Labor and Working – Page 63 – The Tarbabys Blog

Has the planet warmed more than we thought? Ocean sponges might be telling us something

Associated Press – Climate

Has the planet warmed more than we thought? Ocean sponges might be telling us something

By Seth Borenstein – February 5, 2024

This undated image provided by Amos Winter shows a sponge from the Caribbean. This sponge, a simple animal that filters water, and a handful of other centuries-old sponges are causing some scientists to think human-caused climate change began sooner and has heated the world more than they thought. Many sponge species live long, and as they grow they record the conditions of the environment around them in their skeletons. (Courtesy of Amos Winter via AP)

This undated image provided by Amos Winter shows a sponge from the Caribbean that has been cut. This sponge, a simple animal that filters water, and a handful of other centuries-old sponges are causing some scientists to think human-caused climate change began sooner and has heated the world more than they thought. Many sponge species live long, and as they grow they record the conditions of the environment around them in their skeletons. (Courtesy of Amos Winter via AP)

FILE - A man walks past an abandoned canoe at the Sau reservoir amid a drought in Vilanova de Sau, north of Barcelona, Spain, Jan. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti File)

A man walks past an abandoned canoe at the Sau reservoir amid a drought in Vilanova de Sau, north of Barcelona, Spain, Jan. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti File)

FILE - A pedestrian uses an umbrella to shield against the sun while passing through Times Square as temperatures rise, July 27, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

A pedestrian uses an umbrella to shield against the sun while passing through Times Square as temperatures rise, July 27, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

FILE - A boy rests under a tree while watching the sun set as triple-digit heat indexes continue in the Midwest, Aug. 20, 2023, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

A boy rests under a tree while watching the sun set as triple-digit heat indexes continue in the Midwest, Aug. 20, 2023, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

Beachgoers flock to Ipanema beach to beat the extreme heat in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sept. 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado, File)

A handful of centuries-old sponges from deep in the Caribbean are causing some scientists to think human-caused climate change began sooner and has heated the world more than they thought.

They calculate that the world has already gone past the internationally approved target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, hitting 1.7 degrees (3.1 degrees Fahrenheit) as of 2020. They analyzed six of the long-lived sponges — simple animals that filter water — for growth records that document changes in water temperature, acidity and carbon dioxide levels in the air, according to a study in Monday’s journal Nature Climate Change.

Other scientists were skeptical of the study’s claim that the world has warmed that much more than thought. But if the sponge calculations are right, there are big repercussions, the study authors said.

“The big picture is that the global warming clock for emissions reductions to minimize the risk of dangerous climate changes is being brought forward by at least a decade,” study lead author Malcolm McCulloch, a marine geochemist at the University of Western Australia. “Basically, time’s running out.”

“We have a decade less than we thought,” McCulloch told The Associated Press. “It’s really a diary of — what’s the word? — impending disaster.”

In the past several years, scientists have noted more extreme and harmful weather — floods, storms, droughts and heat waves — than they had expected for the current level of warming. One explanation for that would be if there was more warming than scientists had initially calculated, said study co-author Amos Winter, a paleo oceanographer at Indiana State University. He said this study also supports the theory that climate change is accelerating, proposed last year by former NASA top scientist James Hansen.

FILE - Residents wade down a street through receding floodwaters, two days after Hurricane Patricia, in the village of Rebalse, Jalisco State, Mexico, Oct. 25, 2015. A handful of powerful tropical storms in the last decade and the prospect of more to come has some experts proposing a new category of hurricanes: Category 6, which would be for storms with wind speeds of 192 miles per hour or more. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)

Dial it up to Category 6? As warming stokes storms, some want a bigger hurricane category

FILE - Residents evacuate on a motorcycle amid wildfires into Vina del Mar, Chile, Feb. 3, 2024. Scientists say climate change creates conditions that make the drought and wildfires now hitting South America more likely. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix, File)

How climate change contributes to wildfires like Chile’s

An SUV sits buried by a mudslide, Monday, Feb. 5, 2024, in the Beverly Crest area of Los Angeles. A storm of historic proportions unleashed record levels of rain over parts of Los Angeles on Monday, endangering the city's large homeless population, sending mud and boulders down hillsides dotted with multimillion-dollar homes and knocking out power for more than a million people in California. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Historic storm sends debris through LA’s Hollywood Hills and leaves 1.1 million without power

“This is not good news for global climate change as it implies more warming,” said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, who was not part of the study.

Many sponge species live long, and as they grow they record the conditions of the environment around them in their skeletons. Scientists have long used sponges along with other proxies — tree rings, ice cores and coral — that naturally show the record of changes in the environment over centuries. Doing so helps fill in data from before the 20th century.

Sponges — unlike coral, tree rings and ice cores — get water flowing from all over through them so they can record a larger area of ecological change, Winter and McCulloch said.

They used measurements from a rare species of small and hard-shelled sponges to create a temperature record for the 1800s that differs greatly from the scientifically accepted versions used by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The study finds that the mid-1800s were about half a degree Celsius cooler than previously thought, with warming from heat-trapping gases kicking in about 80 years earlier than the measurements the IPCC uses. IPCC figures show warming kicking in just after 1900.

It makes sense that the warming started earlier than the IPCC says because by the mid-1800s the Industrial Revolution had begun and carbon dioxide was being spewed into the air, said McCulloch and Winter. Carbon dioxide and other gases from the burning of fossil fuels are what causes climate change, scientists have established.

Winter and McCulloch said these rusty orange long-lived sponges — one of them was more than 320 years old when it was collected — are special in a way that makes them an ideal measuring tool, better than what scientists used in the mid- to late 1800s.

“They are cathedrals of history, of human history, recording carbon dioxide in the the atmosphere, temperature of the water and pH of the water,” Winter said.

“They’re beautiful,” he said. “They’re not easy to find. You need a special team of divers to find them.”

That’s because they live 100 to 300 feet deep (33 meters to 98 meters) in the dark, Winter said.

The IPCC and most scientists use temperature data for the mid-1800s that came from ships whose crews would take temperature readings by lowering wooden buckets to dip up water. Some of those measurements could be skewed depending on how the collection was done — for example, if the water was collected near a warm steamship engine. But the sponges are more accurate because scientists can track regular tiny deposits of calcium and strontium on the critters’ skeleton. Warmer water would lead to more strontium compared to calcium, and and cooler water would lead to higher proportions of calcium compared to strontium, Winter said.

University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann, who wasn’t part of the study, has long disagreed with the IPCC’s baseline and thinks warming started earlier. But he was still skeptical of the study’s findings.

“In my view it begs credulity to claim that the instrumental record is wrong based on paleo-sponges from one region of the world. It honestly doesn’t make any sense to me,” Mann said.

In a news briefing, Winter and McCulloch repeatedly defended the use of sponges as an accurate proxy for world temperature changes. They said except for the 1800s, their temperature reconstruction based on sponges matches global records from instruments and other proxies like coral, ice cores and tree rings.

And even though these sponges are only in the Caribbean, McCulloch and Winter said they are a good representation for the rest of the world because they’re at a depth that doesn’t get too affected by warm and cold cycles of El Nino and La Nina, and the water matches well with global ocean temperatures, McCulloch and Winter said.

Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, who also wasn’t part of the sponge study, said even if the McCulloch team is right about a cooler baseline in the 1800s that shouldn’t really change the danger levels that scientists set in their reports. That’s because the danger levels “were not tied to the absolute value of preindustrial temperatures” but more about how much temperatures changed from that time, he said.

Although the study stopped at 2020 with 1.7 degrees Celsius (3.1 degrees Fahrenheit) in warming since pre-industrial times, a record hot 2023 pushes that up to 1.8 degrees (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit), McCulloch said.

“The rate of change is much faster than we thought,” McCulloch said. “We’re heading into very dangerous high-risk scenarios for the future. And the only way to stop this is to reduce emissions. Urgently. Most urgently.”

Teresa de Miguel contributed to this report from Mexico City.

Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment

Why Are Americans Wary While the Economy Is Healthy? Look at Nevada.

The New York Times

Why Are Americans Wary While the Economy Is Healthy? Look at Nevada.

Peter S. Goodman – February 5, 2024

Nevada is dependent on a single industry — casino resorts and the hospitality trade — for roughly one-fourth of its jobs. (Bridget Bennett/The New York Times)

LAS VEGAS — Toni Irizarry recognizes that the economy has improved. Compared with the first wave of the pandemic, when Las Vegas went dark, and joblessness soared to levels not seen since the Great Depression, these are days of relative normalcy.

Irizarry, 64, oversees a cafe at the Orleans Hotel and Casino, a property just off the Las Vegas Strip that caters mostly to locals. Guests have returned, filling the blackjack and roulette tables amid the cacophony of jingling slot machines — the sound of money.

She started in the hospitality industry busing tables when she was only 16. Her paychecks have allowed her to purchase a home, raise three children and buy each of them their first car. But as she contemplates the future, she cannot shake a sense of foreboding.

The outlook of people like Irizarry could be crucial in determining who occupies the White House. Nevada is one of six battleground states that are likely to decide the outcome of November’s presidential election. Its economic centerpiece, Las Vegas, was constructed on dreams of easy money. That proved a winning proposition for generations of working people, yielding middle-class paychecks for bartenders, restaurant servers, casino dealers and maids. Yet over the last two decades, a series of shocks have eroded confidence.

First, a speculative bonanza in real estate went spectacularly wrong, turning the city into the epicenter of a national foreclosure crisis. The Great Recession inflicted steep layoffs on the hospitality industry, demolishing the notion that gambling was immune to downturns. Then in 2020, the pandemic turned Las Vegas into a ghost town.

“There is that sense of the unknown,” Irizarry said. “People are scared. They think, ‘If this could happen, which we never ever had before, what else could happen?’”

That the fate of the 2024 presidential election could hinge on economic sentiments is widely taken as a given among political operatives.

In the battleground states, 57% of registered voters identified the economy as the most important issue in a poll conducted in October by The New York Times and Siena College. More than half of all respondents described economic conditions as “poor” — a key reason that President Joe Biden was trailing his presumptive Republican challenger, former President Donald Trump, in five of the six states.

Such indications of worry appear to conflict with data points that reflect an unambiguous strengthening of the U.S. economy. Incomes have risen, unemployment remains low and consumer confidence is improving. Fears of recession have yielded to exultation over economic growth that registered 3.3% over the last three months of 2023. And the Super Bowl, coming to Las Vegas for the first time Sunday, will bring a short-term boost of as much as $700 million to the local economy.

Still, a sense of insecurity has seeped into the crevices of everyday experience. This feeling is especially palpable in Nevada, a state dependent on a single industry — casino resorts and the hospitality trade — for roughly one-fourth of its jobs.

In Nevada, 59% of those polled described the economy as “poor,” the highest margin among the six states. Seventeen percent of registered Democrats asserted intentions to vote for Trump.

The state’s unemployment rate is down sharply, registering 5.4% in November — a fraction of the 31% logged in April 2020 — even as it remains higher than any other state. Wages have grown, especially for more than 40,000 leisure and hospitality workers represented by a pair of local unions. The rate of inflation on a range of consumer goods has slowed markedly.

But those figures leave out key sources of distress that are playing out across the country and even globally, and whose origins are not confined to the four-year windows conventionally used to assess presidential administrations.

While prices for many goods have stopped rising, they remain higher than before the pandemic, especially for critical things like gasoline, groceries and rent.

Higher interest rates — the result of the Federal Reserve’s credit tightening to choke off inflation — have increased credit card burdens for those carrying balances. They have multiplied mortgage payments for homeowners whose interest payments float with broader rates.

Of special concern in Nevada is recognition that potentially lucrative pursuits like advanced manufacturing could take years to produce significant numbers of jobs.

For decades, Nevada’s leaders have sought to diminish the state’s dependence on casinos and tourism. Las Vegas is rapidly filling with warehouses as the metro area emerges as a hub for the distribution of products. Ventures centered on the transition to green energy are generating high-paying jobs, especially near Reno.

Nonetheless, Nevada remains heavily reliant on the willingness of people around the world to fly in, pack into resorts and convention centers, and scatter their dollars across casinos, restaurants and entertainment venues. Which makes the enterprise subject to abrupt changes of fortune. Which makes people nervous.

“We’re still very vulnerable to another recession,” said Andrew Woods, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “If the U.S. economy decides to go off the deep end, we are not any more resilient than we were before.”

The Strains of High Prices

Much of the unhappiness in Nevada, as in the rest of the country, centers on high costs for everyday items along with housing.

Antonio Muñoz, a former police officer, owns 911 Taco Bar, a restaurant tucked inside a food court near the Strip. He laments how the price of chicken has increased to $3.50 a pound from $1.20 before the pandemic. A 5-gallon jug of cooking oil has risen to $60 from $25. He has been forced to increase wages to keep his five full-time workers.

Much of his business is dedicated to catering work. Large events have come back robustly, he said. The annual Consumer Electronics Show in early January produced a surge of orders for rib eye and shrimp tacos as technology companies hosted visitors in private suites. He was gearing up for the Super Bowl.

But smaller bookings — birthday parties in particular — diminished last year by one-fifth compared with 2022. He blames Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, conflict in the Middle East and acrimony over the U.S. election for making people nervous and tight with money.

He worries that worry itself could take down the economy.

“I feel like it’s teetering,” Muñoz said. “People seem to be waiting to see what happens.”

More Pay, Greater Security

One group is celebrating potent gains. After threatening to strike, tens of thousands of people represented by the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 and Bartenders Union Local 165 secured a contract settlement that includes raises of 32% over the next five years.

Union workers played a critical role in turning out voters for Biden four years ago, and their greater pay could motivate them to repeat that effort. And given the importance of their wages in fueling local spending, the new contracts are themselves a source of economic vibrancy.

Kimberly Dopler has worked as a cocktail server at Wynn’s Las Vegas for nearly 20 years. The job is physically exhausting and fraught with the pitfalls of tending to customers who are “drinking and gambling, and not in their right state of mind,” she said. Yet she navigates those risks for the resulting security.

“I get to go home with money in my pocket every day, and I can take my shoes off and relax,” she said.

The union contract has enhanced her sense that the economy is strong. “I see a lot of hiring happening at my job, hiring events throughout town,” Dopler said. “I feel like people have a good opportunity in this town to find work.”

Raymond Lujan, 61, a union steward and server at Edge Steakhouse, a restaurant inside the Westgate Las Vegas, was born and raised in the city. His mother worked as a cocktail server at the Stardust. His brother is a bellman at the Bellagio.

Before the pandemic, Lujan had never been out of work. When the restaurant where he worked closed, he drew on savings, but many of his co-workers live check to check.

He remains confident in a future centered on the hospitality industry.

“This is Vegas,” he said. “It’s still the destination capital of the world.”

‘It’s Still Hard’

Yet for working people who lack the protection of a union, Las Vegas remains something else: an economy subject to violent fluctuations.

Before the pandemic, Carlos Arias, 51, was earning more than $2,000 a week as an Uber driver. When the casinos shut down, he found work as a cook — first at Denny’s for $13.75 an hour, then at IHOP for 50 cents more.

Suddenly earning only one-fourth of his previous income, Arias and his partner, a manger at a McDonald’s, struggled to pay the $1,100 monthly rent on their one-bedroom apartment. They tapped credit cards to keep gas in their car. They cut grocery purchases to bare essentials like rice, beans and instant ramen.

They fell behind on the payments for their Cadillac van. One morning, it was gone, seized in repossession.

He found a new job as a cook at a Mexican restaurant for an extra $1 an hour, and then a second one at an eatery inside the Ellis Island casino. For a year, he worked both positions, rising at 4 a.m. for the early shift, and sometimes not getting home until after midnight.

He felt dizzy, his vision blurring. He could not tell if he was ill or merely exhausted, and he had no health insurance. When he nearly collapsed, he went to the hospital and was diagnosed with diabetes. The medicine the doctor prescribed cost more than $50 for a 30-day course — more than he could manage.

Early last year, he took a job at a restaurant in the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, for $19 an hour.

On paper, Arias presents as an example of an improving economy. He is earning more than during the worst of the pandemic. He has health insurance, and is taking medication for his diabetes.

But he is earning less than half what he did before the unraveling began.

“It’s still hard,” he said. “You go to the store and buy $100 worth of groceries and there’s nothing in the car.”

New US Senate bill to help Ukraine: Biden calls for it to be passed as soon as possible

Ukrayinska Pravda

New US Senate bill to help Ukraine: Biden calls for it to be passed as soon as possible

Ukrainska Pravda – February 4, 2024

US President Joe Biden has urged senators to vote for a bipartisan national security agreement presented by the Senate, which provides US$60 billion in aid to Ukraine, as soon as possible.

Source: US Senate website; Biden’s statement

Details: The US$118 billion package comprises a policy of protecting US borders and providing assistance to Ukraine and Israel.

In particular, US$60.1 billion is earmarked to help Ukraine and more than US$14 billion to support Israel.

The bill also includes funding for humanitarian aid for operations in the Red Sea and Taiwan.

Biden said he “strongly” supports the bipartisan agreement unveiled on Sunday (4 February).

Quote from Biden: “Now we’ve reached an agreement on a bipartisan national security deal that includes the toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades. I strongly support it…

The bipartisan national security agreement would also address two other important priorities. It allows the United States to continue our vital work, together with partners all around the world, to stand up for Ukraine’s freedom and support its ability to defend itself against Russia’s aggression.

As I have said before, if we don’t stop Putin’s appetite for power and control in Ukraine, he won’t limit himself to just Ukraine and the costs for America will rise.

This agreement also provides Israel what they need to protect their people and defend itself against Hamas terrorists. And it will provide life-saving humanitarian assistance for the Palestinian people…

I urge Congress to come together and swiftly pass this bipartisan agreement. Get it to my desk so I can sign it into law immediately.”

Previously: Mike Johnson, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, said on Saturday, 3 February, that the following week, the House will vote on a bill that will ensure Israel obtains US$17.6 billion of aid faster, without, however, making it conditional on also passing aid for Ukraine.

The US President Joe Biden’s administration has stressed that it does not support the bill to help Israel without aid to Ukraine, calling it a “cynical political manoeuvre” by Republicans.

Background:

During a press conference on 30 January, Mike Johnson denied that his position on the border security agreement with Mexico, which Republicans have linked to additional funding for Ukraine, was intended to help Donald Trump win the upcoming US presidential election.
Johnson previously said in a letter that the Senate bill on the border and aid to Ukraine, as well as other countries, will not be approved in the House of Representatives if reports of its terms are true.
Republican Representatives are demanding that the White House take decisive action to curb illegal immigration at the US-Mexico border.
Disagreement over what measures should be taken has meant that a supplemental funding package that includes US$61 billion for Ukraine has been stalled in Congress.
In early January, the White House said that the US has no money for further military aid for Ukraine until a new package by the US Congress is adopted.

US Senate unveils $118 billion bill on border security, aid for Ukraine, Israel

Reuters

US Senate unveils $118 billion bill on border security, aid for Ukraine, Israel

Richard Cowan and Costas Pitas – February 4, 2024

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Senate on Sunday unveiled a $118 billion bipartisan border security bill that would also provide aid to Ukraine and Israel, but it promptly slammed into opposition from the House of Representatives.

“I urge Congress to come together and swiftly pass this bipartisan agreement,” President Joe Biden said, also praising the migration measures in the bill, which took months to negotiate.

However, House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson declared it “dead on arrival” if it reaches his chamber.

“This bill is even worse than we expected, and won’t come close to ending the border catastrophe the president has created,” he said in a statement on X, formerly called Twitter.

The Democratic and Republican Senate backers of the wide-ranging U.S. border security and foreign military aid bill pledged to push ahead, despite opposition by Donald Trump as well.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he would take steps to hold an initial vote on the bill on Wednesday.

If the bill were to become law, it would mark the most significant changes in U.S. immigration and border security in decades.

Some progressive Democrats are angry the measure does nothing to provide a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented people who have lived in the U.S. for many years, including “Dreamer” immigrants who were brought in as children.

Independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema told reporters the legislation would secure the U.S. southern border, including by requiring the Department of Homeland Security to temporarily “shut down” the frontier to most migrants if there are an average of more than 5,000 crossing attempts per day over seven days.

Republican Senator James Lankford, one of the negotiators on the bill, said that the border likely would remain closed for at least three weeks as the numbers of arriving immigrants drop significantly.

In addition to $20.23 billion for border security, the bill included $60.06 billion to support Ukraine in its war with Russia, $14.1 billion in security assistance for Israel, $2.44 billion to U.S. Central Command and the conflict in the Red Sea, and $4.83 billion to support U.S. partners in the Indo-Pacific facing aggression from China, according to figures from Senator Patty Murray, who chairs the Senate’s Appropriation Committee.

An additional $10 billion would provide humanitarian assistance for civilians in conflict zones including in Ukraine, Gaza and the West Bank, although the bill includes a provision barring its funds from going to the U.N. agency for Palestinians, UNRWA. The Biden administration and other nations have paused funding to the agency over allegations that some of its staff were involved in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks in southern Israel.

“The priorities in this bill are too important to ignore and too vital to allow politics to get in the way,” Schumer said in a statement. “The United States and our allies are facing multiple, complex and, in places, coordinated challenges from adversaries who seek to disrupt democracy and expand authoritarian influence around the globe.”

The key overseas security provisions of the bill largely match what Biden requested from Congress in October, when he asked for additional funds for aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

That request has been stalled by House Republicans’ insistence that it be tied to a shift in immigration policy.

With House Republicans divided over how to address the huge number of immigrant arrivals and whether to provide Ukraine with any more aid, Johnson on Saturday said he plans to hold a vote this week on a new bill providing $17.6 billion in military assistance to Israel. That measure has no new funding for Ukraine or for U.S. border security.

Meantime, Lankford said he would engage with Johnson in hopes of more House support for the Senate bill.

Schumer said the agreement would provide more frontline personnel and asylum officers and provide “faster and fair” immigration decisions. Lankford told reporters it would fund as many as 50,000 immigrant detention beds, up from the current 34,000.

The bill’s proponents said it would end the controversial “catch-and-release” practice that critics said contribute to high numbers of illegal immigrants arriving at the southern border. It would do so by speeding up the adjudication of asylum cases instead of quickly releasing apprehended migrants and allowing them to stay in the United States for years while they await hearings.

Mitch McConnell, the top Senate Republican, has supported the negotiations, saying Republicans would not get a better deal under a Republican White House.

“The Senate must carefully consider the opportunity in front of us and prepare to act,” McConnell said in a statement.

Schumer said in a news conference that he had never worked so closely with long-term Senate colleague McConnell as on the bill.

“At many occasions we thought the negotiations had fallen apart,” Schumer said.

RIGHT-WING OPPOSITION

Nonetheless, right-wing Republicans are skeptical of the new Senate bill.

“Here’s what the people pushing this ‘deal’ aren’t telling you: It accepts 5,000 illegal immigrants a day and gives automatic work permits to asylum recipients — a magnet for more illegal immigration,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said on X.

Other congressional Republicans have said Biden can enact many of the changes they want to immigration policy through executive action, though they had previously called for legislative action.

Immigration is the second largest concern for Americans, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Wednesday, and is a top issue for Republicans specifically. The U.S. Border Patrol arrested about 2 million migrants at the border in fiscal year 2023.

Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to challenge Biden in the November election, has campaigned heavily on opposition to immigration. House Republicans are also pushing ahead with an effort to impeach Biden’s top border official, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan and Costas Pitas; Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Makini Brice; Writing by Simon Lewis; Editing by Scott Malone, Rosalba O’Brien, Lisa Shumaker and Himani Sarkar and Miral Fahmy)

Biden challenges House GOP to solve border crisis — or ‘keep playing politics’

Politico

Biden challenges House GOP to solve border crisis — or ‘keep playing politics’

Myah Ward and Jennifer Haberkorn – February 4, 2024

BLUE BELL, PENNSYLVANIA – JANUARY 5: U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event at Montgomery County Community College January 5, 2024 in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. In his first campaign event of the 2024 election season, Biden stated that democracy and fundamental freedoms are under threat if former U.S. President Donald Trump returns to the White House. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)More

President Joe Biden urged Congress to pass the bipartisan border deal unveiled Sunday night by Senate negotiators, ramping up the pressure on House Republicans who have repeatedly cast doubt on the bipartisan effort.

“Working with my administration, the United States Senate has done the hard work it takes to reach a bipartisan agreement. Now, House Republicans have to decide. Do they want to solve the problem? Or do they want to keep playing politics with the border?” Biden said in a lengthy statement.

The president’s response came not long after senators released the long-awaited $118 billion deal that would unleash stricter border and immigration policies, while sending billions of dollars to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan as well as the southern border. The bill’s introduction kicks off a sprint as the White House and negotiators work to sell the deal to Republicans and progressives before it heads for a procedural vote in the Senate scheduled for Wednesday.

The president said the agreement released Sunday includes some of the “toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades,” and ones that he “strongly” supports. Biden asked Congress to pass the deal quickly — placing the fate of the deal in their hands. And he once again dared Republicans to reject the deal as it faces a make-or-break moment amid GOP fissures in both chambers.

“I’ve made my decision. I’m ready to solve the problem. I’m ready to secure the border. And so are the American people,” the president said. “I know we have our divisions at home but we cannot let partisan politics get in the way of our responsibilities as a great nation. I refuse to let that happen.”

The border has long been a challenging issue for the Biden White House. The president has seen record crossings since taking office in 2021, further straining a southern border already weighed down by irregular migration and an overwhelmed asylum processing system. Border Patrol agents reported a record 302,034 encounters with migrants over the southern border in December, according to figures released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

In addition, the fast-approaching 2024 election has piled on the pressure for Biden to take action on the border — to address the crisis but to also win the messaging battle on an issue Republicans frequently used to rally their base. Former President Donald Trump, Biden’s likely 2024 opponent, is sure to continue his efforts to combust a deal, adding another layer to efforts to sell the border legislation.

The legislation includes an authority that would effectively “close” the border if the number of migrant crossings reach a certain number over a certain period of time, although a limited number of people would still be allowed to apply for asylum at ports of entry.

Biden suggested publicly late last month that he’d be open to such an authority, vowing to “shut down the border” as soon as the bill was passed.

“I urge Congress to come together and swiftly pass this bipartisan agreement,” Biden said in Sunday night’s statement. “Get it to my desk so I can sign it into law immediately.”

Given the White House’s work with Senate Republicans on the legislation, Biden administration officials have focused their attention on Speaker Mike Johnson, casting him and House Republicans as the barrier to securing the border.

During the Senate talks, the Biden administration has tried to flip the long-held view — one borne out in public polling — that Republicans are better trusted on the issues of immigration and protecting the border. The administration argues the House GOP has blocked all of the president’s efforts to secure the border.

“Despite arguing for 6 straight years that presidents need new legal authority to secure the border, and despite claiming to agree with President Biden on the need for hiring more Border Patrol agents and deploying new fentanyl detection equipment, Speaker Johnson is now the chief impediment to all 3,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates wrote in a strategy memo released last week.

Johnson’s camp has blamed Biden for reversing Trump-era border regulations that led to an uptick in migrants crossing the border.

“In a desperate attempt to shift blame for a crisis their policies have induced, they have argued it’s a funding problem,” wrote Johnson spokesperson Raj Shah in a memo last month. “Clearly, they have no facts to back up their claim.”

The bill raises “credible fear” standards for migrants; if they are able to pass the more challenging and faster screening, the migrants would be released after full adjudication of their cases and be allowed to work immediately. The legislation would also provide 50,000 visas a year — a mix of family and employment visas, and include the Fend Off Fentanyl Act and the Afghan Adjustment Act.

A major sticking point in talks was the president’s humanitarian parole authority, which the administration uses to accept up to 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela each month. The legislation would not affect this program, which has been central to the administration’s border management strategy, including an agreement with Mexico to also accept 30,000 migrants a month from those four countries.

But the administration would no longer be able to offer parole grants to incentivize migrants to use the online app CBP One, which would curtail the president’s authority to allow more undocumented immigrants into the country.

“This agreement on border security and immigration does not include everything we have fought for over the past three years — and we will continue to fight for these priorities — but it shows: we can make the border more secure while preserving legal immigration, consistent with our values as a nation,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement.

Trump suggests he would consider a tariff upward of 60% on all Chinese imports if reelected

CNN

Trump suggests he would consider a tariff upward of 60% on all Chinese imports if reelected

Kate Sullivan, CNN – February 4, 2024

Former President Donald Trump said Sunday he would consider imposing a tariff upward of 60% on all Chinese imports if he regains the presidency. His remarks come at a time of high economic and other tensions between the US and China.

“No, I would say maybe it’s going to be more than that,” Trump said when asked by Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” whether he would consider imposing a 60% tariff, as The Washington Post has reported.

As president, Trump slapped tariffs of 25% on $50 billion of Chinese goods in June 2018. Beijing countered with its own tariffs, and the spiral continued until the two countries arrived at an agreement in 2020. The Biden administration has largely kept the Trump-era tariffs in place.

The former president also said he thought China would try to interfere in the 2024 presidential election.

“I think they will, and they won’t be interfering on my behalf. We should go same-day voting, paper ballots, voter ID and no mail-in ballots,” Trump said.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping told President Joe Biden that China would not interfere in the 2024 US presidential election when the two men met in November, CNN has reported. But FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Wednesday that Chinese hackers are preparing to “wreak havoc and cause real-world harm” to the US.

Trump also praised Xi, whom he described as “a very good friend of mine during my term,” and said, “I want China to do great, I do.”

Trump would not say whether he would intervene if China tried taking over Taiwan, arguing that doing so would “jeopardize my negotiating ability with China.”

China’s ruling Communist Party views Taiwan as part of its territory, despite never having controlled it, and leader Xi has not ruled out the use of military force to “reunify” the island with the mainland.

The US, meanwhile, is obligated under the Taiwan Relations Act to provide Taiwan with the military means to defend itself, something Beijing regards as interference in its internal affairs.

CNN’s Jack Forrest and Brad Lendon contributed to this report.

Trump says he’s looking for new lawyers on Truth Social amid report he’s not “happy” after $83M loss

Salon

Trump says he’s looking for new lawyers on Truth Social amid report he’s not “happy” after $83M loss

Tatyana Tandanpolie – January 31, 2024

Donald Trimp; Alina Habba Brendan McDermid-Pool/Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced on social media he’s searching for a new law firm to represent him in an appeal against last week’s jury verdict awarding $83.3 million to writer E. Jean Carroll.

He left a message to prospective hires in the Truth Social post, writing: “Any lawyer who takes a TRUMP CASE is either ‘CRAZY,’ or a TRUE AMERICAN PATRIOT.” The former president’s announcement follows his vow to appeal the jury’s decision last Friday, predicated by the presiding federal judge’s September ruling finding him liable for defamation.

“I am in the process, along with my team, of interviewing various law firms to represent me in an Appeal of one of the most ridiculous and unfair Witch Hunts our Country has ever seen – The defamation Sham presided over by a Clinton appointed, highly partisan, Trump Hating Judge, Lewis Kaplan, who was, together with certain other Radical Left Democrat Judges, one of the most partisan and out of control activists that I have ever appeared before,” Trump’s Tuesday night post began. He further bemoaned the rules the federal judge implemented barring him from denying he sexually abused and defamed Carroll, which a jury last spring found him liable for. “This entire HOAX is a disgrace to our American System of Justice,” Trump added.

Representing Trump is a tough task, according to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.

“He’s almost never happy with his legal team,” she said during a Tuesday CNN appearance.

Trial attorney Joe Tacopina withdrew from Trump’s counsel ahead of the trial, and lawyer Alina Habba assumed the role, often drawing sharp rebuke from Kaplan during the proceedings.

“I don’t know how winnable this case was for anybody, Alina Habba or not,” Haberman added. “But, you know, Trump has certain things he wants from his lawyers and I think you see that.

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Wednesday joked that Trump had “83.3 million reasons” to ditch Habba, calling her “one of the most ill-prepared attorneys for a case of this magnitude, maybe in the history of the planet.”

“He’s had bad lawyers but at least they knew their way around the courtroom,” he added, “and by the way, you either know your way around the courtroom or you don’t, and speaking as a lawyer that didn’t know his way around the courtroom, I can tell you, it can be a very frightening thing and you would not want to be in this type of case.

Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce and a MAGA Meltdown

The New York Times

Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce and a MAGA Meltdown

The fulminations surrounding the world’s biggest pop icon — and girlfriend of Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce — reached the stratosphere after Kansas City made it to the Super Bowl.

By Jonathan Weisman – January 31, 2024

Travis Kelce, left, wearing football pads with an AFC Champion T-shirt and hat that says Super Bowl, kisses Taylor Swift on the field after a game. — Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce after the Chiefs’ victory on Sunday. They are the focus of right-wing vitriol and conspiracy theories. Credit…Julio Cortez/Associated Press

For football fans eager to see a new team in the Super Bowl, the conference championship games on Sunday that sent the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers back to the main event of American sports culture were sorely disappointing.

But one thing is new: Taylor Swift. And she is driving the movement behind Donald Trump bonkers.

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The fulminations surrounding the world’s biggest pop icon — and girlfriend of Travis Kelce, the Chiefs’ star tight end — reached the stratosphere after Kansas City made it to the Super Bowl for the fourth time in five years, and the first time since Ms. Swift joined the team’s entourage.

The conspiracy theories coming out of the Make America Great Again contingent were already legion: that Ms. Swift is a secret agent of the Pentagon; that she is bolstering her fan base in preparation for her endorsement of President Biden’s re-election; or that she and Mr. Kelce are a contrived couple, assembled to boost the N.F.L. or Covid vaccines or Democrats or whatever.

“I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month,” Vivek Ramaswamy, the conspiratorial presidential candidate, turned Trump surrogate, pondered on social media on Monday. “And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall.”

The pro-Trump broadcaster Mike Crispi led off on Sunday by claiming that the National Football League is “rigged” in order to spread “Democrat propaganda”: “Calling it now: KC wins, goes to Super Bowl, Swift comes out at the halftime show and ‘endorses’ Joe Biden with Kelce at midfield.”

Other detractors of Ms. Swift among Mr. Trump’s biggest fans include one of his lawyers, Alina Habba, one of his biggest conspiracy theorists, Jack Posobiec, and other MAGA luminaries like Laura Loomer and Charlie Kirk, who leads a pro-Trump youth organization, Turning Point USA.

The right has been fuming about Ms. Swift since September, when she urged her fans on Instagram to register to vote, and the online outfit Vote.org reported a surge of 35,000 registrations in response. Ms. Swift had embarked on a world tour that helped make her a billionaire. Gavin Newsom, the California governor, praised her as “profoundly powerful.” And then Time magazine made her Person of the Year in December, kicking off another round of MAGA indignation.

The love story that linked her world with the N.F.L. has proved incendiary. Mr. Kelce’s advertisements promoting Pfizer’s Covid vaccine and Bud Light — already a target of outrage from the right over a social media promotion with a transgender influencer, Dylan Mulvaney — added fuel to that raging fire.

Taylor Swift onstage, middle, while she is projected onto two screens at left and right, in the middle of a stadium. — Ms. Swift embarked on a worldwide stadium tour last year, which included a May stop at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Credit…Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times

The N.F.L.’s fan base is huge and diverse, but it includes a profoundly conservative element that cheered on the star quarterback Aaron Rodgers’s one-man crusade against Covid vaccines and jeered Black players who knelt during the national anthem. The league has long battled charges of misogyny, from the front offices of the Washington Commanders to multiple cases of sexual and domestic assault and abuse.

The Swift-Kelce story line, for some, has delivered a bruising hit to traditional gender norms, with a rich, powerful woman elevating a successful football player to a new level of fame.

Some of the Monday morning quarterbacking has been downright silly, including speculation that Ms. Swift is after Mr. Kelce for his money. (Her net worth exceeds $1 billion, a different universe than the athlete’s merely wealthy status.)

Other accusations appear to be driven by fear and grounded in some truth, or at least in her command of her 279 million Instagram followers: that she has enormous influence, and has supported Democrats in the past. For much of her extensive music career, Ms. Swift avoided politics, but in 2018, she endorsed two Democrats in Tennessee, where she owns two homes: former Gov. Phil Bredesen, who was running for the Senate against then-Representative Marsha Blackburn, and Jim Cooper, a House member who has since retired.

“I always have and always will cast my vote based on which candidate will protect and fight for the human rights I believe we all deserve in this country,” she wrote on social media. “I believe in the fight for L.G.B.T.Q. rights, and that any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender is WRONG.”

She added, “I believe that the systemic racism we still see in this country towards people of color is terrifying, sickening and prevalent.”

The alarm bells were loud enough to pull Mr. Trump into loudly backing Ms. Blackburn: “I’m sure Taylor Swift doesn’t know anything about her,” he said at the time, knowing all too well how influential Ms. Swift could be. “Let’s say that I like Taylor’s music about 25 percent less now, OK?”

He probably liked her even less in 2020 when she criticized his pandemic response, and then endorsed Mr. Biden.

While her early pop music may have mainly attracted teens and preteens, those fans have reached voting age, and her music has grown more sophisticated with the albums “Evermore” and “Folklore” to match her millennial roots and her fans’ taste.

Taylor Swift fans taking selfies outside a merchandise booth before a concert. — In September, Ms. Swift urged her fans on Instagram to register to vote, yielding a surge of 35,000 registrations on the website Vote.org. Credit…Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times

Much of the Swift paranoia has lurked on the MAGA fringes, with people like Ms. Loomer, the conspiracy theorist from Florida who declared in December that “2024 will be MAGA vs Swifties” and Mr. Kirk, who declared in November that Ms. Swift would “come out for the presidential election” after Democrats had another strong showing in an election that demonstrated the issue of abortion motivated voters to the polls.

“All the Swifties want is swift abortion,” he said.

Then Swift-bashing reached Fox News in mid-January. The host Jesse Watters suggested the superstar was a Defense Department asset engaging in psychological warfare. He tied Ms. Swift’s political voice with her boyfriend’s Pfizer endorsement to the remarkable success of her Eras tour, which bolstered local economies and landed her on the cover of Time.

“Have you ever wondered why or how she blew up like this?” Mr. Watters wondered on air. “Well, around four years ago, the Pentagon psychological operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset during a NATO meeting.”

Andrea Hailey, the chief executive of Vote.org, made the most of the Fox News criticism, saying the organization’s partnership with Ms. Swift “is helping all Americans make their voices heard at the ballot box,” adding that the star is “not a psy-op or a Pentagon asset.”

But her appearance on the field with Mr. Kelce in Baltimore after the Chiefs beat the Ravens on Sunday, complete with a kiss and a hug, appears to have sent conservatives into a fit of apoplexy that may only grow in the run-up to Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas Feb. 11.

The feelings are so strong that Fox News ran a segment on Sunday lamenting that Ms. Swift’s private “jet belches tons of CO2 emissions,” showing a sudden awareness of the leading cause of global warming.

Mr. Ramaswamy said his Super Bowl conjecture was dead serious.

“What your kind of people call ‘conspiracy theories,’ I simply call an amalgam of collective incentives hiding in plain sight,” he said.

The White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stoked speculation still more by invoking the Hatch Act, which prohibits political actions by civil servants, in declining to answer whether Mr. Biden would be appearing with Ms. Swift.

“I’m just going to leave it there,” she said Monday. “I’m not going to get into the president’s schedule at all from here, as it relates to the 2024 elections.”

The Trump campaign, which had initially planned to ignore the frenzy, dispatched Karoline Leavitt, a campaign spokeswoman, to dismiss concerns about a potential Biden endorsement.

“I don’t think this endorsement will save him from the calamity” of his record, she said.

Audio produced by Parin Behrooz.

Jonathan Weisman is a politics writer, covering campaigns with an emphasis on economic and labor policy. He is based in Chicago.

Why Republicans are trying to impeach Biden’s top immigration official

The Washington Post

By Amber Phillips – January 31, 2024

Instead of passing a law with President Biden to crack down on illegal crossings of the U.S.-Mexico border, Republicans in Congress are moving quickly to impeach the Cabinet official who oversees it.

This is a highly political act that won’t help the border crisis, and even some conservative legal scholars and Republican senators are skeptical of doing this. Here’s what’s going on and how it’s tied to the broader immigration battle that is dominating U.S. politics right now.

Why so many migrants are coming: More than 6 million migrants have come to the border under the Biden administration; 2.3 million have been released into the country. There’s a debate about whether it’s in reaction to economic forces outside of politicians’ control, or whether migrants are reacting to having a more lenient president in office.

As the U.S. economy recovers more quickly than most nations after the pandemic, there’s a huge labor demand in the United States right now.

But fairly or not, migrants across the globe have also perceived Biden as more willing to let people in than President Donald Trump was.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in November on Capitol Hill. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Congress has the power to impeach presidents, judges and Cabinet officials. But Cabinet officials are rarely impeached because they are often just implementing the president’s policies. “I think it’s the first time an impeachment drive over policy disagreements has gotten this far,” said Josh Chafetz, a constitutional law expert at Georgetown University.

Having committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” is the bar for impeachment of a federal official. By the assessment of even top conservative legal experts, Republicans have not met that threshold. “Bad policy is not a high crime,” writes conservative legal scholar Jonathan Turley.

Politics is playing a huge role: It’s good politics right now for any politician to sound tough about the border. Really tough. Trump is on his way to winning the Republican nomination by demonizing immigrants, saying they are “poisoning the blood of our country.”Biden campaigned four years ago on a more humane approach to the border. But as border crossings surge to record highs, he says the government should be able to block migrants from entering if the border becomes “overwhelmed” — which is what a bipartisan bill being negotiated in the Senate right now would do.“If given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law,” Biden said last week.

Why Biden says the border is a problem: Biden and Republicans say the huge rush of migrants has opened up the border to dangerous people sneaking through — although Trump takes much more liberty by categorizing all border crossers as dangerous. Most are people escaping danger and economic hardship back home. And the vast majority of convicted fentanyl traffickers have been U.S. citizens, said Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration analyst with the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute.

The real-world impact of impeaching Mayorkas is minimal: House Republicans will vote next week to impeach him. But he’ll still get to keep his job. The Democratic-controlled Senate is highly unlikely to convict him.But through all of this, Republicans are weaponizing immigration to break the norms of democracy. They are voting to impeach Mayorkas over policy disagreements rather than actual “high crimes and misdemeanors.”It raises the question of what’s to come next in this increasingly heated election-year battle over immigration.

Rock band critical of Putin is detained in Thailand, fearful of deportation to Russia

Associated Press

Rock band critical of Putin is detained in Thailand, fearful of deportation to Russia

Grant Pecku – January 30, 2024

FILE – Aleksandr “Shura” Uman, left, and Yegor “Lyova” Bortnik perform during the Bi-2 rock band concert in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Dec. 1, 2011. Members of a rock band that has been critical of Moscow’s war in Ukraine remain locked up in a Thai immigration jail, fearful that they could be deported to Russia as a reported plan to let them fly to safety in Israel was apparently suspended. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)More

BANGKOK (AP) — Members of a rock band that has been critical of Moscow’s war in Ukraine remained locked up Tuesday in a Thai immigration jail, fearful that they could be deported to Russia as a reported plan to let them fly to safety in Israel was apparently suspended.

The progressive rock band Bi-2 said on Facebook that it had information that intervention from Russian diplomats caused the plan to be scuttled, even though tickets had already been purchased for their flight.

“The group participants remain detained at the immigration center in a shared cell with 80 people,” the post said. It said they declined to meet with the Russian consul. The Russian press agency RIA Novosti said the refusal was confirmed by Ilya Ilyin, head of the Russian Embassy’s consular section.

The group later said on the Telegram messaging app that its singer Yegor Bortnik, whose stage name is Lyova, was at the airport awaiting a flight to Israel but the other members remained in the jail.

The seven band members were arrested last Thursday after playing a concert on the southern resort island of Phuket, reportedly for not having proper working papers. On Facebook, they said all their concerts “are held in accordance with local laws and practices.” Phuket is a popular destination for Russian expats and tourists. After paying a fine, the band members were sent to the Immigration Detention Center in Bangkok.

The detained musicians “include Russian citizens as well as dual nationals of Russia and other countries, including Israel and Australia,” the group Human Rights Watch said in a statement Tuesday. Those holding only Russian citizenship are thought to be most at risk.

“The Thai authorities should immediately release the detained members of Bi-2 and allow them to go on their way,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Under no circumstances should they be deported to Russia, where they could face arrest or worse for their outspoken criticisms of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s war in Ukraine.”

“It is not known if the Russian authorities have sought the band members’ forcible return to Russia,” Human Rights Watch said. “However, amid repression in Russia reaching new heights, Russian authorities have used transnational repression — abuses committed against nationals beyond a government’s jurisdiction — to target activists and government critics abroad with violence and other unlawful actions.”

Self-exiled Russian opposition politician and a friend of Bi-2, Dmitry Gudkov, told the AP that he had been in touch with lawyers and diplomats in an attempt to secure the band’s release and suggested that pressure to detain and deport them came directly from the Kremlin and the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Russia, Gudkov said, needs an “evocative story to show that they will catch any critic abroad. This is all happening in the run-up to (Russia’s presidential election), and it’s clear that they want to shut everyone up, and that’s why there’s intense pressure going on.”

Russia’s ambassador to Thailand Yevgeny Tomikhin said Russian diplomats were not responsible for the group’s detention.

“It’s not our practice to dictate to anyone. Americans can do this. We don’t behave like that and don’t make such requests,” Tomikhin was quoted as telling the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.

There have been no public statements from Thai officials on the situation.

Bi-2 has 1.01 million subscribers to its YouTube channel and 376,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.

Andrei Lugovoi, a member of the lower house of Russia’s parliament, called the band members “scum” for their criticism of Russia’s military operations in Ukraine.

“Let the guys get ready: soon they will be playing and singing on spoons and on metal plates, tap dancing in front of their cellmates,” Lugovoi said on Telegram. “Personally, I would be very happy to see this.”

Britain has accused Lugovoi of involvement in the death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who died in London in 2006 after being poisoned with tea laced with radioactive polonium-210.

Associated Press writers Emma Burrows and Jim Heintz in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed.