Photo Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
“Facebook said it will ban former President Trump from its platform for two years, and it announced new policies for how it will handle speech from prominent politicians moving forward….
Between the lines: Facebook also said it would implement some of the Board's broader policy recommendations around handling speech from politicians.
Facebook on Friday said it will no longer give politicians special exemptions from its content rules, a huge departure from its years-long policy of treating politicians' speech differently from everyday users.
It will for the first time make public its ‘strikes system’ for policy violations so that users understand how close they are to being penalized by the platform.
It will also start disclosing when it uses a ‘newsworthiness’ exemption in its quarterly transparency reports.
The Verge first reported some of Facebook's new policies Thursday, a day before they were announced.
The Oversight Board said Friday that it's reviewing Facebook's response and will offer further comment once that review is complete.” Read more at Axios
“On Thursday, the same day that COVID-19 cases hit their lowest point since the beginning of the pandemic, the United States surpassed 600,000 coronavirus deaths, according to a tally from NBC News. The milestone is a grim reminder that Americans are still losing their lives to the virus as the nation makes impressive strides in vaccinating everyone who opts in that is over the age of 12.
Deaths have slowed tremendously since the vaccine rollout gained momentum late this winter. While it took the nation three months to go from 500,000 to 600,000 deaths, it took just one month to go from 400,000 to 500,000.” Read more at NYMag
“SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A federal judge Friday overturned California's three-decade-old ban on assault weapons, ruling that it violates the constitutional right to bear arms.
U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego ruled that the state's definition of illegal military-style rifles unlawfully deprives law-abiding Californians of weapons commonly allowed in most other states and by the U.S. Supreme Court.
‘Under no level of heightened scrutiny can the law survive,’ Benitez said. He issued a permanent injunction against enforcement of the law but stayed it for 30 days to give state Attorney General Rob Bonta time to appeal.
Gov. Gavin Newsom condemned the decision, calling it ‘a direct threat to public safety and the lives of innocent Californians, period.’
In his 94-page ruling, the judge spoke favorably of modern weapons, said they were overwhelmingly used for legal reasons.” Read more at USA Today
“President Biden on Friday rejected the latest GOP offer on infrastructure during a phone call with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), according to the White House, though the two agreed to speak again next week.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement that Capito raised Republicans’ current offer by $50 billion and that while Biden ‘expressed his gratitude for her effort and goodwill’ he also ‘indicated that the current offer did not meet his objectives to grow the economy, tackle the climate crisis, and create new jobs.’
Psaki said that Biden informed the GOP senator he would engage Republican and Democratic senators ‘in hopes of achieving a more substantial package.’
iden and Capito agreed to speak again Monday, according to both the White House and Capito’s office, which also put out a brief readout of the call Friday afternoon.
Biden, who has engaged with Capito and other Republicans for weeks in hopes of a bipartisan deal on infrastructure, is coming under growing pressure from progressives to abandon the discussions and move forward with his $2.25 trillion plan, using budget reconciliation so that Democrats can pass it without GOP votes.
Republicans had previously offered a $928 billion counterproposal that included about $260 billion in new spending. Biden, in an Oval Office meeting with Capito on Wednesday, proposed a plan that includes $1 trillion spending on infrastructure and floated the idea of a 15 percent minimum tax on corporations to pay for it.
Despite inching closer to one another, both sides remain in disagreement on the scope of the proposal and how to pay for it.” Read more at The Hill
“The Biden administration announced Friday that it will be reversing several policies put in place during the Trump administration related to endangered or threatened species.
The reviews by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service are aimed at five Endangered Species Act regulations finalized by the Trump administration, including critical habitat designations and rules defining the scope of federal actions on endangered species.
The Trump-era regulations opened the door to consideration of economic factors in decisions for species protections, weakened protections for critical habitat and left threatened species without guaranteed protections, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.
Speaking about the Biden administration's announcement, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service principal deputy director Martha Williams said Friday that ‘the Fish and Wildlife Service is committed to working with diverse federal, Tribal, state and industry partners to not only protect and recover America’s imperiled wildlife but to ensure cornerstone laws like the Endangered Species Act are helping us meet 21st century challenges.’” Read more at USA Today
“The White House appeared to subtly shift its public posture on supplemental federal benefits for millions of unemployed workers on Friday, following continued complaints from GOP lawmakers and business groups that these weekly payments are creating disincentives for some Americans to return to work.
In remarks from Delaware about Friday’s jobs report, President Biden said that it ‘makes sense’ for the $300 per week benefit to end in September, marking the first time the administration has explicitly endorsed their expiration.
Asked for further clarification by a reporter, White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese declined to say whether the administration believes the benefits are constraining hiring, but also said it is ‘appropriate’ for them to end in September. White House press secretary Jen Psaki also said Friday that Republican governors ‘have every right’ to curb the benefits, a step more than two dozen of them have taken in recent weeks.” Read more at Washington Post
“Former White House counsel Donald McGahn detailed for the House Judiciary Committee on Friday how former president Donald Trump attempted to stymie a federal probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election — bombshell revelations that might once have fueled additional impeachment charges, were they not already public and had it not taken more than two years for Democrats to secure his testimony.
Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who led the Democrats’ exhaustive campaign to compel McGahn’s testimony, emerged from the meeting after nearly six hours but refused to discuss the closed-door interview. He said only that the terms of McGahn’s appearance limited its focus to the findings of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, whose two-year Russia investigation overshadowed much of Trump’s presidency.
In a written statement Friday evening, Nadler offered that McGahn ‘testified at length to an extremely dangerous period in our nation’s history — in which President Trump, increasingly unhinged and fearful of his own liability, attempted to obstruct the Mueller investigation at every turn.’ McGahn, Nadler asserted, was ‘clearly distressed’ by Trump’s repeated refusal to heed his legal advice and ‘shed new light on several troubling events.’” Read more at Washington Post
“Newly released emails sent to and from Arizona state senators reveal that President Donald Trump and his lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani reached out personally to urge GOP officials there to move forward with a partisan recount of the 2020 election, despite a lack of evidence of widespread fraud or other issues.
Hundreds of pages of emails related to the GOP-ordered audit underway in Maricopa County were obtained by the nonprofit legal watchdog group American Oversight through a records request under the Freedom of Information Act. The group published them Friday, along with a scathing statement that decried the audit as a ‘sham partisan crusade.’” Read more at Washington Post
“WARSAW, Poland— The Belarusian opposition said Friday a dissident journalist was coerced to appear in a video on state TV in which he wept and praised the country’s authoritarian ruler, a broadcast sharply criticized by Western officials.
In the 90-minute video broadcast Thursday night, Raman Pratasevich repented for his opposition activities and said he respects Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko as ‘a man with balls of steel.’
He said he was tired of political activism and only wants to have a family and live a normal life. Then he broke into tears, covering his face with his hands. As he did so, marks left by handcuffs were clearly visible on his wrists.
Associates of the 26-year-old reacted with outrage, accusing authorities of forcing Pratasevich to confess and disavow the opposition.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the main opposition candidate in Belarus’ presidential election in August 2020, said she would urge the US and the EU to pressure Belarus to release him.” Read more at Boston Globe
“ST. PETERSBURG — Less than two weeks from a first face-to-face with President Biden in Geneva, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday criticized the U.S. prosecution of rioters who took part in the January attack on the Capitol, calling it an example of American ‘double standards.’
The comments are likely to add to the pessimism in both Moscow and Washington that the June 16 summit will lead to a breakthrough between the two countries. Relations remain deeply strained over issues such as cyberattacks that Western intelligence says originate in Russia.
Meanwhile, Putin on Friday claimed that the United States wants to ‘suppress’ Russia.
He suggested the agenda for the summit with Biden could cover issues of potential common ground, such as climate, the pandemic, disarmament and combating terrorism.” Read more at Washington Post
“BERLIN — Cardinal Reinhard Marx, a leading figure in Germany’s Roman Catholic Church and a member of Pope Francis’s advisory council, said Friday that he had offered his resignation in a personal gesture to take responsibility for sexual abuses by priests over the past decades.
Speaking to reporters outside the offices of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, the cardinal, who has not been accused of abuse, said he had been considering the decision for months. After spending the weeks leading up to Easter in prayer and reflection, he wrote a letter to the pope, asking to be relieved of his duties.” Read more at Boston Globe
“A passenger on a Delta Air Lines flight from LA to Nashville reportedly tried to breach the cockpit Friday, forcing the plane to divert to New Mexico, airport officials in Albuquerque said.
Albuquerque International Sunport had received reports from an air traffic control tower that a passenger on the plane had attempted to breach the cabin, according to airport spokeswoman Stephanie Kitts. She said the unidentified passenger was detained by police at the airport once it landed, and the investigation is being turned over the the FBI.” Read more at USA Today
“Nigeria's government is indefinitely suspending Twitter operations in the country after the social media giant temporarily froze the president's account.” Read more at Axios
A sales assistant arranges fruit in a supermarket in the Philippines. Photo: Veejay Villafranca/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Global food prices aren't leaving any wiggle room for bad harvests or demand spikes.
A UN index of food prices ‘has reached its highest since September 2011, climbing almost 5% last month,’ reports Bloomberg.
Another tracker of ‘prices from grains to sugar and coffee is up 70% in the past year.’
Why it matters: The real threat comes in countries where large portions of the population live close to the edge of hunger, Axios' Bryan Walsh wrote. Even in the U.S., rising prices hit the poorest Americans, who spend more than one-third of their income on food.’The pain could be particularly pronounced in some of the poorest import-dependent nations,’ Bloomberg reports.
The big picture: COVID-related labor disruptions probably aren't helping, but climate change-related shifts in precipitation and temperatures are expected to lead to more volatile food production in the coming years, Axios' Andrew Freedman tells me. That volatility can destabilize fragile countries. This already played out, studies show, with the Syrian Civil War, which began during a severe drought.A study found that rising temperatures in countries of origin increased the number of people seeking asylum in the EU, Axios Science editor Alison Snyder noted.” Read more at Axios