“WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is ready to urge participants at the first White House Summit for Democracy to reverse an ongoing ‘recession’ of democracy that is playing out at a time of rising authoritarianism around the globe and extraordinary strains on foundational institutions in the U.S.
`The two-day virtual summit that starts Thursday has been billed as an opportunity for leaders and civil society experts from some 110 countries to collaborate on fighting corruption and promoting respect for human rights. But the gathering already has drawn backlash from the United States’ chief adversaries and other nations that were not invited to participate.
The ambassadors to the U.S. from China and Russia wrote a joint essay in the National Interest policy journal describing the Biden administration as exhibiting a ‘Cold-War mentality’ that will ‘stoke up ideological confrontation and a rift in the world.’ The administration has also faced scrutiny over how it went about deciding which countries to invite.” Read more at AP News
“President Biden said Wednesday he hoped to convene meetings between Russia and NATO allies to discuss Moscow’s troop buildup along the Ukrainian border, and ruled out the unilateral use of U.S. force if Russia invades its neighbor.
And in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was responding to a ‘creeping threat’ from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and didn’t fully close the door on an invasion.
The two leaders spoke a day after they held a two-hour video call to address what the U.S. has described as large and unusual troop movements near Russia’s border with Ukraine in recent weeks.
Mr. Biden cited ‘the good news’ that Russian and U.S. officials had been holding talks and that he hoped that by Friday, the U.S. could announce high-level meetings among Washington, Moscow and at least four NATO allies. The talks, he said, would comprise discussion of Russia’s concerns on NATO ‘writ large,’ and the possibility of ‘accommodations’ on NATO’s eastern flank.
Mr. Putin told Russian broadcaster TV5 that his conversation with Mr. Biden was ‘open, substantive and constructive,’ but added ‘there is no particular reason for optimism so far.’
On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was expected to speak with Mr. Biden on Thursday, said he viewed the talks between Messrs. Biden and Putin positively.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Congressional Republicans on Wednesday ratcheted up their attempts to repeal President Biden’s vaccine and testing mandates, adopting a measure in the Senate to unwind policies that the White House and top public health officials see as critical to combating the coronavirus.
The intensifying campaign mirrored in spirit the political and legal battles that GOP officials waged earlier in the pandemic, as they attacked business closures, mask mandates and other government-led measures to slow the contagion. With vaccines, Republicans on Capitol Hill argued that the requirements are unwarranted and unconstitutional, putting Americans’ jobs at risk.
In their most public, forceful protest to date, Republicans led by Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) muscled to passage a proposal that aims to repeal the Biden administration’s rules ordering large private businesses to require vaccination or implement comprehensive coronavirus testing for their workers.
Braun’s legislative push hinged on a congressional process that allows lawmakers to review, and potentially revoke, federal agency regulations. The tactic allowed the GOP to take its bill to the Senate floor, even though Democrats control the chamber, where it later passed on a 52-to-48 vote. Two Democrats, Sens. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Jon Tester (Mont.), also joined the GOP in trying to scrap the mandates.
Trump-appointed judges block Biden vaccine mandate for health-care workers
The repeal still could face an uphill battle in the House, and it would see a certain veto if it ever reached Biden’s desk, but some Republicans this week signaled that they plan to accelerate their efforts in the days ahead anyway. Another group of GOP lawmakers, led by Sen. Roger Marshall (Kan.), is already preparing a second measure that aims to scrap Biden’s vaccine mandate for medical professionals, the lawmaker revealed this week to The Washington Post.
‘We have to be able to communicate, to walk and chew gum, and explain to people both pieces of the puzzle,’ said Marshall, adding that he supports vaccination but also believes the government should not require it in the private sector.” Read more at Washington Post
“WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed ready to take another step in requiring states to pay for religious education, with a majority of the justices indicating that they would not allow Maine to exclude religious schools from a state tuition program.
The court has said that states may choose to provide aid to religious schools along with other private schools. The question in the new case was the opposite: Can states refuse to provide such aid if it is made available to other private schools?
Maine requires rural communities without public secondary schools to arrange for their young residents’ educations in one of two ways. They can sign contracts with nearby public schools, or they can pay tuition at a private school chosen by parents so long as it is, in the words of state law, ‘a nonsectarian school in accordance with the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.’
Two families in Maine that send or want to send their children to religious schools challenged the law, saying it violated their right to freely exercise their faith.
Religious people and groups have been on a winning streak at the Supreme Court, which seemed likely to continue in the new case. In recent decisions, the justices have ruled against restrictions on attendance at religious gatherings to address the coronavirus pandemic and Philadelphia’s attempt to bar a Catholic agency that refused to work with same-sex couples from screening potential foster parents.
The court also ruled that the Trump administration could allow employers with religious objections to deny contraception coverage to female workers and that employment discrimination laws do not apply to many teachers at religious schools.” Read more at New York Times
“WASHINGTON — The Biden administration announced Wednesday it aims to buy its way to a cleaner, cooler planet, spending billions to create a federal fleet of electric vehicles, upgrade federal buildings, and change how the government buys electricity.
The executive order President Biden signed leverages Washington’s buying power to cut the government’s carbon emissions 65 percent by the end of the decade. It lays out goals that would put the federal government on a path to net-zero emissions by 2050 and would add at least 10 gigawatts’ worth of clean electricity to the grid.
Under the new approach, federal operations would run entirely on carbon-free electricity by 2030. By 2035, the government would stop buying gas-powered vehicles, switching to zero-emission heavy-duty trucks and cars. A decade after that, most of the buildings owned or leased by the government would no longer contribute to the carbon pollution that’s warming the planet.” Read more at Boston Globe
“WASHINGTON— Mark Meadows, the final chief of staff under President Donald Trump, sued House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and members of the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, after the panel indicated it would move to hold him in criminal contempt of Congress.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in Washington, asks a judge to invalidate subpoenas the committee issued to Mr. Meadows and to Verizon Wireless seeking his phone records, saying the panel lacked the legal authority to issue the ‘overly broad and unduly burdensome’ demands.
The 43-page complaint also notes that Mr. Trump had told his former chief of staff not to comply with the subpoenas, citing executive privilege. But President Biden waived those privilege claims, prompting Mr. Trump to file his own lawsuit. That left Mr. Meadows ‘in the untenable position of choosing between conflicting privilege claims that are of constitutional origin and dimension,’ the Meadows suit said.
‘Thus, Mr. Meadows turns to the courts to say what the law is,’ the lawsuit says.
Mr. Meadows has tangled with the committee since the end of September, when he was subpoenaed to turn over documents and testify in the panel’s probe of the causes and circumstances of the attack. The biggest sticking point has been over Mr. Meadows’s assertion of executive privilege, the idea that certain communications within the executive branch are constitutionally shielded from compelled disclosure.
The committee, which consists of seven Democrats and two Republicans, had argued that executive privilege must be asserted on an issue-by-issue basis and that Mr. Meadows’s claims were overly broad. Mr. Meadows, who had earlier turned over thousands of pages of documents in an initial bid to stave off contempt proceedings, pulled out of a deposition scheduled for Wednesday morning after saying that the panel hadn’t respected the boundaries of his executive-privilege claims.
Mr. Meadows’s lawyer, George Terwilliger, also complained in a letter that the committee had subpoenaed cellphone records ‘without even the basic courtesy of notice to us.’
When Mr. Meadows indicated that he would stop cooperating with the panel, Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D., Miss.) informed Mr. Meadows’s attorney that the Jan. 6 committee would move ahead with contempt charges.
After the filing of the lawsuit, the panel’s leaders said it would meet next week to vote on recommending that Mr. Meadows be held in criminal contempt of Congress.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Eight days before the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, a little-known Trump donor living thousands of miles away in the Tuscan countryside quietly wired a total of $650,000 to three organizations that helped stage and promote the event.
The lack of fanfare was typical of Julie Fancelli, the 72-year-old daughter of the founder of the Publix grocery store chain. Even as she has given millions to charity through a family foundation, Fancelli has lived a private life, splitting time between her homes in Florida and Italy, and doting on her grandchildren, according to family members and friends.
Now, Fancelli is facing public scrutiny as the House committee investigating the insurrection seeks to expose the financing for the rally that preceded the riot at the U.S. Capitol. Fancelli is the largest publicly known donor to the rally, support that some concerned relatives and others attributed to her enthusiasm for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.” Read more at Washington Post
“ATLANTA (AP) — More than 40 people in the U.S. have been found to be infected with the omicron variant so far, and more than three-quarters of them had been vaccinated, the chief of the CDC said Wednesday. But she said nearly all of them were only mildly ill.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the data is very limited and the agency is working on a more detailed analysis of what the new mutant form of the coronavirus might hold for the U.S.” Read more at AP News
“Nearly two years into a coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 5 million people, every country, including the United States, remains dangerously unprepared to respond to future epidemic and pandemic threats, according to a report released Wednesday assessing the efforts of 195 countries.
Researchers compiling the Global Health Security Index — a project of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a D.C.-based nonprofit global security group, and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health — found insufficient capacity in every country, which they said left the world vulnerable to future health emergencies, including some that might be more devastating than COVID-19.” Read more at Boston Globe
“Elizabeth Holmes’s lawyers rested their case. The Theranos founder, who faces 11 counts of wire fraud and conspiracy, testified over seven days, during which she acknowledged regrets but also placed blame on her former deputy and boyfriend.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Chris Cuomo won’t get severance from CNN. The former anchor also lost a publishing deal for a coming book, the latest fallout from his involvement in helping his brother, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, respond to allegations of sexual harassment.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“CHICAGO—Lawyers presented their closing arguments in Jussie Smollett’s criminal trial Wednesday and the jury began deliberations in a case that has largely hinged on contradictory testimony from the former ‘Empire’ actor and the two men who said he paid them to fake a hate crime against him.
Mr. Smollett, who is openly gay, told police that he had been attacked by two men who used racist and antigay slurs, hit and kicked him and placed a noose around his neck at around 2 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2019, as he walked home from picking up food at a Subway sandwich shop.
Over the course of a two-week investigation, police alleged that Mr. Smollett knew his attackers and that the incident was a hoax.
Mr. Smollett is charged with six counts of disorderly conduct for allegedly making false reports to police. He has entered a plea of not guilty.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Italy’s antitrust regulator fined Amazon.com $1.3 billion for harming competitors by favoring third-party sellers that use the U.S. company’s logistics services.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Congress yesterday sent the Biden administration and corporate America an unequivocal message about the Chinese government's repression of Uyghur Muslims:
If this is genocide, as the U.S has declared, the response can't be business as usual, Axios' Zachary Basu and Sarah Mucha report.
The House overwhelmingly passed a bill to ban imports from the Chinese region of Xinjiang unless the U.S. determines with ‘clear and convincing evidence’ the products weren't made with forced labor.
Major corporations, including Nike and Coca-Cola, have lobbied against the bill, which would have far-reaching consequences for U.S. supply chains deeply integrated with China.
What's next: The Senate unanimously passed its own bill in July, but several differences must be reconciled with the House version. The White House hasn't said whether President Biden would sign it.” Read more at Axios
“BANGKOK (AP) — Myanmar government troops raided a small northwestern village, rounding up civilians, binding their hands and then burning them alive in apparent retaliation for an attack on a military convoy, according to witnesses and other reports.
A video of the aftermath of Tuesday’s attack showed the charred bodies of 11 victims, some believed to be teenagers, lying in a circle amid what appeared to be the remains of a hut in Done Taw village in Sagaing region.
Outrage spread as the graphic images were shared on social media over what appeared to be the latest of increasingly brutal military attacks in an attempt to put down stiffening anti-government resistance following the army takeover in February.
Human Rights Watch called Thursday for the international community to ensure that commanders who gave the order are added to targeted sanctions lists, and more broadly, efforts are stepped up to cut off any source of funding to the military.” Read more at AP News
“Tokyo, Japan’s capital city, will introduce a system to recognize same-sex partnerships sometime in the next fiscal year, Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike announced on Tuesday. The Japanese wire service Kyodo reported that the Tokyo local assembly unanimously voted in favor of the change.” [Vox] Read more at Reuters
“Beijing Olympic boycott grows. The United Kingdom and Canada have decided not to send top officials to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, joining a growing number of countries that are taking diplomatic action to protest China’s human rights abuses. In recent days, the United States, Australia, and Lithuania have all announced their diplomatic boycotts of the Winter Games.
Beijing was clearly irritated by their announcements. After learning of Australia’s boycott, Wang Wenbin, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, accused Canberra of ‘political posturing’ and ‘blindly following’ the United States. He added: ‘Whether they come or not, nobody cares.’” Read more at Foreign Policy
“China’s press freedom problem. China has become the world’s ‘biggest captor’ of journalists, according to a new report released by Reporters Without Borders. At least 127 journalists are currently detained by Beijing, the report said, while local journalists are required to undergo training on subjects including so-called Xi Jinping thought.
Beijing has ‘restored a media culture worthy of the Maoist era,’ said Christophe Deloire, the organization’s Secretary General. ‘It is a nightmare.’
“Quarantine or nightclub? Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin has come under fire for going clubbing hours after a close contact tested positive for COVID-19. Initially, Marin said, she was told that she did not need to quarantine because she had been fully vaccinated. When a subsequent text message to her work phone—which she did not bring with her—advised her to isolate, she did not see it until she returned home at 4 a.m. ‘I should have used better judgement on Saturday evening,’ Marin said. ‘I am very sorry.’” Read more at Foreign Policy
“WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand’s government believes it has come up with a unique plan to end tobacco smoking — a lifetime ban for those aged 14 or younger.
Under a new law the government announced Thursday and plans to pass next year, the minimum age to buy cigarettes would keep rising year after year.
That means, in theory at least, 65 years after the law takes effect, shoppers could still buy cigarettes — but only if they could prove they were at least 80 years old.
In practice, officials hope smoking will fade away decades before then. Indeed, the plan sets a goal of having fewer than 5% of New Zealanders smoking by 2025.
Other parts of the plan include allowing only the sale of tobacco products with very low nicotine levels and slashing the number of stores that can sell them. The changes would be brought in over time to help retailers adjust.” Read more at AP News
“UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and members of his administration are embroiled in a thorny controversy concerning claims that two social events were held inside 10 Downing Street in the days leading up to Christmas 2020-- in violation of the country’s strict pandemic restrictions at the time. The scandal reached a head when a video emerged this week that appears to show officials joking about the parties during a rehearsal for televised press briefings. In response, Johnson announced an internal inquiry, and one of the officials in the video -- the prime minister's former spokeswoman Allegra Stratton, resigned as a government adviser yesterday. Aside from the appearance of government hypocrisy, the video and other evidence of the gatherings undermine the UK government’s current efforts to introduce tougher Covid-19 restrictions.” Read more at CNN
“Brian Williams, who announced in November that he's leaving NBC News after 28 years, signs off tonight with the final edition of his 11 p.m. ‘The 11th Hour with Brian Williams’ on MSNBC.” Read more at Axios"
“Last week, Tiger Woods was emphatic that he would never again be a full-time player on the PGA Tour because of the serious leg injuries he sustained in a high-speed car crash in February. But Woods conceded that he could ‘play a round here and there,’ which he called, ‘a little hit and giggle.’
Woods is not waiting long to make an informal, and public, return to a golf course. On Wednesday, he announced he would play in a family team tournament with his son, Charlie, on Dec. 18 and 19. The event, the PNC Championship, has a small limited field — it was once called a father/son tournament — and will be contested at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Orlando, Fla.” Read more at New York Times
“Serena Williams has announced her withdrawal from next month’s Australian Open, extending her absence from the sport that she long ruled.
‘I am not where I need to be physically to compete,’ Williams said in the announcement on Wednesday as the Australian Open released the list of entered players for the 2022 tournament.
Williams, 40, a seven-time Australian Open singles champion, has not played on the WTA Tour since June 28, when she retired late in the first set of her first-round match at Wimbledon because of an injured right hamstring.” Read more at New York Times
“The starving manatees are easy enough to spot. You can see their ribs through their skin. They surface to breathe more than normal. Those most in need appear off balance, listing to one side.
As manatee deaths spike and Florida rescue centers fill up with malnourished animals, federal and state wildlife officials are trying something new in an urgent effort to help the species through the winter: They will provide food, as needed, at a key location on the state’s east coast where hundreds of manatees cluster when water temperatures drop.” Read more at New York Times
“Lives Lived: Greg Tate exploded onto the New York cultural scene in the early 1980s, becoming The Village Voice’s pre-eminent writer on Black music and art and one of the city’s leading critics. He died at 64.” Read more at New York Times
“National Brownie Day with a twist: The world's largest pot brownie – weighing in at 850 pounds – was unveiled by Massachusetts-based cannabis company MariMed, Inc.” Read more at USA Today
“Fox Christmas tree fire: A man faces multiple charges after he climbed a decorated Christmas tree outside the Fox News building in New York and set it on fire.” Read more at USA Today