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Former US Congressman Beto O’Rourke to Challenge Texas Governor Abbott

Beto O’Rourke, the former U.S. congressman from Texas whose surprisingly close 2018 loss to Senator Ted Cruz made him a Democratic star, said on Monday he will challenge Republican Greg Abbott in next year’s race for governor of the state.

O’Rourke has been seen as his party’s best option for the 2022 gubernatorial race even after his bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination failed to garner much support amid a crowded field of candidates.

No Democrat has won a statewide race in Texas, the second most populous U.S. state, in three decades. Abbott, who is facing two Republican challengers as well, has amassed an enormous campaign war chest, with more than $55 million as of June.

O’Rourke has spent much of the past year criticizing Abbott for his handling of several crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic and a fierce winter storm that caused the state’s electric grid to fail and left hundreds of Texans dead.

In an announcement video, O’Rourke blamed the state’s Republican-controlled government for mishandling the storm and argued that it was symptomatic of a larger issue.

“Those in position of public trust have stopped listening to, serving and paying attention to and trusting the people of Texas,” O’Rourke said
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White House Sets Low Expectations Ahead of Biden-Xi Meeting

The White House is setting expectations low ahead of Monday’s virtual meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the evening meeting Washington time will focus on managing the terms of competition between the two rivals but is unlikely to end with resolution of differences.

“The two leaders will discuss ways to responsibly manage the competition” between the two countries “as well as ways to work together where our interests align,” Psaki said in a statement released Friday.

“Throughout, President Biden will make clear U.S. intentions and priorities and be clear and candid about our concerns with the PRC,” Psaki said, referring to Beijing by the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.

The U.S. sees China as its strategic competitor, with Beijing seeking to grow its military and economic influence around the world. In the lead-up to the meeting, however, rhetoric from both sides has softened.

In another positive step, U.S. and China, the world’s two biggest CO2 emitters, unexpectedly announced at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, that they would work together to slash emissions and meet regularly to address the climate crisis.

Patrick Cronin, Asia-Pacific security chair at the Hudson Institute, told VOA, “Xi Jinping and President Biden both want to find some stability from which to work to cooperate, where possible, to compete, and even to confront, where necessary. None of that’s going to stop going forward, but I think the tone is going to be better through the Olympics.”

Still, differences over human rights for the people of Hong Kong and Uyghur minorities will likely remain unresolved, as well as issues of trade, freedom of navigation, and Beijing’s military buildup in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

Robert Daly, the director of the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, told VOA, “We can expect President Biden to say that America still abides by the ‘One China’ policy, and Xi Jinping to say that America has been trampling over that policy.

“So neither leader, as I said, has changed his goals. Each seems to be searching for a formula, the words that will convince the other that all of their own actions are OK. And that is unlikely to happen.”

Ahead of their meeting, the two leaders Friday attended a virtual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, where Xi warned against letting tensions in the region turn into a cold war.

”We should be forward-looking, move ahead and reject practices of discrimination and exclusion of others. Attempts to draw ideological lines or form small circles on geopolitical grounds are bound to fail,” Xi said. He was referring to U.S. efforts to strengthen its partnerships in the region, including the Quad grouping with India, Japan and Australia.

Biden, Xi and leaders of APEC member economies concluded their virtual meeting agreeing on a series of commitments regarding the coronavirus pandemic, economic recovery and climate change mitigation.

Following the meeting chaired by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, leaders adopted a declaration under the theme of “Join, Work, Grow. Together,” which highlights policy actions to respond to COVID-19.

According to organizers, the declaration “lays out commitments in accelerating economic recovery and achieving sustainable and inclusive growth, including further actions in tackling climate change, empowering groups with untapped economic potential, supporting the region’s micro, small and medium enterprises and addressing the digital divide.” 
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Bannon Indicted on Contempt Charges for Defying House Subpoena

Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, was indicted Friday on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress after he defied a subpoena from the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

The Justice Department said Bannon, 67, was indicted on one count for refusing to appear for a deposition last month and the other for refusing to provide documents in response to the committee’s subpoena. He is expected to surrender to authorities on Monday and will appear in court that afternoon, a law enforcement official told the AP. The person was granted anonymity to discuss the case.

The indictment came as a second witness, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, defied his own subpoena from the committee on Friday and as Trump has escalated his legal battles to withhold documents and testimony about the insurrection. The chairman of the January 6 panel, Mississippi Representative Bennie Thompson, said he would recommend contempt charges against Meadows next week. 

If the House votes to hold Meadows in contempt, that recommendation could also be sent to the Justice Department for a possible indictment. 

“Mr. Meadows, Mr. Bannon and others who go down this path won’t prevail in stopping the Select Committee’s effort getting answers for the American people about January 6th, making legislative recommendations to help protect our democracy, and helping ensure nothing like that day ever happens again,” Democrat Thompson and the vice chairwoman of the panel, Republican Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, said in a statement.

The indictment is a victory for House Democrats, who saw dozens of Trump officials decline testimony and defy subpoenas during his presidency. The charges support the authority of Congress to investigate the executive branch and signal potential consequences for those who refuse to cooperate. 

Commitment to rule of law

Attorney General Merrick Garland said Bannon’s indictment reflects the Justice Department’s “steadfast commitment” to ensuring that the department adheres to the rule of law. Each count carries a minimum of 30 days of jail and as long as a year behind bars. 

The indictment alleges that Bannon didn’t appear before the committee as subpoenaed or produce required documents. It says he also didn’t communicate with the committee in any way from the time he received the subpoena on September 24 until October 7, when his lawyer sent a letter, seven hours after the documents were due. 

Bannon, who worked at the White House at the beginning of the Trump administration and currently serves as host of the conspiracy-minded “War Room” podcast, is a private citizen who “refused to appear to give testimony as required by a subpoena,” the indictment says.

Bannon’s attorney did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. When Bannon declined to appear for his deposition in October, his attorney said the former Trump adviser had been directed by a lawyer for Trump citing executive privilege not to answer questions.

Officials in both Democratic and Republican administrations have been held in contempt by Congress, but criminal indictments for contempt are exceedingly rare. The most recent notable examples of criminal penalties for not testifying before Congress date to the 1970s, including when President Richard Nixon’s aide G. Gordon Liddy was convicted of misdemeanor charges for refusing to answer questions about his role in the Watergate scandal. 

‘Sharp legal dispute’

Meadows defied his subpoena on Friday after weeks of discussions with the committee. His lawyer said that Meadows has a “sharp legal dispute” with the panel as Trump has claimed executive privilege over his testimony, as he had with Bannon’s.

The former Republican congressman’s refusal to comply comes amid the legal battles between the committee and Trump. The former president has claimed privilege over documents and interviews the lawmakers are demanding. The White House said in a letter Thursday that President Joe Biden would waive any privilege that would prevent Meadows from cooperating with the committee, prompting his lawyer to say Meadows wouldn’t comply.

“Legal disputes are appropriately resolved by courts,” said the lawyer, George Terwilliger. “It would be irresponsible for Mr. Meadows to prematurely resolve that dispute by voluntarily waiving privileges that are at the heart of those legal issues.”

As the sitting president, Biden has so far waived most of Trump’s assertions of privilege over documents. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has backed Biden’s position, noting in one ruling this week that “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.”

The panel’s proceedings and attempts to gather information have been delayed as Trump appealed Chutkan’s rulings. On Thursday, a federal appeals court temporarily blocked the release of some of the White House records the panel is seeking, giving that court time to consider Trump’s arguments.

Scores of witnesses

Still, the House panel is continuing its work, and lawmakers have already interviewed more than 150 witnesses so far as they attempt to build the most comprehensive record yet of how a violent mob of Trump’s supporters broke into the Capitol and temporarily halted the certification of Biden’s victory.

The committee has subpoenaed almost three dozen people, including former White House staffers, Trump allies who strategized about how to overturn his defeat and people who organized the giant rally on the National Mall the morning of January 6. While some, like Meadows and Bannon, have balked, others have spoken to the panel and provided documents.

Like Bannon, Meadows is a key witness for the panel. He was Trump’s top aide in the time between Trump’s loss in the November election and the insurrection, and was one of several people who pressured state officials to try to overturn the results. He was also by Trump’s side during much of the time, and he could provide information about what the former president was saying and doing during the attack. 
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Court Temporarily Delays Release of Trump’s January 6 Records

A federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily blocked the release of White House records sought by a U.S. House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, granting — for now — a request from former President Donald Trump.

The administrative injunction issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit effectively bars until the end of this month the release of records that were to be turned over Friday. The appeals court set oral arguments in the case for November 30.

The stay gives the court time to consider arguments in a clash between the former president, whose supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, and President Joe Biden and Congress, who have pushed for a thorough investigation of the riot. It delays the House committee from reviewing records that lawmakers say could shed light on the events leading up to the insurrection and Trump’s efforts to delegitimize an election he lost.

The National Archives, which holds the documents, says they include call logs, handwritten notes, and a draft executive order on “election integrity.”

Biden waived executive privilege on the documents. Trump then went to court, arguing that as a former president, he still had the right to exert privilege over the records and that releasing them would damage the presidency in the future.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Tuesday rejected those arguments, noting in part, “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.” She again denied an emergency motion by Trump on Wednesday.

In their emergency filing to the appeals court, Trump’s lawyers wrote that without a stay, Trump would “suffer irreparable harm through the effective denial of a constitutional and statutory right to be fully heard on a serious disagreement between the former and incumbent President.”

The November 30 arguments will take place before three judges nominated by Democratic presidents: Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins, nominated by former President Barack Obama, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, an appointee of Biden.

Given the case’s magnitude, whichever side loses before the circuit court is likely to eventually appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The White House on Thursday also notified a lawyer for Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, that Biden would waive any executive privilege that would prevent Meadows from cooperating with the committee, according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press.

The committee has subpoenaed Meadows and more than two dozen other people as part of its investigation. Meadows’ lawyer, George Terwilliger, issued a statement in response saying Meadows “remains under the instructions of former President Trump to respect long-standing principles of executive privilege.”

“It now appears the courts will have to resolve this conflict,” Terwilliger said.
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Biden: Better Treatment Needed for Veterans Exposed to Toxic Air in War Zones

On his first Veterans Day in office, U.S. President Joe Biden ordered his administration Thursday to provide better medical treatment for veterans exposed to toxic air and to study the diseases they may have contracted while serving overseas. 

For years, American service members were exposed to open-air fire pits during tours of duty in Iraqi and Afghan war zones. Dangerous materials such as electronics, vehicles and human waste were routinely sprayed with jet fuel and set ablaze, spewing toxic fumes and carcinogens into the air. 

For Biden, the directive is personal. He has suggested, without proof, that the cancer that killed his son Beau in 2015 was linked to exposure to burn pits during his military deployment to Iraq. 

“He volunteered to join the National Guard at age 32 because he thought he had an obligation to go,” Biden said at a Service Employees International Union convention in 2019. “And because of exposure to burn pits, in my view, I can’t prove it yet, he came back with stage 4 glioblastoma.”

Biden laid a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington on Thursday to honor U.S. veterans. In a short address, he said retired veterans and those who are serving now are “the spine of this country.” 

“We’ve asked so much of you for so long,” he said. “Our country is grateful.” 

He urged veterans who are struggling with medical problems or thoughts of suicide to reach out for help. 

The new studies related to toxins will initially center on lung problems suffered by troops exposed to contaminated air and the potential connection to rare respiratory cancers, according to senior White House officials, but will expand as possible links to other ailments are identified.

In August, the Department of Veterans Affairs began processing claims for veterans suffering from asthma, rhinitis and sinusitis based on exposure to the pits. New rules will allow veterans to make claims within 10 years of their service and change what symptoms count and why. 

“Exposure to contaminants and environmental hazards poses a major health concern for veterans of all generations,” the White House said. But it added, “There are also gaps and delays in the scientific evidence demonstrating conclusive links between known exposures and health impacts, leaving many veterans without access to Department of Veterans Affairs benefits and high-quality treatment to address significant health conditions.” 

The White House said it took decades for the government to compensate Vietnam-era veterans for their exposure to Agent Orange.

“For the newest generation of veterans, concerns about burn pits and other exposures continue to mount,” it said. 

Veterans Day in the U.S. is commemorated on November 11 to honor everyone who served in the U.S. armed forces. It originally was called Armistice Day, to mark the end of World War I.
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Report Lists 13 Instances of Illegal Political Campaigning by Trump Appointees 

A federal agency charged with making sure that government employees do not use their positions to influence elections released a scathing report this week, finding that at least 13 senior members of the administration of former President Donald Trump, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, engaged in “willful violation” of the Hatch Act, a federal law limiting their political activities.

The report, released by the Office of Special Counsel, reveals a major problem for the United States when it comes to preventing senior administration officials from misusing their positions for political gain. According to the OSC, the only person in a position to punish Hatch Act violations by the most senior officials in the executive branch is the president.

“Indeed, the 2020 election revealed that, at least with respect to an administration’s senior-most officials, the Hatch Act is only as effective as the White House decides it will be,” the report found. “Where, as happened here, the White House chooses to ignore the Hatch Act’s requirements, then the American public is left with no protection against senior administration officials using their official authority for partisan political gain in violation of the law.”

Ethics laws seen as insufficient

Liz Hempowicz, public policy director for the Project on Government Oversight, an independent good-government group, told VOA the unprosecuted violations revealed in the report go to the heart of what many Americans see as the biggest problem with the country.

“The number one concern for constituents across the board is corruption in government, and even more specifically, corruption in government that is never held accountable,” she said.

Hempowicz decried “violations of an ethics law where the watchdog organization in charge of enforcing the law cannot or will not bring enforcement actions against very high-level individuals who violate the law incredibly publicly.”

Hempowicz continued, “It just goes to some of the main concerns we’ve heard from the public. And it reinforces the idea that these ethics laws that we have to protect the people’s interests are not sufficient.”

Multiple violations

The report lists a large number of violations of the Hatch Act during Trump’s term in office, but much of the report is focused on the months immediately prior to the 2020 presidential election, and particularly to the Republican National Convention (RNC). Trump sparked controversy by deciding to hold the convention, a purely political event typically staged in a large city outside Washington, on the grounds of the White House itself.

The report says that while it may have been a breach of political norms, it was not de facto illegal to hold the RNC at the White House. However, during the convention, the OSC documented individual violations of the law.

During the RNC, Pompeo and then-Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf both appeared in their official capacity in events designed to improve the former president’s chances of reelection. Pompeo, who was on a diplomatic trip to Israel at the time, delivered a livestreamed address to the convention. Wolf prerecorded an official naturalization ceremony, in which immigrants to the United States officially become citizens, for a similar purpose.

Numerous violators

The report lists numerous other senior officials who, on one or more occasions, used appearances made in their official capacity to boost the former president’s reelection campaign.

They include then-Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette; then-Senior Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway; then-Senior Adviser to the President Jared Kushner, who is also Trump’s son-in-law; and then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.

Others were then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows; then-Senior Adviser to the President for Policy Stephen Miller; then-national security adviser Robert O’Brien, and several others.

As elected officials, neither Trump nor former Vice President Mike Pence was subject to the Hatch Act during his term in office, and therefore broke no rules by campaigning in his capacity as president or vice president.

However, the OSC concluded that the president and vice president knew about the frequent and ongoing violations of the law, pointing out that the agency had briefed the White House multiple times and had sent “an unprecedented 15 warning letters to senior administration officials notifying them that they had violated the Hatch Act.”

Calls for change

The OSC is led by Special Counsel Henry J. Kerner, who was nominated by Trump and confirmed to his position by the then Republican-led Senate in 2017. His office regularly brings enforcement actions against more junior executive branch appointees. However, the agency has long believed that its authority ends with Senate-confirmed members of the administration and people appointed directly by the president.

According to the OSC, the report was issued “to educate employees about Hatch Act-prohibited activities, highlight the enforcement challenges that OSC confronted during its investigations, and deter similar violations in the future.”

In recognition of its inability to effectively enforce the law, the OSC recommended a number of legislative changes. Among other things, the agency is asking Congress to give it the authority to apply monetary penalties to senior administration officials for Hatch Act violations, even after they have left office. The agency also wants the ability to issue regulations related to the Hatch Act, and suggests that Congress determine what areas of the White house complex can be used for political activity.

‘It was egregious’

Experts concerned with good governance and transparency said there was nothing particularly unexpected in the report, but they praised it for drawing attention to the significant gaps in enforcement that allowed the violations to take place in the first place.

“I don’t think there was anything that was surprising,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a group that promotes good government. “We all saw the activity as it occurred. It was egregious.”

Nevertheless, he told VOA, the report is important.

“We have a tendency, as a society, to move on from crises … without going back and following the thread about what the consequences are … and we don’t learn as a result,” said Stier. “The OSC report is a very important look at the need for reform of the basic infrastructure of the way our government operates.”

The OSC and other watchdog agencies like it were set up more than 40 years ago, in the wake of the Watergate scandal that brought down former President Richard Nixon.

“It’s about time that we revisit, in our present world, what we need by way of structure inside government to ensure that we continue to have a first-grade, corruption-free and effective government,” Stier said.
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Biden Visiting Baltimore Port to Tout Infrastructure Spending

U.S. President Joe Biden is headed to the eastern port of Baltimore, Maryland, on Wednesday to trumpet his newly approved $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending package that he hopes will improve the efficiency of U.S. dock operations and end the logjam of container ships that are anchored off the U.S. Pacific coast waiting to be unloaded. 

The construction measure is aimed chiefly at repairing the country’s deteriorating roads and bridges and expanding broadband internet service throughout the U.S. But it also includes $17 billion for port infrastructure and waterways and another $25 billion for airports to ease the shipment of consumer goods. 

Biden plans to sign the legislation in the coming days, when key lawmakers return to Washington from a weeklong recess. 

Ahead of Biden’s visit to Baltimore, the White House said, “Port infrastructure and waterway investments will double as an investment in environmental justice in and around port facilities by deploying zero-emission technologies and reducing idling and emissions, which impair air quality in adjacent neighborhoods and communities, often which are historically disadvantaged.” 

It said the new funding was especially needed because some rankings show that no U.S. airports rank among the top 25 worldwide for efficiency or ports in the top 50. 

The dozens of container ships currently anchored off the country’s Pacific coast, waiting for consumer goods shipped from Asian ports to be unloaded, have left many U.S. retailers with dwindling stocks of clothes, household products and vehicles to sell heading into the end-of-the-year holiday gift-giving season. Consumer spending accounts for 70% of the U.S. economy, the world’s largest. 

The U.S. economy has continued to advance from the depths of the turmoil caused by the coronavirus pandemic, but with conflicting effects for American workers and shoppers, according to two new reports Wednesday. 

One Labor Department report Wednesday showed that first-time claims for unemployment compensation have now fallen for six straight weeks, down to 267,000 last week, just above the 256,000 total in mid-March 2020, when the coronavirus first swept into the U.S. 

But Labor said in a second report that the consumer price index increased at a three-decade-high pace in October, up at an annualized 6.2% rate. The report indicates this largely results from consumer demand for hard-to-get goods and the supply chain bottleneck at U.S. ports. 

Food shoppers — which is to say, all consumers — have noticed the higher prices in grocery stores, while motorists are facing sharply increased prices at gas pumps and used car prices have jumped as well. 

“We are making progress on our recovery,” Biden said in a statement after release of the two reports. “Jobs are up, wages are up, home values are up, personal debt is down, and unemployment is down. We have more work to do, but there is no question that the economy continues to recover and is in much better shape today than it was a year ago.” 

But he acknowledged the effect of higher consumer prices on American households, a political liability for the president. 

“Inflation hurts Americans’ pocketbooks, and reversing this trend is a top priority for me,” he said. 

Biden blamed higher energy costs and supply chain shortcomings for the higher prices consumers are paying. 

The Baltimore port Biden is visiting is not one of the country’s biggest since it is not located directly on the Atlantic Ocean, with ships having to sail north through the Chesapeake Bay to reach the city. It ranks well behind huge ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, on the country’s Pacific coast, yet still unloaded more than 43 million tons of goods in 2019 before the coronavirus pandemic limited shipping throughout the world last year. 

The White House said the infrastructure spending is needed because “decades of neglect and underinvestment in our infrastructure have left the links in our goods movement supply chains struggling to keep up with the rapid and persistent increase in goods movement that the pandemic has generated.”
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Former US Senator Max Cleland Dies at 79

Max Cleland, who lost three limbs to a Vietnam War hand grenade blast yet went on to serve as a U.S. senator from Georgia, died on Tuesday. He was 79.

Cleland died at his home in Atlanta from congestive heart failure, his personal assistant Linda Dean told The Associated Press. 

Cleland, a Democrat, served one term in the U.S. Senate, losing a 2002 re-election bid to Republican Saxby Chambliss. He also served as administrator of the U.S. Veterans Administration, as Georgia Secretary of State and as a Georgia state senator.

Cleland was a U.S. Army captain in Vietnam when he lost an arm and two legs while picking up a fallen grenade in 1968. For years, Cleland blamed himself for dropping the grenade, but he learned in 1999 that another soldier had dropped it.

Cleland’s loss in the Senate generated enduring controversy after the Chambliss campaign aired a commercial that displayed images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and questioned Cleland’s commitment to defense and Homeland Security. Sen. John McClain was among those who condemned the move by his fellow Republican.

Cleland also led the United States Veterans Administration, appointed in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter and holding the post until 1981. Cleland served in the Georgia Senate from 1971-1975 and was Georgia’s Secretary of State from 1983 until 1996.

“Max Cleland was one of the most remarkable persons I have ever met in my life,” Former Georgia governor and fellow Democrat Roy Barnes said. “His sacrifice and service will long be remembered as best of what it is to be a Georgian and an American. I will miss his laughter and good cheer; his optimism in the face of tragedy and his courage to persevere.”

A native of Lithonia, Cleland suffered grievous injuries on April 8, 1968, near Khe Sanh, as he reached for the grenade he thought had fallen from his belt when he jumped from a helicopter. 

“When my eyes cleared, I looked at my right hand. It was gone. Nothing but a splintered white bone protruded from my shredded elbow,” Cleland wrote in his 1980 memoir, “Strong at the Broken Places.” 

After fellow soldiers made a frantic effort to stop his bleeding and he was helicoptered back to a field hospital, Cleland wrote that he begged a doctor to save one of his legs, but there wasn’t enough left. 

“What poured salt into my wounds was the possible knowledge that it could have been my grenade,” he said in a 1999 interview.

But later that year, former Marine Cpl. David Lloyd, who said he was one of the first to reach Cleland after the explosion, came forward to say he treated another soldier at the scene who was sobbing uncontrollably and saying, “It was my grenade, it was my grenade.”

Before Vietnam, Cleland had been an accomplished college swimmer and basketball player, standing 6-foot-2 and beginning to develop an interest in politics. Returning home a triple-amputee, Cleland recalled being depressed and worried about his future, yet still interested in running for office.

“I sat in my mother and daddy’s living room and took stock in my life,” Cleland said in a 2002 interview. “No job. No hope of a job. No offer of a job. No girlfriend. No apartment. No car. And I said, `This is a great time to run for the state Senate.”’

Nevertheless, he won a state Senate seat, becoming part of a cadre of young senators that included Barnes, the future governor. After a failed 1974 campaign for lieutenant governor and his stint heading the VA, Cleland was elected as Georgia’s Secretary of State in 1982.

A dozen years later, he opted to seek the seat of retiring Sen. Sam Nunn, but served only one term. Polls showed he had been leading in his re-election effort before the devastating Chambliss ad. 

“Accusing me of being soft on homeland defense and Osama bin Laden is the most vicious exploitation of a national tragedy and attempt at character assassination I have ever witnessed,” Cleland said at the time. 

Sen. Jon Ossoff, the first Democrat to hold the seat since Cleland’s defeat, called him “a hero, a patriot, a public servant, and a friend.” 

Cleland later served as a director of the Export-Import Bank, and he was appointed by President Barack Obama to be secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission.

In his memoir, Cleland said that through crises and defeats, “I have learned that it is possible to become strong at the broken places.”
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The Feel-Good Moment for Infrastructure Is Over, Now Comes the Wait 

Last week’s passage of a major bipartisan infrastructure spending package in the House of Representatives was broadly seen as a victory for President Joe Biden at a time when he desperately needed one.

But unlike some of Biden’s earlier legislative wins, this one is not likely to produce immediate changes in the lives of most Americans.

In the early months of his presidency, Biden was able to secure major stimulus packages that sent cash flowing from the federal government directly into the bank accounts of millions of Americans, many of whom were facing financial struggles due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The infrastructure package, which tacked $550 billion of new spending onto $650 billion that was already budgeted, is not expected to work that way. Its promise of investment in electric-vehicle charging stations, highways, ports, airports, broadband, a smart electrical grid and much more, will play out over years, rather than months, analysts caution.

“People think that since the bill has been passed … that you’re going to start seeing things this week. It’s not so simple,” said K.N. Gunalan, a former president of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and a senior vice president with the engineering firm AECOM.

“Procurement on a typical project can take from a few months to a couple of years depending on the magnitude and complexity of the project,” he told VOA. “I want people to be hopeful, but not too anxious, because in order to do it right, these things take a little bit of time.”

‘A generational shift’

Experts said that the fact that it will take years for the full effects of the new investment to be seen shouldn’t obscure the reality that it has the potential to significantly transform the country.

“This is a generational shift in how and what types of projects get invested in,” Joseph Kane, a fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told VOA. “I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say, with $550 billion over five years, that this is on par with New Deal-era levels of spending.” 

The New Deal era was marked by a massive wave of government spending on infrastructure and other public projects meant to help bring the United States out of the Great Depression. 

“It’s also important not to overlook, beyond the dollar figures, just what the bill promises to do, which is investing in forward-looking designs and technology for a 21st century vision of infrastructure,” Kane said.

‘Infrastructure decade’ 

In the wake of the bill’s passage and the run-up to a presidential signing ceremony expected when Congress returns from its current recess, there have been many joking references to “infrastructure week” — something the Trump administration touted more than once while trying in vain to get Congress to move on its previous efforts to make a serious investment in infrastructure.

But Michael Hendrix, a senior fellow and director of state and local policy at the Manhattan Institute, said in an interview with VOA that the passage of the bill means that the country needs to transition to a much longer timeline.

“After this bill is signed, infrastructure week will become infrastructure decade,” Hendrix said. “I think we really have to look at a 10-year time horizon to get a bigger sense of the impact here. And even then, just because the spending will come online, and projects will come online, doesn’t mean that they’re going to be finished within that 10-year time horizon.” 

Short-term action 

While nobody ought to expect new bridges to begin going up overnight, there will be some action in the near term — it just won’t be the kind that most people notice..

The legislation approved by Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate gives Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg a pot of $16 billion that he will be able to direct to projects with little or no delay. Hendrix, of the Manhattan Institute, said that he expects much of that will go toward funding preliminary studies and planning, to help states and localities begin preparing for when the full funding begins to come through the system. 

Additionally, work could begin more quickly on routine maintenance of existing infrastructure that has been deferred, sometimes for many years, because of lack of funding, Gunalan, the former ASCE president, told VOA.

“I know it’s easier to get excited about new projects, but agencies have been struggling for years to maintain their existing assets in good repair,” he said. “Maintenance of existing assets is probably something that can be done sooner than any new projects can come online.”

Medium term 

A number of major projects that have been in the planning phase — some for years — could begin construction within the next few years, even before the end of Biden’s first term in January 2025. 

“I would suspect in the next four years, we will start to see a lot of major infrastructure projects get under construction — and people will see that construction under way,” said Yonah Freemark, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute in Washington. 

Some of those projects, he said in an interview, include the Gateway Tunnel, a new rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey; replacement of the Brent Spence Bridge, a badly overburdened link between Covington, Kentucky, and Cincinnati; a new rail bridge across the Potomac River connecting Washington, D.C., and northern Virginia; and a continuation of work on high-speed rail networks in California. 

“Americans will see all those projects under construction in the next few years,” said Freemark. “Unfortunately, we won’t see them open anytime soon.”

Biden will still promote the package 

The delay between his signing of the infrastructure bill into law and the beginning of major construction projects will not prevent the president from celebrating its passage. This week, he is expected to begin a series of visits to sites around the country that will benefit from the legislation. 

Biden was vice president when President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, an effort to stimulate the economy with a surge of investment in infrastructure projects. While the act generated significant spending on infrastructure, it took much longer to roll out than the administration expected.

The Obama administration did not make much of an effort to bring Americans’ attention to the Recovery Act’s projects when they did come on line, leading to criticism from fellow Democrats, who saw that as a missed opportunity.

Biden does not appear eager to expose himself to the same criticism. His infrastructure tour will be supplemented by appearances by multiple Cabinet secretaries across the country over the coming weeks and months, reminding voters of the projects that, if not under way, are at least on the way.

Biden’s first stop will be the Port of Baltimore on Wednesday. Backlogs at U.S. ports have been blamed for the current supply-chain problems that have left many goods difficult for Americans to find and have contributed to a sharp rise in inflation. A visit to the port will allow Biden to make the argument to Americans that his administration is taking action to at least begin resolving the problem.
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Latest Exit From Fed’s Board Gives Biden Three Slots to Fill 

Randal Quarles announced Monday that he will resign from the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors at the end of the year after completing a four-year term as its top bank regulator, opening up another vacancy on the Fed’s influential board for President Joe Biden to fill.

Quarles has served as the Fed’s first vice chair of supervision, which gave him wide-ranging authority over the banking system. In that role, he oversaw a broad loosening of some of the financial regulations that were put in place after the 2008-2009 global financial crisis and recession. 

Quarles’ deregulatory approach prompted criticism from some on the Fed and from many progressives. It has also sparked resistance from progressives to the potential re-nomination of Jerome Powell as Fed chair, who has voted in favor of Quarles’ regulatory changes.

With Powell’s term as chair ending in February, an announcement is expected sometime this month on whether Biden will offer him a second four-year term. The president is considered likely to renominate Powell, although he could decide instead to elevate Lael Brainard, who is the lone Democrat on the Fed’s seven-member board, to the position of chair.

Besides Quarles’ soon-to-be vacated position on the board, a second slot is vacant and a third will open up in January, when Vice Chair Richard Clarida’s term will expire. Counting the seat held by the Fed chair, that gives Biden a total of four potential slots to fill.

The president may decide to renominate Powell while also promoting Brainard to replace Quarles as vice chair for supervision. That move could potentially mollify at least some of Powell’s critics. Brainard cast some dissenting votes against Quarles’ deregulatory efforts.

With several vacancies to fill, Biden has an opportunity to shift the Fed’s board toward a more Democratic-dominated one. That would undercut one key argument against Powell: That even if Biden elevated Brainard to the Fed’s top bank supervisory post, Powell could ignore or override efforts she might take to toughen financial rules. If Biden were to successfully appoint three new governors to the Fed’s board, Democratic appointees would outnumber Republican ones. 

Late last month, in an appearance on CNN, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen defended Powell against any notion that he has weakened bank rules. Yellen asserted that financial regulations were “markedly strengthened” under Ben Bernanke’s Fed leadership, during her own subsequent term as chair and under Powell, as well.

Members of the Board of Governors have permanent votes at each Fed meeting on interest-rate policy, a powerful tool that affects hiring and the economy. The 12 regional Fed bank presidents also attend policymaking meetings, though only five of them are able to vote on the Fed’s decisions. The New York Fed president holds a permanent vote, and the regional bank presidents hold four votes that rotate among them each year.

The Fed governors also vote on financial regulations, and they could take steps to regulate some cryptocurrencies, known as stablecoins. Some of the officials, including Brainard and Powell, have discussed incorporating climate change considerations into the Fed’s bank oversight, a possibility that has met with opposition from congressional Republicans.

With four slots open, the Biden administration could nominate several candidates as a package. Potential nominees for the three vacancies on the Fed’s board include Lisa Cook, an economist at Michigan State University who would be the first Black woman to serve as a Fed governor, and Sarah Bloom Raskin, who previously served as a Fed governor and as a financial regulator in Maryland. 

Another potential nominee is William Spriggs, chief economist at the AFL-CIO and an economics professor at Howard University. 

Karine Jean-Pierre, a White House spokeswoman, declined to say how Quarles’ departure might influence Biden’s selections for the board. 

“All I can say is this is incredibly important to the president, and he’s taking this seriously,” Jean-Pierre said at Monday’s briefing. 

At a Senate hearing in September, Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, which oversees Fed nominations, said, “It’s time we had a Black woman on the Board of Governors.” 
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Minnesota Lawmaker Sees Role as Cultural Bridge Builder

The different diaspora groups that make up the United States inevitably have fought for representation through the voting process. VOA is profiling a group of emerging politicians with direct ties to Africa who are changing the face of American politics. One is Omar Fateh, whose parents came from Somalia.
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US Supreme Court to Hear Case of Surveillance of Muslims

The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing arguments Monday whether the U.S. government can invoke the protection of “state secrets” to withhold information about its surveillance of Muslims at mosques in California.

The dispute began a decade ago when three Muslim men filed suit against the Federal Bureau of Investigation, alleging the top U.S. law enforcement agency deployed a confidential informant who claimed to be a convert to Islam to spy on them based solely on their religious identity.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of the practice of one’s religion.

But the government is claiming in this case that it can refuse to disclose information about its surveillance under authority granted it by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as well as its use of the state secrets privilege defense, which allows the government to block the release of information it considers to be a risk to national security.

The three Muslim men, Yassir Fazaga, Ali Malik and Yasser AbdelRahim, have argued that the use of the surveillance law violated their religious rights and allowed the government to avoid accountability.

Patrick Toomey, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU National Security Project, told reporters last week, “This case has significant implications for cases where the executive branch asserts state secrets privilege in an effort to foreclose accountability for other types of illegal government conduct, especially in the two decades since 9/11,” when al-Qaida terrorists attacked the U.S., killing nearly 3,000 people.

Muslims in California said they reported the FBI’s own informant in the case to the agency after the informant began asking people about “violent jihad.”

Hussam Ayloush, a Muslim leader in the Los Angeles area, said Muslims in the U.S. “are hoping to shed light on how a government and federal agency that is charged with protecting us all continues its attempt to treat Muslims as second-class citizens.”

“The outcome of this case will impact every American, not just Muslims,” Ayloush said. “Can you be spied on by the government simply because of how you choose to worship?”
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White House ‘Confident’ Its Vaccination Mandate Will Be Upheld

The White House said Sunday it is confident that the courts will eventually approve President Joe Biden’s mandate that U.S. businesses with 100 workers or more insist their workers either be vaccinated against the coronavirus or be frequently tested despite an initial court ruling halting the vaccination requirement. 

White House chief of staff Ron Klain told NBC’s “Meet the Press” show, “I’m quite confident that when this finally gets fully adjudicated, not just a temporary order, the validity of this requirement will be upheld.” 

Klain characterized the Biden vaccination order, which affects 84 million private sector workers and is set to take effect January 4, as “common sense” to help end the pandemic in the United States. 

He said if the government’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) “can tell people to wear a hard hat on the job, to be careful on chemicals, it can … put in place these simple measures to keep our workers safe.” 

The U.S. Supreme Court last month approved a vaccination mandate covering health care workers in the northeastern state of Maine but has yet to consider a broad national mandate such as Biden’s order affecting private businesses or his order requiring 4 million federal employees and contractors working for the federal government to get vaccinated by November 22. 

Numerous Republican state governors opposed to the Democratic president’s national mandate, along with some government employee unions and individual workers, have filed lawsuits in an effort to block Biden’s orders, all claiming they are an overreach of his authority. 

In filing a lawsuit against the Biden order affecting workers at private businesses, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called the vaccine mandate “a breathtaking abuse of federal power” that is “flatly unconstitutional.” He contended that the mandate goes beyond OSHA’s “limited power and specific responsibilities.” 

On Saturday, the conservative-dominated 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases in the adjoining Southern states of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, temporarily blocked the Biden mandate for private businesses, saying there were “grave statutory and constitutional” issues concerning the rule. It ordered Biden administration lawyers to voice their opposition to a permanent injunction by late Monday, pending further court action. It is unclear if the appeals court’s decision applies outside those states. 

White House aide Cedric Richmond defended the use of the OSHA authority to mandate the vaccinations, telling the “Fox News Sunday” show, “OSHA’s job is to protect workers. If it means doing something tough, that’s what this president does.” 

“We think we’re on solid ground,” Richmond said. 

It appears that hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been vaccinated ahead of the deadline in two weeks, but opposition to the shots has emerged at some agencies, especially those related to law enforcement and intelligence. Other lawsuits filed by workers unions and individuals that contest Biden’s mandate remain to be adjudicated. There is no testing option available for government employees as there would be for workers in the private sector. 

The number of new coronavirus cases has been diminishing for several weeks in the U.S., but even so about 70,000 additional cases are being recorded every day. 

More than 193 million people in the U.S. out of its population of 333 million have been fully vaccinated. But millions of adults have for various reasons refused inoculations, curbing Biden’s effort to fully control the pandemic.

More than 750,000 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, more than in any other country, according to the government’s U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 
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Musk Asks Twitter if He Should Sell 10% of His Tesla Stock 

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk on Saturday asked his 62.5 million followers on Twitter if he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock. 

“Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock,” Musk wrote in a tweet referring to a “billionaires’ tax” proposed by Democrats in the U.S. Senate. 

Musk tweeted that he would abide by the results of the poll. 

The poll received more than 700,000 responses in one hour since he posted it, with nearly 56% of respondents approving the proposal to sell the shares. 

Musk’s shareholding in Tesla comes to about 170.5 million shares as of June 30 and selling 10% of his stock would amount to about $21 billion based on Friday’s closing, according to Reuters calculations. 

Analysts say he may have to offload a significant number of shares anyway to pay taxes since a large number of options will expire next year. 

The comment from Musk comes after a proposal in the U.S. Congress to tax billionaires’ assets to help pay for President Joe Biden’s social and climate-change agenda. 

Musk is one of the world’s richest people and owner of several futuristic companies, including SpaceX and Neuralink. He has previously criticized the billionaires’ tax on Twitter. 

“Note, I do not take a cash salary or bonus from anywhere. I only have stock, thus the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock,” Musk said on Twitter. 

Tesla board members including Elon Musk’s mother, Kimbal, have recently sold shares of the electric carmaker. Kimbal Musk sold 88,500 Tesla shares while fellow board member Ira Ehrenpreis sold shares worth more than $200 million. 
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Are Democrats Playing a Budget ‘Shell Game’ with Biden’s $1.75 Trillion Spending Plan?

As Democrats in the House of Representatives struggled Friday to schedule votes for two pieces of legislation vital to President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda, there were complaints from members of both parties about the decision to move forward before lawmakers had an official budget “score” for the larger of the two bills.

Republicans staged a press conference Friday morning on the grounds of the Capitol, calling on Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to postpone a planned vote on the president’s Build Back Better package of climate and social services spending until the budget score, which is prepared by the Congressional Budget Office, is released.

Moderate Democratic members of the House also groused about the lack of a budget score. Meanwhile, in the Senate, which will have to sign off on the Build Back Better legislation if it is to become law, West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin accused Pelosi and her leadership team of playing a “shell game” to disguise the bill’s effects on the federal budget.

Manchin contended Monday that “the real cost” of the $1.75 trillion bill would be nearly twice that amount if key elements of the package were extended or made permanent. Without knowing how this would “impact our debt and our economy and our country,” Manchin said he wouldn’t support it.

Both the White House and Democratic leaders in the House insist that the legislation they have put forward is fully paid for. By that, they mean that all new spending in the bill is offset, either by new revenue sources or decreased spending in other areas.

What is a budget ‘score’?

A common problem in political battles in Washington is that the two sides frequently talk past each other, using words and phrases that one party interprets as meaning something completely different than the other.

When it comes to how proposed legislation is expected to affect the federal budget, however, there is a neutral arbiter whose decisions both parties, sometimes grudgingly, respect.

The Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, is an agency created in the 1970s to provide lawmakers with nonpartisan analysis of the expected economic effects of proposed legislation. When lawmakers ask the CBO to provide that analysis of a specific bill, the product the agency delivers is known as the legislation’s budget score.

“The CBO is the neutral gatekeeper,” said William Gale, a senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and a former senior economist for the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush.

“Especially in the politically charged environment we have, we need some organization to be able to put out numbers that the two sides can agree are legitimate,” he said. “If the numbers that two sides are using are completely different, then you can’t even really have a discussion about it. CBO, through many hard-won battles and careful work, has earned and I think deserves that role.”

Hard-won credibility

The CBO has the reputation of being something of a thorn in the side of the White House. The agency’s director is a presidential appointee, but the tradition of independence within the agency is typically adopted by the director, which frequently leads to intraparty strife.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who ran CBO for nearly three years during the first term of President George W. Bush, came under frequent fire from his own party after the agency under his leadership continued to present relentlessly honest assessments of the true effects of proposed tax cuts and ideas like a partial privatization of the Social Security system.

CBO directors usually “cause the most trouble for their own parties,” Holtz-Eakin told VOA.

“When I was appointed CBO director, the Republicans, of course, said good things about nonpartisanship … but they really wanted me to give them a break every now and then. And if you don’t, they get mad. So, every director, his own party is mad at him,” he said.

Build Back Better’s cost

None of this is to say that Congress is operating completely in the dark in the absence of CBO scores. The bill that is currently before the House has been reviewed by both the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), another arm of Congress, and the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Both JCT and OMB have reported that, by and large, the Democrats’ claim that the spending in the bill is offset is accurate. However, because the elements of the bill keep changing, it is difficult to say for certain whether the latest version lives up to lawmakers’ claims.

The bill that was originally supposed to cost $3.5 trillion has been trimmed to $1.75 trillion at last count. But critics say that lower number doesn’t really reflect a 50% drop in spending.

Temporary programs, or permanent? 

Some longtime observers of congressional budget fights believe that objections from fiscal hawks like Manchin arise from the early termination of many programs that the Democrats plainly mean to make permanent.

In that case, the “shell game” Manchin is referring to involves strategies like reducing the overall cost of the bill by making a popular new refundable child tax credit expire after only one year, even though everyone involved knows that congressional Democrats plan to reintroduce the tax credit after it expires.

Moves like that have allowed Democrats to claim to Manchin that the latest version of the bill cuts spending in half. “But that’s not an apples to apples comparison,” said G. William Hoagland, a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, and a former Republican staff director of the Senate Budget Committee.

“So the question then becomes, ‘Well, wait a minute, if it was really 10 years, what would it really cost?’ ” said Hoaglund.

As written, Hoagland said, he has little doubt that the bill has most of its spending offset, as Democrats claim. But that doesn’t provide the full picture — and that’s where the CBO might come in.

“All I can say is that I think that’s why you need an independent group of people who have no party affiliation, to be able to look at this and analyze it as separate and apart from everything else that’s going on,” Hoagland said.
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US Democrats Pass $1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill, Ending Daylong Standoff

After a daylong standoff, Democrats set aside divisions between progressives and centrists to pass a $1 trillion package of highway, broadband and other infrastructure improvement, sending it on to President Joe Biden to sign into law.

The 228-206 vote late Friday is a substantial triumph for Biden’s Democrats, who have bickered for months over the ambitious spending bills that make up the bulk of his domestic agenda.

Biden’s administration will now oversee the biggest upgrade of America’s roads, railways and other transportation infrastructure in a generation, which he has promised will create jobs and boost U.S. competitiveness.

Democrats still have much work to do on the second pillar of Biden’s domestic program: a sweeping expansion of the social safety net and programs to fight climate change. At a price tag of $1.75 trillion, that package would be the biggest expansion of the U.S. safety net since the 1960s, but the party has struggled to unite behind it.

Democratic leaders had hoped to pass both bills out of the House on Friday, but postponed action after centrists demanded a nonpartisan accounting of its costs – a process that could take weeks.

After hours of closed-door meetings, a group of centrists promised to vote for the bill by Nov. 20 – as long as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that its costs lined up with White House estimates.

“Welcome to my world. This is the Democratic Party,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters earlier in the day. “We are not a lockstep party.”

The $1.75 trillion bill cleared a procedural hurdle by a vote of 221-213 early Saturday, which will enable Democratic leaders to quickly schedule a final vote when the time comes.

The standoff came just days after Democrats suffered losses in closely watched state elections, raising concerns that they may lose control of Congress next year.

The infrastructure bill passed with the support of 13 Republicans, fulfilling Biden’s promise of passing some bipartisan legislation. The phrase “infrastructure week” had become a Washington punchline during his predecessor Donald Trump’s four years in the White House, when plans to focus on those investments were repeatedly derailed by scandals.

“Generations from now, people will look back and know this is when America won the economic competition for the 21st century,” Biden said in a statement.

Aim to move forward

The party is eager to show it can move forward on the president’s agenda and fend off challenges in the 2022 midterm elections in which Republicans will seek to regain control of both chambers of Congress, which they lost to the Democrats under Trump.

Congress also faces looming Dec. 3 deadlines to avert a politically embarrassing government shutdown and an economically catastrophic default on the federal government’s debt.

With razor-thin majorities in Congress and a united Republican opposition, Democrats need unity to pass legislation.

The infrastructure bill, which passed the Senate in August with 19 Republican votes, would fund a massive upgrade of America’s roads, bridges, airports, seaports and rail systems, while also expanding broadband internet service.

The “Build Back Better” package includes provisions on child care and preschool, eldercare, healthcare, prescription drug pricing and immigration.

It would bolster the credibility of Biden’s pledge to halve U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by 2030 during the U.N. climate conference taking place in Glasgow, Scotland.

Republicans uniformly oppose that legislation, casting it as a dramatic expansion of government that would hurt businesses.

“This is potentially a very black day for America,” said Republican Representative Glenn Grothman, who characterized the legislation’s child-care and preschool provisions as a “Marxist” effort to have the federal government raise children.

The nonpartisan U.S. Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the social-spending bill would raise $1.48 trillion in new tax revenue over the next decade, short of its $1.75 trillion cost.

Pelosi and other top Democrats have said that fails to account for increased tax enforcement and savings from lower prescription drug prices. 

 
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Roads, Transit, Internet: What’s In the Infrastructure Bill

The House has passed a $1 trillion bipartisan plan to rebuild roads and bridges, modernize public works systems and boost broadband internet, among other major improvements to the nation’s infrastructure. The legislation now goes to President Joe Biden for his signature.

Once it is signed by Biden, the new law will reach virtually every corner of the country — a historic investment that the president has compared with the building of the transcontinental railroad and Interstate Highway System. The White House is projecting that the investments will add, on average, about 2 million jobs per year over the coming decade.

The bill cleared the House late Friday on a 228-206 vote, ending weeks of intraparty negotiations in which liberal Democrats insisted the legislation be tied to a larger, $1.75 trillion social spending bill — an effort to pressure more moderate Democrats to support both.

The Senate passed the legislation on a 69-30 vote in August after rare bipartisan negotiations, and the House kept that compromise intact. Thirteen House Republicans voted for the bill, giving Democrats more than enough votes to overcome a handful of defections from progressives.

Here’s a breakdown of the bill that Biden is expected to soon sign into law:

Roads and bridges

The bill would provide $110 billion to repair the nation’s aging highways, bridges and roads. According to the White House, 278,416 total kilometers of America’s highways and major roads and 45,000 bridges are in poor condition. And the almost $40 billion for bridges is the single largest dedicated bridge investment since the construction of the interstate highway system, according to President Joe Biden’s administration.

Public transit

The $39 billion for public transit in the legislation would expand transportation systems, improve accessibility for people with disabilities and provide dollars to state and local governments to buy zero-emission and low-emission buses. The Department of Transportation estimates that the current repair backlog is more than 24,000 buses, 5,000 rail cars, 200 stations and thousands of miles of track and power systems.

Passenger and freight rail

To reduce Amtrak’s maintenance backlog, which has worsened since Superstorm Sandy nine years ago, the bill would provide $66 billion to improve the rail service’s 735-kilometer-long Northeast Corridor as well as other routes. It’s less than the $80 billion Biden — who famously rode Amtrak from Delaware to D.C. during his time in the Senate — originally asked for, but it would be the largest federal investment in passenger rail service since Amtrak was founded 50 years ago.

Electric vehicles

The bill would spend $7.5 billion for electric vehicle charging stations, which the administration says are critical to accelerating the use of electric vehicles to curb climate change. It would also provide $5 billion for the purchase of electric school buses and hybrids, reducing reliance on school buses that run on diesel fuel.

Internet access

The legislation’s $65 billion for broadband access would aim to improve internet services for rural areas, low-income families and tribal communities. Most of the money would be made available through grants to states.

Modernizing the electric grid

To protect against the widespread power outages that have become more frequent in recent years, the bill would spend $65 billion to improve the reliability and resiliency of the nation’s power grid. It would also boost carbon capture technologies and more environmentally friendly electricity sources like clean hydrogen.

Airports

The bill would spend $25 billion to improve runways, gates and taxiways at airports and to improve terminals. It would also improve aging infrastructure at air traffic control towers.

Water and wastewater

To improve the safety of the nation’s drinking water, the legislation would spend $55 billion on water and wastewater infrastructure. The bill would include $15 billion to replace lead pipes and $10 billion to address water contamination from polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS — chemicals that were used in the production of Teflon and have also been used in firefighting foam, water-repellent clothing and many other items.

Paying for it

The five-year spending package would be paid for by tapping $210 billion in unspent COVID-19 relief aid and $53 billion in unemployment insurance aid some states have halted, along with an array of other smaller pots of money, like petroleum reserve sales and spectrum auctions for 5G services. 

 
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US Indicts Russian Analyst Who Contributed to ‘Steele Dossier’

A U.S. federal grand jury has indicted the Russian analyst who contributed to the “Steele dossier” alleging potential ties between Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign and Russia, a special prosecutor investigating the matter said Thursday.

Analyst Igor Danchenko is accused of five counts of making false statements to the FBI relating to sources for the material he gave a British firm that prepared the dossier, said John Durham, the special prosecutor appointed by the U.S. Justice Department during Trump’s administration.

At a brief hearing on Thursday in Alexandria, Virginia, U.S. Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan ordered Danchenko’s pretrial release on $100,000 unsecured bail after his lawyer told the court he lived with his family in Virginia.

Danchenko’s lawyer indicated his client would plead not guilty to the charges although his plea was not formally entered. A prosecutor said that, if convicted, Danchenko could face up to five years in prison on each count of his indictment. 

The indictment alleges that between June and November 2017, Danchenko made false statements regarding the sources of certain information he provided to a British investigative firm which Durham did not identify.

Sources identified the firm to Reuters as having been linked to former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. The dossier, which was circulated to the FBI and media outlets before the November 2016 election, set out still-unproven assertions that Russia had embarrassing information about Trump and some of his Republican campaign’s advisers and that Moscow was working behind the scenes to defeat his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.

The indictment alleges Danchenko made false statements about information he said he had received from an anonymous caller who claimed the Kremlin might have been helping to get Trump elected. It says Danchenko knew the information to be untrue. A lawyer for Danchenko did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Two sources familiar with Durham’s activities said he had issued subpoenas seeking evidence from multiple sources, including people linked to Fusion GPS, the Washington investigations firm that commissioned the dossier.

Steele is a former British intelligence officer who prepared the dossier for Fusion GPS, which was working for a law firm that represented the Democratic Party and Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Steele declined to comment in an emailed message.

One of the sources familiar with Durham’s activities said Fusion GPS was not a target of Durham’s investigation. Steele had previously declined to cooperate with investigators working for Durham.
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3- and 4-Year-Olds in a Washington School Ahead of the Game

The 3- and 4-year-olds who attend prekindergarten at Two Rivers Public Charter School in Washington are part of the roughly 60% of U.S. children who go to preschool. U.S. President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better spending plan aims to make pre-K free and universal, expanding it to millions more youngsters. VOA’s Laurel Bowman has our story.

Camera: Adam Greenbaum Produced by: Adam Greenbaum
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Texas Law Renews Contentious US Fight Over Abortion

Texas’ abortion law has landed in the nation’s capital this week, as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs whether limitations on a woman’s ability to terminate her pregnancy are legal. Lawmakers heard from experts Thursday who urged the high court to strike it down. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more.

Producer: Katherine Gypson.
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Democrats’ Virginia Losses Could Spell Trouble for 2022

U.S. Republicans won big Tuesday in at least one off-year state election. As VOA’s Carolyn Presutti reports, some see Democrats’ losses in the state of Virginia as a warning sign for the party ahead of next year’s midterm elections, when all seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and a third of the U.S. Senate will be up for grabs.
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Russian Analyst Who Helped Compile Trump-Russia Dossier Arrested by US Authorities

A Russian analyst who provided information for a dossier of research used during the Trump-Russia investigation has been arrested by U.S. authorities as part of an ongoing special counsel investigation, the Justice Department said Thursday.

Igor Danchenko is the third person, and second in a two-month span, to face charges in special counsel John Durham’s probe into the origins of the Russia investigation.

Danchenko functioned as a source for Christopher Steele, a former British spy who was paid by Democrats to examine ties between Russia and Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. The research he compiled was provided to the FBI and used by federal authorities as they applied for and received surveillance warrants targeting a former Trump campaign aide aide.

Both the dossier and the Durham probe are politically charged. Trump’s Justice Department appointed Durham as Trump claimed the investigation of campaign ties to Russia was a witch hunt and pointed to the dossier, some of which remains uncorroborated or has been discredited, as evidence of a tainted probe driven by Democrats.

But the dossier had no role in the launching of the Trump-Russia investigation and special counsel Robert Mueller ultimately found questionable ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, but not sufficient evidence to pursue criminal charges. Democrats have lambasted the Durham probe as politically motivated, but the Biden administration has not stopped it.

The Justice Department’s inspector general has faulted the FBI and the Justice Department for their handling of the dossier. Danchenko — who was not identified by name in the watchdog report — had revealed to FBI investigators during a 2017 interview about the dossier’s origins and veracity — “potentially serious problems with Steele’s descriptions of information in his reports.”  

But those qualms from Danchenko were omitted from the final three surveillance applications, making the dossier appear more credible than even one of its own sources thought it was, according to the report from Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

Danchenko, who previously worked for the Brookings Institution, has himself suggested that the information he offered to Steele was not meant to be portrayed as indisputable fact.

“Even raw intelligence from credible sources, I take it with a grain of salt,” Danchenko said in an interview with The New York Times last year. “Who knows, what if it’s not particularly accurate? Is it just a rumor or is there more to it?”

It was not immediately clear what charges Danchenko might face. But it would be the third criminal action brought by Durham, following the September indictment of Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer accused of making a false statement to the FBI during a 2016 meeting, and a guilty plea last year from an FBI lawyer who admitted altering an email related to the surveillance of the Trump aide, Carter Page.
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Boston Elects First Woman, Person of Color as Mayor

Not every mayor-elect of an American city gets post-election congratulations from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Taiwan. 

Soon after news broke late Tuesday that Michelle Wu won the race for mayor of Boston, Massachusetts, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweeted its “heartiest congratulations to @wutrain on winning the #Boston mayoral race. We couldn’t be prouder of the 1st woman & Asian American to hold the city’s top job. More power to her as she keeps breaking those glass ceilings!”

In an historic race where the four top candidates were women of color, Wu, the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants to the United States, became the city’s first woman and person of color to be elected mayor of Boston.  

Seen a progressive Democrat and protégé of U.S. senator and 2020 presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, Wu won 62.2% of the vote in Boston. Her rival, centrist Democrat Annissa Essaibi George, won 35.8% of the vote.  

“In 2021, we are still seeing barriers come down that can be a little surprising,” Wu told reporters Wednesday morning. She said when she ran for City Council in 2013, only one other woman served on the 13-member panel.  

“And now, just four election cycles later, to be coming into office with a City Council that is reflective and representative of our communities, to keep building on the progress of this current administration, and to do the work for partnership with communities is incredibly meaningful,” she said. 

An early start 

Warren, one of Wu’s professors at Harvard Law School, congratulated Wu soon after her win. 

“From teaching her in law school, to working together on my first Senate run, to supporting her campaigns, I’ve seen her positive energy, her good heart, and her ability to make big change for Boston,” Warren tweeted.

Early in her time at Harvard Law, Wu moved her mother, who suffered from schizophrenia, and her younger sisters to Boston from Chicago, Illinois, so she could take care of them while attending school. Wu, whose first language is Mandarin Chinese and who interpreted for her parents, has said that trying to run a tea shop in Chicago while caring for her family persuaded her to go into public service.  

Wu graduated from law school in 2012 and worked on Warren’s campaign for the U.S. Senate. She ran for Boston City Council in 2013, becoming the first Asian American woman on the council. She was reelected three times and was City Council president from January 2016 to January 2018. In September 2020, she announced she would run for mayor the following year.  

‘Extraordinarily impressive’ 

Denise Baer, a political scientist who teaches at George Washington University, told VOA Wednesday that Wu is “extraordinarily impressive” for having started her career early and building a broad base of support.  

But, she said, “I think it’s going to be really challenging for her to control the levers of power” in Boston, a city that has until now elected only white men as mayor.  

Wu takes office November 16. Her plan for the short transition, she said Wednesday, is to ensure “there will be a continuous ability to make sure residents are getting all the city services that are needed.” She also called for civility and “a growing sense of what’s possible in city government.” 

Kerri Greenidge, Mellon Assistant Professor in the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora at Boston-area Tufts University, said Wu’s election in a city known for its institutions of higher learning, as well as being a bastion of Democrat-dominated politics, means she will be taking control of a city “that has often struggled to live up to the highest ideals it has about itself.”  

“The fact that the city has not had a mayor that is of color or a woman has indicated that that city has not lived up to its reality” as a minority-majority city, one where the population is of a range of ethnicities, Greenidge told VOA in an email. 

According to U.S. census data from 2020, Boston’s white, non-Latino population makes up 44.5% of the population; those identifying as Black or African American alone, 25.2%; those identifying as Asian alone, 9.7%; and those identifying as Hispanic or Latino, 19.8%. Other races and those identifying as mixed race make up smaller percentages. 

Challenges and assets 

Among the goals Wu talked about in her campaign are reintroducing rent control to bring down the cost of living in Boston, which has been against state law since 1994; making Boston public transportation free, which her critics say is too costly; and solving the problems of homelessness and addiction as Boston’s winter begins to settle in. 

Her gender could be either an asset or a liability, according to Baer, who coauthored a study on women and higher office. The study found that women tend to be problem-solvers, “which makes them really excellent officials,” Baer said. But she noted that taking control of a well-established power base is challenging.  

“It’s going to take a lot of strong leadership,” she said. 

And Greenidge said she believes women of color are judged more harshly for their political actions than white men, particularly on the local level.  

“Michelle Wu will have to face that reality,” she said. But she believes Boston’s breadth of ethnicities will help. The city, she said, “has a strong and well organized Asian American, African American, and immigrant community, and those communities’ engagement will be key to mitigating any obstruction or difficulties that Wu will face.” 
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Across US, Asian American Mayoral Candidates Make Historic Gains

As elections took place in states across America on Tuesday, Asian American candidates made history with solidified and projected victories in three major cities. 

Mayoral races in Boston, Cincinnati and Seattle drew just as much national attention as the tight gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey.

Michelle Wu, the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, claimed victory in Boston’s mayoral race, as unofficial returns signaled a strong defeat of opponent Annissa Essaibi George, prompting the city councilor to concede.

Wu, 36, will now become the first woman, first person of color and first Asian American to serve as Boston’s mayor, breaking the city’s long tradition of electing white men to the top office. 

The former president of the Boston City Council ran on a progressive platform that emphasized racial, economic and climate justice. She gained voters’ support with her commitments to create free public transportation and align city contracting to close the racial wealth gap.

The Boston Globe reported that Essaibi George ran a “more moderate and traditional campaign.” In the end, Wu succeeded by securing the votes of progressives and Boston’s communities of color.

Following her victory, Wu addressed supporters.

“We are ready for every Bostonian to know that we don’t have to choose between generational change and keeping the streetlights on, between tackling big problems with bold solutions and filling our potholes,” she said.

Wu reiterated her commitment to working on behalf of all citizens. 

“I’ll never stop fighting to make all our systems work for all of us,” she said.

In Cincinnati

Aftab Pureval, a 39-year-old lawyer and son of Indian and Tibetan immigrants, will become Cincinnati’s first Asian American mayor.

After unofficial returns projected Pureval’s victory, his opponent, longtime Cincinnati City Council member David Mann, conceded.

Pureval, who is the current Hamilton County clerk of courts, ran on a commitment to bringing new ideas to the city, with goals of rebuilding Cincinnati’s economy, reforming its police department and creating more affordable housing, as well as addressing public safety and transportation.

Mann, a former Cincinnati mayor and U.S. congressman, campaigned as an experienced candidate who would steadily guide the city out of the pandemic, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer.

In a statement from his campaign Wednesday, Pureval expressed gratitude for voters’ support.

“We have the vision, and I can’t wait to help drive growth and equity in Cincinnati. I’m humbled to be a part of the wave of newly elected Asian American mayors,” he said. “Representation matters, and this is only the beginning.” 

In Seattle

In Seattle, early returns indicated that Bruce Harrell, 63, who is half Black and half Japanese, would likely become the city’s first Asian American and second Black mayor.

According to The Seattle Times, Harrell, a former member of the Seattle City Council, had secured 65% of the votes counted thus far and maintained a nearly 30 percentage-point lead over opponent and City Council President M. Lorena González.

“You believed in what we’re trying to do. We believe in this city. This city has awesome potential,” Harrell said while addressing supporters Tuesday night.

His campaign placed a strong focus on addressing Seattle’s homelessness problem and increasing the city’s police force, while also tackling concerns about systemic racism and implicit bias among first responders. González’s campaign previously expressed support for defunding the police department, according to The Seattle Times.

Despite Harrell’s significant lead, González maintained that her campaign would wait for the election’s final results.

“We respect every vote as equal, regardless as to when it was cast,” she said in a statement to supporters Tuesday night.
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Murphy Narrowly Wins Second Term as New Jersey Governor 

New Jersey Democratic Governor Phil Murphy narrowly won reelection Wednesday, eking out a victory that spared Democrats the loss of a second gubernatorial seat.

He’s the state’s first Democratic governor to get a second straight term in 44 years, defeating Republican former New Jersey General Assembly member Jack Ciattarelli. 

AP called the race Wednesday evening when a new batch of votes from Republican leaning Monmouth County increased Murphy’s lead and closed the door to a Ciattarelli comeback. 

Ballots left

Ballots remaining to be counted included a significant number of votes from predominantly Democratic Essex County, along with mail-in votes spread across other counties. Murphy won the mail-in vote by a wide margin, even in Republican leaning counties like Monmouth. 

Ciattarelli spokesperson Stami Williams disputed the call because of the close margin, calling it “irresponsible.” 

Ciattarelli waged a formidable campaign in the heavily Democratic New Jersey, his spending nearly equaling the governor’s and outpacing the GOP’s performance four years ago. But Murphy’s advantages, including 1 million more registered Democrats, proved too much for the Republican to overcome.

The victory gives Democrats a silver lining after GOP businessman Glenn Youngkin defeated Terry McAuliffe in Virginia’s gubernatorial race — prompting worries that President Joe Biden’s sagging approval ratings are hurting the party. This year’s elections were the first major tests of voter sentiment since Biden took office. 

The closeness of the race surprised experts, who watched public polls showing Murphy leading comfortably and looked to his party’s registration advantage.

“If you asked anybody several months ago within the state, I think anyone would have predicted a high double-digit landslide for Murphy,” said Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University.

Trend stopped

Murphy’s win also ends the more than three-decade-old trend of the party opposite the president’s winning in New Jersey’s off-year governor’s race. Voters came out in much higher rates for Ciattarelli this year than they did for his GOP predecessor in 2017.

The 64-year-old governor said he was acutely aware of the political trends, calling them an “animating” force for his reelection effort that spurred him to run as if he were 10 points behind.

Murphy built his campaign around the progressive accomplishments he signed into law — like a phased-in, $15-an-hour minimum wage and paid sick leave along with taxes on the wealthy — and brought Democratic allies, like progressive U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, in to campaign for him. 

With a Democrat-led Legislature, Murphy achieved most of the promises he made in his first run four years ago when he vied to succeed Republican Chris Christie. Paid sick leave, taxpayer-financed community college and some pre-kindergarten, tighter gun laws, expanded voting access, recreational marijuana, more state aid for schools and a fully funded public pension — all promised and all delivered during the first term. A proposal for a public bank to finance projects went unfulfilled.

Murphy is a former Goldman Sachs executive and served as ambassador to Germany under former President Barack Obama, who campaigned for Murphy in the weeks before Election Day.

He has said his next term will be about enacting a Reproductive Freedom Act aimed at codifying Roe v. Wade in the state as well as additional gun control laws and the expansion of taxpayer-financed pre-kindergarten for 3-year-olds.

Headwinds facing Democrats, like Biden’s falling approval ratings and congressional Democrats’ struggles to enact their agenda didn’t factor heavily enough into some experts’ pre-election analysis, said Ben Dworkin, the director of Rowan University’s Institute for Public Policy & Citizenship. He counted himself among them.

A spokesperson for Ciattarelli said Wednesday that the campaign was focused on the vote count and said that a possible legal pursuit of a recount was on the table. Murphy also called Wednesday morning for every vote to be counted.

New Jersey does not have an automatic recount law, but the candidates are permitted to request one. The party that wants a recount has to file a suit in State Superior Court in the counties where they want to contest tallies. That has to be done within 17 days of Election Day.

Ciattarelli is a former state Assembly member, serving until 2018. He’s the founder of a medical publishing company called Galen Publishing, and served as a local and county official in Somerset.

He walked a line between standing up for the moderate stances he had in the Legislature — like supporting Roe v. Wade — and appealing to Republicans who embraced Trump, particularly on cultural issues that have captured attention across the country. 
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Voters Reject Replacing Minneapolis Police Department 

Sweeping police reforms have been at the center of a debate in the United States since the May 2020 death of African American George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A year-and-a-half later, amid spiking violent crime rates nationwide, voters in the city rejected scrapping its police department and replacing it with a proposed Department of Public Safety. 

In the first municipal election since Floyd’s death, voters rejected the referendum, known as Ballot Question 2, by a projected margin of 56% to 44%. The measure was seen as a high-profile test of support for the so-called “defund the police” movement. 

“The defund the police movement has been soundly rejected,” said Richard Aborn, president of the Citizens Crime Commission of New York, a non-partisan organization that works to improve public safety through innovation. “I think there’s a growing realization that defunding the police is not an idea that people are going to accept.” 

Critics of the Minneapolis police force maintained the department has a long history of mistrust, abuse and discriminatory practices.

“This vote means maintaining the status quo … a city that continues to devolve,” said JaNaé Bates, an organizer and spokesperson for the initiative, on CNN. Bates said her group will continue to push to reform the police department. 

At issue was whether to amend Minneapolis’ city charter to replace the police department with a Department of Public Safety that would have brought a public health approach to policing rather than a narrow focus on law enforcement. The new public safety model envisioned a greater reliance on social workers and violence prevention counselors in emergency situations.

“The city’s residents decided they wanted their police department to stay in place. Now the real work begins,” Cedric Alexander, a former police chief and director of public safety in Dekalb County, Georgia, told VOA. “You’ve got to have good policing. You’ve got to have great police and you’ve got to have transparent open, well recruited, well-trained and well supervised policing.” 

Calls to shift resources away from police departments collided with headlines as homicides have soared in the United States, up 30% from 2019 to 2020, according to federal statistics. 2021 could eclipse the 2020 estimate of more than 21,500 murders. 

“People have understood that while the United States definitely needs to reform police, we cannot eliminate police. It’s just it’s a wonderful aspiration, but it’s something that’s not going to happen,”  but it’s something that’s not going to happen,” Aborn said. “At the end of the day, people want to know that the police are going to be out there patrolling, maintaining public safety and arresting people that commit violent crimes.” 

Calls for change 

Floyd’s death triggered months of anger, racial justice protests and demands for an end to police brutality in the United States and around the world. Floyd died May 25, 2020 after white former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pinned the handcuffed Floyd on the street with a knee to Floyd’s neck for roughly nine minutes. The incident was captured on video and disseminated across the globe. Chauvin was convicted of second-degree murder and manslaughter in April 2021 and is serving a 22.5-year prison sentence.

In recent years, videos of police using excessive, sometimes deadly force against Blacks and other people of color have become commonplace, sparking calls for police reforms and reallocating funding for law enforcement. Twenty-three major cities including Washington saw police budgets reduced last year, according to Smart Cities Dive.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department is investigating the Minneapolis Police Department. Launched in April, the probe is focusing on the department’s use of force patterns to determine if it disproportionately targets Blacks and other residents of color.

Clarifying goals 

In Minneapolis, reform advocates sought to clarify their goals ahead of the referendum, maintaining that they did not seek the abolition of law enforcement but rather to change the scope and execution of officers’ duties.

Some residents were not convinced.

“I want the city to hire more officers and not take resources away from the police department,” news reports quoted a Minneapolis voter as saying.

The Minneapolis City Council will vote next month on a proposal to restore $192 million to the police department’s budget. The mayor has proposed hiring as many as 150 officers to replace those who recently left the force.

“We have swung from people calling for no police back to, ‘We want police because of rising crime,’” Alexander said. 

“We have to find that middle ground because we have to have public safety,” added Alexander, who served for four decades in law enforcement.

“Hiring more cops will not reduce violence but something has to be done more structurally to change policing and practices. The police department is not going to change by itself.”
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