been hospitalized to be treated for shingles. 

The Democratic absences have proven a challenge for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who is already navigating a very narrow 51-49 majority.  

The Republicans, as the minority party, have had an easier time with intermittent absences. It is unclear if McConnell will be out on Thursday and if that would have an effect on scheduled votes. South Dakota Sen. John Thune is the Senate’s No. 2 Republican. 
…

US House Speaker Declines Invitation from Ukraine’s Zelenskyy

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy invited the top House lawmaker in the United States to visit Kyiv to see “what’s happening here” in an interview broadcast Wednesday on TV news channel CNN.

“Mr. (Kevin) McCarthy, he has to come here to see how we work, what’s happening here, what war caused us, which people are fighting now, who are fighting now. And then after that, make your assumptions,” Zelenskyy told the news outlet through an interpreter.

Responding to CNN, House Speaker McCarthy said, “I don’t have to go to Ukraine or Kyiv” to understand it. He said he received information in briefings and other ways.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the U.S. has sent nearly $100 billion in military, economic and relief aid to Ukraine. That aid was sent when President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party controlled both chambers in Congress.

The Republican Party took control of the U.S. House after the midterm elections, and some Republicans have expressed opposition to sending additional arms and financial aid to Ukraine.

McCarthy has said he supports Ukraine but that House Republicans will not provide “a blank check” for additional U.S. assistance to Kyiv without closer scrutiny of how it is being spent.

In the CNN interview, Zelenskyy said, “I think that Speaker McCarthy, he never visited Kyiv or Ukraine, and I think it would help him with his position.”

Many U.S. lawmakers and officials and world leaders have visited Zelenskyy in Kyiv as a show of solidarity, including President Biden and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Guterres calls invasion violation of law

Earlier Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres assailed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a violation of international law as he arrived in Kyiv for talks with Zelenskyy.

The two were to discuss extending grain shipments from the war-torn country and securing the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

“The sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine must be upheld, within its internationally recognized borders,” Guterres said ahead of talks with Zelenskyy.

“Our ultimate objective is equally clear: a just peace based on the U.N. Charter, international law and the recent General Assembly resolution marking one year since the start of the war,” he said.

But with fighting raging and no peace talks on the horizon, Guterres said the U.N. is trying “to mitigate the impacts of the conflict, which has caused enormous suffering for the Ukrainian people — with profound global implications.”

He called for the continuation of Ukrainian grain shipments through the Black Sea with Russian acquiescence. Since July 2022, he said, 23 million tons of grain have been exported from Ukrainian ports, much of it shipped to impoverished countries. Absent a new agreement, the program is set to expire March 18.

Guterres said the grain exports have “contributed to lowering the global cost of food” and offered “critical relief to people, who are also paying a high price for this war, particularly in the developing world. Indeed, the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Food Price Index has fallen by almost 20% over the last year.”

“Exports of Ukrainian — as well as Russian — food and fertilizers are essential to global food security and food prices,” he said.

Guterres also called for “full demilitarization” of the region around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant — Europe’s largest — where nearby fighting has periodically shut down the facility and raised fears of a catastrophic nuclear meltdown.

Attempts for months to end fighting in the region have failed, but Guterres said that safety and security near the power plant are vital so that the facility can return to normal operations.

EU defense ministers push for ammunition

Meanwhile, European Union defense ministers gathered Wednesday in Stockholm with a push to provide more ammunition to Ukrainian forces high on their agenda.

Under a plan by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, the EU states would get financial incentives worth about $1 billion to send ammunition to Kyiv, while another $1 billion would be spent on procuring new ammunition, Agence France-Presse reported.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, who attended the Stockholm meeting, said Kyiv needed 90,000-100,000 artillery rounds per month, and that Ukraine’s military is using the ammunition faster than allies can manufacture them, AFP reported.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters Wednesday, “There is enormous demand out there. … The current rate of consumption compared to the current rate of production of ammunition is not sustainable and therefore we need to ramp up production.”

Stoltenberg said the conflict is “now a war of attrition.”

He said he could not rule out the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut falling into Russian control in the coming days.

“Therefore, it is also important to highlight that this does not necessarily reflect any turning point of the war, and it just highlights that we should not underestimate Russia,” Stoltenberg said. “We must continue to provide support to Ukraine.”

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
…

Biden to Unveil Budget Proposal

U.S. President Joe Biden is set to unveil his budget proposal for fiscal 2024 during a visit Thursday to the state of Pennsylvania.

“The president will deliver remarks on his plans to invest in America, continue to lower costs for families, protect and strengthen Social Security and Medicare, reduce the deficit, and more,” the White House said ahead of the event in Philadelphia.

Part of Biden’s proposal is to raise taxes on the wealthy to help pay for his plans.

The White House has already announced that part of the budget proposal includes an increase in Medicare taxes for incomes above $400,000 a year and allowing Medicare to negotiate better prices for prescription drugs to bolster the federal health insurance program for older Americans and certain people with disabilities.

Republicans in Congress expressed opposition to the president’s Medicare plan, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell predicting it had no chance of approval in the Republican-held House of Representatives.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
…

Trump Dominates Key Conservative Event   

Two competing, prominent events have put on display a cleaving of American conservatives ahead of next year’s presidential election.

Former President Donald Trump closed out the annual Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington, which for years has been a must-attend event for the right wing of the Republican Party. But many party loyalists, including big campaign contributors, instead attended a rival gathering in Florida.

“In 2016, I declared: I am your voice. Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution,” Trump told the CPAC attendees shortly after he captured the conference’s Saturday evening straw poll (unofficial balloting among event registrants) for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

In the survey, Trump trounced runner-up Ron DeSantis, the governor of the southern U.S. state of Florida, 62% to 20%. It was the fifth consecutive time Trump has won the CPAC straw poll.

Trump, whose speech lasted an hour and 42 minutes, revisited familiar grievances aired at his campaign rallies and repeated the false claim he won the 2020 presidential election. He made no mention of any other declared or expected Republican presidential candidates, instead heaping criticism on the Democrat who defeated him in the 2020 presidential election.

“Joe Biden is leading us into oblivion,” Trump said, adding, “We’re going to have World War III if something doesn’t happen fast.”

“I am the only candidate who can make this promise,” he said. “I will prevent World War III.”

Trump also vowed, if elected again, that he would settle Russia’s war on Ukraine before he arrived back in the Oval Office.

Haley speaks at both events

The former president’s only significant, declared primary challenger so far, his former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, was on the CPAC stage the previous day. Haley also spoke at the rival event, the four-day gathering of the Club for Growth, a group focused on an anti-tax agenda.

“I know there’s a Republican candidate out there you did not invite to this conference,” she told those at the Palm Beach, Florida, event. “I appreciate being one you did invite.”

Trump was not invited to the Club for Growth retreat, held at a luxury hotel just 5 kilometers north up Ocean Boulevard from his Mar-a-Lago resort.

Florida Governor DeSantis was among the top speakers with dozens of major Republican Party donors attending. Among those in Palm Beach for the conference were several potential presidential candidates: former Vice President Mike Pence; Tim Scott, a U.S. senator from South Carolina; and Chris Sununu, the governor of the Northeastern U.S. state of New Hampshire.

On Tuesday, Trump criticized the conservative, economy-focused group, writing in a Truth Social post the “Club for NO Growth is an insignificant group of Globalists” that would only attract the stragglers in next year’s Republican primary.

Another potential presidential prospect from the Republican Party who spoke at CPAC was Trump’s former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo.

Attendees described the reception to remarks at CPAC by Pompeo and Haley as tepid. Haley was confronted by chants for Trump as she departed the ballroom.

Pompeo took a subtle dig at Trump during his speech, indirectly blaming his former boss for Republican losses in the 2022 midterm elections, combined with the 2020 presidential loss, creating what he called a “crisis in conservatism.”

“We need a party, a conservative party, that we can be proud to call home again, rooted in our founding ideas, led by people of real character, of competence and commitment to the mission that brought you all here today,” he said.

‘A vehicle for Trump’ 

In public remarks so far, prominent Republicans, including those expected to challenge Trump for the party’s presidential nomination, have refrained from directly criticizing the former president, a reflection of the power he wields over the party rank and file.

Conservatives were mostly united around Trump when he unsuccessfully ran for reelection in 2020. Some recent polls show the former president retaining about 50% support among Republicans ahead of next year’s election.

CPAC has turned into the “Donald Trump Family Variety Hour,” said CNN’s conservative commentator Sarah Elizabeth Cupp. “It’s become a vehicle for Trump and Trumpism” and no longer “a stop on way to becoming president.”

Prominent neo-conservative writer Bill Kristol, who served in the administrations of two Republican presidents, was not impressed by either the CPAC or Club for Growth events.

“Competition is a good thing. It leads to better products and choices except when it’s a race to the bottom,” Kristol told VOA. “And it looks like Trump versus DeSantis is more of a race to the bottom than a healthy contest which will improve the choice.”
…

Marianne Williamson Launches Longshot 2024 Challenge to Biden

Self-help author Marianne Williamson, whose 2020 White House campaign featured calls for spiritual healing, launched another bid for the presidency on Saturday, becoming the first Democrat to formally challenge President Joe Biden for the 2024 nomination.

“We are upset about this country, we’re worried about this country,” Williamson told a crowd of more than 600 at a kickoff in the nation’s capital. “It is our job to create a vision of justice and love that is so powerful that it will override the forces of hatred and injustice and fear.”

The 70-year-old onetime spiritual adviser to Oprah Winfrey should provide only token primary opposition — a testament to how strongly national Democrats are united behind Biden. Still, she tweaked the president, a longtime Amtrak rider, by holding her opening rally at the ornately marble-columned presidential suite at Union Station, Washington’s railway hub.

Biden gave his own speech from Union Station just before last November’s elections, when he led Democrats to a surprisingly strong showing, urging voters to reject political extremism and saying “democracy itself” was at stake.

Williamson, whose red, blue and black campaign signs feature the dual slogans “A New Beginning” and “Disrupt the System,” said she’ll be campaigning in early-voting states on the 2024 election calendar.

That includes New Hampshire, which has threatened to defy a Biden-backed plan by the Democratic National Committee to have South Carolina lead off the nominating contests. Democrats and Republicans in New Hampshire have warned that if Biden skips the state’s unsanctioned primary and a rival wins it, that outcome could prove embarrassing for the sitting president — even if that challenger has no real shot of becoming the nominee.

Striking a defiant tone Saturday, Williamson denounced “those who feel they are the adults in the room” and aren’t taking her candidacy seriously, proclaiming, “Let me in there.”

“I have run for president before. I am not naive about these forces which have no intention of allowing anyone into this conversation who does not align with their predetermined agenda,” she said. “I understand that, in their mind, only people who previously have been entrenched in the car that brought us into this ditch can possibly be considered qualified to bring us out of it.”

Luke Stowell, 20, a musician and student at American University in Washington who sat in the front row for Williamson’s announcement, said “she has a really nice message that incorporates all of the prejudices and the social structures that inhibit, I think, a lot of people on a daily basis.”

Seated next to him, 24-year-old American University law student Ivan Claudio noted that, should he win a second term, Biden would be in his late 80s by the time he leaves office, which Claudio said “is a cause for concern.”

Biden, the oldest president in U.S. history, would be 86 at the end of a second term. Most people in the United States — and even most Democrats — say they don’t want him to run again, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The president is expected to announce in the coming weeks that he’s running again.

A Texas native who now lives in Beverly Hills, California, Williamson is the author of more than a dozen books and ran an unsuccessful independent congressional campaign in California in 2014. In 2020, she was best known for wanting to create a Department of Peace and arguing the federal government should pay large financial reparations to Black Americans as atonement for centuries of slavery and discrimination.

Arguably her most memorable moment of that campaign came during a primary debate when she called for a “moral uprising,” but she dropped out of the race shortly before the leadoff Iowa caucuses began.
…

American Cindy McCain to Head UN World Food Program

American Cindy McCain will take over as executive director of the United Nations World Food Program when current director David Beasley steps down next month.

“Ms. McCain, a champion for human rights, has a long history of giving a voice to the voiceless through her humanitarian and philanthropic work,” said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Director-General Qu Dongyu in a statement announcing the appointment.

McCain is a prominent Republican Party member who is currently U.S. ambassador to United Nations agencies in Rome, which include the FAO, the WFP, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

She has been active in U.S. politics for decades as the wife of Arizona Senator John McCain, who died of brain cancer in August 2018. Since then, she has forged her own political profile, including backing Democrat Joe Biden in his presidential bid against then-incumbent Republican president Donald Trump in 2020.

Biden appointed McCain to the Rome post in November 2021. Typically, the White House is involved in nominating the U.S. candidate to head the WFP, which is often a U.S.-held post.

McCain has worked in philanthropy, starting the American Voluntary Medical Team in 1988, which provides emergency medical and surgical care to poor children across the world. She has also traveled in her personal capacity on behalf of the WFP, visiting mother and child feeding programs in Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Mammoth challenges

McCain, 68, takes over the agency at a time of unprecedented global need. The WFP says 349 million people across 79 countries are acutely food insecure. The agency is attempting to raise $23 billion this year to reach almost 150 million people worldwide.

In 2022, the WFP reached 160 million people with humanitarian assistance.

“McCain takes over as head of the World Food Program at a moment when the world confronts the most serious food security crisis in modern history and this leadership role has never been more important,” the president of the WFP’s executive board, Polish Ambassador Artur Andrzej Pollok, said in a statement. “We wish her well and can assure her she will have the full support of the Executive Board.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken offered his congratulations and said Washington is “deeply invested” in the WFP’s continuing success.

“I am confident that she will bring renewed energy, optimism, and success to the World Food Program,” Blinken said of McCain.

The Republican chairman of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael McCaul, and the highest-ranking Democrat, Gregory Meeks, welcomed McCain’s appointment saying she is “an exceptionally qualified leader.”

“At a time when food insecurity and fuel costs are at an all-time high and there is soaring global hunger, the task of leading the World Food Program is more significant and consequential than ever,” they said in a joint statement.

Former leader warns against partisanship

The United States is the WFP’s largest contributor, providing about 40% of its budget or $7 billion in 2022, so McCain’s political clout will be an asset in securing funding.

But former U.S. ambassador Ertharin Cousin, who headed the WFP from 2012-2017 and is now CEO of the Chicago-based Food Systems for the Future, cautioned that McCain is serving as an international civil servant, not as member of the Republican Party.

“She must serve on a non-partisan basis in order to effectively support the work of the organization,” Cousin told VOA. “But having said that, of course, I am not naive that she will need to continue to work with both sides of the aisle in order to secure the commitment from the U.S. for the level of contribution that is required to meet the global food insecurity needs.”

Cousin also said it will be important for McCain to keep the organization fit for its purpose.

“You are stewards of taxpayers’ dollars from across the globe, and as a result you have a responsibility to make sure the organization remains the efficient behemoth that the world needs,” Cousin said.

Outgoing chief Beasley offered his congratulations on Twitter Wednesday, a day ahead of the official announcement.

Outgoing WFP leader praised

Beasley said in mid-December that he would be leaving in April. He has served as the food agency’s chief since 2017. In 2020, the World Food Program was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.”

Guterres and the FAO Director-General expressed deep appreciation for Beasley’s leadership.

“He has led WFP with a deep compassion for the world’s hungry and most vulnerable during what can only be described as unprecedented crises that severely impacted global food security,” Guterres and Qu said. “He has humanized for the world the women and children most affected by hunger and has used his powerful voice to bring awareness and substantial resources to one crisis after another.”

Beasley’s tenure has coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, unprecedented droughts and floods in several developing countries, as well as a steady stream of conflicts, including Russia’s invasion last year of Ukraine.

Despite tremendous levels of fundraising, a number of the agency’s programs are hurting for cash and facing cutbacks as needs continue to rise.
…

Top Lawmakers Briefed on Trump, Biden, Pence Documents

Top lawmakers in Congress were briefed Tuesday on the investigations into classified documents found in the private possession of President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence. 

U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines was among the officials who met privately with congressional leaders for roughly an hour. Attending the briefing were the House and Senate leaders of both parties and the leaders of both intelligence committees, who comprise what’s known as the “Gang of Eight.” Lawmakers leaving the briefing declined to specify what was discussed. 

Both Republicans and Democrats have long demanded more information from the Biden administration about the successive discoveries of classified documents in the homes of two presidents and a vice president. The U.S. strictly controls who has access to classified material and how they can view it. 

Leaders of the intelligence committees have expressed concerns about the possible exposure of highly classified secrets in those documents. 

“We still have considerable work to do, oversight work to do, to satisfy ourselves that absolutely everything is being done to protect sources and methods,” Democratic Representative Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview. 

The chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a joint statement that also called for more information about any potential damage. 

“While today’s meeting helped shed some light on these issues, it left much to be desired, and we will continue to press for full answers to our questions in accordance with our constitutional oversight obligations,” Senators Mark Warner and Marco Rubio said. 

The Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence have declined to share details of their investigations. Attorney General Merrick Garland has directed separate special counsels to review the documents linked to Trump and Biden. 

Federal agents searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in August after developing evidence that led them to believe that Trump and his representatives had not returned all classified files. The Justice Department has said in court filings that roughly 300 documents with classified markings, including at the top-secret level, have been recovered from Mar-a-Lago after being taken there after Trump left the White House. 

Biden’s lawyers have said they discovered a “small number” of classified documents in November after searching a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. A second batch of documents — again described by Biden’s lawyers as a “small number” — were found in a storage space in Biden’s garage near Wilmington, Delaware, along with six pages located in Biden’s personal library in his home. 

FBI agents in January found six additional items that contained documents with classified markings and also took possession of some of Biden’s handwritten notes, according to Biden’s lawyers. 

Pence’s lawyers have also said they found a “small number of documents” in his Indiana home that appeared to have been inadvertently taken there at the conclusion of his vice presidency. Federal agents found an additional classified document during a voluntary search. 

Underscoring the political and legal sensitivities for Biden, the White House issued a statement saying the Justice Department and the director of national intelligence decided on their own to brief Congress and what information to share. 

“The White House has confidence in DOJ and ODNI to exercise independent judgment about whether or when it may be appropriate for national security reasons to offer briefings on any relevant information in these investigations,” said spokesperson Ian Sams. 
…

Chicago Mayor Lightfoot Taking On 8 Rivals in Reelection Bid 

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is fighting for reelection Tuesday after a history-making but tumultuous four years in office and a bruising campaign threaten to make her the city’s first one-term mayor in decades.

Lightfoot in 2019 became the first Black woman and first openly gay mayor of the third-largest U.S. city, and only the second woman to hold the office. But Lightfoot, a former prosecutor and head of a city police review board, now faces serious challenges from multiple candidates, who have hammered her over crime that spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic and a leadership style they say is unnecessarily combative.

With none of the nine candidates likely to receive over 50% of the vote, the race is expected to move to an April runoff between the top two vote-getters. Lightfoot may not be among them.

Lightfoot has touted her record of investing in neighborhoods and supporting workers, such as by increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour. She also notes that the city has navigated unprecedented challenges such as the pandemic and its economic and public safety fallout to protests over policing.

“The world is very different than it was four years ago. I believe that I’m still the right person and I think the voters will validate that, but we’ve been through a lot,” Lightfoot said after a rally on the city’s west side during the final days before the election. “We can’t go back.”

Lightfoot’s top rivals include Paul Vallas, who has run as the law-and-order candidate with support from the city’s police union and promises to put hundreds more officers on the streets, and U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, who forced then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel to a runoff in 2015. Brandon Johnson is endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union, a group that has tangled with Lightfoot, including during an 11-day teachers strike in her first year in office.

If Lightfoot loses on Tuesday, she would be one of the few big-city mayors in recent history to lose their reelection bid. That’s particularly true in the first round of voting, when incumbents generally enjoy an advantage.

‘This election is different’

But this election is very different, said Constance Mixon, a lifelong Chicago resident and political science professor at Elmhurst University. Of the 10 largest U.S. cities, Chicago is the only place without mayoral term limits, which may make voters in other cities more willing to give an incumbent one more term, Mixon said. 

Lightfoot also is the first mayor of a major U.S. city to face reelection following the pandemic, recession and the crime wave that’s occurred in many places, she said.

“I suspect that other mayors — and we’ve got a handful of them that are up this year, but after Lightfoot — are going to face many of the same challenges as Lightfoot,” she said.

Race also is a factor as candidates court votes in the highly segregated city, which is closely divided in population among Black, Hispanic and white residents. Lightfoot, Johnson and five other candidates are Black, though Lightfoot — who is hoping strong support from Black voters will help propel her to victory — has argued that she is the only Black candidate who can win. Garcia, the only Latino in the race, would be Chicago’s first Hispanic mayor, while Vallas is the only white candidate in the field.

Lightfoot has accused Vallas of using “the ultimate dog whistle” by saying his campaign is about “taking back our city,” and of cozying up to the president of the Fraternal Order of Police, whom she calls a racist. A recent Chicago Tribune story also found Vallas’ Twitter account had liked racist tweets and tweets that mocked Lightfoot’s appearance and referred to her as masculine.

Vallas denied his comments were related to race and says his police union endorsement is from rank-and-file officers. He also said he wasn’t responsible for the liked tweets, which he called “abhorrent,” and suggested someone had improperly accessed his account.

But Lightfoot and some of her supporters see some of the criticism of her leadership as motivated by racism, sexism and anti-gay sentiment.

“No other mayor has been asked to change this city within four years,” said city Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, who is Black, and noted that white mayors like Emanuel and Richard Daley served multiple terms. “When we get in the game, the rules change.”

At a weekend campaign stop, Vallas said he is focused on things like public safety, Chicago’s “demoralized” police department and the number of residents “fleeing” the city’s school district.

“It’s all a product of bad leadership,” Vallas said.

A former city budget director who also led school systems in Chicago, New Orleans and Philadelphia, Vallas lost a 2019 bid for mayor. This time, he has been laser-focused on public safety, saying police officers who left the force under Lightfoot’s administration will return if he’s elected.

It seems to have resonated with voters, such as Antwoin Jackson, who are concerned about an uptick in crime. Jackson said he supported Lightfoot four years ago but cast his ballot for Vallas in Tuesday’s election because he said Lightfoot “did not hold control over the violence in the communities.” Jackson said he feels particularly unsafe when riding public transit.

Johnson, who lives in one of Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods, says more needs to be done to provide affordable housing and social services such as mental health care.

Garcia, a former City Council member, state lawmaker and county commissioner, has called Lightfoot too combative and says he has a record of bringing people together.

The other candidates are businessman Willie Wilson, Chicago City Council members Sophia King and Roderick Sawyer, activist Ja’Mal Green and state Rep. Kambium “Kam” Buckner. 
…

New US House Committee to Focus on Strategic Competition With China

U.S. lawmakers this week are launching a two-year effort to address strategic competition between the United States and China, with a prime-time hearing set for Tuesday that will include testimony from human rights activists and members of former President Donald Trump’s national security team.

Representative Mike Gallagher, who will chair the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition with China, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” earlier this week, “We may call this a strategic competition, but it’s not a tennis match. This is about what type of world we want to live in. Do we want to live in Xinjiang-lite, or do we want to live in the free world?”

He was characterizing Beijing’s treatment of the minority Uyghur population in China’s Xinjiang province.

Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi will serve as the top Democrat on the committee, which has been described by many of its 24 members as a serious opportunity for bipartisan cooperation.

While the first hearing will focus on security concerns, the committee’s work is expected to address a wide range of issues in the relationship – from economic and agricultural competition to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Committee member Republican Representative Dusty Johnson recently told VOA the U.S.-China relationship is often compared incorrectly to the Cold War between the United States and the then-Soviet Union.

“It’s a very different environment,” Johnson said in an interview earlier in February. “We didn’t need to in a targeted way decouple our economy from that of the Soviet Union’s. The Soviet Union was a one-dimensional threat. It was a military threat. The Chinese Communist Party is a threat in a much more comprehensive way.”

While they were in the minority in the 117th Congress, Republicans formed a China Task Force. This bipartisan group of lawmakers said they will pursue their efforts with a spirit of cooperation.

Johnson said several themes emerged from the committee’s first planning meeting.

“Number one, our work should be bipartisan. Number two, that the Chinese people are the primary victims of the pattern of aggression from the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese people are not an adversary,” he said.

The recent U.S. shootdown of a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon off the South Carolina coast focused the attention of the American public on security concerns posed by China.

“It actually has elevated the formation — the reasons for the formation of the committee,” Republican Representative Dan Newhouse, a committee member, told VOA, adding that it was important to understand China’s pattern of behavior and what the U.S. should do to deter any potential action. “We need to be smart, smarter; we need to be wired, our eyes wide open about what’s going on in the world as it relates to China.”

Newhouse is a co-sponsor of legislation addressing concerns China is buying up U.S. agricultural land.

“These trends are concerning — that potentially our supply chain as it relates to our production of food is being compromised, that we’re losing control, that we’re ceding a very important aspect of our security,” Newhouse said, adding concerns that the U.S. is ceding that control to a nation that is “not someone that has demonstrated to us that deserves the same amount of trust as some of our other trading partners.”

Democratic Representative Andre Carson, who also serves on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, told VOA that the surveillance balloons will keep security concerns at the forefront of their work. But the committee also plans to dig into other areas of strategic competition.

“We have to explore the production of semiconductors and how our allies are now working with us to thwart China’s expansion efforts,” said Carson. “And I think we have to look at ways in which our supply chain is compromised in this process.”

Carson also expressed concern about China’s investments in U.S. companies and fronting businesses in Indiana, the industrial Midwest and other places.

The committee is considering hearings outside Capitol Hill for a firsthand look at possible threats to critical infrastructure. Carson, however, emphasized the tone of the committee’s work is also important and will be heard around the country.

“We want to make sure without increasing anti-discrimination against Asian Americans in the process … that we are strengthening our national security apparatus, while at the same time we were not fanning the flames of xenophobia and anti-Asian sentiment,” he said.
…

Female Leaders Stepping Down From High-Profile Jobs

Around the world, prominent women are leaving their jobs to pursue other interests and focus on other priorities. VOA’s Laurel Bowman has the story.
…

Former President Jimmy Carter Enters Home Hospice Care

The Carter Center said Saturday that former President Jimmy Carter has entered home hospice care. 

The charity created by the 98-year-old former president said on Twitter that after a series of short hospital stays, Carter “decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention.” 

It said he has the full support of his medical team and family, which “asks for privacy at this time and is grateful for the concern shown by his many admirers.” 

Carter, a Democrat, became the 39th U.S. president when he defeated former President Gerald R. Ford in 1976. He served a single term and was defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980. 

In recent years the Georgia native suffered from a series of health issues including an aggressive form of melanoma that spread to his liver and brain, although he had responded well to the treatment he received. 

In August 2015, Carter had a small cancerous mass removed from his liver. The following year, Carter announced that he needed no further treatment, as an experimental drug had eliminated any signs of cancer. 

Carter celebrated his most recent birthday in October with family and friends in Plains, the tiny Georgia town where he and his wife, Rosalynn, were born in the years between World War I and the Great Depression. 

The Carter Center, which the 39th president and the former first lady established after their one White House term, last year marked 40 years of promoting democracy and conflict resolution, monitoring elections, and advancing public health in the developing world. 

James Earl Carter Jr. won the 1976 presidential election after beginning the campaign as a little-known, one-term Georgia governor. His surprise performance in the Iowa caucuses established the small, Midwestern state as an epicenter of presidential politics. Carter went on to defeat Ford in the general election, largely on the strength of sweeping the South before his native region shifted heavily to Republicans. 
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