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After Midterms, Pressure for Biden to Stay Tough on China

With polls suggesting that Republicans may retake control of the House of Representatives in the November midterm elections, the United States appears set to continue its “tough on China” policy. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara looks at how a GOP-led Congress might exert more pressure on the Biden administration on various issues from trade relations with Beijing to support for Taiwan.
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After Midterms, Pressure for Biden to Stay Tough on China

Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping did not mention the United States during the CCP’s 20th National Congress this week. But his message was clear: Beijing will double down in the face of Western threats, including those concerning Taiwan.

“We are not committed to abandoning the use of force, and we reserve the option of taking all necessary measures,” Xi said, slamming the “serious provocations of external forces interfering in Taiwan.”

The U.S. Congress is considering the Taiwan Policy Act, a bill aimed at boosting the military capability of the self-governed island, which Beijing considers a breakaway province, against a potential Chinese invasion.

Xi’s address and the CCP congress’ report contained stark warnings that China is facing growing external threats and entering a period “in which strategic opportunities, risks, and challenges are concurrent.”

As the CCP congress cements a more assertive foreign policy under Xi, who will remain in power for an extraordinary third term, the country is on a collision course with a Biden administration that would be pressed to be even tougher on China should Republicans win more congressional seats in the November midterm elections.

“For 50 years, the Chinese Communist Party has launched an assault on the American way of life, on our economy, on our jobs, on our companies, on our culture, on our institutions, on our very future,” Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters in September.

If Republicans win a majority of seats in the House, McCarthy will likely become the speaker.

Representative Michael McCaul, who leads the House Foreign  Affairs Committee China Task Force, has vowed that if Republicans retake control, they will prepare the U.S. to win its great power competition against China through tougher legislation, including on export controls.

“My priority will be to stop exporting these technologies and selling these technologies to China so they can build their own war machine that will then in turn be pointed at us,” he said at the same press conference.

Earlier this month, the Biden administration announced aggressive measures limiting exports of advanced U.S. semiconductor technology to China, saying that the technology is supporting Beijing’s military modernization.

Beyond Taiwan

Beyond Taiwan, various Republican lawmakers have promised more focus on China — and a tougher U.S. stance on issues from securing supply chains to investigating the origins of the coronavirus — to make their point that President Joe Biden is soft on Beijing.

But even if Democrats retain their slim majority in Congress, Biden’s China policy will likely remain hawkish, keeping in place many of the policies of his predecessor, Donald Trump, including steep tariffs on Chinese goods and containing Beijing’s influence in the Indo-Pacific.

“Under the Trump administration, the Chinese genuinely hoped that the Democrats would win. But after almost two years of the Biden administration, I think the Chinese have come to the realization that both are not going to change the consensus on China,” said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center.

“And some in China would even argue that Biden’s policy is even more difficult for China because of how Biden aligns his position and mobilizes allies and partners to jointly counter China’s growing influence,” Yun told VOA.

Should Republicans retake Congress, Yun said, there will be more skepticism of Biden’s compartmentalized approach of competing strategically with China while cooperating on transnational challenges such as climate change and pandemic prevention.

The approach is problematic, she said, because Beijing views its relationship with Washington as transactional; to secure China’s cooperation, the U.S. must concede on issues it sees as competitive because for Beijing, “everything is linked to everything else.”

From Beijing’s point of view, whatever happens in U.S. politics in the foreseeable future, there are no good outcomes, she said.

“Regardless of who wins in this midterm election, or regardless of who wins in the next presidential election in 2024, this China policy is here to stay.”
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Court Temporarily Blocks Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness

A federal appeals court late Friday issued an administrative stay temporarily blocking President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel billions of dollars in federal student loans. 

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the stay while it considers a motion from six Republican-led states to block the loan cancellation program. The stay ordered the Biden administration not to act on the program while it considers the appeal. 

The order came just days after people began applying for loan forgiveness. 

It’s unclear what the decision means for the 22 million borrowers who have applied for relief. The Biden administration had promised not to clear any debt before Sunday as it battled the legal challenges, but the soonest it was expected to begin erasing debt was mid-November. 

The crucial question now is whether the issue will be resolved before January 1, when payments on federal student loans are expected to restart after being paused during the pandemic. Millions of Americans were expected to have their debt canceled entirely under Biden’s plan, but they now face uncertainty about whether they will need to start making payments in January. 

Biden has said his previous extension of the payment pause would be the final one, but economists worry that many Americans may not have regained financial footing after the upheaval of the pandemic. If borrowers who were expecting debt cancellation are asked to make payments in January, there’s fear that many could fall behind on the bills and default on their loans. 

A notice of appeal to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was filed late Thursday, hours after U.S. District Judge Henry Autrey in St. Louis ruled that because the states of Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina failed to establish standing, “the court lacks jurisdiction to hear this case.” 

Separately, the six states also asked the district court for an injunction prohibiting the administration from implementing the debt cancellation plan until the appeals process plays out. 

Speaking at Delaware State University, a historically Black university where the majority of students receive federal Pell Grants, Biden on Friday said nearly 22 million people have applied for the loan relief in the week since his administration made its online application available. 

The plan, announced in August, would cancel $10,000 in student loan debt for those making less than $125,000 yearly or households with less than $250,000 in income. Pell Grant recipients, who typically demonstrate more financial need, will get an additional $10,000 in debt forgiven. 

The Congressional Budget Office has said the program will cost about $400 billion over the next three decades.  

James Campbell, an attorney for the Nebraska attorney general’s office, told Autrey at an October 12 hearing that the administration was acting outside its authority in a way that would cost states millions of dollars. 

The cancellation applies to federal student loans used to attend undergraduate and graduate school, along with Parent Plus loans. Current college students qualify if their loans were disbursed before July 1. The plan makes 43 million borrowers eligible for some debt forgiveness, with 20 million who could see their debt erased entirely, according to the administration. 

The announcement immediately became a major political issue ahead of the November midterm elections. 

Conservative attorneys, Republican lawmakers and business-oriented groups have asserted that Biden overstepped his authority in taking such sweeping action without the assent of Congress. They called it an unfair government giveaway for relatively affluent people at the expense of taxpayers who didn’t pursue higher education. 

Many Democratic lawmakers facing tough reelection contests have distanced themselves from the plan. 

Biden on Friday blasted Republicans who have criticized his relief program, saying “their outrage is wrong and it’s hypocritical.” He noted that some Republican officials had debt and pandemic relief loans forgiven. 

Other lawsuits also have sought to stop the program. Earlier Thursday, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett rejected an appeal from a Wisconsin taxpayers group seeking to stop the debt cancellation program. 

Barrett, who oversees emergency appeals from Wisconsin and neighboring states, did not comment in turning away the appeal from the Brown County Taxpayers Association. The group wrote in its Supreme Court filing that it needed an emergency order because the administration could begin canceling outstanding student debt as soon as Sunday.
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Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Plan Survives 2 Legal Challenges

A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a Republican-led challenge to President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel billions of dollars in student debt, shortly after U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett rejected a request in another case to block it. 

U.S. District Judge Henry Autrey in St. Louis, Missouri, said that while the six Republican-led states had raised “important and significant challenges to the debt relief plan,” they lacked the necessary legal standing to be able to pursue the case. 

Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina had alleged Biden’s plan skirted congressional authority and threatened the states’ future tax revenues and money earned by state entities that invest in or service loans. 

Their case is one of a number of challenges that conservative state attorneys general and legal groups have filed seeking to put on hold the debt forgiveness plan for people who had taken out loans to pay for college. Biden announced the plan in August. 

Autrey ruled about an hour after Barrett denied without explanation an emergency request to put the debt relief plan on hold in a challenge brought by the Wisconsin-based Brown County Taxpayers Association.

No personal harm demonstrated 

A lower court had thrown out the Wisconsin group’s lawsuit because it could not show that it would be personally harmed by the loan relief. Barrett is designated by the Supreme Court to act on emergency matters arising from a group of states, including Wisconsin. 

Republican state attorneys general promised to appeal Autrey’s decision. Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson in a statement said, “The states continue to believe that they do in fact have standing to raise their important legal challenges.” 

In a policy benefiting millions of Americans, Biden said in August the U.S. government would forgive up to $10,000 in student loan debt for borrowers making less than $125,000 a year, or $250,000 for married couples. Those who received Pell Grants, which benefit lower-income college students, will have up to $20,000 of their debt canceled. 

The policy fulfilled a promise that Biden made during the 2020 presidential campaign to help debt-saddled former college students. The Congressional Budget Office in September calculated that the debt forgiveness would cost the government about $400 billion. 

Democrats are hoping the policy will boost support for them in the November 8 midterm elections in which control of Congress is at stake, even as many Republicans criticize the plan. 

Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell called the debt forgiveness “socialism” that would worsen inflation, reward “far-left activists” and deliver a “slap in the face” to Americans who paid back their student loans or picked career paths, including serving in the military, to avoid taking on debt. 

President’s authority challenged

Several legal challenges have been filed contesting Biden’s authority to cancel the debt under a 2003 law called the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act, which lets the government modify or waive federal student loans during war or national emergency. 

Biden’s administration asserts that the COVID-19 pandemic represented such an emergency. 

The six states sued on September 29. That same day, the U.S. Department of Education closed the forgiveness program to borrowers with loans issued by private banks but guaranteed by the federal government, a move seen as an attempt to avoid lawsuits involving state entities that profit from such loans. 

In a 19-page ruling, Autrey cited that decision in dismissing the states’ cases. He said claims by several of the states that their tax revenues would be also harmed were “tenuous” and “speculative.” 

The Wisconsin group brought its case to the Supreme Court after rapid losses in lower courts. It sued on October 4, arguing that the policy “obligates federal taxes and erases federal assets (in the form of debt) without any authority whatsoever.”  

U.S. District Judge William Griesbach in Green Bay threw out the case two days later, noting that merely paying taxes is not enough to challenge federal actions. The Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals subsequently refused the group’s request to block the debt relief program pending an appeal. 
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Appeals Court: Graham Must Testify in Georgia Election Probe

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham must testify before a special grand jury investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and others illegally tried to influence the 2020 election in Georgia, a federal appeals court said Thursday.

The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals paves the way for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to bring Graham in for questioning. She wants to ask the South Carolina Republican about phone calls he made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who said Graham asked him whether he had the power to reject certain absentee ballots.

Raffensperger said he took that as a suggestion to toss out legally cast votes, an interpretation Graham dismissed as “ridiculous.”

Graham could appeal the ruling to the full appellate court. An attorney for Graham deferred comment Thursday to a spokesperson for the senator’s office, which did not immediately comment on the ruling.

Graham had challenged his subpoena, saying his position as a U.S. senator protected him from having to testify in the state investigation. He has also denied wrongdoing. In a six-page order, the judges wrote that Graham “has failed to demonstrate that this approach will violate his rights under the Speech and Debate Clause.”

Willis opened the investigation early last year, shortly after a recording of a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Raffensperger was made public. In that call, Trump suggested Raffensperger could “find” the votes needed to overturn his narrow loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Willis requested a special grand jury, saying the panel’s subpoena power would allow the questioning of people who otherwise wouldn’t cooperate with the investigation. She has since filed several rounds of paperwork with the court, seeking to compel the testimony of close Trump advisers and associates.

Some of those associates include former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who has testified before the special grand jury, according to a person familiar with Cipollone’s testimony who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a private appearance. Cipollone’s appearance was first reported by CNN.

Cipollone vigorously resisted efforts to undo the election and has said he did not believe there was sufficient fraud to have affected the outcome of the race won by Biden.

Graham was in the first group of people close to Trump whose testimony Willis sought to compel in a batch of petitions filed with the court in early July. He challenged his subpoena in federal court, but U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May refused to toss out his subpoena. Graham then appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Graham’s lawyers argued that the U.S. Constitution’s speech or debate clause, which protects members of Congress from having to answer questions about legislative activity, shields him from having to testify. He contends that the call he made to Raffensperger was protected because he was asking questions to inform his decisions on voting to certify the 2020 election and future legislation.

Lawyers on Willis’ team argued that comments Graham made in news interviews at the time, as well as statements by Raffensperger, show that the senator was motivated by politics rather than by legislative fact-finding.

They also argued that the scope of the special grand jury’s investigation includes a variety of other topics that have nothing to do with the Raffensperger call. They also want to ask Graham about his briefings by the Trump campaign, including whether he was briefed on the Trump-Raffensperger call, and whether he communicated or coordinated with Trump and his campaign about efforts to overturn the election results in Georgia and elsewhere.

Invoking ‘sovereign immunity’

Graham’s lawyers also argued that the principle of “sovereign immunity” protects a U.S. senator from being summoned by a state prosecutor.

Even if the speech or debate clause or sovereign immunity didn’t apply, Graham’s lawyers argued, his status as a “high-ranking official” protects him from having to testify. That’s because Willis has failed to show that his testimony is essential and that the information he would provide cannot be obtained from someone else, they argued.

Judge May had found that Graham cannot be questioned about any “investigatory fact-finding” on his call with Raffensperger because that is protected legislative activity. But she rejected his other arguments, saying Willis’ team and the special grand jury can ask him about any attempts to encourage Raffensperger to throw out ballots and about any communications and coordination with the Trump campaign on post-election efforts in Georgia, as well as his public statements about the election in Georgia.

In their ruling Thursday, the appellate judges ruled that Willis “can ask about non-investigatory conduct that falls within the subpoena’s scope” but “may not ask about any investigatory conduct,” noting that Graham could note any issues over specific areas at the time of his questioning.

Others have already made their appearances before the special grand jury. Former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who’s been told he could face criminal charges in the probe, testified in August. Attorneys John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro have also appeared before the panel.

Paperwork has been filed seeking testimony from others, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich. 
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Republican Party Targeting Hispanic Voters in Texas

In this year’s midterm elections in the United States, the Republican Party is pushing to expand recent gains among Hispanic voters. VOA’s Scott Stearns narrates this story from Christian von Preysing-Barry in Texas, where Republicans this year won a congressional seat long held by the Democratic Party. Videographer: Christian von Preysing-Barry
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Emails Show Trump Knowingly Pressed False Voter Fraud Claims, Judge Says 

A California federal judge on Wednesday said then-U.S. President Donald Trump had signed a sworn statement asserting that voter fraud numbers included in a 2020 election lawsuit were accurate, despite being told the numbers were not correct. 

U.S. District Judge David Carter made the disclosure in ordering lawyer John Eastman to provide more emails to the congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump’s supporters. 

Eastman was one of Trump’s attorneys when the former president and his allies challenged his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. 

Representatives for Trump and Eastman did not immediately return requests for comment. 

Carter said Wednesday that Trump had “signed a verification swearing under oath” that the inaccurate fraud numbers were “true and correct” or “believed to be true and correct” to the best of his knowledge and belief, when alleging the improper counting of votes in a county in Georgia. 

“The emails show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public,” the judge wrote. 

Carter has previously ruled that Eastman and Trump had likely committed a felony by trying to pressure his then-vice president to obstruct Congress. 

The ruling was made in a lawsuit filed by Eastman to block disclosure of the emails to the January 6 select committee, following a congressional subpoena.  

Carter has previously ordered Eastman to provide more than 200 emails to the committee, after the lawyer resisted the subpoena and claimed that the communications were privileged. 

The judge said Wednesday that the vast majority of emails still being sought by congressional investigators should not be handed over, because legal protections given to attorneys and their clients apply to those records. 

He said eight emails that would normally be shielded under those protections must be given to the committee, after he found that the communications were in furtherance of a crime — one of the few times those legal safeguards can be lifted. 

Carter found that four emails show that Eastman and other lawyers suggested that the “primary goal” of filing lawsuits was to delay Congress’s certification of the 2020 election results. 

The judge said four other emails “demonstrate an effort by President Trump and his attorneys to press false claims in federal court for the purpose of delaying the January 6 vote.” 

Trump and his allies filed more than 60 lawsuits challenging the 2020 election, which Biden won, with some complaints alleging voter fraud without evidence to support those claims. Those cases were overwhelmingly rejected by judges, some of which Trump appointed to the federal courts. 

The January 6 select committee last week voted to subpoena Trump in its investigation. It is set to issue a report in the coming weeks on its findings. 
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Why US Courts Are Allowing Voters in 4 States to Use Rejected Congressional Maps

When midterm elections get under way next month, voters in several Republican-controlled states will be casting their ballots in congressional districts with borders that courts have rejected.

In Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Ohio, the congressional maps were drawn by Republican legislators in the aftermath of the 2020 census. Judges later ruled that the maps were illegally drawn or likely to be proven illegal at trial.

But the U.S. Supreme Court, and other federal courts following its precedent, have allowed the rejected maps to be used for this election, rejecting proposals to make them fairer.

Their rationale? A little-known legal concept that says judges should refrain from changing voting rules close to an election because doing so can lead to chaos and confusion and keep voters away from the polls.

Known as the “Purcell principle,” the concept takes its name from a 2006 Supreme Court case called Purcell v. Gonzalez. The case involved a legal challenge to Arizona’s voter ID requirements. It was a midterm year, and the Supreme Court dismissed the challenge.

‘Bedrock tenet’

In the 16 years since the Arizona ruling, the “Purcell principle” has become what Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh has called a “bedrock tenet of election law.”

“When an election is close at hand, the rules of the road must be clear and settled,” Kavanaugh wrote in February, explaining his decision to allow Alabama’s Republican-backed congressional map to take effect even though it had been rejected by a three-judge panel. “Late judicial tinkering with election laws can lead to disruption and to unanticipated and unfair consequences for candidates, political parties and voters, among others.”

That means judges should be wary of issuing orders that change voting rules close to an election, and so they have. In 2020, the Supreme Court repeatedly blocked changes that sought to make it easier for voters to cast their ballots during the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.

Critics say this amounts to putting the administration of elections ahead of safeguarding the right to vote.

“I think the balance they’ve chosen is out of whack,” said Dan Vicuna, the national redistricting manager for the watchdog Common Cause.

Rick Hasen, a University of California-Los Angeles election law expert who coined the term “Purcell principle” in 2016, has argued that the Supreme Court should “rein in” the doctrine.

Republicans have stood by their maps.

Hans von Spakovsky, a former county election official now with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the Purcell principle is a “good rule” with an important purpose.

“Anyone who’s got a problem with [an election] law or regulation has plenty of time before an election to file a lawsuit,” von Spakovsky, manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative, said.

Districts redrawn each decade

The disputed congressional maps in the four states are considered “gerrymandered,” a portmanteau with origins in early 19th-century American politics.

Every 10 years, following a constitutionally mandated census, U.S. states redraw their congressional and state legislative maps to reflect changes in their electorate.

Gerrymandering occurs when voting district maps are redrawn for political gain, for example by packing opposition party voters into one district so as to reduce their influence in others.

The practice is legal in most states, and both Democrats and Republicans engage in it. But when a map is flagrantly drawn to favor one group over another, it can run afoul of state and federal laws.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits racial discrimination in voting. Under the law, voters can seek judicial relief if they believe a voting practice or procedure such as a new political map “abridges” their right to vote.

Under the Voting Rights Act, challengers can also bring claims of “vote dilution.” Vote dilution occurs when minority voters cannot elect the candidate of their choice because of gerrymandering. This was part of the claim in the legal challenge against the congressional maps in Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana.

Former procedure

Before Purcell, aggrieved voters could sue for judicial relief and courts did not dismiss the challenge simply because an election was close at hand.

But that changed with Purcell, according to David Gans, director of the human rights, civil rights and citizenship program at the Constitutional Accountability Center.

“Purcell has made it incredibly difficult for courts to provide relief when state governments violate the right to vote, when they put in place discriminatory maps that dilute the vote for communities of color,” Gans said.

Consider what happened in Georgia.

In December, civil rights groups filed lawsuits against the state’s new political redistricting maps that appear designed to give Republicans an additional House seat even though the state’s electorate has become increasingly Democratic.

Then in March, with the state’s primary elections under two months away, U.S. District Judge Steve Jones, citing the Purcell principle, ruled that the challenged maps could be used even though he found that they included boundaries that violated the Voting Rights Act.

“Changes to the redistricting map at this point in the 2022 election schedule are likely to substantially disrupt the election process,” Jones wrote.

In Alabama and Louisiana, federal courts found that the two Southern states’ redistricting maps violated the Voting Rights Act, only to be overruled by the Supreme Court.

High court’s rulings

The Supreme Court, dominated by six conservative justices appointed by Republican presidents, has applied the Purcell doctrine “in a way that’s mostly friendly to Republicans,” Vicuna said, but that has not always been the case.

In March, for example, the high court refused to overturn a map drawn by the North Carolina Supreme Court over the objection of Republican lawmakers who wanted to use their own map.

In addition, the high court has rejected Republican challenges to redistricting maps drawn by Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, though not on the grounds of Purcell.

Election law experts say that while the likelihood of voter confusion can be a strong argument against making last-minute changes in voting procedures, it should not be the sole factor.

“One of the reasons the court has gone awry is that it’s not looked at the sort of traditional factors that apply when there’s a request for emergency relief,” Gans said. “Purcell has essentially replaced that sort of more careful fact-specific analysis with this across-the-board hostility to protecting voting rights.”
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