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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Julia Carrie Wong and Daniel Strauss

White House says Republicans increased offer on Biden infrastructure deal by $50bn – as it happened

Joe Biden meets with Senator Shelley Moore Capito during an infrastructure meeting at the White House on 13 May.
Joe Biden meets with Senator Shelley Moore Capito during an infrastructure meeting at the White House on 13 May. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Evening Summary

That’s all from me today. Here’s a rundown of the day’s biggest stories:

  • The US added 559,000 jobs in May, assuaging fears of a hiring slowdown that arose when the April jobs numbers were worse than expected.
  • Facebook’s suspension of Donald Trump will last for at least two years, the company announced today. The social media company said that it will also no longer exempt all politicians from its content rules. Trump responded by hinting that he plans to run for president again.
  • Christopher Wray, the head of the FBI, compared recent ransomware attacks to the September 11 terrorist attacks. Wray said the FBI is investigating 100 different types of ransomware, many of which are linked to Russia.
  • Vladimir Putin accused the United States of trying to provoke a confrontation with Russia with its allegations of hacking.
  • Microsoft censored search results related to Tiananmen Square on the 32nd anniversary of China’s military crackdown on the pro-democracy movement.

Updated

At least 10 US states have siphoned millions of dollars from federal block grants, meant to provide aid to their neediest families, to pay for the operations of ideological anti-abortion clinics.

These overwhelmingly Republican-led states used money from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (Tanf), better known as welfare or direct cash aid, to fund the activities of anti-abortion clinics associated with the evangelical right. The clinics work to dissuade women from obtaining abortions.

In all cases, the states used these funds even as Covid-19 caused the worst economic upheaval in nearly a century, left one in four families without enough to eat, and resulted in mass layoffs that had a disproportionate effect on low-income and racial minority Americans.

“They’re not a replacement for Tanf, by any stretch of the imagination,” said Andrea Swartzendruber, an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Georgia College of Public Health, whose research has focused on how crisis pregnancy centers operate.

Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Texas have used federal Tanf funds to support anti-abortion clinics.

Read the full report here:

The sheriff’s department in Orange county, California, advised its officers earlier this year not to affiliate with far-right extremist groups and warned them against engaging with white supremacist websites, according to internal documents reviewed by the Guardian.

The Orange county sheriff’s department’s “extremism awareness” training document from February instructed officers not to share disinformation and to avoid associating with militias, QAnon, rightwing platforms like Gab and 4chan, as well as second-amendment groups or law enforcement “clubs” that could be “avenues for exploitation”.

The 66-page PowerPoint presentation for staff also included a lengthy section on “the extreme left”, warning officers about “Karl Marx’s influence”; the history of the Black Panther party; anti-fascist groups’ vandalism and “improvised weapons”; and animal rights and anti-war protesters.

The training is notable, experts said, because it suggests that sheriff’s officials were acknowledging that their own officers could be drawn to far-right groups and were concerned about the risks of them posting racist or extremist content.

Experts said it was unusual to see this kind of training from local police. But they also criticized the training for falsely presenting the far right and the “extreme left” as equivalent threats, when data shows that white supremacists perpetuated the large majority of recent domestic terror attacks.

Read the full report here:

Former congresswoman Katie Hill has been ordered to pay $220,000 in attorneys’ fees for the Daily Mail and two journalists she sued over their non-consensual publication of her nude photos.

Hill resigned from Congress in 2019 following the publication of the photos. Her lawsuit was thrown out on first amendment grounds.

Per the AP:

On Wednesday, Judge Yolanda Orozco of Los Angeles county superior court awarded about $105,000 to the parent company of the Mail. Hill had called for a boycott of the tabloid on Twitter and sought donations for her legal costs ...

The judge previously ordered Hill to pay about $84,000 to the attorneys of Jennifer Van Laar, managing editor of the conservative website Red State, and about $30,000 to lawyers representing the radio producer Joseph Messina. Hill initially accused Messina of being part of a conspiracy to distribute the pictures, but dropped her claim against him earlier this year.

Read the full report here:

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, took a surreal turn as a gameshow-host/bingo-caller on Friday, as he drew numbers for the first 15 winners of the state’s $50,000 prize for getting the coronavirus vaccine.

The drawing, which took place on a makeshift stage backed by a sparkly gold curtain and giant gameshow wheel, is part of a $116.5m program designed to incentivize more Californians to get vaccinated.

The state will give 10 people $1.5m prizes and 30 people $50,000 prizes. An additional 2 million people will receive $50 gift cards. Everyone who has received at least one shot is eligible for the drawings.

Two-thirds of eligible Californians have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the AP. The state is hoping to increase the vaccination rate to 75%.

Updated

Microsoft censors Tiananmen Square search results outside China

Microsoft blocked its search engine, Bing, from returning image and video results for the phrase “tank man” – a reference to the iconic image of a lone protestor facing down tanks during the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square – on Friday, the 32nd anniversary of the military crackdown.

References to the pro-democracy protest movement have long been censored in the People’s Republic of China, where the government maintains strict control over the internet, but the Bing censorship extended to users outside China’s “great firewall”, including the US. Results in Germany, Singapore, France, Switzerland and elsewhere were also blocked, according to Reuters and Vice News.

The censorship came amid the PRC’s crackdown on Hong Kong, where it banned the Tiananmen Square anniversary vigil for the second year in a row, and growing concern over the extent to which China can exert economic pressure to enforce its censoriousness overseas.

Just last week, American actor John Cena made a public apology for referring to Taiwan as “a country”, an offense to the PRC which insists that Taiwan is not an independent state.

US-based tech companies have long struggled to balance their desire to operate in China’s enormous market with the censorship demands of the government.

In 2016, the New York Times reported that Facebook was working on a secret tool that would allow a third party to censor the platform for Chinese users in exchange for the PRC allowing Facebook to operate within the country.

In 2018, employees at Google exposed an internal project to build a censored search engine that the company hoped would allow it to reenter China. Google had pulled out of China in 2010 over censorship and hacking.

Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian. A company spokesperson told Vice: “This is due to an accidental human error and we are actively working to resolve this.”

Updated

Hello everyone, this is Julia Carrie Wong in Oakland, California, picking up the live blog for the rest of the evening. Stay tuned for more news coming up...

Evening summary

That’s it for me. I’m passing the blogging platform over my colleague Julia Carrie Wong. To reiterate here’s what happened today:

  • The chairman of the Texas Republican Party, Allen West, has abruptly stepped down.
  • Despite calls from Republicans for Anthony Fauci to step down, Joe Biden says his confidence in Fauci is unchanged.
  • Vladimir Putin accused the United States of trying to gin up tensions with Russia over accusations of cyberhacking.
  • Facebook said Donald Trump’s suspension on the platform will continue for at least two years.
  • Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of NATO, will travel to Washington DC in June.

Updated

A little more on those infrastructure negotiations. The White House sent out its own account of today’s call between Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Joe Biden. The key line here is that the White House said Capito and Republicans increased their counteroffer by about $50 billion.

The Guardian’s ace voting rights reporter, Sam Levine, flags this editorial from the New York Times editorial board arguing that Democrats shouldn’t go so big on a voting rights bill.

The argument from the Times comes as Joe Biden has dispatched vice-president Kamala Harris to lead his administration’s push to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the For The People Act through a stubbornly gridlocked Congress.

Here’s more from the editorial:

Because there is little chance the bill will pass in its current form, Democrats face a clear choice. They can wage what might be a symbolic (and likely doomed) fight for all the changes they would like. Or they can confront the acute crisis at hand by crafting a more focused bill, perhaps more palatable for more senators, that aims squarely at ensuring that Americans can cast votes and that those votes are counted.

A new election law in Georgia highlights the shortcomings of H.R. 1. The Georgia law, passed in March, imposes a host of restrictions on voter registration and on voting, most of which would be reversed by the federal legislation. It also changes the rules of vote counting in ways that are not addressed by the federal legislation. It facilitates third-party challenges to the legitimacy of votes and arrogates to the state legislature, the General Assembly, the power to appoint most members of the state board of elections, who in turn have the power to replace county boards of elections. The legislature removed Georgia’s secretary of state from the State Election Board after the incumbent, Brad Raffensperger, refused to help Mr. Trump stake an illegitimate claim on the state’s electoral votes.

Earlier today Reuters reported that JPMorgan & Chase is restarting its political giving with one stipulation: it won’t give to Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

Here’s the Reuters report:

JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) will resume making political donations to U.S. lawmakers but will not give to Republican members of Congress who voted to overturn President Joe Biden’s election victory, according to an internal memo on Friday seen by Reuters.

The bank was among many corporations that paused political giving following the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riots when supporters of former president Donald Trump tried to stop Congress from certifying the election.

Just hours later, 147 Republicans, the vast majority of them in the House of Representatives, voted to overturn the Electoral College results which Trump falsely claimed were tainted by fraud.

Following a review, the country’s largest lender will this month resume giving through its Political Action Committee (PAC) but will continue its freeze on donations to a “handful” of the 147 lawmakers whom it had previously supported, the bank said.

The pause will last through the 2021-2022 election cycle, which includes November’s midterm elections, after which JPMorgan will review whether to resume contributions to the lawmakers concerned on an individual basis, it said.

“This was a unique and historic moment when we believe the country needed our elected officials to put aside strongly held differences and demonstrate unity,” the bank wrote of the Jan. 6 vote to certify Biden’s win.

JPMorgan noted that its PAC is an important tool for engaging in the political process in the United States. PACs are political committees organized for the purpose of raising cash to support or in some cases oppose election candidates.

Meanwhile, CNBC’s Brian Schwartz got his hands on a memo from CitiGroup memo announcing a slightly different approach.

We have a new readout of conversations between Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, the lead Republican negotiator on an infrastructure deal, and Joe Biden. The statement is very brief, even for these usually anodyne readouts.

Conspicuously, there’s no line saying that Capito is encouraged or any progress has been made (as there have been in other statements). On the other hand, the statement does say the two lawmakers will talk again on Monday so it’s not over yet.

NATO’s secretary general will meet with Joe Biden here in Washington in early June.

Updated

Donald Trump is fuming over Facebook’s announcement that he would be suspended from the social media platform for the next two years.

My colleague Julie Carrie Wong has written a report on Facebook’s announcement:

At the end of the suspension period, Facebook said, it would work with experts to assess the risk to public safety posed by reinstating Trump’s account. “We will evaluate external factors, including instances of violence, restrictions on peaceful assembly and other markers of civil unrest,” Clegg wrote. “If we determine that there is still a serious risk to public safety, we will extend the restriction for a set period of time and continue to re-evaluate until that risk has receded.”

Biden sees cyber attacks as rising national security concern - WH

The White House media briefing is underway and press secretary Jen Psaki has reiterated that Joe Biden intends to raise the problems of cyber attacks on US entities with Vladimir Putin when he meets with the Russian president during his visit to the UK and the European Union later this month.

Biden views increasingly frequent ransomware attacks to be a “rising national security concern,” she said.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki today.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki today. Photograph: Shawn Thew/EPA

Psaki just said: “We want to move towards a more stable and predictable relationship with Russia” and pledged that Biden is “never one to hold back on areas where Russian action is hurting the US”.

Recent cyber attacks, including ransomware hacks, on US government and commercial computer systems are not known to be run by the Russian government but are carried out by cyber criminal gangs that are based in Russia or Russian-controlled territories and are tolerated by the authorities in Moscow.

“We know that the ransomware threat is urgent,” Psaki said. Biden plans to confront Putin when he meets with him in Geneva on June 16. Biden is attending G7 talks in the UK followed by a NATO summit on the Continent.

A little earlier, Psaki said Biden will raise a number of issues with Putin, such as human rights and Russian aggression at the Ukraine border.

“He also will raise cyber activity, malign activity, problematic activity, harmful activity that we’ve seen take place. There is the Solar Winds hack but also the ransomware hacks that we’ve talked about.

“The actions of criminal groups within a country, there is a responsibility on the leaders of that country to take action and there’s no doubt that President Biden will be addressing that directly in that conversation.”

Psaki added that the increasing problem has prompted a “rapid review” of cyber security that is underway by the US government.

Updated

Donald Trump has responded to Facebook’s decision that his suspension from the social media platform will, initially, last for two years. And, in a parallel universe, the former US president mysteriously refers to some election somewhere with which this outlet is unfamiliar.

The election we’re familiar with is this one:

Updated

Interim summary

We’re waiting for a press briefing at the White House by Jen Psaki, but for the moment, let us bring you a summary of the main events so far today.

  • Facebook has announced that Donald Trump will continue to be suspended from the social media platform for two years and will only be reinstated “if conditions permit”.
  • Russian president Vladimir Putin issued a warning today: ransomware hacking allegations from the United States are a deliberate attempt to provoke a confrontation between the US and Russia.
  • In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, compared the recent spate of ransomware attacks to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.
  • Joe Biden is continuing talks with the Republican side today in an attempt to win bipartisan agreement on key legislative pieces stuck in Congress.

Trump suspension from Facebook to last two years

Facebook has announced that Donald Trump will continue to be suspended from the social media platform for two years and will only be reinstated “if conditions permit”.

Today’s decision comes just weeks after input from the Facebook oversight board – an independent advisory committee of academics, media figures and former politicians – who recommended in early May that Trump’s account not be reinstated.

However the oversight board punted the ultimate decision on Trump’s fate back to Facebook itself, giving the company six months to make the final call.

Trump has been suspended for two years.
Trump has been suspended for two years. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP

The former president has been suspended since January, following the deadly Capitol attack that saw a mob of Trump supporters storm Congress in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The company suspended Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts over posts in which he appeared to praise the actions of the rioters, saying that his actions posed too great a risk to remain on the platform.

Following the Capitol riot, Trump was suspended from several major tech platforms, including Twitter, YouTube and Snapchat. Twitter has since made its ban permanent.

We’ll bring you more reaction and developments but you can also follow the full story as it unfolds here.

Here’s a link to the decision as issued by Facebook itself. And here’s the column from last month from former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, who is a member of the oversight board that upheld FB’s ban, #ICYMI.

Updated

Putin: US hacking claims an attempt to provoke confrontation

Russian president Vladimir Putin issued a warning Friday: hacking allegations from the United States are a deliberate attempt to provoke a confrontation with the United States, per Reuters:

President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that hacking allegations which some have linked to Russia were an attempt to provoke a political dispute ahead of a summit with US President Joe Biden on June 16, Interfax news agency reported.

He also said that he expected his summit with Biden, which is set to take place in Geneva, to be held in a positive atmosphere, though he anticipated no breakthrough.

Tensions between the two countries have been simmering for some time. Recall that in April the Biden administration issued new sanctions against Russia over cyberespionage:

The Biden administration on Thursday announced sanctions against Russia for its involvement in a recent major cyber espionage operation against the US, foreign influence operations around US elections and other concerns.

As part of an executive order signed by President Biden, the administration through the Treasury Department will block US financial institutions from purchasing bonds from Russia’s Central Bank, National Wealth Fund or Ministry of Finance after June 14 and from lending funds to these institutions. The directive also leaves open the possibility for the administration to expand the sanctions on Russian sovereign debt.

Additionally, the Biden administration is expelling 10 personnel from the Russian diplomatic mission in Washington, some of whom US officials say are representatives of Russian intelligence services.

Updated

One of the more crucial policy points for Joe Biden during his trip to meet with G7 leaders will be over a global minimum tax CNN has more. CNN’s Julia Horowitz explained the dynamics:

The Biden administration’s ambitious plan to overhaul the global tax system is about to face a crucial test.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen heads to a meeting of Group of Seven finance ministers in London on Friday and Saturday looking to build support from many of the world’s top economies — an important step in the administration’s efforts to rewrite international tax rules and discourage American companies from booking earnings abroad. G7 finance ministers are expected to back the US plan during the summit, according to a Reuters report citing a US Treasury official. Washington’s proposal will likely get a full endorsement when G7 leaders including President Joe Biden gather in the United Kingdom next week, the news agency reported.

Last month, the US Treasury proposed a global minimum tax of at least 15%, aiming to tackle an unwieldy international system rife with loopholes. Establishing a minimum rate could help discourage companies from shifting their profits to countries where they would pay less tax.

More and more Republicans have been calling for Dr. Anthony Fauci’s resignation, citing a trove of emails recently released to the public. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri released one such statement this morning.

It’s unlikely Fauci will resign or that Joe Biden will ask for Fauci’s resignation though. He said today he still is “very confident” in the chief medical adviser to the president.

FBI chief likens recent ransomware attacks to 9/11 challenge

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, compared the recent spate of ransomware attacks to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.

Here’s his comments in the Journal:

FBI Director Christopher Wray said the agency is investigating about 100 different types of ransomware, many of which trace back to hackers in Russia, and compared the current spate of cyberattacks with the challenge posed by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“There are a lot of parallels, there’s a lot of importance, and a lot of focus by us on disruption and prevention,” Mr. Wray said in an interview on Thursday. “There’s a shared responsibility, not just across government agencies but across the private sector and even the average American.”

Mr. Wray’s comments—among his first publicly since two recent ransomware attacks gripped the U.S. meat and oil-and-gas industries—come as senior Biden administration officials have characterized ransomware as an urgent national-security threat and said they are looking at ways to disrupt the criminal ecosystem that supports the booming industry. Each of the 100 different malicious software variants are responsible for multiple ransomware attacks in the U.S., Mr. Wray said.

Cyberattacks are something the president plans to bring up when he meets with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Earlier this week Biden told reporters that his administration is looking “closely” at possibly retaliating against Russia over ransomware attacks.

“Responsible states do not harbor ransomware criminals,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said recently.

Updated

The Texas Tribune throws out the possibility that Allen West could be gearing up to challenge incumbent governor Greg Abbott, a Republican. Here’s the Tribune:

West has not ruled out challenging Gov. Greg Abbott, and he has also had tension recently with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

A former Florida congressman who moved to Texas several years ago, West took over the party last summer, unseating incumbent James Dickey. He quickly made a name for himself for his willingness to speak out against fellow Republicans, including Abbott, whose coronavirus response he criticized.

West used the latest legislative session to push hard for the party’s eight legislative priorities, and he has spent recent days lamenting the lack of progress that lawmakers have to show on them.

It’s important to note that Abbott is a popular politician in Texas and has recently touted Donald Trump’s endorsement. He also won his last gubernatorial election by 13 percentage points. Unseating Abbott would not be easy.

The jobs report numbers out today were overall positive. My colleague Dominic Rushe has more:

The US added 559,000 jobs in May as the coronavirus pandemic receded, shaking off fears of a substantial slowdown in hiring after April’s disappointing monthly report.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday that the unemployment rate had fallen to 5.8% from 6.1% in April, still significantly higher than the 3.8% unemployment rate recorded in February 2020 before Covid 19 hit the US but less than half its 14.8% peak in April last year.

The news comes one month after the labor department shocked economists by announcing the US had added just 266,000 new jobs in April – far below the 1m gain that had been expected.

April’s report led to sparring between the Biden administration and Republicans who claimed higher levels of unemployment benefits were keeping people from returning to work.

There are signs of a strong rebound across the US economy. Worker filings for unemployment benefits have dropped by 35% since late April and fell to a pandemic low of 385,000 last week, the labor department said Thursday.

Former congressman Allen West, the ex-Florida member of Congress-turned chairman of the Texas Republican Party, is stepping down from his post.

He had been leading the Texas Republican Party for less than a year, a short tenure for a chairman to abruptly end.

There seems to be some confusion about the timing of when his departure will go into effect. While the vice chair of the party tweeted that West is stepping down at 5pm. today the party’s communications director tweeted that West will keep his job until early July.

Here’s a press release announcing West’s departure.

Updated

Biden to hold further infrastructure talks with key Republican

Good morning readers, Daniel Strauss here. Let’s get started.

Joe Biden continues to find a deal with Republicans and conservative members of the Democratic party elusive on the primary legislative initiative his administration is focusing on.

Later today, Biden is meeting with Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia. It’s the latest meeting between the president and the lead Republican negotiator over a major infrastructure funding package.

Despite repeated counter offers by Capito and her team of Senate Republicans, the White House and Congress have not gotten close to a compromise. And that’s caused Biden and his top aides to warn that time is running out to come up with a bipartisan deal.

But there are persistent fissures within the Democratic Party as well. In an interview with CNN, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the most conservative Democrat in the Senate caucus and the most outspoken conservative Democrat on Capitol Hill, warned that he’s not ready to give up on a bipartisan compromise. Per CNN:

In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Manchin said bipartisan infrastructure talks should continue even as pressure builds for Democrats to move ahead without Republicans, and he dismissed calls to create a special carveout from the Senate’s filibuster rules to pass a voting overhaul bill along straight party lines, a key priority for Democrats that faces stiff opposition from GOP lawmakers.

Manchin heads into a pivotal time for Congress where a number of key policy issues are on a razor’s edge in the Senate, giving the swing Democrat enormous sway over the future of the Biden agenda. At the centerpiece of that agenda is the infrastructure package that Biden and Republicans are furiously negotiating in a last-ditch attempt to cut a compromise, though they remain far apart.

The West Virginia Democrat is not ready to give up on those talks with Republicans quite yet, saying: “These (things) take time.”

Manchin’s comments underscore one of the more persistent aspects of Congressional gridlock that’s continued through the Biden administration: a small, moderate sect of the Democratic Party opposes the drastic go-it-alone approach other wings of the party are pushing for on a range of issues – from filibuster reform in the Senate to an infrastructure deal.

Updated

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